Slashdot Mirror
Copyrights Need New Business Models
fleener writes "Business 2.0 has an article simplifying the brouhaha over DVD and MP3. In a nutshell, the author argues a new business model is needed which destroys the motive to copy, not the mechanisms used to copy. For example, "a wireless flat-fee/advertising-supported jukebox of unlimited capacity would strip us of our desire to make MP3 files." He goes on to relate this idea to the success of other media formats, such as video cassettes. So, if the mechanisms for copying digital works are not restricted, what business model do you think is viable for the MP3/DVD paranoid entertainment industry?" And more important, how would you convince them to adopt it?
Copyrights are starting to get ridicuously dated in concept. We have so much more available to us now than we did in the beginning of the century... back then it was to make sure that one person didn't print 1000 copies of another author's book and make money off of it unfairly. Now we have the RIAA and the MPAA telling us we can buy their CDs and DVDs, yet we don't really own them and they have complete control over everything. Sheesh.
First post.
This world is moving faster than legislators can keep up with. Copyright that applies to printed material can't work in the digital age. People will need to change the way they think about information.
Information wants to be free. Let it.
Reality has a liberal bias
I could go for that. Sounds kinki.
You should begin the conversation with something like, "So, did you hear what the RIAA are doing?!"...
(I don't know whether or not this post is humorous...)
--
The industry powerhouses won't accept it until they have no other choice. They think they can control everything if they throw enough money and lawyers at it, and they've got plenty of both. I'm not sure how it's all going to pan out, but it's going to take quite some time, and there's probably going to be legal casualties. There's too many people out there sharing the information for the industry to stop them all, so they'll pick the few that they can conjure up the best cases against, and try to make examples of them. History shows that this seldom is an effective technique, especially the short but compelling internet history, but it's going to happen nonetheless.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
What about choice?
What if I wanted to listen to a Gentle Giant track from 1974. Or a Dixie Dregs track from 1981?
Unless this broadcast facility had EVERY RECORD EVER RECORDED this wouldn't seem to elliminate the proliferation of MP3's (which I fail to understand anyway).
But imagine if you could get EVERY RECORD EVER RECORDED, you could then get Richard Klein to advertise for the company!
(1970's Comedy reference)
Ignore Alien Orders
This is exactly what cable tv is, isn't it?
Let me see if I got this straight - Wireless, flat fee/Advertising supported jukebox with unlimited capacity... So we would set up transmitters in every city, and a phone line where listeners could call in and ask for a song to be played, and have different kinds of stations play different kinds of music! And support it by ads - we could even offer news and weather on the hour! And THAT could be sponsored by advertisers too! People could have little players that fit in cars, on their wrist, on their heads! Maybe we could call it - FM Radio!!! Genious? No - maybe something else.
Always one for cynicism, I think this whole thing with the RIAA and the MPAA and the DeCSS is just going to show how far out of whack US capitalism has gone.
; }return(0);}
Patents, Copyrights, etc. are[were] designed to protect people, not profits. It used to be a crime to profiteer in the US, now its a crime to prevent the rich from getting richer. I feel very strongly that its time for the US to go back to revolution and start clean. Same applies to most western democracies.
I can't remember who said it (I'm no historian), but one of the American 'fathers' cautionned that the US needed a civil war or societal restructuring of some sort every generation to ensure a truly democratic nation.
#include <signal.h> \ #include <stdlib.h> \ int main(void){signal(ABRT,SIGIGN);while(1){abort(-1)
OFTC: By the community, for the community
Yes, wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone had unrestricted "free" access to all art (note... Britney Spears and NSYNC are not art, and should cost extra) and literature, but how feasibly is it really? Record companies and publishers are not going to be convinced that they can make as much money by "giving away" their "products," even if it might be true! They will fight tooth and nail, we are living in a world where money is the driving force, not quality of life, i'm sorry to say.
Now, the mp3 scene is probably too big for them to even catch up with, and they won't release singles for fear of appearing weak on their anti-piracy stance. It'd be great if an intelligent business approach was taken in this area - let's just hope it's not too late.
You know what to do with the HELLO. ...
Help create an open-source world
The RIAA really does need to take a whole new approach to the way they do business. Instead of relying on overpriced CD's for revenue (and attempting to add a copy-protection scheme once they realize there is no way to stop the mp3 revolution) why don't they attempt to make some money out of this?
They should just put up a massive online collection of mp3's of all the artists from major labels. They could rely on ads and/or promotions (concert tours, merchandise, etc) to generate income...they could even charge a nominal fee for unlimited access to the servers, and I don't doubt that an enormous amount of people would flock to a site like this. As nice as Napster is, it's very irritating when my transfers get cancelled midway through - or when I try to download from someone on a "T1" line speed and get 2k/sec... if the recording industry put up servers with all their music in mp3 form they would make a LOT of money. It's really too bad that they don't seem to understand this. Instead of adapting to new technology, they're simply trying to suppress it, and if history is any guide they are obviously doomed from the start.
... how copying an mp3 is different from stealing? If I walk into a car dealership and drop off $5000 (to pay for cost the raw materials that compose the car) for a car and drive off with a $80,000 car, is this not wrong? How is copying an mp3 any different? Theoretically I don't even have to drop the $5000 because the cost of the raw materials is arbitrarily assigned, and in my opinion those materials are abundant and can be easily found, thus they should cost nothing, thus the price of the car is nothing.
These companies that are very profitable are going to lose money and go to flat rate scheme that lets you get what the hell you want...WRONG..the issue is that it's not that their loosing money from mp3's (people still by cd's) it's the fact thier loosing control..to quote austin powers Its about "freedom baby Yea"...our freedom..and the artist freedom. Freedom not to have to lick the boots of some corporate thug.
Cost will be a major driving force. For any method to work it will need to make it cost effective to just buy the original.
With the advent of very fast computers it is just not possible to make a copy protection scheme that will last for any duration. A means around the protection will always be found. Encryption is easy to break because the key needs to be on the player at some point, and at some point the raw digital data needs to be available. Due to both of these constraints it just isn't feasable to use copy protection to protect a work. There will always be a way around it.
Ease of use. If Joe Schmoe 50 IQ can't deal with it, it will fail.
Because of these constraints I feel low cost download will likely be the wave of the future.
Sure some people will pirate like mad, they are pirates and the law can deal with that.
keep prices cheap more people will buy legit. Half of the reason the estimates of piracy are so high is that it is calculated on an inflated fee in the first place.
cya, Andrew...
PS:anyone else notice xooom.com's stats are haywire??
This is my sig, exciting huh!
There is one major fundamental difference that everyone seems to ignore when it comes to MP3s and DVD piracy. Whereas with videocassettes and cassette tapes and photocopies, you had to pay for some sort of medium on which to copy the target work, with MP3s and DVD rips, you don't need anything but disk space, which people already have. I see people say that copyright laws were there to prevent people from rattling off 1000 copies of a book and then selling them, but a) it cost a bit of money to rattle off 1000 copies and b)the copies weren't identical to the original. But with an MP3 rip, it is identical, and it doesn't cost anything to do it. Sure, no one's selling MP3s, but copyrights weren't meant to prevent people from selling stuff, they were meant to give the author the right to manage the content, including distribution. Giving something away still steals a sale from the copyright owner.
The VCR debate is not an analogy to the Mp3/DVD debate since it required both a) an extra machine and b) another video cassette. Both induced financial burdens that could be monitored, but the warez activity on USENET shows that this is not the case for MP3s. What the RIAA and MPAA are worried about is not controlling your lives to make sure that you can't get your information, but controlling their information which they have the legal right to distribute. The problem they have is that people are ignoring that right, just simple blatant ignorance. I think the MPAA and RIAA are taking a typical corporate hard-line stance in favor of their legal arguments, their open-source opponents are taking an equally hard-line stance against them, and the end result is helping neither side. OS people look like a bunch of little anarchist brats with no regard for the world they live in. Just as the MPAA and RIAA have been adversarial in their approach to the situation, OS members have been just as adversarial in theirs ("Oh, well, if we post DeCSS to all the newsgroups and message boards on the Internet, they can't stop us!").
The article's suggestions about a jukebox and about new copyright laws are what I would call constructive ideas. They show the MPAA how to control distribution in such a way as to give the people what they want. I think the idea itself is a bit too much like radio and does not take into account that people can freely copy the data and ignore the signal, but at least it's constructive. It ignores that fundamental difference, though, free and easy redistribution.
I personally wouldn't mind paying for my MP3s or DVD rips. Figure out a way to code in a security check that replies with a key unique to your player, so that even if you do copy it, it needs a certain key to play. Granted, any security system can be cracked with brute force, but if that's the only way it can be cracked (ie. no deCSS our there for the files), then that's ten times better than battles between crackers and corporates.
The idea is not to reject our current copyright system, for it does work very well to protect intellectual rights. The idea is to figure out a way to respect those rights and give the people their data. I would much rather listen to my music knowing that I had respected the author's right to distribute it than listen to brats and bigwigs bicker back and forth about what each other's rights are.
How could a company take movies on VHS, convert to digital format, and deliver to you via the net for rental? Instead we have to ship snail-mail rental VHS tapes back and forth. Why cant Qwest deliver on its promise and have "every movie ever made, ever".
What Jim Griffin proposes isn't a bad solution to the whole ugly mess that we're heading towards now. However, as some people point out, it'll only work if it contains EVERYTHING.
On the other hand, if a flat-fee, web-accessible, moderately comprehensive jukebox system were put into place, then maybe those of us that wanted to hear, for instance, National Health, would be willing to order (and pay for) the album. This might be supplied through the jukebox clearinghouse[1], or through more traditional channels.
