Slashdot Mirror
Part One: In A Virtual World, Who Owns Ideas?
Note:This is the first of a two-part analysis.
Who owns ideas?
It isn't an abstract or academic question. Some of the greatest prosperity in history has been created by an economic system -- capitalism -- which permits private parties to do business freely through a system of contract and property laws, agreements and understandings. Governments have always had a vested interest in defining rights to private property, and enforcing laws that protect it.
Private property is essential to creating a functioning system for economic relationships that -- theoretically, at least -- benefit everyone. No one has come up with a better or more efficient system.
But property rights have never been absolute, unyielding or static. There is no such thing as property rights that aren't at some point subordinated to other interests. Your car can't be driven at any speed over somebody else's lawn; your dogs may be turned over to the local Humane Society if you mistreat them; your house can be auctioned if you don't pay taxes.
Now, the Net and Web have put the idea of copyright and intellectual property on the table for the first time in centuries. At the moment, nobody can clearly define what these things mean in virtual space, let alone how they should be regulated or policed.
Cyberspace has also highlighted the differences between intellectual property and other kinds. "If you 'take' my idea," writes Lawrence Lessig in his book Code, "I still have it. If I tell you an idea, you have not deprived me of it. An unavoidable feature of intellectual property is that its consumption, as the economists like to put it, is 'non-rivalrous.' Your consumption does not lessen mine. Ideas, at their core, can be shared with no reduction in the amount the 'owner' can consume. This difference is fundamental, and it has been understood since the founding."
Contemporary "patriots" -- especially those who would who would restrict the free flow of intellectual property via the Internet, would do well to read Thomas Jefferson, who eloquently expressed one of his fondest wishes for intellectual property in his new country as follows:
"That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
But the authors of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, under intense pressure from corporate lawyers and lobbyists to curb the spread of free music and movies, obviously didn't spend much time reading Jefferson. So the new, Net-spawned reality -- being played out most visibly at the moment in the free-music wars raging between the recording industry and millions of fans - has challenged traditional ideas about law, commerce, technology and culture.
In the Digital Age, can anyone own ideas? Apart from moral issues, is it even possible to own something that's distributed globally through a representational medium like the Internet? The question is unsettled whether institutions like Congress will ever grasp what geeks and corporatists both know is at the center of the growing collision over ownership of ideas: code.
Codes are the building blocks of cyberspace. Laws passed without comprehending of or considering of code and software can't possibly determine whether the new ways of life evolving online are moral or not, whether they should continue to exist. As Net scholars like physicist Paul Davies have written in books (such as Davies' The Mind of God, The Scientific Basis for a Rational World, the sudden existence of both a real and a virtual world -- a new kind of dual property -- is of "cosmic significance." With the advent of computers, the world is being reordered.
The structure of the Net, and of the Web in particular, is altering the way younger Americans view many traditional ethics and values -- the definitions of theft, content and property, among others. (To see one expression of this sensibility clearly, check out the Netropolis Collective, founded by the Open Chronicles Clan.) This collective describes itself as "an organized group of people who will not give up their culture to join the norm. The Collective is non-violent," declares its manifesto, "and would prefer to start revolutions in a fashion much like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."
Another manifestation of this new sensibility is evident in an e-mail I received from from Elizabeth Durack, a Star Wars fan concerned because the series' official Web site (www.Starwars.com) has begun offering free Web sites on its subdomain fan.starwars.com. "This is seriously scary to me because it seems to be an attempt to lure fans into their territory in order to better control the content of fan Web sites."
In an insightful essay, Durack argues that fans paying for culture and supporting entertainment should be allowed leeway in the use of copyrighted and trademarked properties.
The notion of fan "rights" is a growing political instinct online, where people feel passionately about their culture, from ground-breaking representational experiences like Quake, Doom, Ultima and The Sims to followers of Star Trek, South Park, The Simpsons, and Star Wars. These games, movies and television programs transcend mere entertainment; they are an integral part of people's cultural experiences the same way music is. Durack's essay reflects the growing tension between "fans" and the companies that want to take their money -- but otherwise keep them at arm's length.
Durack's point of view is radical. It isn't widely held in political and media circles -- especially not in Washington.
"In your writings on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act earlier this week," e-mailed a Congressional aide, "you are obscuring the fact that the Internet is creating a generation of culture and content pirates. They steal other peoples ideas, and they don't pay for them, and they take no moral responsibility for that. People like you are celebrating and enabling and helping raise a culture of thievery that is not only institutionalized but which considers itself morally superior. We are a nation of laws and you seem to celebrate a nation of law-breakers."
A number of musicians have expressed similar feelings, accusing me and others of turning a blind eye towards an epidemic of online theft of intellectual property.
The DMCA, responsible for a growing wave of threats, legal assaults on free music and DVD code-sharing sites, codified this conventional legal, political and corporate wisdom into law. It holds institutions (like colleges) liable if they dont act to prevent the distribution of software that violates existing copyright laws.
For more than a century, copyright laws have governed the sale and distribution of many artifacts of culture. People who create music and literature have never been particularly good at selling their work, which tends to be collected and distributed by increasingly monopolistic corporate entities: publishers, record labels, Hollywood studios. Although such companies -- Disney, AOL/Time-Warner, Wal-Mart, Blockbuster Video -- sell and profit from the work of individual creators, they have organized into enormous corporatist collectives that are the antithesis of individualism and creative expression.
Corporations, from record labels, to book publishers, to the owners of TV networks, exclude idiosyncratic, individualistic or "non-commercial" voices. They directly and indirectly censor culture by pressuring artists, writers, filmmakers and musicians to produce bland, packageable entertainment suited to their synergistic marketing structures. The book (if there is one) becomes the Web site, then the movie, then the CD and video. The more inoffensive, the more lucrative.
These global conglomerates -- among the worlds most profitable and influential business entities -- earn billions of dollars by collecting various distribution and user fees.
The Net is beginning to dismantle this economic model of culture, and it isn't going quietly. Not only music, but also many other forms of information and entertainment -- from games and term papers to legal documents and movies -- are becoming instantly available to millions of people for free as broadband access spreads from institutions like universities and large corporations to small and mid-sized workplaces and to private homes via cable and high-speed phone lines.
My response to that congressional aide: It's disingenuous to use terms like "theft" and "piracy," ancient notions of law and property, in the 21st Century. They have little contemporary meaning in cyberspace.
Artists, musicians, writers and other creators of intellectual property can still be paid fairly for their work. There are all sorts of options beyond conventional royalties. They can sign contracts with music distributors that draw revenue from Web site advertising or subscription fees, or that sell music and other cultural offerings in smaller, less costly units. They can offer contracts to cadres of music lovers who agree to pay for access if they're offered more choices at cheaper prices.
The fact is anyone who writes or designs on the Web understands immediately that culture can't be copyrighted online: there are simply too many means of transmission. The linkage inherent to the Web presents too many distribution channels to patrol. Music, open source software, cultural and political opinions are memes -- they travel to anyone who cares to partake, all over the Net, instantly.
And there's no taking them back.
End Part One. Tomorrow: Criminalizing access to technology, freedom and choice.
Historically, this reminds me of how the slave plantaions were most profitable in the years just before the civil war. New technologies caused by the industrial revolution, like the cotton gyn, allowed plantations to expand to vast territories. Unfortunately, this same industrial revolution technology was also challenging the concept of slavery like never before. It was only a matter of time before things "hit the fan" as the new economany would not tolerate the restrictions on migration, and freedom to switch where you work at will - that are essential in any free market society. Of course, many prople naievely assumed that slavery was a property right. It wasn't, it was a controll on human behavior as copyrights and patents are today.
Infact the simaliarities between the conflicts of yesteryear and today are striking. Slavery started out as a short term incentive, as patnets and copyrights have. Slavery was considered a property right, as copyrights and patents often are. Slavery was associated with America's great wealth as copyrights and patents are today. It was even suggested that people needed slavery to "tame" their inherit barbarisim, and today it is often implied that without copyrights and patents plagureisim and fraud would run rampant. Of course, if things "hit the fan" today over copyrights and patents - it would not be a north vs south scenario, but rather more like anarchy and much more global as institutions that embrace "intellectual property" and institutions that oppose it are in very close proximity. And would likely unite on internet territories rather than geographical territories.
David
dmchr@netcom.com
Why _two_ orders of magnitude? Most artists incur recording expenses in that way but cannot recoup the advance from CD sales, so the majority never see anything except that they got to see the inside of a very very expensive recording studio, once. That is what they 'spent' their cut on, only they were contractually bound to spend it like that up front. It's a neat racket but certainly a very poor way to keep musicians eating and paying their rent. Your system, or just about _anything_ else, would be a marked improvement.
Thought, discovery, identity... they're all abstract things. You can't own things like that; no one can. That fact is why copyrights, trademarks, and patents were created in the first place. The US Constitution, for example, established offices for these "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" (Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 8).
This is the problem with the name "intellectual property." You may own a patent, copyright, or whatever, but you don't own the idea behind it. Nobody does. This is where software and media companies have gotten confused (or simply ignored?)
It only gets worse when people misappropriate things. Software, for example, when you come down to it, is thought (on a relatively primitive level, but thought nonetheless). The patent office was not established to handle thought; that's the job of copyrights. When you write a science-fiction novel, do you try to patent science-fiction? Of course not; you copyright your work without trying to patent the idea behind it. Why, then, should software vendors (who do essentially the same thing) be allowed to patent software, when copyrights fit the type of work being done better, are cheaper, and last more than four times as long (for corporations; for an individual it's at least three times as long as a patent and can theoretically go for far longer than a corporate copyright can)?
Change while() to while(<>) and next time use Extrans mode ;-)
"Once we can all cheaply create content..." the value of most of it will be the equivalent of First Post, hot grits, petrified Portman, etc.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Despite his many other flaws (as I perceive them), Katz regularly reads the responses to his articles and posts replies when (apparently) he feels they are warrented. I have a lot of complaints about him, but "elitist snob" isn't one of them.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
"How can one own such a thing?"
Because they thought of it and you didn't!
