stch2

On point (2) -- In four years of being a math major, I don't think a single professor ever used brackets in that situation, only additional parentheses.

Why do you think a currency that naturally appreciates over time is desirable?

Sorry, they stole your money. This is a big advantage of theirs, they aren't regulated like a bank so they have no trouble taking money from marginalized people.

The downside is that it's nearly impossible to go back to a thread and continue where you left off. With a linear thread, you can go back to the last post you read and continue from there -- with a fully threaded forum, I basically get one pass at the comments and then can never view that page again without huge effort to reconstruct my position.

Flattery is a two-way act to me, why else did you use the word? You basically said "accept that someone copied you against your wishes and just ignore it".

I have a question about bitcoin -- let's assume that it actually starts becoming popular. What stops any country that's adopting it from simply forking their own version? Specifically, why is everyone investing in this particular instance of bitcoin?

download/steal/copy/whatever you want to call it. I was just suggesting a place to get it from.

What if I don't want to be "flattered"? I don't really see anything flattering about someone copying one of my ideas when I don't want them to copy it.

You can always steal it from thepiratebay/megaconz

Just because it's possible to steal something, you/society should allow it to happen? Did I misinterpret what you said, or is this what you're saying?

What's the incentive to be a sponsor vs. someone who receives a copy after the work is finished?

You're right, I actually agree with #4 more than my previous post will admit. But I believe the unrestricted level of piracy the OP suggests should be allowed swings the pendulum too far in the opposite direction.

1. "Not my problem"

3. "They'll figure it out"

4. "Not my problem"

5. "They'll figure it out"

The only legitimate argument I'm seeing there is point (2), and even then, all you're saying is that in absolute dollars the music industry is generating more profit -- ignoring population growth, accessibility to more music (iTunes, Amazon music), etc. -- so it's very hard to say whether the music industry profits grew despite piracy, because of piracy, or independent of piracy. I'm sorry, but that's extremely unconvincing. Given the article in the OP and this reply, I can't really see the difference between your current viewpoint and pure selfishness/FYGM.

So what is the ideal scenario, in the author's mind, for how creative work should be compensated? Let's say I wrote a book, and I want to get compensated for the time I spent writing the book. In his ideal world, I would ____________ ?

My impression from the article is I would sell one copy to one person, that person, or future recipients of a copy, would copy it for every single other person that might want to read it, and then I would just wait and pray for donations. Am I misinterpreting his article?

The author explicitly states there is a 24% correlation, and then says there is no correlation. Can he or she not make up their mind?