[1] This unfortunately suggests the possiblilty of corruption, due to the absolute power over recorded music. Probably won't work that way.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
In the early 1960's (god I'm giving away my age) when I was but a kid, I remember the bru-ha-ha over a new medium of marketing music called the Cassette. (either 8-track or the currently seen 4 track) This was predicted by the Music companies as being the end of thier ability to be profitable because it made pirated copies too easy to make. However the opposite turned out to be the case. Although it was easy to make a copy, the expense, time, and lower quality of a home made copy vs. a store bought one proved to be in favor of the music companies by a longshot. In addition, it turned out that this new medium actually INcreased their profits because it allowed for lower cost reproduction, more market penatration, (portible players, car audio systems etc.) In other words instead of fighting the tech the record companies embraced and even advanced the tech. ie. Dolby noise reduction, surround sound, quadrophonic sound etc. The record companies need to take a lesson from thier own history and embrace and expand. A profesionally engineered MP3 has got to be better than a dorm room rip any day. Sides why should a consumer spend an hour downloading an MP3 with a 28.8 when they could take thier Rio to the store and BANG have a copy of the latest from whoever they chose. Leading the tech means that Record companies stand to make more than fighting it. Simple math, Simple history lesson.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
The answers are already here - website advertising, free music samples, pay per month encyclopaedias, small fees for music downloads, convenient internet ordering.
The problem is that some industries don't want to enter the 21st century. After all, their gravy train might end! They might not be able to herd the sheep of humanity anymore! For god's sake people may start to think for themselves!!!!
It's up to new companies (or those that are willing to change) to use business models that don't screw over consumers and still make them money. And it's up to us to support them if we think they're worth it. The informed consumer can still win in the end.
Libraries effectively created a mass-market of literate potential book-purchasers. The reason that they would purchase books when they had enough money to do so was that although it is great to be able to trundle down to the library and borrow things that you don't really know if you like, or can't afford, ultimately if it's a great book and you've got the cash it is much handier to be able to buy it than keep on borrowing it, having it recalled by other users, having to pay fines.
Now, when books and music and films are potentially storable at home on the comfort of one's own PC the incentive is to trundle out to the library, copy the ones you want and keep them and never buy the dead-tree version.
It may be that there would be enough revenue stream from advertising giving away free information, but the are the companies that are doing the advertising (of physical products presumably) the same ones that are potentially going to lose the revenue gained through selling information?
If they are (and if the links between companies are all that they are claimed to be they probably are) then that is a possible model.
However I bet there are plenty of companies that just produce information and are going to hang on tooth and claw to their sole revenue stream come what may.
It's kind of like "Hey we'll never have to do chores ... we'll have computers and robots do them for us." Tell ya what I STILL have to shovel my driveway.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
With video, there are several methods which may defray the production costs of a program, such that the copying of a program does not impact the production company.
We don't pay for television program viewing per show. Advertisers pay to interrupt the show every 7-10 minutes to let us know about their great products. By using product placement in movies, e.g. a close up of a bag of Brand X Potato Chips, advertising costs can be used to defray the production costs associated with video. Another great way to save no production costs in the first place is to stop paying movie stars $20 million per movie. Some movies (e.g. Star Wars, and anything made by Disney in the last 10 years) are effectively no more than 100 minute long advertisements for the merchandise associated with the movie. Action Figures, Video Games, T-Shirts, etc. are all "difficult to copy" goods that can be sold to make back production costs. I suspect Lucasfilm could sell DVDs for TPM at cost + $0.01 and still make back much more than the movie cost to produce via merchandise sales.
Audio, however, presents a slightly more difficult problem. Product placement doesn't fit in very well, although artists could acquire corporate sponsorships to make a living. Bands don't generally make money through touring, as the tours have traditionally been the advertisements for the records/CDs/tapes.
The fundamental tradeoff that the RIAA is looking at, is that it's easier to surf the mp3 search engines for popular songs, and download them, than it is to purchase the music legitimately. DVDs don't present as much of a problem in this area, as it would take weeks to download a movie via modem. Combine that with expensive DVD blank media, and it just isn't cost effective to duplicate DVDs electronically. Audio data, however, is relatively low bandwidth, and is easy to share, as teenagers/college students have always done. Blank tapes have a surcharge built into the price to defray the cost of piracy to the record labels (and by proxy, to their bands), but a totally electronic distribution scheme would be impossible to track and tax accordingly.
Another thing to consider is that a fair amount of music in mp3 format can be obtained legally from web sites that cater to the DIY (do-it-yourself) recording industry. What's the difference between downloading the newest songs from that garage band in Timbuktu and buying the latest Limp Bizkit CD? The price is the popularity of the band, sharing a common musical experience with others across the globe. Back in the days of vinyl, artists could offer more than just music. Different colors of vinyl pressings, elaborate artwork (e.g. Roger Dean or H.R.Giger), and creative jacket design (e.g. Velvet Underground, Rolling Stones) could be used to make the legitimate purchase "worth it".
What incentives do they offer us now?
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
Historically, many societies regarded middlemen as contemptible: they didn't produce anything, they just got rich shuffling goods around. But however little they were liked, the economic forces of the time dictated their existence.
A modern, digital parallel of the middleman is an outfit like RIAA: they don't make music, they get rich packaging and selling other people's work. We have become so used to such middlemen that we forget that they don't have to exist at all. In fact, we've now come full circle. The internet kills the economic reason for the existence of these dealers in digital media. So-- what a great irony!-- we get laws like DMCA intended to perpetuate these once-reviled institutions, despite the economic forces of our time.
My personal bet for the New Business Model in the music industry is that the corporate part will disintegrate, digital music will be free (or so cheap that pirating isn't worth the trouble), and musicians will make their money from live performances.
I have seen versions of this idea posted here on slashdot and in other forums; but it makes sense to reiterate it and hopefully bring it into focus. The current furor over copyrights will eventually settle into a metastable arrangement where the rights of creators and consumers are balanced de facto if not de jure. It seems likely that what it will settle down towards is a mixture of subscription funded digital archives (sort of like what MP3.com is attempting to build) but based on the backcatalogues of the major recording labels; and trade/sharing networks like napster and various IRC channels.
Now it might seem odd to predict that the majors will have a (very) profitable business going when anybody can effectively make perfect copies of their product and pass it out to a few hundred thousand of their friends. But they will, keeping a large archive organized and accessible is a chore one that most people would gladly pay ~$5 a month for, especially if it allowed them immediate access to just about any piece of music ever recorded.
The thing is that it would be a worthwhile service even to people who could load up a sharing server (like napster) and find what they were looking for IF it was available right then and IF it didn't take too long to find it.
However, and I'm making one of those bold predictions that could be quite wrong. It's the file-sharing networks that will determine who the stars are. I'm betting the majors with a clue are already working on ways to maximise penetration of message to the various sharing groups.
I'd choose mp3s and vcds over some jukebox idea with advertisements.
...but there's a problem with his approach. Namely, implementation. What's the best way to do it? The basics are already in place, perhaps, but work still needs to be done.
This would, in the end, be very similar to radio. Incidentally, adio is probably the single biggest contributor to CD saled out there, actually; I can think of one, maybe two CD's I've ever gotten for reasons other than the fact that I'd heard a song on the radio that I'd liked.
I pity RIAA more than anything else, to be honest. They're getting left behind in the course of technological evolution, and they're being held back by nothing but first paranoia (people will steal our music), then greed (let's stop that by making it pay-per-listen), then stupidity (yeah, the public will stand for that... sure). If RIAA had harnessed the power of MP3 and streaming when these technologies had first come out, they would have owned the scene by now. But they refused, and now they're paying the price. I'm not too certain they'll be able to recover from it, in fact.
But this guy gets it. He's on to something, even if he's forgotten some of the details. He'll never convince the RIAA that it'll work, but he has the right idea regardless.
Restrictions on copying, distribution and performance, if fully enforced, would effectively prevent all but the "Top 40" music, and blockbuster movies from being exposed to most people. Since it is these which generate the majority of profits for the recording and production companies anyhow, there should be a much more liberal policy regarding other works.
Consider, I have a few friends over, and I play an album from a little known artist, which they really enjoy. Then they go out and buy CDs, or attend concerts, etc., because they've been exposed to it. But this was an unauthorized performance. Had I not done so, they'd have never heard it at all, and would likely never have supported the artist at all.
More out on the edge, services like Napster, which undoubtedly contribute to copyright infringement on a large scale, help artists with smaller audiences gain greater exposure. Somebody might have heard good things about Beth Orton, but never actually heard any music by her -- downloading an MP3, one could actually listen to it and decide to go out and buy her album.
Indeed, Napster is a perfect example of what the industry should be SUPPORTING. With or without advertising revenue, this is a model which on the whole adds to their bottom line. And indie labels should be in the forefront of this.
Peace and love, y'all
The marketing people can attempt to circumvent pirating, but they will never succeed. The audio/video or whatever still has to be accessible to the hardware. I can record whatever I want simply because I have a sound card and a video card. I have the analoge signal!! It's really easy!
I can only hope for the day when everything is self-produced. Let big music/movies die a gruesome death.
In devising a new business model for IP distribution, I think its important to keep in mind that our ultimate goal make everyone better off--not just the consumer. Artists and producers should make more money off their content. Consumers should have greater availability of content and lower prices. However, if that goal means the elimination of certain "middle-men" in the current system, then so be it. Keep in mind that in an ideal system which maximizes economic profit for both, the producers of IP sell directly to the consumers. Whether this can be accomplished in reality will be up to the market and the marketing skills of those who produce IP.
