ZeagleFiend

1. Your reductive analysis of my comment inculpates you, not me. "Whatever, kill the RIAA" is not what I said at all.

2. I was reply to someone who was talking about intellectual property as a concept. Thus, I was engaging in discussion with him, not with the thread in a more general sense.

I oppose the concept of Intellectual Property as we know it. It is something up with by the entertainment industries to line their own pockets, and it stymies progress and good art.

For the majority of human (art) history, no such concept existed. Ideas were communal (for instance see Bach's famous "Goldberg Variations", which borrowed a lot from popular songs of the time). In what sense is an intangible idea property at all? In what sense do I "own" a riff if I randomly strum it out one day on my guitar? It didn't create it. It existed prior to me playing it.

It has been shown the monetary incentive is not required for great things to be produced. Projects like wikipedia are testament to this, as is the immensity of excellent fiction, music and other art that is available for free on the internet.

The concept of Intellectual Property is outdated, and the world needs to realise this as it adapts to deal with the incredible implications of the developing internet.

The problem with actually implementing this system is that, after drawing up said list of things that need doing, I would simply go and find myself doing a bunch of other stuff, stuff which isn't on the list, but is capable of making itself seem important and worthwhile enough to me to keep me from feeling bad. Stuff like reading that book I bought a year ago, practising piano, reading articles about interesting stuff online, writing and then scrapping the opening few pages of a novel...

The point is, making such a list of tasks to do would simply give me something else to avoid entirely. I might even progress to having lists of lists of tasks.

I realise this article isn't serious, but it's interesting to consider. I could never make it work, because pandering to procrastination like this would just engender further procrastination and further doing of things which can seem important but are really utterly unimportant.

There is almost always something you would rather be doing than what you are doing right now.

I don't think that the new design 'emphasises' the search button at all. It slots it neatly onto the end of the search bar rather than hanging it below the bar. It's smaller and more pleasing to the eye.

But I'm all for removing the 'I'm feeling lucky' button. Did anyone ever use that?