By and large it seems that those with no ideas worth having are a lot more enthusiastic about people having no rights over their own ideas as are those with ideas worth having.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The unconscionable "make Phelps the bad guy" which ruined the first Mission Impossible movie is more than sufficent reason for a boycott all by itself.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Because of all the people stealing, I mean, liberating, Katz's writings. :)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
If their ideas are worthless, then those ideas probably won't be "copied and used" by anyone else, so those with worthless ideas probably won't be the ones whining about piracy.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
You seem to be advocating an "Everybody's doing it" argument to ignoring theft. If everyone's doing it, then it must be OK. That is not a mature way of looking at the world. I got nailed for that one as a little kid.
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I keep thinking about that old saying about the baby and the bathwater...
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I think there is the ability to "own" music. You can't own the notes themselves, but you can own the presentation of them. There are many musicians who can create music, but not all have the same ability and the same interest from fans. Anybody can string a few random notes together, but to make music that people enjoy listening to is a different thing altogether.
A similar idea is that Red Hat can "own" their distribution of Linux. They don't own the basic code, but how it is put together and presented.
You can't own the number 1 or 0, but you can own a particular arrangement of 1's and 0's that create something that others can't, or haven't yet, or are not able to.
Just because it is theoretically possible that I can create a popular piece of music doesn't mean that I have actually created it yet. There is work in creation. If authors don't get compensated for that work, then they may have to stop (or reduce) that type of work and seek other work that will sustain them (music, art, code, etc).
Making something easy to copy doesn't make it easy to create.
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spiralx writes: Yes, but it's still incredibly difficult for an unknown artist to gain serious exposure or make more than a pittence on the net.
To be practical, I'd suggest that the artist should not depend only on the 'net for income, but use both old and new media at the same time.
I'm an unknown artist, a minor author of a well-known nerd book. I'm gaining serious exposure via the publisher making the book available on the net, and this is increasing the revenue from the "dead-tree" edition. Conventional books, you see, still have great value, so people happily buy them even though they can refer to them online as well.
And why did I and my publisher take this track? Because we know that the historical origin of copyright is really quite different from what some people would have you believe. A good article, and a sustained debate, lives here, at my favorite tree-based mag.
It starts with Charles C. Mann on Emmanuel Kant: "Every artistic work, he said, consists of a physical object and a piece of its creator's spirit. People can buy the object but not the spirit, for soul cannot be purchased. Thus readers can freely copy books, but only in ways that respect the writer's integrity".
Also check out the comments by Lawrence Lessig, of "Code" fame...
To be blunt, there is no theft taking place so long as the use is that which the author wanted. The contrary opinions of interested third parties does not change this.
--davedavecb@spamcop.net
...i've ever been accused to trying too hard (not sure what what means) but you are always, of course, free to turn back to "mainstream" news.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I think this is a great post, and went right to the heart of it...a lot of people (including Thomas Jefferson) thought, like absurd, that such a thing can't be owned. Looks increasingly like they were right.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Very much appreciate this post from somebody who wants to talk about the issues raised here..My argument is that people who grow up (for years now) having access to free music really don't see it as stealing..And in a way, it isn't, as they've been permitted to do it for so long and in such great depth. If people ultimately decide that it is stealing, then that will require a massive reworking of technology and of education...Because we've institutionalized "thievery" to such a degree that it's almost impossible to get people to see it that way now. Many of you know more about the technology involved than I do, but I don't see or hear of any systems that can put the genie back in the bottle. Don't we have to accept that. In any case, I thought this was a very smart and useful post.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
You don't sound like a thief to me. But would you be willing to pay compensation in small amounts or different ways?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I agree, but last weekend, the music industry posted record $15 billion profits. Also, we have to remember this is much bigger than music..It's hard for me to believe, much as I would like to that the legal, medical, music and movie professions and industries will all throw in the towel.
Also, I question the word "pirates." I don't think the people downloading this stuff are theives, not in the context of their own lives.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
P.S. This is a good post to look at it when you think about personalizing of issues. Ilike emotional reaction and melodrama, and if there's a problem with this column, it's probably that there's too much content (there is plenty, I am quite confident). Marklee, don't you have one thing to say on this very large issue that doesn't have to do with me personally? If not, why post at all? Either skip it or go back to your other other media.
Lots of people obviously want to talk about this. This post is too vague too bother me, but it's a useful place to keep arguing for people to talk on the issues here, rather than try and personalize all disagreements. Just a point.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
A couple of quotes: "If I can see farther, it's because I stand on the sholders of giants" - i.e., if I come up with a great new idea, it always contains someone else's prior art, and "Ideas are the property of the person who created it".
Basically, if you create or broker info and want to profit either marginally or massively by it, you're all for copyright protection and enforcement. If your an info consumer trying to maximize utility at the lowest possible cost, then you want 'free' copies. There will always be this tension between producers and consumers as long as info producers and consumers exist.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
for newcomers, check out Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright by Eben Moglen.
Copyright nor patents preclude free distribution. However, currently there are problems applying both copyright and patents to new developments. With the extremely small division between an idea and it's implementation in software and companies patenting as broad as they possibly can we see the patent system breaking down not because of inherent flaws in it, but merely because of insufficient care exercised in determining which patents are valid and which are not.
I think the point I'm trying to make is to let people realize that crying "the system is breaking down, therefore it must be fundamentally wrong" is pretty stupid. If my PC were to run Amazon, it would break down pretty quickly... but that does not give me any reason to think Amazon's systems are built on fundamentally different concepts than my PC is...
I do agree that the current system is too expensive to keep on track, and that would be a good reason to redesign it. That does not mean it's design is inherently wrong...
Off of ideas, no matter what the rules are.
Part of it will be figuring what the business
rules are.
Take MS as example- its made lots of money off of
other people's ideas.
As a journalist you should know that the only sources entitled to anonymity (or for that matter, for which anonymity is appropriate -- what happened to "cite everything!"?) are those for whom anonymity was a precondition to receiving the statements in the first place.
That said, "inquiring minds want to know": which Congressman did the aide you quoted work for, and (this is a matter of simple research) how much Big Vinyl is lining the pockets of his suit-coat? If you're serious about a political solution to IP reform, then it only makes sense to expose which politicians are firmly in the pocket of large corporate IP owners....
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
who feels that piracy is his right, that he shares some mysterious brotherhood with
masses of faceless teenagers, and that this is some sort of crusade to "take back the
power". Every characterization of the content producers and publishers indicate that
they have sold out and are only in it for the money, all but justifying the piracy of
their product.
Instead of fighting the "evil greedy" corporations, he should encourage people to make
their own content and sell it any darn way they please. The Internet shouldn't be about
taking what isn't yours and redistributing it, but about creating something new and
special and then self-publishing it. Make your own music, animations, fiction -- and
bypass the traditional media to make your own mark (and profit). Of course, then how
do you protect your content from the same pirates that you were previously allied with?
It's not just about profit. Okay, that's a big portion of it. I feed my family on the
profits my company makes off its software. But it's also about responsibility. You can't
blame the media conglomerates for making these huge special effects movies to cater to
the Stars Wars generation, then blame them because they need to recoup the huge investment
they made. That's the market you helped to build.
I can't stand people who advocate giving away their ideas and stealing from those who
don't, when the only product they actually have is their own opinion. Jon has spent alot
of time culling an audience of technical readers who feel the government or big business
has done them wrong. He taps into adolescent rage against things that they can't change
by making them feel that they can, that there is some massive wrong to be righted. If
government and business don't move fast enough to keep up with technology that reinvents
itself every 5 years, they are dinosaurs that are being passed by. If government and
business try to anticipate the needs of the industry, they are thwarting the open nature
of the market and should be stopped.
He tries to put a face on the "little guy" who is fighting for something (usually to make
free copies of the Matrix or slurp down more free music into his dorm). He argues that the
kids at Columbine are misunderstood, that the rioters in Seattle had some noble intentions,
and that people in trenchcoats are being singled out. Maybe there is some injustice going
on here, but maybe, they are just angry Quake heads who only know how to express themselves
through destruction or by playing the outsiders. People give him this power the same way
they give Rush or Howard their power, by identifying with his stories in some way (I've been
wronged, and he understands me).
Instead of stirring up a mob, Jon should be preaching responsibility. Civil disobedience
is only effective when you stand up to the system and say "I'm doing this because I think
there is something wrong with the system -- I'm going to take my lumps, and demonstrate to
the world how wrong it is". Don't teach people to steal, don't encourage them to break the
rules, but work within the system and defeat it. How is Microsoft going to be beaten? Not
by pirating their software, but by building something better. That's working within the
system, beating them at their own game. It's responsible. It's the adult thing to do.
Finally, here are some juicy excerpts and my comments:
Well bully for them. I don't see how this impedes you from creating your own content, or
at least continuing on with your life unaffected. If you don't like the homogonized product,
then don't buy it. If you don't like what's on the tube, don't watch it. There is no reason
why the product they push needs to bother you if you can avoid it.
Also, don't try to justify piracy because (a) you can't stand the content producers, (b)
you can't stand the content publishers, or (c) you can't stand the product itself.
That's a totally non-responsive response. These concepts don't map perfectly into a digital
world, but there is still enough overlap. Every copy of a virtual work lessens the value of
that work for future profit. If 100% of the people who wanted a work made an illegal copy,
then the author would have little justification for producing another. If 50% made a copy,
then the other 50% would feel cheated for shouldering the burden. At the microscopic level,
one person may feel he has done no harm by making an illegal copy, but encouraging a whole
class of people do do the same... that's irresponsible and a real problem that needs to be
addressed.
Ideas want to be free, right? I seriously wonder what would happen if someone copied
Jon's articles verbatim and posted them onto their own website. I haven't "stolen" anything
from him because his articles are still available on slashdot, but perhaps I can generate a
few more hits (and a little more cash) on my own website. Aren't I just borrowing some of
the value of his ideas, or am I doing him real harm?
Each time I read a Jon Katz article, it's like reading a textbook example of how to stir
up angry rebellion against the faceless monopolies and government henchmen. It's diatribe
meant to inflame instead of inform, to accuse instead of explain, and to subvert instead
of support. If I had the time, I'd compare him to some of the other great subversives of
the last century -- but I'm afraid of the parallels I might find. Just please, please don't
ever vote him into office.
Matt Slot / Bitwise Operator / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
And yet it's hard to judge before the fact what would happen if IP laws were eliminated or drastically scaled back. It may, in fact, turn out to be the case that with a million monkeys at the keyboard, we'll get another Shakespeare or two (hey, he didn't need any IP laws, did he?) but it isn't obvious or certain that the result would be any better than what we have now.