3 5&cid=141
NOTE: see my earlier post here which goes into greater detail:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/01/21/2342
In the information age, digital forms of art, especially music and video, need to be sold as a service, not as a product. One cannot blame large traditional companies for not quickly realizing this, but one can definitely blame them for their efforts to hamper such progress.
Once the primary method of distribution is the internet, the cost of distribution should drop sharply. If the drop in cost of distribution is passed on to the user, the piracy problem is solved. Who will spend the time making and trading MP3s when higher quality versions are available faster for pennies, or better yet, for a flat fee of ~$20 a month?
My real worry is the following: The record and movie industries realize that the internet is the distribution medium of the future. The recent attacks on MP3s and DeCSS are not to prevent eventual internet distribution, but in fact to give the record and movie industries time to cement their control of this distribution medium. With standards like DVD and CSS in place with the backing of laws like the DMCA, one organization can have control of distribution of music or video for an entire medium. Imagine a future where CSS-like standards are in place for internet-distributed movies and audio. Laws like the DMCA make it a felony to remove such encryption, or even to write programs capable of removing such "protection". The companies in question then sell these protected files dirt-cheap, or as a cheap service, and completely replace MP3's. Only problem is, they still have complete control, and no competition. Record companies can still screw the artists and the customers. The movie industry can do the same. This is why MP3.com is being sued. This is why DeCSS is under attack. The corporations in question are not as dumb as we'd like to believe.
-Larry Lansing
www.fuzzynerd.com
+++
...These aren't the droids you're looking for....Move along....
The DVD thing is not about piracy. Why does anyone think that it is?
Sure, people will pirate DVD's with DeCSS. But, those people can already pirate DVD's without DeCSS. Commercial programs exist to record everything sent to the video card into an AVI or MPG file. The most common use I've seen for them is when a company creates how-to CD's for a product.
Given that, DeCSS is not any more of a pirating tool than those programs you can buy. So, the only use of DeCSS beyond this already possible pirating, is playback of movies you own.
Of course, the judge says something to the effect of "you must have a license...without one you have effectively bypassed a copy protection scheme..." which is illegal by our new Digital Mellinium...etc.
So, what we should be fighting are the new laws!
Plenty of projects, not enough developers...
I think that trying to compare MP3/DVD distribution to the duplication of books, cars, etc, is the wrong analogy. To me, this all looks much more like the (computer) age old problem of software piracy - something that doesn't seem to be such a raging issue any more.
As far as I can see, the software industry has really given up. They tell you not to do it (pages of legal jargon in every pack) - they try to catch the big offenders (warez sites etc), but rely encouraging purchase with the value-adds like support and distribution for income (smells like open-source to me).
Do we think this model can apply to music? Hey, buy the CD, get a nice little booklet, and some useful support (fan club mail, discount tickets?) in the post.
Litigating the butt of everybody is going nowhere - after all did the companies that made software to duplicate those magical key floppies ever get shut down?
Grand idea, ole chap. Streaming web-jukebox.
Somebody should get on that pronto.
What? Mp3.com already has?
Allright, lets commend those guys!
What? They're being sued?
Hmph
Come on, Tinkler, Tink!!
Not true. Giving something away might steal a sale... and it might not.
Most of the people I know who make illegal copies all the time don't have the money to buy what they're copying. They buy what they can, and rip what they can't. No sales are lost. However, what money they do spend is very concentrated among the very best of the overpriced products they want. If prices were lower, or they worked on a busking model, the money would be spread around more; making fewer producers into idle millionaires and letting more of them survive in their work.
Copyright laws were made in a time when there were no feasible distribution methods except commercial ones. Now it consumes far more resources to prevent people from copying something than to let them copy it. How can you justify expending those resources just to keep things away from people? How about justifying keeping them away from people who <i>can't</i> pay what is asked?
It's like RMS's story about the sandwich; how can you justify <i>not</i> giving the hungry man a sandwich that costs you nothing?
Regardless of what laws there are, they are basically no longer enforceable. Sure, they can make examples, but it's become just one more rare risk of living, akin to being hit by lightning.
You have to look at how people will make money from creative works without copyright or other IP. The answer is simple: a busking model. People give what they think it's worth if they feel like it. Once people get used to the idea, they will pay to keep things they enjoy going.
For the market of computer data for internet users it has already become a busking model. A large portion of people don't pay except out of a sense of moral obligation, to show their appreciation, or to encourage further production. Price tags have become a way of saying "Want to pay less? Unacceptable, you pay nothing. Want to pay more? No, just pay what's on the price tag."
I'm not saying that it's right, but it's true. There's no point in making idealistic laws that make 90% of the population criminals, you have to make enforceable laws, and copyright isn't enforceable against people on the internet, which will shortly be everyone.
There are ways to make money without copyright. We will have to shift toward them in the future, because the protection of copyright is eroding whatever any central agency decides to do.
Who needs ethics anyway? I'll take the easy way any time...
DVD can be defeated. Here's how it might be done:
Think I'm dreaming? Right now, the world is crying out for a viable replacement for the old 1.4 Mb floppy disc. The 1.4 Mb floppy disc is long past its peak of usefulness, but a floppy drive is still installed by default on all new computers, because no replacement is yet available that meets all of the criteria of robustness, ubiquitousness and ease of use. Invent and patent such a replacement, and you will make millions.
I didn't say it would be easy. But to anyone willing to try, I wish you good luck.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
That doesn't give them the right to sue everyone that comes close to breaking their copyright.
Besides, copyrights are getting nearly impossible to enforce without putting an iron grip on society, which is what the RIAA and MPAA are trying to do. They're making themeseleves the law pretty much. DeCSS, Napster lawsuits are prime examples. Reverse engineering is legal and should be, Napster doesn't actually hold the mp3s and isn't responsible for the users' actions.
They make more than enough money at the theaters, and while the MPAA can't crack down on pirates effectively, a theater using a pirated copy would be burned.
This is dumb. If the MPAA doesn't want people ripping DVDs, then they shouldn't publish DVDs. But they want the market. So what do they do? They go and bully a kid in another country and try to silence him legally. Umm.. doesn't this sound like something that happened centuries ago?
Of course, they don't seem to care that the encryption doesn't really stop copying(besides, movies are already being traded around the internet at the moment months before they hit DVD) and as mentioned elsewhere, seem more worried that this could disable regional coding.
Yeah, it sounds alarmist but don't you see the power they have? Anyone they suspect could be yanked into court and sued. What the hell is this? We should be afraid of programming things and doing things that are not liked by the RIAA?
Programming something like DeCSS is not illegal(at least it shouldn't be), using it to pirate movies is illegal. But the MPAA knows it can't hunt down every pirate. Of course, now it believes the rights of movie producers/companies are better than those of the consumers. We're just mindless drones that give them money.
The right to free speech and thought is a natural right, and shouldn't be put behind any other right, even the right of these companies to make money off their creation.
The world will not end if copyrights are abolished, but it will be interesting to see what will happen as they become more and more useless. Hopefully the attitude will not be to struggle to keep this method of IP protection that is not working using legal kludges.
For a real media report on this, try this from npr.org's all things considered archive.Commissioning artists nowadays can work. For an
example that used the web to attract potential patrons, see the latest
CD from the singer/songwriter Momus. Personally, I don't like his music, but I am hardly an arbiter of good taste.
----
Here in Australia, a new-release CD costs about $30; the same album on cassette $10. Presumably both are profitable, and the cost of manufacturing each would have to be pretty close ($1-2 I'd think). I guess $30 is the "profit-maximising" price for CDs; probably the profit profile would have a large peak at around the $10 mark and a slightly larger one at $30 with a dip in between. That profile would fail to take piracy into consideration, however -- if half the people who pirate music would pay for it at $10, the peak there would be much higher than the one at $30.
I think the music industry believes that people who pirate music would do so at any price, and although this is true for some, I suspect that most people say to themselves, "This disc is worth $30 to me; I'd like that one, but I couldn't justify $30 for it... I guess I'll fire up Napster."
Most people are not fundamentally stupid enough to wish that the musicians they like should starve. Nor are they fundamentally stupid enough to believe that they are not being taken advantage of with current prices. They simply make the compromise that their finances allow.
I've got a list as long as my arm of CDs I would like to get; unfortunately it keeps getting longer... for every CD I buy another two seem to end up on the list... there's that 30:10 ratio again.
Ummm...wrong
Broadband and compression technology will allow for an infinitely larger number of stations to come into existence, as the cost to an individual or business of setting one up wouldn't exceed the cost of a server and the tracks being played. If you don't like the playlists of the hundreds of thousands of stations that will be accessible to you, you'll be free to create your own. Contrast that with the necessity to have access to a mountain of radio equipment, antennas. and whatever the hell else that is necessary to set up your average FM radio station. If it's easy for me to listen to a fairly specific genre of music at any given time (or even a station that revolves around a specific artist), then casual music fans such as myself won't have a very large incentive to actually to purchase music. The ownly reason why we purchase CDs is because we cannot rely on FM radio to deliver our favorite music in a consistent fashion, if at all. Because FM radio is expensive, only commercially viable music is played -- only it can pay for the equipment, the high utility bills, etc. If one only needs to pay for a web server and a broadband connection, one can afford to play pretty much anything one wants.
This article makes a lot of sense. We need a new business model, not just for music, but for any product that can be copied with high fidelity. Right now this is clearly the case with music and software; later it may extend to movies; and maybe far in the future, to nanotech constructors.
