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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?
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...)
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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.
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
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.
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.
What if I wanted to listen to a Gentle Giant track from 1974. Or a Dixie Dregs track from 1981?
Buy all the Gentle Giant CD's while you can get them. Online distribution of music will completely homogenize music, because it is so expensive to deliver music. The margins will be so low (if not zero), that only highly profitable, homogenized music such as Backstreet Boys and Nine Inch Nails will get produced. The more creative and innovative acts (such as the would-be Gentle Giants of the 2000's) will not get produced. The music industry will splinter into two camps: mega-produced mega-stars on one hand, and poorly produced amateur acts on the other. The middle ground of artists who have thrived in the industry, such as Gentle Giant, other progressive musics, folk musics, jazz, and ethnic musics, will be completely destroyed. This is the danger of online distribution. Say goodbye to creativity, and usher in the new era of commoditized downloads, with ads attached.
I'm particularly not looking forward to the the future of recorded classical music, which online distribution will completely and thoroughly destroy. (Wanna stream The Ring on 56k, anyone?)
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.
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.
...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
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.
That's not true in the UK. Everyone pays a license fee to the British Broadcasting Corporation for possesion of a T.V. reception apparatus. And I've got to say that T.V. in the U.K. is way than in the U.S. I actually bothered to watch it when I was there because it would hold my attention span. I fucking hate being interrupted with advertising all the time and I considered the #40 or so pounds pretty reasonable for commercial free TV which also produced original drama.
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.
There's already a lot of that in the movies and funnily enough the movies with the most of it are the ones that suck - they're commercial, whoring to the ad-execs and the big companies.
Audio, however, presents a slightly more difficult problem. Product placement doesn't fit in very well,
I can just hear the Dead Kennedys or RATM popping in soundbites for Ford Explorers.
I totally agree with your last 2 paragraphs - they've got to offer attractive packaging. Although I have the opportunity to burn my own audio CD's I like to buy them if they have good sleeve notes or artwork, I also collect vinyl for exactly the same reason. Companies have to learn to sell good physical products, not information.
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.
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!
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
Well I certainly don't agree with that. The worst bands I have ever heard in my life are often given HUGE recording budgets, and the most talented people I have seen are given nothing, or have to fund themselves. Blame people's watered down musical pallettes.
As I said to you in a previous post, this seems to describe the industry already.
Perhaps if you're talking about the top .1% of the people being recorded today. But with the proliferation of high quality inexpensive digital formats like 20-bit ADATs and consoles like the Yamaha O2R, you can produce recordings with very good sonic integrity at very reasonable prices. (although I prefer analog, but that's another subject entirely!)
I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to record the most talented musician I've seen in a long time, and we did a full length jazz-fusion CD (~59 minutes) for around $11,000. This included recording, mix, mastering, and production of 1000 initial units.
I'm pretty happy with the sonic integrity of the finished product (recorded on 16-bit ADATs and mixed on an Amek Big (by Graham Langley) console with a decent selection of outboard gear.
Sure, in retrospect I would have done a few things differently and perhaps made it sound a bit better, but we learn something new every day.
Could I have made it better with a $100,000 budget? You bet... a better console with better mic pre's and a better mix path would have helped... at least to my ear. But is John Q. Citizen going to hear the difference?
Nah.
Sure given the choice and money I'd be happy to take it to that next level. But with a lot of the gear today, I'm not convinced it's necessary anymore.
In the long run I agree with you. I consider myself an audiofile and a perfectionist in the studio. Bad engineering and bad production make me CRINGE (you have no idea!)... I demand stellar music production... but I don't think you need to spend $1,000,000 unless you have the very example you cited. An orchestra with dozens of musicians and the necessity of a huge studio environment. Other wise you can do great work for in most cases for mid 5-figures, and often less.
Ignore Alien Orders
The author gets it right when he says we need a new business model if we're going to distribute "intellectual property". I'm suprised record companies havent devised some sort of NDA on their recording media that says you won't make copies of the product. The kicker with intellectual property is that it's physical production costs are insanely low due to our culture's industrialization. A CD which stores digital copies of a dozen songs only costs 2$ 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.