Like so many other arguments that favor the free distribution of "intellectual" property, there's one thing missing from this analogy. Whether it's digital or physical, BOTH mediums share one common element - in fact, it's one element that makes them BOTH very viable in a free market. VALUE. Pure and simple.
Value is neither pure nor simple. The value you say is in your song is partly made of chords, progressions, harmonies, hooks and melodies that someone else thought, imagined and used before you. Another part of the value lies in the capacity of your audience to understand and appreciate your creation. That your song has value to them does not in itself ENTITLE you to the recoup the value, let alone benefit from a comfortable, state-run racket.
In a way, you are like the wanderer who lays the last brick in the building and calls it his own. You depend on the past and the commonality of shared culture to make your song or story or invention valuable. If I were to calculate the value of all those contributions, you would be left with a much smaller royalty, probably not worth the trouble of collection.
This notion is exceedingly important when one considers the implications of relaying an idea to someone else- an idea that has the potential of being of substantial value to a significant number of people. Yes, I still have the idea, but now that two people have access to its substance, its value has been effectively diminished.
It's value can only have been diminished if you ALREADY ASSUME IT IS YOUR RIGHT TO COLLECT ROYALTIES. Since this is the question at issue, I would say you are taking for granted what is to be proved. Not to mention being smug.
I really don't understand the mentality behind the idea that IP should be free. IP, in one form or another, has DRIVEN our advancement as a society, and the reason for this is simple. We reward those with good ideas by buying what they have created.
First of all, when copyright and patent became part of English law in the 17th century, printers, inventors and the like were impoverished by today's standards. It made sense to have the advancement of science and the useful arts as a social policy objective because there really weren't any cultural 'industries'. That was three hundred years ago. The situation now is much different, in fact just the opposite. Science is out of control; technology dominates and enslaves us, huge conglomerates have to spew out oceans of irrelevant, nauseating 'content' just because they exist. That's the danger of having a whole social class of professional intellectual property generators. If they stopped spitting out crap, they'd die. The situation we have now is exactly the reverse of England at the time of the Statute of Anne. Far from needing the encouragement of guaranteed monopoly, the intellectual property economy is overdeveloped and in need of restraint. Ask anyone what they think about having human genes patented and you'll see that my view is not unpopular.
Whether it's a physical item, like a new type of house paint that will last for 20 years, or a new song that leaves us with a positive sense of well-being, it's all the same. They both do something FOR us...they convey very real benefits whose value is based on what the maker is offering, and the buyer is willing to pay.
You're giving an example of someone who is willing to pay under the current intellectual property regime, but you are just following the ridiculous practice of the Software Anti-Piracy Lobby that overstates the losses to piracy by assuming that everyone who steals the software would have paid list price for it. That's just plain false. Some would, but most wouldn't. If the person who values something enough to buy it has no other option, then yes, they might buy where they would otherwise copy, but again, in counting this as a direct loss to the creator, you are assuming that the creator already has residual property rights in his creation when that is the very point that is in question.
If you don't pay, you don't play. Period. Otherwise, it's theft.
Why should we pay for someone else to play? Why don't they do it on their own dime like the rest of us?
And those that think their ideas are worth a lot generally whine about piracy until the state sends in the army.
"Free Art is a gift. You should be grateful for it and pay for it or I won't give it to you".
or something to that effect. Hey buddy, your talent is a gift too, and so is the time you spend practising. Stop acting (or sounding) like you created yourself out of nothing by your own effort.
Excellent points about live performance and underground music. Many careers are made on this so called "piracy" of their music. I dj and compose as well, and i dont pay royalties to anyone, and noone pays me royalties unless they license a track for a cd compilation (PSST! HEY! that's where the money's at!!!)
The vast majority of the records i play don't have the "unauthorized public performance or lending" blurb on the label or sleeve. There is no room for legal disclaimers or legalese on my recordings if i ever release any.
I love seeing live performances and i love performing live as well. The interaction between the audience and the music and the musician is what really matters. Its pure magic folks, and mp3's are no replacement for a big-fucking-soundsystem and a group of my closest friends dancing and sweating together!
--freq
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
You've been trapped by Slashdot's HTML thingie again. The correct perl line is:
perl -e 'while(<>){print pack("H32",$_)}' |
Gerv
I love the quote from the policy dweeb -
"... the Internet is creating a generation of culture and content pirates. They steal other peoples ideas, and they don't pay for them, and they take no moral responsibility for that."
As a well-respected enforcer for a local criminal orginization says:
"Too bloody right, mate! You steal sumtin' from me, I'm gonna break yer fookin legs, ain't I?"
The lack of a difference between government theft and free-market theft becomes quite apparent, yes?
"...they may harpoon us, but they ain't gonna pick us up on no radar screen!"
Picture this. The DVD Conortium releases the new DVD standard that will support high definition formats. As a part of this standard, they include a very strong encryption scheme that is unbreakable (or just close enough for government work
Now, not only could you not play this on your Linux box, but you couldn't even get a drive for it. The technology seems to be evolving in such a way that eventually enthusiasts and businesses will be the one's with PC's, and consumers will just use sealed internet appliances. So why risk the inability to enforce copyright by releasing it to PC's being a small percentage of the overall market. Nope, you have to get a sealed system with no upgrades or ability to hack the O/S and you throw it out when you don't like it and get a new one for free with your cable subscription. They'll subsidize the cost of these devices, and then make it all back in the end by upping the cost of the media you buy.
No more MP3 trading. No more ripping. No more DeCSS. Oh yeah, and since the government's copyright protections are either superfluous on appliances, or unenforcable on PC's, guess what? No more copyrights. Why bother? And thus, no more fair use and no more expiration of copyright. Nope nope, the media corps dictate their terms to you, and you just cope because there's nobody else who can provide the same service.
Now, you might think that congress can save us. Yet, this would take a fundamental reconstructing of their understanding of copyright law. Besides which, who's financing their campaigns? Yup, AOL Time Warner Turner etc, incorporated and their ilk. Furthermore, they'll play it smart and provide ways for people to get a pseudo-fair use out of the technology. They'll provide academic discounts for libraries and schools. They'll have to pay for this of course, but the prices will be very reasonable.
They will be an information monopoly. Media for the corporations, by the corporations. Packaged and delievered to you at the maximum price they can extort from you.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
New games lately cannot be copied even with a CD burner. We are back to the old days of defective floppies where it was impossible to make a legitimate backup copy and if your original went bad the publisher said "buy another one."
There are several new games on the market, Age of Empires 2 is the only one I can distinctly remember, that have defective tracks in the CD itself. When you try to make a legitimate backup copy you get a track read error. The game looks for this defective track when it is running and will not run without it.
I am serious about _legitimate backup_ copies. All of my original CDs are locked up in a safe at home. I travel alot, CDs get scratched, things get lost or stolen (or forgotten in a clients CD Drive).
what is iritating is that I thought this fight was dead and gone 10 years ago. Now I will be back in the position that if media I own gets damaged, I will be forced to resort to a method that is technically illegal in order to access a program that I have a legitimate license to use.
We've come full circle only recreating the mistakes of the past.
chris
-- I need more coffee. It's Monday. There is no such thing as enough coffee on a Monday.
I had to respond to this because it brings closer to the surface that JonKatz is alomost arguing against himself. Jon is a commercial writer who is being paid for these articles. He is however writing within a new revenue model. although it is not truly new, it is supported soley by advertising and is a close analog of the "Free" weekly newspaper present in most of America.
The theft/payment/profit/compensation is in my mind the most interesting arena of exploration. Theft is traditionally referenced to physical objects. Patent extended theft to the creation of physical objects by a certain means. Copyright extends theft (ownership) over physical representation of ideas, be they writings or artwork. we do not have any current representaion of theft that does not involve something physical.
When sombody copies a CD to give to their friend theft is involved because they have created a duplicate physical object that is protected. If they RIP a CD and give the files to a friend, they have copied a physical object that is protected. The copy is not physical, but they have created a precise duplicate of a unique physical object.
So many of our analogies break down because there is no physical representaion of a purely digital creation. OTOH it can be argued that we are merely dealing with a new physical medium, the computer, which has new properties of infinite flexibility and propagation, but is fundamentally no different than oil on canvas or words on paper because the ideas behind the creations are the same, merely the medium is different.
payment/profit/compensation is really the sticky area. Artists create because of the joy of creating, be they sculpters, musicians, or programmers. If their creations are able to be leveraged to be able to take care of their material needs then more of their energy, spirit, and creativity can be leveraged into the common good, creating more original "things".
a common theme among the mass media has been that the Internet will redefine business by reducing the layers between creator and consumer. This is beginning to happen more every day. Instead of paying for physical representation of ideas, I can "pay" for there digital equivilents. I can go to MP3.com and download new music, for which the artist is paid via a split of the ad revenues which my visit generates. I can come to Slashdot and read the opinions of JonKatz (and several thousand commentators) and Jon gets paid again through the ad banners that we view.
In each of these models monetary compensation is passed very effeciently to the creator of the original work. There is overhead, but there is not the overhead of large headquarters or thousands of executives wining and dining local media personalities the purchase exposure for their product.
I wonder if Lexus/Nexus has ever studied whether or not advertising could support their revenue model more than subscriptions?
enjoy,
Chris
-- I need more coffee. It's Monday. There is no such thing as enough coffee on a Monday.
Jon,
absolutely and without question I would pay other forms of compensation.
At the beginning of last week I went out to MP3.com to look and see what was available and If the quality had improved. I found hundreds of excellent techno and electronic songs, inspiring divas, and some hilarious country. Over the next few days I downloaded about 2 GB of MP3's from these artists.
I am still torn about compensation. at MP3.com the only option is to buy a hard copy album from the artist for $6-10, much more affordable than the local store, but honestly I have no interest in owning more physical CD's. so I dug deeper into MP3.com and their compensation.
MP3.com splits their ad revenue among the artists ( in February they paid out $200,000 ) based upon popularity measured in plays and downloads. Their top 20 artists averaged $5k in ad revenues. This is a good start, but far less than major record contracts and I am still only giving them pennies when I download 20 songs from them.
so I looked at the CD's. MP3.com is far more generous than the major record labels. Every artist gets 50% of the revenues from CD sales. cool, this gets me the opportunity to better reward the artist, but then I have lots of physical CDs laying around and a lot of money is wasted in pressing, packaging, and shipping me something that I will just throw on a shelf and ignore.
