[AnthonyMouse]

> This is what the blog post under discussion is complaining about - your labour will be laundered through the machine, and presented to an end-user with the end-user having never heard of you.

Isn't that what organizations do in general? A person grows your food and installed the plumbing in your house and wrote a component of the web browser you're using. Do you know their names?

[lelanthran]

> Isn't that what organizations do in general? A person grows your food and installed the plumbing in your house and wrote a component of the web browser you're using.

The person growing the food I get or the plumber installing a toilet never asked for attribution because it wasn't relevant to their pay.

> Do you know their names?

As a matter of fact, for things that require attribution, I do know their names. You do too!

Like the author of this blog post - his name is right there on the site.

Now, you may say "But I'm fine with laundering attribution", but that is no different from claiming that trademark law should be effectively nullified because you don't wear trademarked clothing.

[AnthonyMouse]

> The person growing the food I get or the plumber installing a toilet never asked for attribution because it wasn't relevant to their pay.

But it is though. If they do a good job then you could have customers wanting the same one again. You go to the grocery store and there is just a bin full of undifferentiated produce. Some days they're juicier than others. They came from different farms. But they don't even tell you when they switch from one to another, so how is a farmer who is doing a better job supposed to get more business or command higher prices?

> As a matter of fact, for things that require attribution, I do know their names. You do too!

Blogs include the author's name because they want to, not because they're required to. There are plenty of organizational ones that are published only in the name of the organization.

The thing that allows attribution to happen is the absence of a middle man. When you go to the farm shop at the farm itself then you get told the name of the family whose farm it is, but not when you go to Walmart. When you hire someone to build a walkway you see their face and learn their name; when the government hires them to build a sidewalk on your behalf they become a faceless abstraction.

[lelanthran]

> But it is though.

Is it? Lets see your reason for thinking that.

> If they do a good job then you could have customers wanting the same one again. You go to the grocery store and there is just a bin full of undifferentiated produce. Some days they're juicier than others. They came from different farms. But they don't even tell you when they switch from one to another, so how is a farmer who is doing a better job supposed to get more business or command higher prices?

As far as I can see from the text above, you feel it should be relevant to their pay, but nothing you say makes me think that it currently is relevant to their pay.

What you think should be happening is not my point; I am only saying that it isn't happening.

> Blogs include the author's name because they want to, not because they're required to.

But that's my point! You appear to agree that the labour supplier in this specific case wants attribution, and yet you are arguing that they should not get it?

[AnthonyMouse]

> As far as I can see from the text above, you feel it should be relevant to their pay, but nothing you say makes me think that it currently is relevant to their pay.

No, it currently is relevant to their pay. They would be paid a different amount if the quality of their product was attributable by the customer to the specific producer. It affects how many customers/sales they get.

> You appear to agree that the labour supplier in this specific case wants attribution, and yet you are arguing that they should not get it?

But how is that any different than any other case? If the farmer wants attribution, that doesn't mean Walmart is giving it to them.

[lelanthran]

> They would be paid a different amount if the quality of their product was attributable by the customer to the specific producer.

You are proposing a hypothetical; that is not what is currently happening.

[AnthonyMouse]

The thing that isn't currently happening is the stores attributing the source of their produce. It's obviously not a hypothetical that customers have preferences between different sources when they're actually provided with that information, or those preferences affect the sales of each supplier.