The current system is workable because people who pay for music and software subsidize people who don't pay for it. It's a stable system, as long as it's more convenient to buy a product than to pirate it. However, it will only get easier, not harder to freely distribute information, as programs like Napster show. As the cost of copying software drops, the price a developer can charge for software will have to drop as well, just so developers can compete against copies of their own product.
Which brings us to the question: how do we allow developers to charge a reasonable price for their software, while encouraging, not restricting, the free transfer of information?
Here's the proposal:
Of course, some immediate objections come to mind:
If you buy software, you already are. This system will be more fair. Besides, there are plenty of situations where we subsidize a larger group based on statistical information, i.e. any sort of insurance, paying a flat fee for internet access, property taxes.
In the limit of perfect statistics, we could determine a person's software use exactly, and each person would pay for exactly what he used. We can't, and so we clump people together into larger groups, with good enough statistics so that the end result is roughly correct.
This is better than the current system, where the industry aspries to have each person pay for exactly what he uses by mandating that this be the case, rather than making a determination based on actual measurements.
What if the band distributed a copy of their entire album at a lower sampling rate? People would no longer be ripped off by one song wonders. It would encourage music to be passed around and expose great bands. People would have a convenient place to get the album. Then if they liked it they could pay whatever to get the high quality copy.
As for software, eh that's a tougher one. Sadly, we'll probably see a resurgence of code-wheels and other such techniques. Most people do not realize what an excellent copy protection scheme the CD was. Pretty much everyone was happy with that. It allowed copies of the music to be made, but at a lesser quality. Software could also be copied, but in general the cost in hard drive space wasn't worth it. Hopefully we'll see another similar media form that will prevent illegal copying and allow developers to make the money they deserve, but without hassling legitimate users.
It's about time someone else floated this idea; namely, that existing business models cannot work in the digital universe, where everything can be infinitely copied. Just imagine what life would be like in a world with Star Trek-like replicators; how would you be able to sell anything?
So, there are two issues needing to be addressed:
In a world with replicators everywhere, trying to restrict copying isn't just impossible, it's childishly naïve. People would laugh at the attempt. However, even though control over copies isn't possible, control over reputation is. In fact, reputation becomes tremendously important. If you see (a copy of) something you like, and would like to have something similar made, you'd like to be able to get in touch with the original designer, reliably. You'd like to be assured that the person you're speaking to is the true holder of the reputation you're seeking, rather than a charlatan. So laws guarding against theft/dilution of reputation will be important and necessary.
As for the second point -- economic models -- that one's a little tougher for "ephemeral" stuff, like music. Although copies are freely available, the creator's time is still a scarce resource. So the economy will revolve around competing for the artist's time rather than their artifacts. How would people know to approach a particular artist? Through their reputation.
One possible way this could be done today is to set up a Web site whereby artists/programmers put up their wares for open bidding. Let's say John Carmack decides he wants $50M for Quake-4. So he puts it up for bid: "Quake 4, by id Software. Price: USD$50,000,000". Visitors bid whatever they want for it: $10, $50, $100, etc. The bids are held in escrow for a certain time limit (established by the artist). When the sale price is reached, Carmack gets the $50M, and Quake 4 is released free to the world. (Quake 4 remains listed on the Web site, so people can throw "tips" in the jar.) If the requested sale price isn't reached, the code isn't released, and all bidders get their money back. The artist can resubmit for a different price if they wish.
This is just one possible idea (one I think is terribly interesting and worth exploring). Others doubtless exist.
Start exploring, people...
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
The best forms of copy protection are new business models that destroy the motive to copy, not its mechanism.
The argument of the article is solid, but it has fallen into accepting the semantic trap that copyright owners are using to frame the issue.
What is the difference between:
1. Copyright Protection
2. Copy Protection
3. Access Protection
The first is what copyright holders have traditionally held. For the last several decades, however, there has been a trend to equate copying with copyright violation. Nothing could be further from the truth - copyright law only exists because of the balance that was struck between the inherent fair use rights of the public and the statutory rights granted to content providers.
Now, under the DMCA, copyright holders are attempting to change the debate again. According to the DMCA, copyright holders now have the right to dictate the terms under which you can access a copyrighted work.
The community needs to lobby hard to overturn the DMCA's restrictions on access and fair use. That means writing your Congressman and Senator (yes, he or she voted for the DMCA - they all did) and inform them of the abuse of law that the MPAA and RIAA is engaging in. Digital works should be protected by the same tradition of copyright that helped spawn innovation in this country over the last 200 years. Digital works do not deserve special protections beyond the scope of traditional copyright law!
And more important, how would you convince them to adopt it?
You wouldn't. That's the point: the MPAA and RIAA have their head up their collective ass. As anyone can(and has) not-so-astutely observe, there's nothing that the above lettered organizations can do to stop us. They can sue one person, but the hydra-like internet will pop up three new individuals to protest an unjust action for each such action taken. Besides, the illegal nature of (some) mp3 trading is a good thing in that the draconian measures taken to stop it breed a healthy distrust of authority in many who lacked it before. Oh, yeah, this post is redundant, since the mp3/pirated media discussion completed its natural course about a year and a half ago. I would suggest that moderators mark my post down as such, but I think that the moderation system was the biggest policy mistake CmdrTaco and the others ever made, except perhaps for attachment of the nom de plume "anonymous coward" to anonymous posts. It only encourages people to act down to the expectations set by such a degrading name. I guess the fuckwit moderators can mark this as off topic now, too.
Sigs suck.
Is for no recording or media devices in the home, just on-demand delivery from the uber-music collection. Bandwidth on the next gen mobile networks will be more than sufficient to deliver on demand MP3's (or higher). You'll never pay $14 for a CD again. You'll pay maybe 5c to 'hire' a one off play for a track. This will please the music companies no-end as they will receive a constant stream of revenue and when you work it out, it'll generally be cheaper than buying the CD/tape in the first place. (How many people could actually justify the $1000's they spend on CD's versus listening time ?). Of course there will still be pirate broadcasters ... sucking those poor multi-nationals dry :-)
A profesionally engineered MP3 has got to be better than a dorm room rip any day
I don't see why...it's not like you need specialized hardware to encode an MP3, or horrible amounts of time. And the GPL'd encoders like LAME are getting pretty close to the Fraunhofer encoder etc, as well. So the difference between typing on a command line in a dorm room or in a studio shouldn't sound different...
Libraries already allow people to borrow music CDs and movies, it seems the next logical step would be to have this digital and online.
Then how do artist get paid? Simple, taxes. Everyone pays an "art tax" and artist get paid in proportion to how popular their music/movie is. Each time you play a song you increased that artists revenue. Of course barriers to cheating would have to be implemented.
The advertising industry still promotes artist in return for a cut of that artist's yearly earnings. There is no actual product changing hands - just a bid to make the artist more popular. So the only part of the industry that goes away is the brick and mortar stores that do actual sales.
-- Virtual Windows Project
The author gets it right when he says we need a new business model if we're going to distribute "intellectual property". I'm suprised record companies havent devised some sort of NDA on their recording media that says you won't make copies of the product. The kicker with intellectual property is that it's physical production costs are insanely low due to our culture's industrialization. A CD which stores digital copies of a dozen songs only costs 2$ at the very most to produce. This is about the same for a DVD, a book, software program, ad infinitum. The problem with these media is that they are heavy and bulky and require gasoline, jet fuel, manpower, paper, plastic, ad infinitum to transfer to your convienience which adds to the cost of these things. The second drawback from a distrobution point of view is the fact they are physical object which take up space. Digital media on the otherhand is all virtual, it takes up space per se but seeing as a fully stocked library can fit onto a DVD disc the space restrictions aren't quite as restrictive. Lets try a little equation real quick. Say a CD costs $13.95 and has 14 songs on it for a total of 570 megabytes of music. The CD obviously costs $13.95, not including the price of gas to drive to buy it. Now lets calculate how much it would cost to download this album in MP3 format. 570 megabytes at 10:1 compression equals 57 megabytes. Current hard drives go for about 2 per megabyte which is roughly $1.14 worth of storage space. Now lets say you use a DSL connection to download this album. Your DSL service is from your phone company so it costs you about $39 per month and you can download at 512Kbps on average. Thats roughly 52KBps depending how you calculate it. SOme fancy arithmatic gets me about 18 minutes to download the album. Thats not even one penny (monthly connection fee devided by minutes in a month) worth of bandwidth on your DSL. So at most an album costs you $2 to download and keep. Why are recording companies so pissed off over MP3s? It isn't the piracy excuse, they are afraid of people having their own cheap distribution method of music that the record companies don't own. Every CD you buy gives a record company a chunk of chanrge, one larger than the artist gets for their troubles. New CDs are sold at sale prices, but older albums cost you a healthy bit more, giving the record company a larger chunk of change for something they stamped out months of years prior.
I like the one guy's idea about people bidding in escrow for someone to release software, music, movies and such and then have them freely avilable. Another idea that would work fine is record companies offering really high speed distrobution channels that are fee-based. What a coincidence, HDTV is on the way in America which will offer nice sized data pipes into many people's houses. What if record and movie companies invested along with traditional cable companies to develop these networks. Your monthly payment would go in part to the record/movie companies to download high quality music and video for use in all sorts of consumer devices and on your trusty desktop computer. What makes this enticing to companies? The data pipe downstream is huge but the upstream pipe is tiny. People can share files if they want but it won't be nearly as fast as getting it strait from the fibre/coax/dish/radio.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I'm just wondering whether it would be financially viable for the industry to support MP3's.
So if a company was selling a CD containing about 2 hours of MP3's, for a small amount more than a normal CD, with explicit permission to put it on your hard disk, but not on a publicly available network, would you pay the extra for it?