Middle ground, middle ground. I would be willing to pay half of the price of the album to download a single zip file with all of the songs in it. No, it is not very hard to sit there and select every single song and download it (as I did), but organized tar balls are a lot easier for me to deal with, it is much more likely that I am going to remember the artist if when I undo all of these tarballs they spit out into organized directories by artist and subdirs by album.
This is providing a value added service that I would be willing to pay for. I want to see more money go to the artist, and I don't want to waste any of my money on dead trees and UPS.
One more catch, it needs to be persistent so that if I have a crash (without good backups), or I go to work or home or change jobs, then I can go back to the site and redownload everything I have already purchased.
Thoughts,,
chris
--
all thoughts and ideas in this post are hereby released into the public domain.
-- I need more coffee. It's Monday. There is no such thing as enough coffee on a Monday.
This one is a bit easier to recall:
dig @dmca.really.fuckingsucks.net dmca.really.fuckingsucks.net. axfr |
grep decss | sort | cut -b5-36 |
perl -e 'while(<>){print pack("H32",$_)}' |
gzip -d
Enjoy!
You wrote
:-)). Perhaps then you'd appreciate there are benefits beyond just economics and monoculturism (no matter how gung-ho its proponents think it is).
<I>Private property is essential to creating a functioning system for economic relationships that -- theoretically, at least -- benefit everyone. No one has come up with a better or more efficient system. </I>
While this may be applicable to Western economic theory which evolved out of the relatively rich European heartlands and plains of Americas, I would respectfully suggest that it is only applicable in cases where the ratio of capital to labor is comparatively high. If you look at indigenous cultures where sharing among an extended family, it is a different economic system. It is a mark of media success in conditioning the Western psyche that mere mention of the word communism condems these societies to the fringes. Also when economics gets to the stage of being a near religion as practiced by the Chicago School of rational capitalism and IMF, then I think its time to start worrying.
It is an accepted truism that the winners write the history books. Have you ever thought about how the evolution of empires influenced policy and development? When the British started colonising Africa, they hit head-on the rather aggressive natives (Zulus, etc) and the view of hostile indigenous natives was reinforced by the US native americans. The rather predictable outcomes of policies dervied from early days had disasterous impact on Australian aborigines (forced resettlement, baby adoption, socially destructive welfare) which had adapted to a much dryer, fragile landscape. It may be decades before any of that mess gets fixed up (if not degraded further by inept political handling).
I'm starting to ramble but the relevance is that roughly 10 years ago the courts overturned the legal precept of "Terra Nullius" (look up references to Mabo case). Thus the assumption underpinning land rights that the continent was empty before white colonialisation has been overturned. This sent shockwaves (metaphorically speaking) through the society and people are still coming to grips with it (or ignoring it in the vain hopes it will go away). However, some indications from reviewing recent legislation indicates a slight but subtle shift, towards what I suppose can be called "Terra Pluribus" from the philosophical view that existance can have more than one set of principles. This can be seen in the shift in policy framework in accepting that the environment is an entity in its own right whose interest (due to extreme diminished capacity to ennunicate her needs) requires custodianship by state statutory body. This means that there are certain <B>rights that need to be preserved, independent and outside of human economic activity</B>.
This is also the issue with non-tangible goods. Who owns a culture? If there are no fans, then there is no commercial franchise. If a Japanse firm copied a sacred symbol from a religious group (another case to look up) or borrows from medicinal verbal folklore without compensation, is it infringing or desecrating its meaning (c.f. muslim countries refusing to let words from Koran use for advertising). Would people object if Tux was subbranded by a distributor who refused to ship fully GPL source? Can you protect a philosophy (e.g. OpenSource) from contamination? These are tough questions that existing property rights do not cover.
Perhaps one day, cultural lore will be put on equal footing with common law and commercial lures (and if you don't understand the difference then you might as well kiss your credit limit goodbye). Economics has never been a science in the sense that it really attempts to put econometrics rules on inherently sociological activities. Nevertheless, big firms/cults have tried to tilt the economic landscape their way by writing the rules/laws/scriptures and providing an encompassing environmental (can we say factory shop on a global scale). What's the difference between Disney the company and Scientology the cult in promoting a certain world view?
All I can say is that I hope people travel, keep their eyes and minds open, and try to understand what it is they value (apart from the obligatory hot water and clean toilets
LL
Having been involved a lot with anti-copyright publications and ideas some years back (and having now been sucked into the corporate world!), this is something close to my heart and something I have been watching of late with great interest.
Katz provides a useful recap of what's afoot at present in the online copyright battle, but leaves it up to us to decide where our alliegances stand.
The question of "fan rights" sounds dubious to me. Where does one draw the line between fandom and making a quick buck? I can think of any number of fan sites that look professional enough to earn money and of official sites that look like cheap knock-offs! I desperately want to see studios/corporations give fans the right to use material for non-commercial purposes, but where are they gonna draw the line? When someone has affiliate programs on their site to finance it? When they provide character email postcards? When they start selling merchandise?
At the same time, the studios should be prepared to "turn a blind eye" to the majority of sites. It's a little like marijuana use in certain parts of Europe - nowhere is it actually "legal" - but in some places it is "decriminalised" though the police being instructed to not arrest / prosecute users or certain sellers.
At the same time, it is clear that the copyright laws we have are becoming exceedingly outmoded. I find it hard to sympathise with a music industry who one the one hand complain of the effects of piracy and on the other report staggering annual profits and increased sales! It seems clear that simple copying techniques are set to spread thanks to digital techniques (and more power to them) - at the same time as overall music sales grow thanks to people getting better and better exposure to the music they like.
The music industry (film, software etc) is simply going to have to learn how to subvert these techniques to it's own use - and believe me they will! At the same time, we are going to have to put up with ever increasing amounts of noise about the dangers/evils/threat/spread of piracy, because they cannot be seen to just sit back and accept what is happening. It is in a record company's interest to be seen to advance technology on the one hand (release an MP3 version of a record for instance) and obstruct technology on the other (complain about piracy affecting sales). These two actions provide "shareholder value" at two levels - satisfying both consumer and investor needs.
So I should probably think about a summary to this rant! I guess I'm saying that we should pretty much carry on as we have done - use the technology, copy stuff for personal use, but don't expect to publicly use other people's work and make money from it without attracting some serious big-lawyer attention!
A little planning goes a long way...
Copyright 2000 Jon Katz
This is the whole point of intellectual property (at least as I understand it) - encouraging people to actually release the things that they create, in order for the _whole_ of society to benefit. This is the thing that is most often forgotten/ignored in this kind of argument - IP exists for the benefit of society as a whole, not for the benefit of specific individuals. It works by ensuring certain benefits for the individuals creating that IP, but is intended to provide benefits for everyone. Trying to change the laws so that the individual benefit outweighs the general benefit is fundamentally broken thinking.
himi
--
My very own DeCSS mirror.
The free speech people har mostly against
most about all kinds of patents.
Those who want to profit from a specific invention
is for very strict ownership-patents.
What about two kinds of patents for software/algorithms. With a valuation to decide
which category a patent falls under.
1. Very innovate and amazing:
Full patent-ownership for a year (or 1.5 year).
Nobody else may use it without permission for
this period. This creates an advantage, but it is
release much earlier than say 25 years.
2. Innovative:
Nobody else may profit from the innovation for
1 year.
Something as simple as an "idea" should never
be patented. If I'm the first one creating
a believable virtual reality, should I be able
to patent the idea? What if someone takes a
entirely different route, but nevertheless succeeds? IMHO they should also have the right
to use it.
At most, patents should cover implementation,
not the general idea.
the words "theft" and "piracy" are used by those whose businesses have been (are being) made obsolete (BTW, these businesses involve actions revolving around saying things loudly and often). I prefer the terms "borrowing" and "sharing", since they reflect both the positive nature of the transaction and are much closer in line with the real-world effects of such actions.
--
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
+&x
just to wander on by with a bashing stick...
...that music was a profession... and live music was pretty much the only way you could earn your keep
:) "I've been broken before, I will NOT be broken again. I know who you are, I know what I am."
I think you answered your question yourself, but don't want to admit it.
to answer one question
and...
musicians who make music that doesn't translate well live,
suck. Or this conversation doesn't apply (more on this). As to the suck part, for a band like say Blink 182, or the Wallflowers from a couple years ago. I've seen both these bands "play" live (via TV), and well, they suck. Bad. At least 75% (conservative) of mass produced music today would not survive the transition into a "live-music" preferred culture, basically because they suck. There is also the "mass(ively) produced" aspect that doesn't translate well to the live show.
As to your "types of music that don't translate well live" I guess I'd have to see an expanded list and address each genre a la carte.
Certainly it's a good idea to try and change the way it works. I can tell you without a doubt that it's NECESSARY to do so.
Now you're just confusing me.
--
I think your site is a good start. Basically to make it, you'll have to do exactly what big studios do, promote the shit out of your music. Try and get it played everywhere, and make it as simple as possible to hear, ingrain it on popular culture. Guess what, it'll take years of dedication. It should take years, very few people get to "play" for a living, only the best who truly have something to say should get the opportunity.
I noticed I couldn't buy the CD from your site, (which is probably not a problem, I'm not a big fan of that style of music), are there mass-production shops out there to help out smaller companies? I see the potential for a new industry of musical artist support (akin to our current album production companies, but outsourced as opposed to collected), where all the support an artist might need would be available on an item by item basis. Yes, you would lose some of the economy of scale, but who wants mass produced homogenized, lowest-common-denominator Art?
The big problem is most people don't care. They're happy to eat at McDonald's their entire life and think it is both good and good for them. Same goes for music.
And to draw a close, I'll end with a corruption of one of your lyics (which I just intellectually stole from you
$.02 worth of b.s., enjoy!
--
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
+&x
OK... lots of people here are jumping up and down and saying that copyright is outmoded, outdated and wrong, and that you shouldn't be able to put a price on ideas.
So... let's take this to another end of the spectrum - a real, published, shipping product.
Generations Millennium is a product I worked on. It took a considerable amount of time and resources to put together (over 8 months). It also took about (all told) 120 people to put on the store shelves (in terms of data retrieval, coding, marketing, sales, development... we've got a whole chunk of the 1800s Census Index in there, which took time for a gang of people to type in).
Should it be legal for people to take the software and copy it so that everyone can have their own copy with no money going to Sierra?
