Slashdot Mirror

The studios' accounting tricks in their standard artist's contract is what will kill them. Awesome.

FTFA:

Not only have recording artists traditionally paid for the making of their records themselves, with advances from the record companies that are then charged against royalties, they are also exempted from both the obligations and benefits an employee typically expects.

Here's my favorite article about record contracts from the pre-internet era:
http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp/albini.html

Fuck You Real Hard. Only the vapid tripe that evolutionary rejects like you call "entertainment" ever gets in the bargain bin. Everything I download (and it's 100+G / month) is out of .

I don't pay for software because I'm yet to see $1 in return on investment.

I don't pay for movies because, if said movie hasn't made an obscene profit* in the first week-end, it is considered a commercial failure anyway. (I'm not buying into the "rental" racket : shop-owners who pay $150 for the right to rent a DVD without bonuses and sometimes even lacking the original audio! Boycott.)

*obscene profit : cost $ 10e6, makes ten times that in the two first days. Poor, poor Hollywood. Boohoo.

I do pay for every thing that can not be copied at zero cost. I believe in capitalism : everything is worth exactly its production cost, taking into account paying everyone involved in producing said thing, so that they can buy things.

Don't even think of replying before you've read http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/l ove/ and http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp/albini .html

I'm not familiar with the system over there, but it sounds like it's different from over here in the US. Talk about disillusionment, when one discovers that here in the US, airtime and thus chart position are basically rigged by (illegally) paying stations for airplay. (Someone jump in here if I go off base)

This is why this couldn't work in the US, ClearChannel owns a vast majority of the stations. This gives them the unique position of being gatekeeper and judge of which songs and artists are the best.

Here's a couple links I just grabbed from google. I haven't read through them all, so if they contradict what I just said then I'm probably the one who's wrong.
Royalty Politics
Blurb on Airplay

Just make sure to hit the right spot on the flamethrower suit.

You state what you think your top priority is. You clearly assume that this matters more than other issues, such as upholding an ethical position. You likely believe that non-free software is not unethical. Is your understanding of the issues perfect? Of course not -- no one's is. Therefore, consider a little argument against the notion of things such as non-free software (not from RMS or the FSF, BTW):

-----

Why is the abridgement of the [freedom of] copying, use, distribution, and modification of published information unethical?

The abridgement of the [freedom of] copying, use, distribution, and modification of published information (as defined in USC 17) is unethical for three main reasons, all taken in conjunction with each other:

* Arbitrary copying, use, distribution, and modification of published information generally does not cause harm to anyone. When someone makes a copy of a certain piece of information that is published, there is no information lost. The person from which the information is copied (say an author or an inventor) retains the information in exactly the same state. What has happened is that two copies of the same piece of published information arise. What is done with the second copy does not affect what is done with the first copy, ceterus paribus.

* Abridgement of the [freedom of] copying, use, distribution, and modification of published information generally causes harm to the progress of the sciences and the arts. One instance is in the case of software. Suppose I publish a program that does rational drug design (makes it easier to find drugs for diseases) and is generally found useful by individuals all over. Suppose you're able to modify the program and make it even more better at rational drug design and distribute it. I can, under current Copyright and Patent law, for whatever reasons I wish, control you and prevent you from doing this even though your modification would be beneficial to everyone. This causes a lot of harm to people, even though the modification itself does not cause harm to me.

* Abridgement of the [freedom of] copying, use, distribution, and modification of published information also abridges your freedom of speech, expression, and your freedom to think freely. As in the above situation, suppose I publish a program for drug design, and claim all "intellectual property rights" associated with the creation. You can't even begin to do research (legally) on the program without licensing it from me, i.e., your freedom to even think about what the program does and improve its workings is abridged. Further, you're forbidden from repeating the program (and its improvements) to someone else. In other words, you're forbidden from telling people what your thoughts are, even if they are so uncreative as to be identical to what you've heard or seen before. What this ultimately boils down to is that your freedom to obtain knowledge, store and process that knowledge, and spread that knowledge as you see fit, is abridged. Thus people are constantly forced to re-invent the wheel rather than copy and use or modify existing information.

-----

(source: http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp/copyin g_primer.html)

If you disagree with the given ethical position, please falsify it.

viral video makers

Are we talking about the Motaba Virus?