Assuming it came with nice packaging, and you had a player, would you buy it in preference to downloading all the files from the internet?
Radio stations pay a fee to ASCAP and BMI for the songs that are played on the air.
Most of my music is on MP3. I don't listen to the radio... but I realize, now, that I am my own radio station, with an audience of one, available 24 hours a day without commercial interruption!! (It's a great station. The DJ is deeply rooted in my subconcious...) If I'm a radio station... how do I support the artists I'm playing?
For non-profit stations the yearly fee from ASCAP is some negotiable amount less than 450 dollars.
Now 450 dollars a year is a bit pricy. I'm trying to find out what a non-commercial radio station pays in fees as I write.
ASCAP fees are unfairly divided between the record company and the songwriter. (So far as I know, bandmembers get nothing if they don't have songwriting credit)
ASCAP also requires you to complete and submit a playlist so that the proper authors get reimbursed.
Anyway, the key here is that a mechanism already exists that reimburses artists and publishers for their works without having to have purchased their media (cds,records,tapes). It sorta works. Perhaps it can be improved on.
I, Rhysling
In an ideal world the following business model I think would be best in providing an e-commerece trade for the likes of mp3.
/etc/passwd (or /etc/shadow - depending on your setup).
:)
Just like record shops the '.com's would have a trade agreement with the record companies. In effect this allows the record-shop.com to sell either the songs on-line while paying royalities to the record company.
Now the customer buying the music can either or both have.
1. The mp3 is kept on the record-shop.com's server and a database which holds information relating to the customer's account provides access to that song once the transaction is complete. So the user can use a bit of player software to listen to the song while streaming it of the server. Also to protect from paranoia the mp3 stream is encrypted during transfer.
2. The mp3 song can be downloaded once purchased. Now to protect from copying the song the mp3 is encrypted using something like the MD5 digest of the users account password. This is so that the MD5 digest can be held locally on the computer and has the same kind of protection as the likes of encrypted passwords in
I am very opposed to having the song being encoded such that it will only ever play on the computer it was downloaded too. The basic premise is people usually upgrade there computer hardware, have portable players, different OSs on the same computer, more than one computer etc etc etc etc. And thought of having to redownload your ENTIRE music collection from all the record-shop.com's each time you had to re-install Windows 98 would drive you away from it and kill the market before it had even started.
However the scheme has the same weakness and ethical debate as that of DVD - even more so because an mp3 file is a hell of a lot smaller than a DVD disc - so easier to copy and distribute once decoded.
My suggestion would be to integrate a unique digital-ID signature into the decrpyted form of the mp3. It would have be such that the removal of the siganture from a signed mp3 file would be NP-complete or there abouts. Personally I don't know of any such algorthim - but I'm sure there out there. But the end effect is that if a mp3 is pirated then the original perpatrator could be identified. Also the digital-ID would have to be integrated in such a way that if the decrpyted mp3 was played back using another player that didn't know about digital-ID signatures wouldn't flip out.
Believe me that I have very little illusion that doing this is very very hard. But hey - what else was voodoo and black magic invented for
This kind of follows the same idea as how the person who created the Melissa virus was caught.
By this way nearly everyone is happy - the source code for the client and server end could be published. Just like the RSA public-key encrpytion is published - point here is that we know the process but don't know how to break it. The thing is not proprietary - like DVD is at the moment. The record companies are kept happy because they get paid for selling their music on-line safe in the knowledge that they still get their royalities, have an increased market audience and if an mp3 is illegally distrubited then they can trace back to the source of where it came from and get the pirate who distrubuted it.
Anyway back to banging my head of the desk writing my mp3 decoder. Just to answer the question of 'Why?' when there are other decoders out there under the GPL - because I love audio compression technology and of all the subjects I know this one I know the best, because I want to understand it, because its a challenge that is there. Just for reassurance - it will be released under the GPL. Also noted a few things in going through other mp3 decoder code.
1. The original decoder code released by the ISO has a flaw in it. Although the code I am referencing it from is dated 1994 - so problem may have been fixed. The flaw is in the dequantization section when using a mixed block frame under a mp3 encoded to the MPEG 2.0 or 2.5 specification. When switching from the long block to the short block the variables pertaining to the next boundary reference and the sfBandIndex are thrown out of syncronisation - leading to buffer overflow situations.
2. In the XMMS source code it uses Byeong Gi Lee's Fast Cosine Transform for applying the DCT calculations. However in the middle of reading a paper that has the statement that this alrgorithm is not mathematically stable - probably not enough to effect mp3 decoding - but I've seen the mathematical consequences of unstable equations. Though I've still got to see the mathematical proof for this statement. I'll get back on that one - doing large research into DCT and associated algorithms.
No! You are so wrong! I don't know what country you're from, but here in the US the legal intent of copyright law is defined in, of all places, the US Constitution, the highest law in the land.
The Constitution says (and I quote):
Federal copyright law owes its entire legitimacy to this clause in the Constitution. Reading it, you will see that copyright law exists to promote progress in science and arts, and not, as you say, to give authors control.The incorrect notion that copyright and patent law exists to give the copyright/patent owner control over their work has been misused time and time again by corporations to justify increasingly restrictive intellectual property laws, even to the point of choking progress in science and arts in a manner contrary to the Constitutional justification for copyright and patent law. But the Constitution is very clear on this point, assuming anyone even bothers to read it anymore. Authors should not be given an amount of control over their work that is so excessive that it hinders instead of promotes progress.
I'm sure there are even more ways, but these are the ones that came to me off the top of my head. It seems to the first option would be best for the industry. They could maintain quite a bit of control, still make the same margins (since distribution would be far less expensive), and all the while seem like good guys to the vast majority of the public.
Oh, wait! What am I thinking? That would only make sense... duh!
Here's one. Stop trying to "maximize profits" so much. Lower prices ($20 for a cd that came out years ago? Really now...) and increase quality. Stop trying to rape customers, and i think they'll stop trying to rape you. Seems simple enough to me. I mean there will always be people that pirate or what have you, but who cares? I'm sure alot more people would buy cds if the new releases started around 5 or 10. Oh and stop interfering w/my right to fair use; it really discourages me from legally buying your product.
Why can't people simply work for free like open source programmers do!? Why should I be expected to pay for music which I can just copy from my friend? Why do I have to pay for a book when it can be electronically copied MILLIONS of times with no loss of the original? Why should anyone expect to receive any type of compensation anymore when they put out something that I can't touch, taste, or feel? Work for free you blithering fools.
But this is the whole point. Why the hell would any digital distributor make a deal with a record company when they could make a deal directly with the artist and become the 'record company' themselves!?!?!?!
It's the fault of the DVD industry coalition, that there were motives to crack DVD.
If they'd given away DVD drivers for Linux, BeOs, OS/2 etc. then DVD would not have been cracked.
Everybody says that making a DVD copy is more expensive than buying the original, well, that works then!
A new business model should serve customers in a broad way, this new business model is better prepared. They should sell 'DVD' drivers with encrypted keys to third-party businesses who'm provide front-end software.
Bizar technology?
When the American Government relinquishes control of the government to the NWO on Jan 1st, 2001 (new millennium, new order), millions of black uniformed UN troops will storm into houses across the nation with registered gun owners and either kill them, take away all their guns, or both.
If they survive they'll be taken to Area 51 where they will be used by the alien overlords there for experimentation on perfecting the brain washing abilities of the human sheep. Do NOT let this happen!!! Go out and secure a gun immediately... in fact, if you can, buy at least 5-10 AK47's and at LEAST 10,000 rounds of ammo. We need brave new warriors to fight this threat by the UN and the Millennium group to remove our freedoms.
It's like that priest when he wrote about the Germans. Most of the pansy americans won't complain when the 2nd ammendment is taken away because you're not "gun nuts".. then they'll take away your 5th ammendment. Most of you won't try to stop them because you know you haven't done anything wrong so you don't need that protection against self incrimination. Most won't care when they come take all the blacks and hispanics away to slave labor camps because.. well, hell, some whites would probably hold fucking parades if that happened.
And when they come around to take your 1st ammendment away.. only then will the liberal fucking pansy ass bitches start to speak up.. but it is too late by then. You just have to bend over and take that UN assault rifle up your ass because the 2nd ammendment is gone and all the TRUE patriots are in a camp in fucking area 51 being butt fucked and brainwashed by aliens. You're tortured and forced to report on all your illegal activities like your Pamela Anderson Lee honeymoon video sales on the Internet and your fascination with greek child porn.. nothing you can do about it.. you have no 5th ammendment right.
Then, when the alien overmasters come out of hiding in their secret based to assume control over their hideous UN NWO organization you will sit back and wish you had listened to the "gun nuts". Because now your fucking constitution is worthless when you are being brainwashed by alien advertising saying "humans suck"... "humans suck"... "Drink Pepsi-Cola"... "humans suck". You're probably saying I am insane or something.. but I'm not. I've watched enough Exo Squad to realize the truth. Why do you think the show was cancelled after only a short run? THEY did it. THEY cancelled it because it spouted the truth about THEM. But they are not neo sapiens.. they are ALIENS! Heed my words people... buy a gun, hide in the woods, save the world! Which brings me to my main point! Why don't they bring back Exo Squad? That was a kickass show. Oh yea, fuck the RIAA.
IMHO we have been distracted to the real issue. The issue is NOT about copying or piracy. There are DVD copiers on the market that I can afford that make viable copies of any DVD disks.
The issue IS about what platform the DVD is played from. GNU/Linux will not pay for the rights therefore will not be permitted to play DVD's.
willy
No hour on a horse is ever wasted. Winston Churchill
"...a wireless flat-fee/advertising-supported jukebox of unlimited capacity would strip us of our desire to make MP3 files."