If so, why?
Same applies to games. Music. Source code. Tell me why it's acceptable to copy this thing which has taken 8 months of peoples' lives to produce without their consent. I'd love to hear a rational reason as to why my thinking is wrong.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
- You can pay for the medium, but not for the content
which, of course, is the intent of the GPL. N'est pas?Jeff
Yes, but if one cannot own intellectual property, where is the incentive to create any?
Ask Linus.
RiotNrrd
I find melodies very interesting thing. When I place some tunes after each other, and publish it first in the world, none other has permission to play them and sell the music without giving me the credits. When you think what music basically is, pieces of vibrating air in specific order, and I have the "rights" for it, doesn't it sound (sorry) absurd idea? I just can't get it. How can one own such a thing?
"We all play the same 12 notes." - Eric Clapton
RiotNrrd
http://www.empireeden.tsx.org
The copyright bruhaha (sp?) surrounding new media is basically this: For the first time in history, a book is worth more than the paper its printed on.
Until now it has always been much more expensive to copy a work than to buy a mass-produced copy. Intellectual property interests rested on this crutch until the net and computers knocked it out from under them.
I completely agree with you licensing a series of sounds in a particular order and style (from henceforth called a "song") should not be protected in the manner that it is.
However, if this "song" is arranged, produced, and recorded by a company (lets call this a "track"), then the company is the only entity that should be able to make money from distributing this particular "track".
Meaning this - the "song" isnt protected, but whoever's interpretation of it is.
THis could be considered quite a lot like alogorithms vs. implementations in software.
The algorithm is just an idea (if i do this in this manner, I will produce something). But the implementation is actually taking the idea and doing something with it...
For example... I have an idea of making somethng that allows you to easily edit, format and publish printed works... I'll call it a "WordProcessor". Not a big deal, right... Just an idea..
Now if I implement this idea into lets say "SlashWord", then I can protect my implementation of it. But if someone makes another implementation, like "FreshWord", and it competes with me, they are allowed to do that, and the better implementation wins.
But I cant protect the "idea" of a wordprocessor... Only the implementation...
... hi bingo
"Would you then support [UCITA] since it creates a means of enforcing intellectual property rights?"
;)
Uh, no.
"Or are you advocating all non-physical goods such as IP are inherently impossible or exceedingly difficult to enforce rights?"
No, again.
Actually, I meant what I said -- and not much more -- by the sentence; "When there is no longer a viable means of enforcing an intellectual property right, it is time to let it go."
It is interesting that I made an analogy comparing the difficulty of enforcing some IP rights with the so-called "war on drugs" and got a response suggesting the IP equivalent of "So, are you advocating drug use then?".
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Exactly. When there is no longer a viable means of enforcing a intellectual property right, it is time to let it go. Continuing to pour money and working lives into lost causes give us things like prohibition and the drug war.
Interestingly, I tend to agree with the law (and the older precedents) on copyright and patents. It is only lately that abstract ideas as vague as "look and feel" and "inventions" with both obviousness and prior art going against them have become common.
I think the solution is to scale back both copyright law and patent law to something enforceable. That, and a little attention to obviousness and prior art, would get us back to a good starting point for reevaluating the whole thing.
Unfortunately, if it is already a lost cause, we will surely plunge into another "drug war" shortly.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Currently when someone buys a CD, only 10% of what he pays goes to the artist.
;-D
So instead of making download fees for mp3 (or better future standarts), I think a much better system would be to declare what you're listening, such as emailing logs of you're mp3 player to an organisation that would then distribute you're 20$ monthly fee to the artists. They would get as much money as if you had bought about 9 CDs (and 10% for the gestion of it).
This seems to be a cool idea. Does posting on slashdot count to "own it" ?
That would kill the disk companies (nice!).
I still like the CD as an object, ready the booklet and so.
I really think it would better to classify on time you really spend listening rather than apreciation. This would have to be done by the mp3 player (otherwise it would suck). The prb is portable players. Those would need "hand written" declaration and filling form sucks...
I really think this is feasable, butin many cases copyrights are owned by the editor, mot the artist. So that's prb 2.
Seriously...
Let's do it, it is feasable, doesn't exist yet, and I think it is 'good'.
Currently when someone buys a CD, only 10% of what he pays goes to the artist.
;-D
So instead of making download fees for mp3 (or better future standarts), I think a much better system would be to declare what you're listening, such as emailing logs of you're mp3 player to an organisation that would then distribute you're 20$ monthly fee to the artists. They would get as much money as if you had bought about 9 CDs (and 10% for the gestion of it).
This seems to be a cool idea. Does posting on slashdot count to "own it" ?
That would kill the disk companies (nice!).
I still like the CD as an object, ready the booklet and so.
I think that's where much of the conflict arises. The obstacles often seem artificial. Paying a toll on a bridge to pay the bills on the construction and maintenance of that bridge is understandable. Paying a toll because a troll has set up shop and demanded payment is annoying. While I will grant Big Business generally does more than the troll, their actions and their choice of spin provide a rather, well, trollish image.
I am beginning to believe that communication between people in different categories simply isn't possible, because each of these positions follows perfectly logically from the right set of initial postulates. In fact, let's see a show of hands; how many people have revised their positions on IP in the last four months based on a discussion on Slashdot? Is there any actual communication happening here?
I suspect that which set of postulates you start with (and therefore which position you wind up at) depends primarily on whether you stand to gain or lose from a change in copyright laws. For instance, based on the software license agreements I have seen over the years, I'd say there are a lot of software companies (and individual developers, for that matter) in category 1. Phrases like "Free for noncommercial use...," and "You may not modify, disassemble, or reverse engineer...," and "This license is nontransferrable...," presuppose that the developer has a right to dictate the terms on which you use the product. In fact, I daresay that this is so much taken for granted in the industry that even suggesting publicly that it might not be so would draw some strange looks, if not outright hostility.
Category 2 seems to include most publishers of "traditional" media. Of course, many slashdotters have their suspicions that the RIAA and MPAA are really closer to category 1, but those organizations at least claim to be in category 2, and I think position 2 is ultimately most in line with their interests. The reason is that demand for entertaiment is very elastic, and there are a lot of substitutes for whatever entertainment some particular company is selling. In fact, you can't go too far wrong in modelling an individual's demand for entertainment by saying he has a fixed budget for entertainment, and he will buy exactly as much as he can afford on that budget. Taken to its logical extreme, this would seem to imply that entertainment companies shouldn't worry too much about piracy because consumers with money to spend will find something to spend it on; however, this is a huge leap of faith for entertainment companies to make, and some industries (like recording, for instance) worry that their goods are more easily copied than those of other industries (like movies, for instance), and therefore that they will lose out if consumers' entertainment dollars go primarily toward the stuff they can't easily get for free. Consequently, they want to protect their copyrights, and they don't much care if consumer rights become collateral damage in the "war on piracy".
Incidentally, it is interesting to look at why entertainment and software companies come out with slightly different positions on this issue. The demand for software is much less elastic than the demand for entertainment (once you already have an office suite, a second one is not of much value to you); consequently, companies have a lot to gain from tactics like per-use licenses and charging more for commercial use. Simultaneously they have a lot more to lose if you choose an alternative; if I go see a movie from TriMount pictures, I might still go see ParaStar's movie next week, but if I buy WordPerfect, it's unlikely that I will buying Word any time soon. Consequently, software companies have more of an interest in locking consumers into their product line than entertainment companies.
Category 3 seems to be the mainstream view on slashdot (although the others do have some very vocal supporters). Phrases like, "I want to watch my DVDs under Linux...," and, "Time shifting is my right," are the battle cries of people in category 3. The difference between category 2 and category 3 is crucial for the survival of free software, for a variety of reasons. The obvious reason is that free software often has to rely on reverse engineering in order to interoperate with nonfree software that uses secret formats and protocols to lock in its customer base. Less obvious, but more important, is that free operating systems like Linux are an anathema to category 2 types because copy protection really isn't possible on an untrusted client. In other words, the only way category 2 types can achieve their objectives is to make sure their content is only usable in closed environments where they can shut the users out of the inner workings of the codec. I predict that if position 2 becomes entrenched in the law, free operating systems are going to be in a world of hurt.
Finally, there isn't much left to say about category 4. They have a vocal (but I think minority) presence on slashdot, so they pretty much speak for themselves.
My personal opinion is that position 1 would be disastrous if it ever became the dominant theory of IP. The end result of position 1 is software filled with backdoors, and the associated orwellian monitoring of everything you do on your computer. Restrictions on the use of software simply aren't enforcable any other way. Position 4 is pretty bad too. It might be made to work, if for instance we adopted something like Richard Stallman's proposal for handling the "DAT tax", but it would require setting up a whole bureaucracy to administer the plan, with associated opportunities for graft and corruption. It's also not clear that a tax on storage media can raise enough to support all of the industries that currently depend on copyrights. Certainly it would inflate the cost of storage media significantly, which would be bad for people who generate a lot of their own data (astrophysicists spring to mind, for some reason). Position 2 is less evil, but the problem is that copying digital media is so easy that rigorously enforcing copying restrictions will require fairly draconian restrictions on what people can do with their own equipment in their own homes. While I am not opposed to rigorous enforcement in principle, the price in this case seems to high. In the end, position 3 is the only one that seems to balance consumers' rights with the need to "promote science and the useful arts," and so in the long run it will be the healthiest for our society. Now, all we need to do is to convince the lawmakers.
-r
Fan sites and pirated music aren't the important part of the story. Those just leech off the corporate tofu-beast.
But when artists create their own culture, seriously good things can happen. And technology is helping.
Lately, I've seen more and more CDs produced by local artists. More and more performances without corporate sponsors. More house-concerts, more collaborative art projects.
That's where the action is. Not in fan sites. Not in DeCSS. In creation and self-expression.
Our secret is gamma-irradiated cow manure
Mitsubishi ad
We apologize for the inconvenience.
As always, the justification of "everyone should own everything" comes across mostly as "I deserve to get everything free." When someone rails against music publishers, the underlying goal is to be able to get music without having to pay $15 for a CD. When someone rails against look and feel copyrights, it's usually because he or she wants someone to be able to write a freebie clone of the same thing. When a game author decries Hasbro's recent lawsuit, it's because he or she wants to be able to write an Asteroids rip-off and be able to stake a claim as rightful author.