Most bands get their money from touring. The entrance fee, the t-shirts and assorted commerical wares. They get shit crumbs from the record company. Only with huge bands like Metalica that have power to make demands and who sell a fuckload of albums anyway does piracy really matter for.

You should read this article from Maximum Rock'n'Roll, written by a very insightful music industry producer. Please do read it and tell me your thoughts are. You can call me Mr. Gray if you want to reference me specifically.

But maybe Aldiss was influenced or inspired by Dick? I don't know.

It's kind of like those bacteria and tube worms thriving on the ocean floor in sulfuric acid at 300C. Drop their temperature below 150C, and they die.

*If* there were anything living on Mars in the first place, it would die long before we ever knew it got here.

But hey, anything to keep us safe from the Martian threat. Somebody's been watching too many bad scifi movies.

Here you go.

0) Software http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html
1) Hardware HOWTO with example http://www.ram.org/computing/linux/dpt_raid.html
2) http://www.finnie.org/terabyte/
3) Plder http://www.nobell.org/~gjm/linux/ide-raid/ but useful info on controller companies.

Now that they've tackled that issue they can get to work on the real folding problem

You're going to make my band increase prices instead of giving away songs for free? Right now, the songs we recorded are free on our site. Not that there's a Big Demand for Star Trek punk rock, but still.

No, but seriously, artists aren't the ones deciding on the price of songs. 99 cents is too much for most music. Artists rarely decide anything. Steve Albini wrote a great article about how much major labels suck for Maximum Rock n Roll.

Now *that's* some serious detox...

here and here

Somebody should write up a music version of GPL and propose it.

"Although Stallman believes that copyright as a mechanism lends itself to evil purposes much more readily than to good, it's important to stress that the GNU project's fundamental argument is not about copyrighted software, but proprietary software. The GNU position is that we should not only be allowed to copy software freely, but that we should also have free access to the source code, so that it is possible for us to "read, fix, adapt, and improve, not just operate" the software. The GPL's requirement that all source code be made available is a legal embodiment of Stallman's moral stance: that software authors should be required to make their source code available to the same extent that they make the object code available. This is an issue of secrecy which is entirely outside the scope of copyright in its current form: source code to proprietary software is generally unavailable because it is undisclosed, not because it is copyrighted. From the GNU perspective, eliminating copyright on software would reduce but not eliminate or even minimise the inherent evil of proprietary software, whereas it would render the GPL effectively toothless."

While perusing the net, I came across this site on Free Music by a guy named Ram Samudrala

He has listed a 'Free Music Philosophy', which (I think) has merit. I think as a community, there should be a much larger effort on this subject to help further the cause.

I know it will be a long, hard fight (which might be impossible to win, who knows) against the RIAA, but they've done so many things lately that make me hate them to no end (like the proprosal on Ashcroft's Anti-terrorism bill that would allow them to hack into our computers and spy on us), so I would love to see them go down in flames.

Any article about someone suing the RIAA would definitely be of interest to me, and hopefully to many of you.

While perusing the net, I came across this site on Free Music by a guy named Ram Samudrala

He has listed a 'Free Music Philosophy', which (I think) has merit. I think as a community, there should be a much larger effort on this subject to help further the cause.

I know it will be a long, hard fight (which might be impossible to win, who knows) against the RIAA, but they've done so many things lately that make me hate them to no end (like the proprosal on Ashcroft's Anti-terrorism bill that would allow them to hack into our computers and spy on us), so I would love to see them go down in flames.

Any article about someone suing the RIAA would definitely be of interest to me, and hopefully to many of you.

http://www.mp3.com/news/222.html
http://www.musicalevolution.8k.com/albini.htm
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp/albini .html
http://www.musicianassist.com/archive/article/ART/ a-1098-1.htm

Uhhhhh...hyuk hyuk! I mean here.

Forgot to QA my own post!

As for why I released them under that license, I respond: why not? Those recordings were done many years ago. I will never make any money off of them, nor do I really need or want to. I didn't make the music with the intent of making money... I made it because I wanted to. I learned long ago that the kind of music that I wanted to create wouldn't be the kind of music that would make me rich... or even make me enough money to live off of.