Scientists ushered in a new era of copyright protection today. They're calling it the "wireless radio". This amazing device transmits voice and music through the ether, directly to receivers which will be placed in homes and automobiles. This is the wave of the future!
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
(I'm saying that the music should not be further distributed, of course, to protect ad revenues. There shouldn't be much need, if the site is sufficiently fast. And "unofficial" redistribution isn't worth worrying about, we just don't want some rogue site mirroring our work and getting his own ad revenue.)
If you answered yes, you can say goodbye to Freedom in the information age.
Let me state another question:
Can a person or organisation (or society) ever have the right to with threat of violence expropriate your information?
If you answer yes to *that* question, you no longer have any right to complain about for example doubleclick or echelon-ish schemes.
My thoughs are information. Are they free too? Am I a bad guy when I choose to keep some of them for myself? I might have written something positive about my country. I would very much want the (legal) means to react if I was quoted out of context on a Nazi site.
Hobbex, you have made many good posts, but I think you are going a bit far here. The purpose of copyright *is* to protect the artist or innovator. The artist is in his/her full right to give up their rights, either by GPL-ing (or similar) or by selling out to a distributor. The problem is that there are not enough "good" distributors to tackle the megacorps.
The way to fight (MP|RI)AA and their clueless|evil likes is *not* by forcing them to free information. It is to demonstrate how flawed their business model is. Continuing down the path of the RIAA here will make consumers *and* artists lose and find alternative ways. How long do you think they will survive as middlemen of a vacuum?
Let the artists free their information because they *want* to, not because *you* want them to.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
If people are online, distribution companies (music, movie, publishing industry) become unnecessary and irrelevant. The net does the distribution.
Copyright was intended to enable the spread of knowledge and art. It is now no longer needed for that, so it should be abolished.
Those who think that good music, movies and books (texts) will no longer be made when there aren't any companies that can put up megabucks are wrong.
Money is never the motivation for great art (although it may be for lots of crap we have today that we'd better be without anyway).
ONLY, no w.
Anyway, the only reason I buy CD's, is because I can't statnd advertising. The reason that most of the people I know buy CD's, is so that they can listen to what they want, when they want it. No matter how specific the channel, is still will not provide for this.
I will give you that the original poster's argument was a little simplisitic, but that is what sarcasm is. Obviously the idea of a jukebox is more flexible than a radio station, but ultimately, it will still not satisfy the need that some listeners want.
Yes! The answer! And we can have a "software" tax, so that no-one pays for software, but Microsoft get paid billions a year by the government because their software is most popular. And a "car manufacturing tax" so people don't have to pay for cars, and Ferrari will get billions a year 'cause everyone wants a Ferrari. And a "food tax" so that no-one has to pay for food, and farmers get billions a year... and... and...
Hell, why bother with the taxes and payments, why not just abolish money and we'll all have everything we want for free!
What? They tried that in Russia and it became one of the worst and most backward police states of all time?
People like to eat.
People like to work (mostly, but we won't go there), to get themselves somethine to eat.
If I do something that EVERYBODY wants, why shouldn't EVERYBODY pay me. You are consuming my product, you should pay for it.
If the laws don't protect one interest, then soon they will stop protecting any interest, so every one has a concern that copyright laws are still upheld.
The only reason Open Source works is that everybody donates their time, and do something else to eat. If everybody got paid for what they did, all the software would be better, but how are you going to pay everybody.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
Depending on your views you can read that as:
"We want to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. Therefore we secure the rights of the Authors and Inventors"
or:
"The rights of the Authors and Inventors shall be secured. (We believe that it promotes the Progress of Science and useful Arts.)"
For obvious reasons, media companies prefer the second interpretation.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
I hate advertising. He did say flat fee, but how well will that work, and what will the flat fee be.
He is also missing the other point that to steal an MP3 is still cheaper and more flexible than either of his business models.
The thieving bastards that have nothing better to do than bitch about how people aren't giving their talents away will never pay for anything they can steal.
If I GPL a piece of software, that is my decision. I shouldn't feel obligated to, and you shouldn't try to force it down my throat.
I work to eat, and live well. the harder I work, or the more important my work is, the better I should be paid. That does not mean I still won't donate money, and help fiends that are in trouble. That is a lot different than giving everybody I know access to my checking account.
Sharing is one thing, being forced to share everything is communism. And to argue with Stallman's half assed attempt to seem pias, the Church only requests 10% for a reason, the Church believes you should be paid for your work, and you should choose to share part of that. Your plan is communist in nature.
If musicians stopped feeling like they need to be on MTV, and started committing to a DIY set-up, then the big labels really would be in trouble.
I can't speak for Brittany Spears, but I don't WANT to be on MTV. Have you looked at it lately? Where the hell is Downtown Julie Brown?!
I have a site up at mp3.com, and am fully aware that people may download my music and do whatever they want with it. That excites me, though - it means they liked it. For 3 minutes they listened to me instead of Ricky Martin. I am of the opinion that the mp3 'revolution' is helping musicians to network and connect, share ideas and recording tips, etc. Most of the musicians I know aren't out to become mega-billionaires. They just want to be able to make a living off their music. (Some of us don't even have that much ambition - I have a pretty sweet day job, and do music on the weekends.) That's not to say that if, oh, Grand Royal dug my sound and wanted to sign me up for a 3 album deal I wouldn't think long and hard about it.
Ultimately I don't see this as being an issue of how musicians are wanting to get airplay and TV time. It's about artists signing away their rights to big recording companies, who in turn market them, squeeze their popularity dry and then move on to the next big cash cow.
And let's not forget the unwashed millions who buy the drek they play on FM top 40, people whose favorite song changes every week, who are supporting the MTV culture instead of searching out unique and unsigned artists.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
...so this may be abrasive. I don't think that the issue of copying DVDs and making MP3s will have that much relevance in 2-3 years. As the technology becomes more prevalent, these actions will become more and more ubiquitous. Just as copying CD's and audio/video tapes is now rampant (and often goes unprosecuted). The companies won't really lose out because, and this is the key, they will always have the Ignorant Masses (TM) to bail them out. Most people are not going to want to bother to learn how to copy these things. A lot will be scared away by the warnings on the original media. And many will simply not know how to make the copies and will not bother to learn how. It's the same reason why people get their car's oil changed at a garage, laziness and convenience. It often seems much simpler to a non-techie person for them to just go out and by a CD instead of downloading it off the net. If the industry loses a percentage of its tech saavy audience, the likelihood is that these people would not have paid for the music no matter what. The real solution would be for the record labels to keep prices reasonable. CDs should not cost $17. If they moderated the prices, say if CDs were $10 for example, I'd think their sales would skyrocket. I'd like the know the margins on the sale of a music CD these days...where does all that money go?
Or suppose I put your name, address, phone number, e-mail address, and purchasing habits on another CD-ROM and share that with my business associates who have many valuable offers to share with you. Hey, information wants to be free! You still have your own copy of your personal information!
I notice that people who use this argument are almost invariably talking about other people's intellectual property rather than their own.
Not that anybody listened, but I"ve been saying for
a long time that we needed new business models in the
'Information Age.' This applies to movies and music,
but it also applies to software and video games.
The lastest couple rounds of video games have come with
Herculean efforts at copy protection. Most of these
efforts only manage to lock out and annoy legitimate
customers.
Companies need to find someway to make money without
worrying about copying. Sadly, I don't know how.
The fact that our current system does not protect authors' original rights is a major implementation failure that needs to be corrected. Even a simple change in our law to the effect of "The original author maintains ultimate copyright control during the period of copyright no matter what licensing arrangments are signed with others" would go a long way towards addressing this problem that you brought up.
There is yet another good point to be found in the "limited time" stipulation. During our nation's formative years the duration of a copyright was 27 years. I don't think our founding fathers imagined that copyright protection would be extended to anywhere near its current 95 year length. I am quite convinced that a 95 year protection period can not be considered "limited time" in anyone's lifetime, but I seem to be the only one who feels this way.
In this way, we take advantage of the medium, instead of fighting it. The artist benefits because free copies maximize his fan base. The public obviously benefits. A new musician or author will have to take some time to build a fan base before making any money, but that's pretty much the case anyway. Given the amount of hype George Lucas can generate, I think this could even work for him.
as the cost to an individual or business of setting one up wouldn't exceed the cost of a server and the tracks being played.
visit live365 (this free plug in return for all the commercial free music I get from them)
+&x
If you read the entire sentence, starting from the beginning with "Congress shall have the power ...", and ask yourself what this sentence authorizes Congress to do (keeping in mind that the Constitution also specifies that any power not explicitly granted to Congress remains with the states), you'll see right away that Congress has the power to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, and that's it. The word "by" in this context can only mean "by means of".
The fact that the latter half of the sentence is a subordinate clause indicates clearly (to me at least) that securing the rights of authors is subordinate to the greater purpose of promoting progress.
This is not to say that authors might not have intrinsic rights to their works anyway. They probably do have some natural rights to their work, but even if they do have such rights this sentence does not give Congress the power to secure those rights directly. As explained above, this sentence gives Congress the power to promote progress, not the power to secure rights as an end in itself.
Remember that under the Constitution, Congress is not necessarily authorized to secure every single human right. For example, Federal law says nothing about murder unless it crosses state lines (at which point Congress's laws can apply because Congress has the Constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce), but I certainly have a right to life even if I'm only staying within one state.
I'd be in favor of a 'pay for download' system where I can get authorized works (cleanly encoded, too) without funding the Big Pigs, aka, the record execs.