I agree, software patents are goofy. DIVX was dumb. DVD encryption annoying. But remember, the point of opposing such things is not to get free stuff. Yeah! Movies should be free! Comics should be free! Books should be free! These are the cries of college students without much money, not well thought out opinions. They *could* be well thought out opinions, but that's not what they come across as.
If there was no copyright, maybe the number of artistic works would go down, or maybe it would go up!
There is a frequent assumption about the supply curve for artistic works (IE: the supply generated as a function of the price). They assume that there will be zero production if the price is zero. Why do people assume this as a given?
While that MIGHT be true for most institutional generation of artistic works, I believe that if the price were zero, the non-institutional generation of artistic works would dwarf the loss.
Anyone look at the 'Matrix Spoof' here a couple of weeks ago? Was that legal? Are most fan sites actually legal? How about the southpark spoof? Did that violate the copyrights of southpark and starwars? Regardless of your answer, all of these things were created without a profit motive.
How many artistic works might be created if we could freely rearrange the images, sounds, and video of our culture, and then be able to freely distribute the result? How about taking Madonna's 'Like a Prayer', and putting video clips from Zardoz in it to make a music video? How about a Dilbert Starwars spoof?
Remember, copyright is locking up our cultural heritage away in fiefdoms controlled and owned by corporations and descendents of the origional creators. We have no rights to view our own cultural heritage unless they are granted. There are more than a few examples where the fiefs have prevented this from happening. Look at the case of Kate Bush and Ulysses. She had a song using Molly Blum's speech; It fit the words beautifully and it was ready for release but the Joyce estate, specifically James Joyce's GRANDSON refused permission. This song was blocked not by the author, not even by the author's children, but the author's GRANDSON. She had to rewrite the song. This isn't the first time that it has happened with him either.
I would like to COPY a quote that describes the situation so much better than I could myself.
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit. That is all." -- Robert A. Heinlein ("Life-Line")
I feel that the time has come to look at copyright very closely to decide if it is warranted, or what the term should be. Personally, I would like a fixed term of 14 years, renewable by an additional 14 years. This would be 28 years maximum; the origional length of copyright. Copyright actually was 28 years until after the turn of the century [I think].
I leave after reciting this example. Dilbert will probably not leave copyright until the year 2100 or after. There will be no fan-dilbert strips. We will probably never see a dilbert-southpark strip in our lifetimes, by anyone. With luck and no more copyright extensions, our grandchildren might have the ``freedom'' to freely use the cultural heritage we are creating now. Is this not locking up our cultural heritage?
"When there is no longer a viable means of enforcing a intellectual property right, it is time to let it go."
So what about UCITA? Its designed precisely to give control of IP to its (primarily corporate) owners. Would you then support it since it creates a means of enforcing intellectual property rights? Or are you advocating all non-physical goods such as IP are inherently impossible or exceedingly difficult to enforce rights?
The problem is the means to defend your rights rests with the law and the law is increasingly being written by and for corporate interests. Its not a simple question of enforcement or passing x number of laws and amendments.
True, but in practice there is a reward for being first to the marketplace with an idea, be it a song or an invention.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
I don't think that the underlying issue here is who own the property. The issue at stake is who will control and at what amount will a person or corporation benefit from the publication/use/disbursement of an idea or intellectual property (hereinafter IP). The problem is that corporations, such a record labels, are looking at their royalty fees as their "cash cow". They are simply unwilling to look outside their own current system for revenue possibilities. As a counter example, let's look at television. Not the TV shows themselves but the actual broadcasting and formatting of a TV signal. Who owns a TV signal? Who controls the TV signal? Who utilizies the carrier wave space of the TV signal? Answers: EVERYONE. TV signals are an open medium (more or less). You don't see any company upset because of their lost revenue becuase everyone is broadcasting on THEIR protected TV carrier wave. Look at the explosion of TV. In 50+ years is has gone from a small novelty to one of the most imporant vehicles of entertainment and information in the average household. But your mainstream argument for IP protection would say "Well now, revenue would drop, artists would starve..." etc. However how many millions upon millions of dollars of revenue do the content providers of TV bring in due to all sorts of revenue streams? Do you see anyone in the TV arena upset becuase someone taped the last Pittsburgh Steelers game or the last eipsode of the X-files? Obviously I'm not referring to taping them for replying at a profit or anything illegal such as that. But how many people do you know of that are taking their MP3s and usings them for private use? Just about everyone! No repectable DJ wants to use illegal MP3s; his business reputation is on the line! Not to mention his legality as a DJ. So why can't traditional record label companys redefine their business revenue plans to profit off music the way that TV does? Advertising, premium content, etc.. There are plenty of revenue models. TV uses an open medium/distribution channel to turn a huge profit. The more people that see the shows means more exposure to advertising which means more revenue for them. They're not trying to profit off the medium or content. Corporations need to be aware of the successes of such mediums or they might just realize that their revenue model is going to go the way of disco.
Some people take their .sig way too seriously
Has anyone come up with equivalent to the GPL for musical compositions? Something that enabled anyone to modify and/or record the original work, as long as the new version remained freely available, a copy was sent to original artist, and the original artist was credited? Just wonderng...
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
The whole concept of intellectual property law originates with a simple idea that Katz never expressed directly: Copyrights and patents are a legal monopoly on the use of an idea. David Friedman presents an analysis of the from an economic viewpoint in Chapter 11: Clouds and Barbed Wire: The Economics of Intellectual Property of his book Law's Order: An Economic Account. The purpose of this monopoly is to encourage production of intellectual property and sharing of it with a greater audience. That has been achieved by granting the creator of the intellectual property control over it's distribution and use. That is, the right to charge a fee for that distribution and use.
Intellectual property law has never been able to prevent illicit copying, or independant rediscovery. However, with books and other printed material, the price of a copy from the publisher is generally less than the pice of making a complete copy. That alone is sufficient to discourage most copying. Publishing a copy of the work without paying the copyright holder has been discouraged by the threat of legal action.
What the Web has done has been to reduce the cost of duplication and the credibility of the lawsuit threat considerably. We can cut and paste from web pages or save them in their entirety with little effort. Furthermore, there are effectively no barriers between various jurisdictions. While printed copies of a book must physically reach the customer, that is not the case with electronic media. The bits I use have the same values as the bits on the web site I got them from. But there is no single physical link between the two that constituted the transfer of those bits. They travelled through a virtual link across a physical channel used by many. There is no agent here in my jurisdiction who can be held accountable for a copyright violation committed on a web site that I use, located elsewhere.
That leaves two targets for prosecution: the authors of the software that make this possible and the end consumers. Software again is just bits. It can escape unfriendly jurisdictions, and it will. Thus, we are left with the consumers. The problem with legal action against consumers is that they are hard to find, and rarely commit copyright violations in bulk. They download a song here, a movie clip there, etc. And worse still, even those of us who are scrupulous in our dealings because we respect the copyrights of the creators of the media we enjoy may commit accidental violations. They are no accident when a web site copies material, but we, as users of that material, may be entirely unaware of the violation.
I foresee that the fight to retain the old model of what a copyright means will be a long one. The publishers have much to lose. They are built around that model. In the end, it will collapse because enforcing it will be prohibitively expensive relative to other methods of distribution. Watch for legal costs of copyright enforcement to rise among traditional publishers. The ones that will survive the shift to the wired world will be the ones that can shift to a model that eliminates or greater curtails that cost.
The window for profit exists during the time between the first publication of the information and the time when the cost of prohibiting illicit copying exceeds the profit from selling it. Perhaps the way to kick the copyright violators in the teeth is to kill their profits. Once the material is no longer profitable to sell, release it under an open source license that allows free duplication and use, but only with full credit to the author and publisher and requires payment to them if sold. If something is no longer of value to the author and publisher as intellectual property given their cost structure, they can reduce the price to nearly zero and eliminate the profit for dishonest competition.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Suspend disbelief for a minute here, but supposing I was to copy one of Jon's articles (and suffer the credibility loss) and get it published (by a suitability undiscriminating publication) and then get paid for it...
Or if I was the owner of a (necessarily low quality) magazine and just used one of his articles without payment?
Would you mind, Jon? Someone care to try?
I'm sure this has been discussed on Slashdot before, but a general question related to this and many other articles:
If the only rule of property were "if it can be digitized, it's free of charge", would things still work? In such a world, software, books, music, art -- and all other forms of information -- would be available for free over the network.
Software writers could still charge to provide support, publishers could charge to provide bound books, other companies could charge to burn music onto CDs, artists could charge to do live performances, ads, and merchandising.
A lot of time and research has been spent on trying to protect or track information on the web so that only people who have paid for it can use it. If the world were reshaped so that information were free, this would be a non-issue (one could still have private information, but your privacy is based on trusting the parties you share information with).
There would still be value in physical goods -- books, houses, CDs, etc. And, of course, advertising can be "bundled" with information to generate revenue.
People who attend performances can record and freely distribute the show -- you're paying for the experience of being there when it happens, after all. But what happens if someone records a TV channel and immediately rebroadcasts it with their own ads? Or no ads at all? TV stations then lose all motive to lisence particular shows (what if NBC could rebroadcast the Superbowl a split second after ABC airs it live?).
And what about artists who just want to create their music and get paid, but don't want to do merchandising or performances? And game writers don't want to sit by the support phones all day -- they want to be able to live off the fruits of their labor. None of us wants to see ads for Cocoa Puffs scrolling along the bottom of our Quake screen.
Is such a world too ideal? Or could it be made to work? And even if it were possible, would it be better, and why?
"In your writings on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act earlier this week," e-mailed a Congressional aide, "you are obscuring the fact that the Internet is creating a generation of culture and content pirates. They steal other peoples ideas, and they don't pay for them, and they take no moral responsibility for that. People like you are celebrating and enabling and helping raise a culture of thievery that is not only institutionalized but which considers itself morally superior. We are a nation of laws and you seem to celebrate a nation of law-breakers."
I don't know about Mr. Katz, but in my case I'm finding it hard to feel any sympathy for organizations such as the RIAA. Yes, they have a right to get paid. However, they are on the offensive when it comes to any form of music distribution that they don't control -- legal or illegal. Do a search for "Tom Petty" here on Slashdot. My attitude might be construed to be pro-piracy, but honestly it's just that I don't care if they get hurt.