If someone else can get some enjoyment out of them, then that's great... if not, then oh well... But they're definitely not going to do any anyone any good just sitting on cassette tapes in my closet.

It's nice to see our intuition quantified, with regard to Napster use and CD sales, but to address the previous posters' comment about cause and effect, Napster allows users exposure to new music they would not have been exposed to otherwise (and would never have even considered buying for the simple reason that they didn't know about it). This suggests an alternative reason for the RIAA suit. Because these organizations determine residuals paid to artists based on Radio Airtime, the popularity of Napsterand other such services would cause those payments to become more skiewed than they already are. This would threaten the vary existance of the RIAA and other such organizations, because if the membership felt they were not being served (read: paid) fairly, the organization would fall apart completely. Cornered animals fight back even more firecely when you're swinging a spiked clup over their head. As I suggested, these organizations use outdated techniques to measure listenership, and pay those residuals as described in this extremely good essay. Napster threatened to bring this to light and expose it to scrutiny.

With regard to MediaBay, the afore mentioned survey results do not refute their argument, since they are making a detailed and precise argument rather than the wild generalizations made by the RIAA. Aside from the extremely ambiguous copyright status if the content they claim ownership of, they seem to have a decent case, as much as it pains me to say so.

--CTH

though it's probably been posted to death, nobody should ever enter or leave a conversation on this topic without reading the following:

The Problem With Music by Steve Albini

Spamuel's more correct than not...$1/CD is a pipedream for most. Indie bands do tend to get a bigger cut though.

Shift each characters of HAL to the right you get IBM.

It's coming from 2001: A Space Odyssey based on Arthur C. Clarke's novel, a story about the infamous HAL 9000, an artificially intelligent computer who becomes unstable, dominates and threatens the world. Sounds like Matrix.
The author feared that IBM, biggest computer maker at time, eventually create something uncontrollable. Reality tells us IBM did not create something threatening the world, rather they created something barely beats Kasparov. (Stephen Hawkings was right, modern computers is about as complex as worm's brain)

HAL has then become a word for supercomputer with human intelligence.

ASCAP tapes over 60,000 hours of radio airplay in order to identify the music played and on that basis, distributes a percentage of the license fees collected from radio stations and other performance venues, to the artists who's music appears most frequently in the sampled material, in the percentages associated with that performance frequency.

Let the RIAA make it as hard as they like for people to share music from their artists. Give them enough rope to hang themselves. If the only tunes on Napster are free tunes, then free tunes will get traded and free tunes will get heard.

The more draconian the RIAA gets, the more people will want and seek out alternatives. This could be the start of something wonderful.

I don't think Ani DiFranco spends a whole lot of time suing people for copying her music, and the link will give you a little more detail about how to make a living as a musician outside the mainstream. If you want you can sift through this list of bands who oppose copyrighting and see if any are making any money. My guess is that none own their own jet, I'll grant you that.

You've defined your question in a somewhat difficult way, though, by insisting on an exception for "hippie musicians." You can take any example you are given and label them a hippie and therefore they don't count. The fact that they don't go around demanding royalties for their music can be taken as proof that they are hippies. So you want, what, like a Christian country western singer with a buzz cut who never sells recordings and only collects the ticket recipts? I'll go look; stay right there 'til I get back...

Unlike tangible goods and real property, the nature of IP -- or any form of knowledge -- is to spread."

Looks a lot like "Information wants to be free" to me.. :)

Yes, but then he goes on to say

As far as IP being worthy of being safeguarded, it matters little to me whether or not a week's worth of my labor was spent fashioning a dining room table or writing code -- both consumed part of my life and are fruits of my labor, and I want both to be guarded from those who would take them without my giving me something in exchange.

The (unspoken) implication is that copyright, patents, and other forms of IP are OK, although strictly speaking he did not state that explicitly.

I think he (and a lot of people, both here and elsewhere) need to be educated and made to realize (or at least confront and argue against) the notion that a government mandated and enforced monopoly isn't necessary for IP creators to be fairly compensated and, furthermore, has a stifling impact on the field of endeavor so affected, not to mention the society, culture, and the economy as a whole.