IMHO, the execs do little to actually contribute to the art yet they get the lion's share of the revenue. so of course they revolt against this new model and cry 'Foul!'. I suppose, to be honest, if I was raking in that kind of dough, I'd be overprotective about keeping the cash flowing too.
but technology is now equalizing things and its bigger than they are. their way of gouging cash from consumers has a very limited lifetime now. if they are smart, they'd adapt to the new way of things and try to make the system work for them instead of fighting it so much.
anyway, I'd pay $0.05 per song to download it - no problem. heck, even $0.10 per song, and give that extra nickel to the execs. they should be happy for ANY charity we throw toward them ;-) but the days of the "$15 for 10 songs, 2 of which are worth listening to" is reaching its end...
and btw, the current model is to force folks to buy music in bulk (ie, the whole cd). we all know that most popular bands today are producing a high fluff-to-quality ratio on the cd's. I'm sure the ability to buy only the songs we want puts a chill up the exec's back. this is probably another reason why they are so against a per-song download model of business. even if we pay the same proportion for mp3's as we do for full cd's, few folks will want to get the full cd. so the exec's profits go WAY down...
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I like this, because it ties in with something I was mulling over. If there was a way to for an artist or company to get all their money at point of production, so that they didn't care about distribution by others, then the piracy accusations might not be flying. The problem is, how do you set a target? Everyone wants as much lolly as they can get. Us Nice Guys [tm] just want as much as we can *fairly* get. (If this shows up twice, I apologize. I dropped my mouse). Anyway, this scheme would block 'sleeper hits' from becoming successful, wouldn't it? I had no interest in seeing Blair Witch Project, but I like the idea that they can come out of left field and be competitive. How the heck could they set what they wound up making a priori?
I have hundreds of CD's and god knows how many songs. The problem is that on any particular CD, there may be only one or two songs I really like. I rip those to MP3 and store them on my hard drive so that I can queue them up appropriately. I can't easily do this with conventional CDROM jukeboxes (the UI on those jukeboxes are horrid).
I hope you don't continue to equate MP3-making with piracy.
>2. Copy Protection
>3. Access Protection
This is a great distinction among otherwise muddy concepts. We need to stress the legitimate uses of circumvention technologies or the overextension of copy-protection systems as access prevention.
Copyright is a bundle of rights granted exclusively to the author. The right to make copies is just one of those. (Others are distribution, performance, and preparation of derivative works, see sec. 106.)
Typically, once the author has exercised his right to copy and distribute a copy to someone else, call him the reader, the reader gets rights under the "first sale" doctrine to use his copy as he wants (read it, read it backwards, place it on a bookshelf, burn it...) or to give or sell his copy to someone else. The reader still cannot make further copies of the work or perform the whole work publicly, but fair use gives him the legal right to use excerpts from the work, or to copy for limited purposes.
The licensing and access controls we're now seeing change that picture. Under a license, the reader doesn't own a copy of the work free and clear, but is granted a more limited set of rights. His license may not permit activities that copyright law would otherwise allow.
If everybody who has access to a work is bound by a more restrictive license, there is no one who can exercise the fair use rights. The author can sue anyone who violates his license agreement for breach of contract, though not for violation of copyright. (Then we face issues of the validity of the contract; on a click-wrap license, the reader can raise arguments that there was no real acceptance on his part, so he should not be bound by the boilerplate...)
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act in effect imposes a mass license condition, prohibiting readers from accessing works except through the methods approved by their authors. (The legislation has imposed its consent to these terms on us.) Fair use is again limited to what readers can do within the bounds of restricted access. Yet the legislative purpose was not to restrict use or access, but to prevent copyright-violative copying. The statute arguably goes beyond its legislative findings.
I'm still trying to figure out where this leads. For one, we can argue that the DMCA unconstitutionally tips the balance of "promot[ing] the progress of science and the useful arts" by granting too many rights to copyright holders, against readers. A narrower argument suggests that for the statute to be constitutional, circumvention of access controls must be permitted, even if those controls are also copy controls. This is only a slight extension of the Sony holding that devices with "substantial noninfringing uses" must be permitted even if the devices (there VCRs) may also be used to infringe copyright.
--Wendy
-- Openlaw: Fighting for fair use and the public domain
The Blair Witch wouldn't make money, because its creators weren't known yet. No one is going to put up much money for unknown filmmakers. However, their second movie could make a lot of money. Blair Witch makes them money indirectly, by giving them a reputation. Once they have that reputation, they could probably come up with ways of figuring the price for their next film, based on how many copies of the first one are out there, polling their fan base, etc.
We wanted capitalism. Now we are protesting that some people have too much money (microsoft)... and we are protesting that RIAA is suing Napster and Mp3.com... and we are protesting that republicans don't want NASA to send people on Mars before 2015. What is it that we want? Can't w A website with 15 houres of music in streaming realaudio (available for free). that's 20 CDs. All the music is available in Mp3-format (CDquality) for the price of 1$ per track. it's the project I have been working on the last few months. (you can check it out at manrec.com). what do you think of this? Is it a communist idea? (you can email me at charbax@mail.com)
The way you convince an industry to use a new business model is to put it in practice yourself, get stinkin' rich, take all their customers away, and the rest will take care of itself.
Your password has expired, please login to change it.
OK, I posted this a week or so ago, but this story is just too relevant not to re-post it. This is one of my favorite topics, and I really think what I've got in mind here is the way to go with all this...
.4 cents. And I bet he hates being called Puffster. (No, I didn't work out the math - it's just relative, for illustration purposes)
The corporations are going to realize, either through enlightenment or exasperation, that a certain amount of pirating is going to happen no matter what, and all their lawsuits and dumbass anti-theft schemes just annoy and alienate a sizeable segment of their customers. And then they're going to realize that it's not really a bad deal for them... people are still going to buy real product, and bootleg MP3s can be great exposure. They'll have to grow up and take the bad with the good. Makes me want to waggle a finger at them and remind them that life isn't fair, then give them a little pat on the head and tell them to run along... the little tyrannical ballbusting corporate stinkers. They're so cute at this age, aren't they?
Now, of course, when 2.2 terabyte credit-card-size storage cards become widely available, and your common Swatch holds 400 gigs, then all bets are off. But there's enough time between now and then to implement the only system that can save the corporations' sorry asses, as far as I can figure...
You already pay $40/month for, let's face it, lousy fucking cable TV service that's unreliable and offers you no choice whatsoever. What a joke. But most of us keep paying it. Personally, I don't, but if I could pay $10/month and only get Fox (for The Simpsons and Futurama), Discovery, History, Bravo, AMC, Comedy and the Learning Channel, I'd be a happy bastard. But I'm not going to pay another $30/month for a whole pile of pathetic sports, news, almost impossibly stupid MTV shows and something called the WB Network which I'm under doctor's orders not to ever even look at. Oh... but sorry, got off on a tangent there - that's GooseKirk Rant #47. Back to...
Check this out: If I could pay, for example, $60/month for full-on media services... if I could watch any TV show anytime I want, any movie anytime I want, and listen to any music anytime I want, I would never download another illicit MP3 as long as I live. Make this media service available via DSL, cable and broadband roaming wireless, and bam, you've just effectively - not completely, but effectively - wiped out piracy.
YOU TAKE AWAY THE INCENTIVE. Why would I bother owning any physical media whatsoever? Why would I waste my time copying multiple gigs of MP3s and DVDs from my friends? I'm going to want this service no matter what -- it's cable TV, the video store and the music store all at the touch of a button, with all the new stuff available to me the second it's released and all the old stuff available any time I want. Every episode of Futurama, every song by Charles Mingus, every John Cusack movie all professionally encoded and cataloged and awaiting my command. No more schlepping around crates of CDs, no more messed up tapes and discs from the video store, no more late fees, no more unavailable titles, no more accidentally trashing or burning or theft of entire collections, no more missing a favorite show... I've seen the future, brothers and sisters, and it is cool. And add a Transmeta receiver with broadband wandering wireless service, and I'm good for home, the office, the car, jogging, whatever. And, oh yeah, make it a service that runs on top of my current internet provider, please.
The business side of a project like this... I dunno. I'm sure it could be worked out. Out of a $60/month fee, say $10 goes to overhead for whoever runs the service, and $50 gets divided up among all the artists who created content on some sort of a per-watch/listen scale. I realize this raises more questions than it answers, but I'm sure the particulars could be hammered out. Hey, I'm the visionary, I leave the accounting to the eggheads, alright?
OK, there's some privacy issues here, too, I know, I know. The Corporation is going to know everything I watch and listen to. Well, I'm of the camp that the US Gov't needs to pull its head out of its ass and enact some EU-style laws, and pronto. Sorry to my libertarian pals, but I think it's abundantly clear by now that the private sector is not going to play nice on its own, and a little governmental smacking around is occasionally in order. Microsoft. But that's neither here nor there. Personally, I got no beef with marketers knowing that I like good things and hate bad stupid things, and to please stop trying to sell me the bad stupid things and I don't care if Oliver Stone did make the football movie, I'm still not going to watch it, and I'm not going to watch his "WWF Smackdown" movie in 2012, either, so if I have to watch that idiotic commercial one more time...
So what would this system actually be like?
1. It has to be bilateral open-access. Anyone who pays their monthly fee can access anything, and anyone who publishes can get a piece of the action.
2. It's gotta be flat-rate. Micropayments might make more sense, but IMHO consumers just won't go for it. Flat-rate rules.
3. Royalties have to paid out in an equitable manner that's highly resistant to abuse (ah-ha! that makes it really tricky, eh?).