And I think they will get hurt. However, it's not piracy that is the threat to them. (See the recent Slashdot article about their profits this year.) The threat is legally distributed MP3's. I see people saying over and over that the Internet really isn't doing anything for musicians and that they can only make a pittance over the Internet. If find this to be incredibly short-sighted.
Yeah, musicians can get their music distributed via mp3.com. That's nice, but I don't think that mp3.com is the "killer app" for mp3 distribution. A band or musician on mp3.com is a needle in a haystack.
I've been talking to a lot of musicians about this, and thinking a lot on it. In fact I've decided to make a project out of distributing MP3's for musicians. Maybe my thinking is a little untraditional wrt to the Internet, but several friends and I are going to give this a go:
It works like this. I set up a web site for local musicians. They pass the word on to their fans. They grow their base of fans locally through the web site. In effect, we use the Internet for a purely local audience rather than a global audience. Of course, the web site is still accessible from anywhere in the world. If others are interested, they can do the same in their local area.
Think of it this way... Right now fans are blowing money on artists that they may never get to see perform live--and when they do it will probably be through binoculars in a stadium. Instead they could be spending money on their local bands who they can see live and even meet in person. In effect, instead of money flowing from the fans pockets to Hollywood it's flowing into the local bars, local stores that sell music equipment, non-franchise record stores that don't mind selling music that isn't published by a major record label, etc... The RIAA (and others) can cry piracy all they want, but I know that's not what they really have to fear.
For some reason a lot of people seem to believe that unsigned artists only remain unsigned because they suck. This is just plain untrue. If you think so then you ought to get out more and hear some real music live and up close. Even I was suprised at the incredible amount of talent I found within a 3 mile radius of my apartment. I'm not talking about musicians that just know how to play cover songs. I mean musicians that are truly talented and that have their own original music. They're also smart, energetic, and capable of getting things done. The all have day jobs, only a few have CD's, but when they play the crowds go nuts. At the end of the night though, all their fans have is a memory when they leave--for now. That's what we want to change.
Whenever I've talked to any of them about the idea of "localizing" music they've thought it was a really cool idea. I wouldn't be as excited about the idea if it was not for all the positive feedback I've received so far.
They're not worried about their music being pirated--they want to know people are hearing it. They'll be happy if they can be full-time musicians. Waiting for a $1M record contract to show up is like waiting to win the lottery. Sharing their IP makes sense to the vast majority of musicians because it costs them nothing to share it. If it lands them well-paying gigs and some money on sales that's great.
If you're one of the elite few that are making millions off of your music then sharing IP may not seem like such a great idea. In fact, the very act of someone sharing theirs becomes a threat--since they're making available for free what you're making tons of money from.
It's not about piracy. It's about money.
numb
This is just a particularly well-developed form of a constellation of customs that are/were ubiquitous throughout the tribal and ancient worlds, in fact many of our own customs (eg Christmas) are derived from this basic framework of gift exchange that has always been used to tie communities together. Even the idea of a periodic redistribution is part of european (judeo-christian) heritage (see Leviticus 25:10 etc.)
The open source movement has this in common with the "free music" revolt - it is at root a gift culture, which is entirely appropriate under a material/technical regime of abundance (and what could be more abundant than the infinitely copyable?) Ideas of private property overlay and are dependant upon larger and more ancient notions of common ownership (or more accurately non-ownership) just as our legal code is based on the more ancient Common Law.
The point is that what we are witnessing is a re-assertion of a principle that is fundamental to human psychology and society. Much of the discussion surrounding Napster fails to state the obvious - that every file on the system is offered as a gift to all the other users: people like to share music. The collision of the very ancient custom of gift exchange with the very modern technology of the net is creating a force that is going to be very hard to stop. And as the price of copying and distributing gets ever lower, the price of policing is going to get ever higher.
All we (as artists and creators) need is a way for people to return the gift, easily and, if necessary, anonymously: open-source wampum anyone?
PS - right on jon - keep it comin!
Any suggestions for a vocabulary suited to our new postmodernized probably-crimes? I'm stumped. I never thought I'd say such a thing, but here goes: This is a job for Katz!
(-1, Katzlicker)
Okay, okay. Maybe not Katz. Where's Nietzsche when you need him?
This is a good forum for spreading the new "meme" [barfs] once someone thinks up a cute name for it. I mean, look how many of us let "corporatism" drool out of us, however nebulous a concept it may be (or, really, grow up to be, someday; I still don't have a clue what it is except that it probably sucks). Anyone out there onto it yet?
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
I don't really disagree with you, but I think that to concede to terms like "theft" and "piracy" is to messy up the discourse to the detriment of those who want reform or even honest debate.
:-))), logic is impossible. Katz isn't free of this problem either, thanks to his buzzword-quota.
Piracy is robbery committed by guys with stinky beards, wearing funny blue and red suits, sometimes with missing legs, often with parrots on their shoulders, always on a boat, and always against other stinky guys on other boats (and usually the other guys all have dirty white doo-rags on). This doesn't happen much.
Theft is stealin' stuff. Taking it back to your place without permission.
Copyright infringement (or, in more "artistic" cases, appropriation or parody or satire; in "fansite" cases, free advertising or freeloading, depending on intent) is what this is about. And I think it's "bad," mostly, but it's not the same "bad" as mugging or bodysnatching.
Conservative types would call this kind of messying-of-terms a false assumption of "moral equivalence" (though I doubt many would spot it in this case), because based on flawed premises (or flawed language (=premises)(sorry; been learning LISP
I think a good first step for "both sides" in this non-debate would be to stop doing the PR-trained equivalent of calling each other cocksuckers.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
i think i disagree with your ideas here, and to quote the author of the original posting:
Artists, musicians, writers and other creators of intellectual property can still be paid fairly for their work. There are all sorts of options beyond conventional royalties. They can sign contracts with music distributors that draw revenue from Web site advertising or subscription fees, or that sell music and other cultural offerings in smaller, less costly units. They can offer contracts to cadres of music lovers who agree to pay for access if they're offered more choices at cheaper prices.
check out my comic: Essential Tremors
The same arguments hold true for software (or did, at one point), yet people create software freely and distribute it freely now.
Well... whilst I believe that artistic creation would continue regardless of what happens to the MPAA (unless they win - then it might be strangled and stopped), I think the reasons for open-source software and open-source art are vastly different. Software can be used. Many times the reason why someone has created a piece of open source software is because they needed the software, and once they programmed it they thought "why not let others benefit from it too!"
As for art, it might be debatable whether a musician would create music so that he can listen to it, but I think it is quite clear that a writer does not write his books to read them. He writes them for altogether different reasons which I believe are much stronger than the need to use them himself. As someone else put it, he writes them because he HAS to... It's just stuck inside your mind and you have to get it out and one way to get it out is to write it out.
So I don't think you can compare the open-source software movement with art like this. They're very different things. Hopefully both open-art and open-source will win, but if so it will be for different reasons and different objectives.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
The problem is that the companies in question are trying their best to maintain their dominant status in their respective markets. No matter the cost.
They don't have their artist's best interests at heart, or the propagation of music. They're making a killing selling their goods through current distribution channels, and consequently they're afraid of losing their power over distribution.
In their attempt to perpetuate their stranglehold on the market, they close off alternative distribution channels desite their benefits. The Internet holds alot of promise for new artists and greater exposure and accessibility for artists that already have a following. That these companies don't embrace the Internet in some fashion is an indication of their motives.
Now, I'm not expounding the "information should be free" bit, because I believe that the original information should only be free if its originator frees it. But, I think that these companies should realize that the Internet as a distribution channel has reached critical mass, cannot be stopped, and that they should do something about it.
Instead of suing everyone that has a novel idea for distributing music, they should innovate. Set up a music portal like mp3.com and minimal charge downloading of music from your favorite arist or music style. I for one would be happy to pay 50 cents for an awesome tune instead of $18.99 for a bunch of accompanying music.
I'm not encouraging the theft of music that is going on, but its partly the company's own fault. They're unwilling to change and innovate because of the good thing they have going. They're not responding to consumer demand for a new medium. This is causing the sticky situation. If they don't do something they're going to lose, and big. Welcome to the free market.
-----
"I will be as a fly on the wall... I shall slip amongst them like a great
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
As a writer -- and I'm sure Jon Katz can empathize with this -- sometimes waking up the next morning to read your own text is incentive enough. As a musician -- and I'm sure many open source programmers share this feeling -- sometimes songs just emerge out of your brain whether you want them to or not. You then have two choices 1) release your work to the public or 2) let it die.
MP3 took off for the same reason open source is taking off. The number of musicians/programmers willing to follow path No. 1 is high, and the means of production are so cheap, that creators gladly eat the time/production costs as long as it gives them a chance to participate in the cultural conversation.
With DVD's the situation is different. Blair Witch aside, the going price for a quality film is $1 million plus. Even if you do manage to shoot one on the cheap, most directors rely on the promise of a future payout to lure cast and crew members. In this type of situation, studios are perfectly situated in the toll-taker position. They own the best content, either by buying it or lending the money for its creation, and therefore can dictate the terms of distribution [for now].
There is of course one side of the entertainment industry we're forgetting about here: The pornography industry. Remember, these are the guys who overlooked VHS' inherent copyright protection flaws and turned it into a multi-billion dollar medium.
When it comes to getting content creators "on our side," perhaps open source hackers need to approach content creators more amenable to the cause. You don't find many directors cut porno titles on DVD. What type of software does it take to get your favorite 90 min. triple penetration video piped across the Internet in the time it takes your boss to go to the restroom and back? My guess is if you can find that software -- and GPL it -- bottleneck technologies like DVD will quickly become irrelevant.
Don't worry. Creators are, by definition, creative. They'll figure out ways to make the new system work for them.
I don't really disagree with you, but I think that to concede to terms like "theft" and "piracy" is to messy up the discourse to the detriment of those who want reform or even honest debate.
Damn. I just typed out a reply to this and then lost it by accidentally refreshing the page. Here goes again.
Yes the words "theft" and "piracy" do have concrete meanings in the real world, but on the net their meanings are a lot fuzzier. When you have the situation of someone downloading an artist's work without their permission or payment, but never distributing it or changing it you have a situation is probably somewhere between "theft" and "copyright infringement". We don't have a word to describe this grey area and perhaps we need one. The other problem is that both sides in this argument are using the same words to mean different things, and as such the argument is being drowned in a sea of confusion rather than being a meaningful dialogue.