Nevertheless, while Libertarians are split on the question of IP (and he perhaps falls on the wrong side of that debate), he is quite correct in saying that "our first step on the road to freedom is to return to the Constitution as the rule of law for our nation." We can (and must) fix the debacle that is IP, but he argues (perhaps correctly) that getting bogged down in that is putting the cart before the horse.

Although I disagree with his (implied) stance on patents and copyrights, I have been persuaded to vote for Harry Browne over Ralph Nader nevertheless. There is no candidate I agree with on every issue, but I agree with Harry Browne's agenda on far more points than I do with any other candidate.

(And yes, as someone who was going to vote for Ralph Nader based on his stance WRT corporate and special interests influencing government, I have had my mind changed. This happens from time to time, if one's mind is truly open.)

--

It's bad enough that our jails are so full of consenual criminal that rapists, murders, and other deviants get to go free in less than four years. Now we're going to add to the overcrowding!?!?! Intellectual property is going to lead to very oppressive laws if it is not stopped!

--
J Perry Fecteau, 5-time Mr. Internet
Ejercisio Perfecto: from Geek to GOD in WEEKS!

Yeah! The philosophy behind Open Source should not remain merely in the realm of computers. There should be all kinds of equivalents of "open source", like in music, movies, novels, you-name-it.

On the other side, people who aren't creating stuff and putting it under open-source-like licenses should at least support the people who are doing this. As far as music is concerned, people should definitely support GAMH and read the Free Music Philosophy.

Also check out the CZR Public License

The people who want to control the entertainment industry wants to make you a couch potato. If you don't want to be one, do something about it! Go create something new and put an open-source-like license on it. Or at least, go support the people who are doing this. Sitting there on your desk typing messages on Slashdot won't accomplish that much. Save some of that energy and accomplish something.

There is actually a group of musicians/bands/etc. applying a GPLish touch to the music that they write. Doing a search in your favorite search engine on "free music" should reveal of few of their pages. Check out here to get started.

Anyone up for creating a website devoted to musical artists who want to share their contributions with the world? I got the idea earlier when someone mentioned that music should be open sourced.

• Call this OS anything you want, but please include the name "linux" in whatever you call it.
• Please claim to your free subdomain (reputation) in our community-owned, mother-of-all-intranets at http://our.linux.org/dns (eg: va.linux.org = valinux.com etc)
• Let's chaorganize ourselves to free our idea exchange, while forging a commercial agreement to immunize ourselves from free-riders like Dr. Chiou.. This process might take us a year..

The only problem we have with patents today is that the USPTO is giving them out too easily, trivializing the real value of the patent process.

another problem might include the fact that an owner of a patent monopoly can choose to deny anyone else access to the invention, or set unfair terms.. might compulsory licensing alleviate the problem?

One can easily imagine RMS having gotten bent over not being allowed to record and distribute his own cover version of some song, instead of a printer driver.

• You are allowed to play covers, and even copy existing recordings, if it's not a commercial endeavor. If you're making money at it, you have to give BMI or ASCAP their cut to pass along to the songwriter.
• There's no practical way to prevent a song from being reverse-engineered.
• No one sticks end-listener license agreements on audio CDs. ("You are prohibited from singing, humming, or whistling any tune, melody, or song contained therein. Your hearing of the music on this disk indicates your acceptance of the terms of this License.")
• No one has tried to patent the twelve-bar blues. ("A method for the combination of audio tones to induce within the listener certain changes of mental and physical state, including but not limited to emotional changes, rhythmic body movements, and the Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie-Woogie Flu.")

I prefer a more pragmatic approach: intellectual property is a construct we invented for the betterment of society as a whole. Does it work? Which parts help more than they hurt?

There is a group of musicians following the Free Music Philosophy, which is interesting. I will probably do something like that with my own music when I get enough good stuff together to make it worthwhile. (That may take a while. B-) )

One interesting project underway involving GPL'd art is the Free Music Philosophy.

It's an interesting idea. It would certainly cut down on piracy and illegal remixes, eh? Poor business move for big cos, good one for the little guys, but money decides these things in abscence of a large scale grassroots movement.

Regardless, check out free music philosophy -- Essentially the GPL as it applies to music. http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philo sophy/fmp.html

Ironically all the bands on the web ring are thinking free beer, but the main page hits home. Also rtmark has been in the news due to their "liberation" (a la illegal deconstruction / remixing) of a beck album, with the specific goal of having it tried in court.