Now that we've established that, take a look at the history of copyright and authors vs publishers at: http://dvd.picketwyre.com/~hthor eau/css.html#history. Copyright was first established as a right of publishers over the authors and public. It didn't work. Copyright was established in the US to be a bargain between author and public, not between publisher and public.
Online distribution of music will completely homogenize music...
Like having 4 record companies and 5 radio station chains hasn't?
because it is so expensive to deliver music...
The typical "big label deal" costs about 250k-1m to produce. 19 times out of 20 the deal ends up with the artist in debt to the label - the album must sell more the 2m copies! Basically musicians are forced into indentured servitude for two or more albums more by the legalize in their contracts at that point. Ever wonder why the 2nd album sucks? It's because the artist is broke and still has to fill his contract.
The odds of success and profits are much better at the indies. An album might cost 50k to produce, and is manufactured in small quantities. A working musician like Christine Lavin can tour, fill small halls, sell a few dozen CDs a day, and make an honest living. With the decline in price of a good home studio (you can build a good 24 track home studio for less than 10k these days), it is perfectly feasible to self produce your own albums. MP3 cuts the labels and distributors and radio stations out of the distribution problem entirely - with MP3 there is no dependence on airplay, bribes, distribution, at all!! And I for one, and every last musician I know that has had the music industry suck on their tit - say - "Good Riddance, Music Industry. Don't let technology's revolving door hit you on the way out. Have a nice day. Don't call us, we'll call you."
I think with the advent of MP3s homogenized music such as the Backstreet Boys and Nine Inch Nails will go the way of the dodo. Instead of a few dozen mega-stars we will see tens of thousands of musicians finally able to make a modest living in music.
As for the delivery costs of radio stations... who cares? They can go the way of the dodo, too....
Say goodbye to creative and innovative acts...
The creative and innovative acts will always get produced. An artist is not driven by money but by the need to creat art. Further, widespread MP3 availability will make it possible for these acts to be heard and to get gigs.
Say goodbye to creativity...
We've already said goodbye to creativity. Albums using sampled music are so dangerous to produce due to various claims to copyright on "licks" that it's amazing any new music is being produced at all in the United States. This is a case where music as property has been taken too far. Can you imagine a world where every time you play a lick from Professor Longhair or Eric Clapton you have to pay a royalty?
Usher in a new era of commoditized downloads... I admit that I'm bugged by the sites that destroy or cut various Mp3s that they are distributing in the name of advertising. This is destroying art. This is treating art as property. I have to point out that LONG before mp3s existed there was the informal concert taping community (DAT-Heads) - who've been trading tapes for a long time and many bands support our efforts!!
It is the labels that are against concert taping and MP3s because they believe in a law of artificial scarcity, that somehow there being one and only one copy of "Sensitive New Age Guy" somehow increases its value, which is dead wrong. Music evolves. Every live performance is different.
As for your last point about the future of recorded classical music, do you have any idea how much money recordings net most orchestras? Zip. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. I think high quality MP3s of classical music will do more to open up peoples ears to classical and into attending classical concerts than any number of snooty PBS shows.
A future where good music is distributed commercial free via MP3s, where an artist can make a decent living playing live and from selling albums at shows - that is the world I want to live in.
(I buy CDs at every show I go to - why? because I can get them autographed, I always find CDs I had never heard of, and I'm supporting the artist)
I, Rhysling
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
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.
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
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'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...
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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.
I've been paid to work on open source software -- but, I wasn't been paid for the software I wrote, I was paid for the work I did. Most programmers are paid like that anyway -- what percentage of programmers of closed-sources software do you know who get per-copy royalties? (the answer: very few. even the ones who freelance are typically paid by the hour, not per copy of software used)
I don't think charging consumers per-copy is really fair, given that the programmers typically never get any of it anyway. We may as well stop trying to pretend programming isn't a service, and focus on funding software development appropriately.
DNA just wants to be free...
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)
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