So let's give this a shot:
I think ye olde public/private key encryption is called for. Let's call our secure audio/video streaming format "MP5", and say that it's open-source. Anyone can use FreeMP5 to freely encode their A/V stream and post it on their website or FTP or MP5 server.
But when I encode my MP5, if I want to make money off it, I register it with a public database with my public key... and there's probably a nominal fee for this, like a buck a song or ten cents per minute of video. I don't know who manages these databases, but it should work something like how the domain name servers work now (only... a little smoother, hopefully).
The software I use to play back the MP5 stream unlocks the stream with my private key and hits a counter on the server for it. After some consideration, I think the creators should be paid per second a slice of the flat-rate pie. So if I pay $50/month for media service and I listen to and watch nothing but Peter Gabriel for a whole month straight, Pete gets all $50, but if I watch a straight day of CNN in there, then Pete gets like $48 and CNN gets $2. And if I listen to one Puff Daddy song in there (what are the odds), the Puffster gets like
I guess in this system, our media service provider would be the maintainer of the database. This could be separate from both our ISP and the provider of the DSL/cable/wireless connection. I still don't fully comprehend how the whole domain name debacle is working, but again, that seems to be the sort of model I'd be after, where if one service refused to log my MP5 song called "Tits.com" because they thought it was offensive, I could just find someone else who'd do it and the experience for both the artist and consumer would be seamless because they'd interoperate like DNS. Does that make any sense?
Of course all this will require some heavy duty infrastructure... but what the hell, in another ten years we'll have it anyway... gotta use it for something!
Comments appreciated...
We will have to change the rules; we'll have to think differently. The good thing would be to force everyone to pay some sort of "art-taxe" so we can have theese digital libraries and have access to all information for free. Oh yeah I'm looking forward to the art-on-demand-for-free future that awaits us. (you can check out my previous thread called "a ManRec idea")
I'm a dummy when it comes to marketing, but... It could have been SO easy! If as soon as mp3 became popular, the music industry had gotten all excited about it and provided free mp3 services right away, they could have had the opportunity to lay the groundwork for a broadcast system that would have perfectly accurate listener ratings, AND offer a direct path to the "buy" button. A perfect situation for making advertising money and paying appropriate royalties, with perfectly documentable statistics to base it all on. Plus, in doing all of this, they could have made the whole process of making and storing mp3s seem tedious by comparison to just listening to them anytime and anywhere you want without having to download or convert anything! And now everybody is so used to doing it that it probably is too late. But the other point is that, in this scenario, it wouldn't matter anyway if a few people wanted to keep mp3s around on their hard drives, as long as most of us were doing it the "easy" way and making them lots of cash. I tape the radio sometimes and I don't have FBI agents at my door, at least not for that...
---The Vicar---
I think that what it comes down to is, free market capitalism does not work when applied to Intellectual Property.
The key issue with any transaction is setting a price that is fair to both buyer and seller. The free market is supposed to find the 'best' price for any given item, by ensuring that the buyer has the freedom to seek out the best price, on the condition that sellers are not allowed to sell below the cost of production.
The few laws that are applied in lassez-faire capitalism are those to ensure that the market works efficiently, eg antitrust, anti-dumping, and so on. This free market is the key to enabling Adam Smith's 'Invisible Hand' to ensure that the economy is organised as effieciently as possible, in general.
BUT the problem is, this system only works for commodities, ie items where the seller has a choice of who they want to buy from. If the price is too high, they can buy somewhere else, and if there are no alternative suppliers, the increased prices will induce some to start up.
The very idea of intellectual property invalidates this, because there is no alternative way to buy a particular album that you want (the price is determined centrally, whichever shop you go to). This means there is little way for the market to set a 'fair' price for music, videos, software and the like.
Ultimately, if you want that particular album, you have no choice (legally) but to pay whatever the asking price is.
Another feature of IP is that the incremental cost of each item is small, with respect to the original cost of creating the content in the first place. There is no concept of 'cost + margin' to fall back on to determine what something should be sold for.
A couple of instances that show this up:
Should new patent AIDS drugs be sold cheaper in Africa than Europe / America?
Should CDs?
How would you enforce anti-dumping laws for videogames, given that prices tend to reduce exponentially over time anyway? (£40, £20, £10, £5). Did games mags giving away year-old Amiga games kill that market?
And of course, there's the whole piracy thing - can you steal, without directly depriving anyone of anything?
One idea I had, thinking along these lines, was this:
All software should be free
All computer hardware should have a 5% tax (maybe 2.5% off govt. sales tax, 2.5% increased price)
All computer software should log usage and report to a central trusted location (anonymously)
The usage statistics should be used to allocate the hardware tax amongst software manufacturers.
Result:
Computer users pay no more than before, but have unfettered access to any software they desire.
Computer manufacturers see a slightly increased tax, but their products are more valuable because they are more useful.
Software development companies make as much money as before, but don't have to worry about piracy. The new system rewards truly good software, and punishes makers who use good marketing to get punters to buy products that won't actually be useful.
Goverment gets slightly less sales tax, but a happier, more educated and more productive populace.
Ok, I don't know what the % would need to be, and I know it's a flawed idea, but hey, it's better than the current attempt to stretch old-style, commodity capitalism to cover ideas as well.
Whatever, I really think we need a new way of thinking about this.
1. Encryption
2. Cheap Modems
and 3. Massive Databases
Became available to business. The new business model I refer to? Divx. Divx was intended to change (or rather truncate) the entire concept of ownership when it came to intellectual property. If Divx had suceeded, as opposed to DVD, even tighter controls on where, when and how you could use your DVD (all a Divx disk was was an "enhanced" DVD) would have been imposed. The court cases we're having wouldn't be over whether a Linux box could be created for Linux, but whether that "gold Divx" version of The Little Mermaid that you bought would have to be rebought after you let your account at Circuit City expire for a few years.
Of course, digital video enthusiasts caught on to Divx right away, and had to fight some nasty lies in order to defeat the concept. I think most digital video enthusiasts understood the dangers of the Divx model, stuff like the Nosferatu effect (Bram Stoker's widow thought Nosferatu was to close to Dracula and successfully got many copies of the film destroyed. If the Divx age had come to pass, all she would've had to do was have her lawyer send a letter off to Richard Sharp, and the movie would effectively cease to exist.)
This business model isn't dead, it's just resting. Divx II won't be called Divx II but it'll show up as long as people in the content industry believe it will promise "a vast expanse of gold as far as the eye can see."
Basically, technology hasn't been seen by Big Business as any reason to abandon content control, but as a method to increase it to the greatest degree possible. I'm not sure how far it will go, but I was one of the foolish people who sighed with relief when I realized Divx was dead. I've seen now that it will take something big to turn back the tide of increased (rather than decreased) content control on the part of Big Business.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
In a previous discussion related to DeCSS, somebody pointed out that it was absurd to restrict the distribution of a piece of code, pointing to the example of various distributions of information on how to make bombs/guns/poison, etc. The right to distribute that kind of information (at least printed on paper) has been upheld again and again, regardless of its potential to lead to someone getting hurt.
This got me thinking: Bomb plans are legal to create, possess, distribute, etc. But making and owning the bomb itself is illegal most places. I.e. the knowledge is legal, but the implementation is not. With a decryption scheme the difference between the knowledge and the implementation is much less clear cut, but it still exists: it is the difference between source code and compiled code.
So if they want to be consistent with precedent, they should permit the distribution of the source, but not the compiled code.
This is silly and spurious! you say. Well, it does seem that way, but I think this might be a compromise with something to offer. Think about the consequences:
The hacker community can continue to pass around the code, and, yes compile it and run it and copy DVDs or whatever...
BUT
Nobody will be able to (legally; i.e. very profitably) produce a DVD copy machine that uses this code. This plugs a potentially enormous profit leak that I'm sure worries the Hollywood folks to no end.
Also, Joe Q AOL User will not have even the minimal level of competence required to compile and use the (freely available) decryption algorithm. And 98% of the consumer public are in that class.
The essence of this solution is that it allows the movie/music/etc industry to continue to fleece the sheep. But those who take the time and trouble to educate themselves can opt out. Personally, I find that arrangement very appealing.
Of course, this is a compromise, which means that the entertainment industry gives up some level of control over their material, and the computer/consumer community gives up some of their freedom. So in point of fact it may be a solution that everybody can hate equally. Besides the fact that very few lawyers and fewer judges know the difference between source code, compiled code, and Morse code, so this solution will never be implemented. Nevertheless, I thought I'd toss it out there for people to pick at.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
Again, I'd like to be able to claim "ownership" of them. The question is what rights that "ownership" gives me. Do I claim (or grant others) the right to prevent people from access?, No!! What I do want is protection from misquotes, the chance to explain what I meant and so on.
Two times I've been asked permission to use texts I've written (actually, that I and some friends wrote) My answer has been "Yes feel free to use it, *if* you would make any money from it, give us what you consider fair"
I certainly don't consider myself an "enemy of the freedom of information" I just fear the possibilities for abuse. If information is free, how do I keep a secret? Where is the line between a private conversation in confidence and an open discussion? This reply is public (since I prefer an open discussion). The words of my post are definitely free. If I had responded by mail, would my words still be "public"?
Free information is generally much more useful than closed. Therefore let the best system win in each and every case Forcing an "all information is free"-doctrine is (almost;-) as worng as forcing "all information is closed"
OK I'm ranting. Keep screaming, revolutionary. The day everybody agrees either 100% or not att all will be a sad one.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Well I dont know of any buisness models (ways to make money) for open source music. But it still exists anyway, in the form of music modules (MOD format).