Imagine for instance, that we allow free redistribution of the music, and that very little of it is actually sold.

Imagine, for instance, that the artists make their money from tangible goods that come as a result of their popularity.. Selling concert tickets, T Shirts, Merchandising their craft.

May I have a minute or two of your time? I'm sorry if I've come a little too late to this party.

Your solutions point to impossible examples; sure, the Stones and the Floyd can make tons of money this way, even while their recordings are yawn-inducing loss-leaders designed to promote the latest World Tour, but this has nothing to do with music, and everything to do with showbiz. Popular music has more to do with showbiz than it does with music; it's a distinction that goes largely unnoticed. Thanks to the suits who work at the large corporations affiliated with the dreaded RIAA (and the suits who work in showbiz management), Mick'n'Keef, and whomever's-left-in-Pink-Floyd-these-days have been able to establish brand names that are as powerful as brand names such as Microsoft and Oracle. This has little or nothing to do with music; we're talking about brand names and product. There are only subtle differences between Mariah Carey, Marilyn Manson, and whatever little-known band or DJ is appearing at your favorite local venue - but perhaps this flame-inducing statement probably belongs elsewhere.

Yeah, maybe it's OK for some just-started band to try to make their money off of ancillary merchandise - they've probably come up with a logo and an "angle" before they've even come up with a full set-list. And they've chosen a genre of music that is highly marketable, thanks (again) to the dreaded RIAA, the dreadful agent-weasels, and their henchmen in the radio industry (which, again, has little to do with music, even though their programming is rife with it). But what of those people who make "real" music - i.e., non-pop music. Do Ellery Eskelin (who?) or Fred van Hove (who?) now have to sell t-shirts and assorted tchotchkes? I've seen people wearing Coltrane or Beethoven t-shirts, but I don't think the licensing monies are doled out to them posthumously. As a kid, I remember reading an article about the (then pre-academe) composer/saxophonist Anthony Braxton (who?) in which it was mentioned that he was having trouble coming up with the money to pay his phone bill; Braxton at that point had already gained a worldwide reputation, with gigs and recordings in North America, Europe, and Japan. Gee, maybe if he'd come up with a "Braxton World Tour '73" logo and sold World Tour t-shirts at the concert halls, that phone bill wouldn't have been a problem! These individuals I've mentioned (and perhaps thousands of others) don't have any misconceptions about music being a "hobby" - they've spent a hell of a lot more time studying, formulating, practicing, rehearsing, and flat-out working than many of you will ever do in your chosen fields.

I'm getting a little tired of these "Let Them Eat Cake" arguments (i.e. "free your music, and the money will follow"). I respect and understand the arguments and rationales for Free Software, but it doesn't necessarily scale to all fields of endeavor. Is the sheet music equivalent to the source code, or is the recording equivalent to the source code? That simple question should tell you that there isn't a one-to-one correspondence. In the art world, a JPEG can't compare to the "hard copy" of an actual painting or sculpture - so there's no problem with having that JPEG freely distributable on the Web; there will, if the work in question is good, be someone out there who will want to purchase that actual painting or sculpture. With music - or, more specifically, a recorded work of music - the MP2/MP3/MPEG-4 digitized version can be "CD quality" if the bitrate is high enough and the source material is recorded and encoded well. That means there's less of an incentive to buy the "hard copy" version.

Those of you who write code for a living, how would you like it if your compensation came this way: you get paid a few cents each time someone runs your code, no matter how large or small that code was. If that doesn't bring in enough cash to buy all those nice toys, well... there's plenty of McJobs out there; maybe you're "just not working hard enough". Maybe you can supplement your income by selling screensavers and mouse pads with the wonderful logo you've designed for your shared library? Can we please put an end to these ivory-tower solutions for "helping" musicians in the digital age? I'll have a hell of a lot more respect for Ram Samudrala's Free Music Philosophy once he's spent a few years making a living solely through music-making.

Fin du rant. Thanks for stopping by.

--

incidentally, the guy who wrote the first linked essay, Ram Samudrala, has a VERY interesting site at www.ram.org. I ordered the CD "traversing a twisted path" from him, and it's really worth it.