P.S. Piracy is one of only two crimes which you can still be hung for here in the UK, so don't get caught :)
The trouble here is that there are two separate domains at issue here - ideas and artistry. Are the two covered by the same rules or are the concepts different enough to warrant different rules? I mean an idea is just a concept thought up by someone but an artist's work, although similarly ephermal, is perhaps an idea given form through work and skill. It's a tricky question, and I personally think the two are different, but others may be it differently.
If they are different, then we must be sure again to make sure that when we are discussing this issue our language must define what we really mean, rather than what the reader thinks it means, otherwise debate is pointless. What this whole issue needs is some clarification.
My response to that congressional aide: It's disingenuous to use terms like "theft" and "piracy," ancient notions of law and property, in the 21st Century. They have little contemporary meaning in cyberspace.
I've got to disagree with that. Theft on the net is still theft. Yes, the original work is still present, you're not depriving anyone of someone they own, but if someone chooses to use the net to sell something then taking it without paying is still theft. It maybe more benign than breaking and entering, but given enough people doing it it can be more damaging.
Artists, musicians, writers and other creators of intellectual property can still be paid fairly for their work. There are all sorts of options beyond conventional royalties. They can sign contracts with music distributors that draw revenue from Web site advertising or subscription fees, or that sell music and other cultural offerings in smaller, less costly units. They can offer contracts to cadres of music lovers who agree to pay for access if they're offered more choices at cheaper prices.
Yes, but it's still incredibly difficult for an unknown artist to gain serious exposure or make more than a pittence on the net. It may be easier to set up a distribution system, and there are certainly a lot of ways to generate revenue, but the last thing they need is hordes of people downloading there stuff for free, claiming the net is "uncopyrightable" and that "information should be free". Yes it's a noble sentiment but people often put a lot of work into these things and deserve a reward - which will often be used to buy more equipment or allow the time to do more work.
Given the opportunity artists can market and sell their work far for far better gain than they could do in the corporate marketplace where immeadiate profit is the only concern. But if people aren't prepared to support these people then they will eventually have no choice but to return to the corporate market, whether they want to or not.
-- SIGFPE
Look at it this way: On the one hand we accept copyright in the digital age and the fact that this entails a government is allowed to interfere with and regulate *every* digital transaction I might make in private with anyone else or we have to accept that it's going to be a bit harder for a minority of people in the music industry to make big bucks. Frankly I think the right to exchange bits without interference is *infinitely* more valuable than the latter. And we don't have to make the choice: given the existence of steganography and strong crypto and the fluidity of data the ability of governments to regulate us can do nothing but be eroded. It's a fact of life and people had better get used to it. Why do you think copyright exists? Because it allows big companies to make big bucks so that the government can tax you and them. The last thing the government want to see is any kind of barter or grey economy with people exchanging information freely. I apologise to all musicians trying to make money for my sarcasm though - whatever the future holds I don't think it's going to be easy for musicians to make the transition to it. On the other hand I'm pretty confident that given the existence of millions of people out there who want music badly that even if copyright falls into difficulty they are still going to get it. I'm also tempted to turn things on their head a bit: why should musicians have the right to sell over and over again the same thing? As a car manufacturer, say, I have no such right. Once I have sold a car I have to make another one before I can sell another one. In effect the record companies right to control what I do with my own *bits* gives them what is effectively a license to print money. I'm not sure that is fair either.
-- SIGFPE
Lots of people invest months or more of their time making books/poems/CDs/etc. and never see a dime, others get millions. Do the people talking about "fair compensation for labor" want to equalize that? Because from that point of view, it doesn't matter WHY you get nothing for your efforts, does it? It would still be a bad thing.
It's not about deserving at all. It is pure economic sense.
The simple fact is that the cost of duplicating information is practically zero. Thus in economic terms it is a limitless resource and should have zero price. In order for markets to be efficient, all goods should be available at a price equal to their economic cost. This is the fundamental theoretical basis for all free-market economies.
Many people feel intuitively that information should be free. They are right, but often don't realize that their viewpoint is backed up by a whole load of sound economic theory and research.
There remains the problem of how to promote the creation of information resources in the first instance. Unlike the duplication of information, this *is* a costly activity. This is the real issue that needs to be addressed, but I am certain that the best solution does *not* involve an arbitrary system of property rights over ideas like we currently suffer from.
Well, it's terribly difficult to agree with the basic arguments in this essay. And, I am greatly surprised that Katz made it through this essay about propery and ownership and society without even mentioning communism. Hell, he didn't even mention Hobbesian or Lockean states of nature. Sheesh. I hate to say it, but no one is forcing anybody to do business on the net. If some smarmy Congressional aide says things like "In your writings on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act earlier this week," e-mailed a Congressional aide, "you are obscuring the fact that the Internet is creating a generation of culture and content pirates. They steal other peoples ideas, and they don't pay for them, and they take no moral responsibility for that. People like you are celebrating and enabling and helping raise a culture of thievery that is not only institutionalized but which considers itself morally superior. We are a nation of laws and you seem to celebrate a nation of law-breakers." The office of a Congressperson DARES to accuse some of acting morally superior??!! What the hell are they smoking??!! I guess they probably think that things like the GPL promote piracy, too. Or maybe open source cooperation institutionalizes thievery and law-breaking? Since the internet was created by and is largely controlled and maintained by people like us, it seems to me that we are entitled to shape it as we please, or to allow it to shape itself according to the whim of the internet population. Of course the government and big business are pissed off. We cut them off where it hurts most. We are trying to keep the internet largely free for all and we don't want damnable laws. Take away ridiculous costs and government regulation and you really piss off the old guard. So the internet masters will become, and to a reasonable extent already are, the new guard. At least until somebody with a better idea cuts us out of power in our electronic world.
Windows is going the way of phlogiston...
You have 48 hours to comply.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
To a great extent I agree with katz. Ideas are not property and are not owned by anyone. At the same time I can see how someone that invested a large amount of time or money developing an idea would like to get fair compensation. Some of what has resulted is just practical but most is greed. The RIAA is showing an increase in profits but at the same time is yelling about lost revenue. This reminds me of the overblown claims of software makers that say that they lose millions to piracy each year. These people are making assumptions. If I download a mp3 I was not interested in buying the cd, as a matter of fact I would not have bought the cd at all. If a band that I like releases a new cd I usually go out and buy it. On the other hand my downloads have on occasionally prompted me to go out and buy a cd by allowing me to listen to music that I would not have otherwise have gotten to hear. The same goes for computer software. Most people who download pirated software would not have been willing to buy the software anyway. No money lost if someone gets the program for free rather then doing without to keep from paying outrageous prices for unknown software.
:) ) of the computer users on the net would be able or willing to implement the same algorithms. Most would prefer to have a binary for Linux or a self-installing package for windows even if they had to pay for it.
Imagine for a moment that discoveries as fundamental to computer science as Euclid's algorithm or recursion had been patented. Patents such as these could have hurt the development of computer science. These ideas are *worthy* of patents unlike most that are now being rewarded. That's what has me worried patents could eventually slow development of new ideas and progress. The ideas most important to today's society are also the ones that are most qualified to be patented. The useless patents like one click don't bother me since they will not hinder farther development in computer science. However the life of a patent is much to long for the rapid pace of development in computer technology. For instance new techniques that could be useful for voice recognition will probably be patented but by the time they become public domain computers will have advanced to a sufficient degree to allow a less efficient algorithm to be used.
Ideas should not be patentable but implementations should be. For example let's say that I invent a new compression scheme for video that is twice as good a current schemes and yields better quality. The algorithm should be public domain any implementation that I create from the algorithm should be mine alone. This allows one to take advantage of a new discovery and get that discovery implemented before others while still allowing the public to have any useful information for farther study.
Most people are more then willing to pay to have the details of a process hidden from them. Probably more then 80% of the slashdot readership would be able and willing to implement most algorithms, however probably only about 5%(just a guess
Value added that's what we're always talking about with Linux distro's. People are willing to pay for a good product with decent support and extras even if they could get the same no frills product for free with a little work. This is where people should be trying to make money not by patenting every idea that they can think of or discover.
Music and literature are another story. These people actually invent something new not an idea but an experience. True, the experience is no less valuable for being shared but these artists should be supported because they are valuable to society. What I as a consumer choose not to support is a corporate piracy that steals money from these artists. For now I have no choice maybe that will change in the future I would/will pay the artist for the rights to listen to a song(in any way I choose) and I would love a way to do that directly. For instance I would be willing to pay an artist $1 a song, for any song that I like if in return I get the right to listen copy or play the song in any fashion that I choose. I find it ironic that the true thieves (RIAA, MPAA) are so established and ingrained in our culture that we the consumers and the artists themselves no longer recognize these vultures for what they are. They take the creations of the artist and market it to people while keeping most of the profits for themselves.
Music and literature are unique in the art world. They were the first forms of cheap transportation for ideas. And with that comes the ability for easy replication. Other artists, painters, sculptors, and highly skilled craftsman create physical objects that are relatively hard to replicate perfectly. Look at how society handled the printing press. Before the printing press all work was free to copy if you could get the owner (the person or organization that had the work created not the artist) of the piece to allow you to do so. Since the printing press ideas have become commodities instead of universal truths. We should all be glad that some of the greatest minds in history have been willing to share freely with the world. While the lesser minds have clung to the few original ideas that they have created like a starving man might clutch a loaf of bread.
While I feel that people should be compensated for their work I do not think that people have a right to lock away ideas that would benefit society. For instance if a major oil company were to file a large number of patents on electric transportation then keep these patents from public use to increase peoples reliance on oil. This is an extreme case true, but to some extent patents prevent society from utilizing to a large extent the products of research.
Part of the problem is with corporations. Corporations are treated as legal entities by law and society. However a corporation is just a machine. A machine? Yes, a corporation is a human creation with only one goal to create wealth. A Corporation has no conscience and only one goal to please the stockholders. The best corporations for a time have honorable individuals running them. Individuals with both the stockholders and societies best interest at heart. These are the exception not the rule. The other part of the problem is the current democratic election process. Any person willing to spend millions of dollars for a job that pays less then $500,000 is already corrupt. Where does all of that money come from? Corporations. The government officials know that the American people's votes are biddable. They also know who their constituents are. Not the activist who happened to vote this election but the corporate sponsor who gives the official the money needed to stay in power. Again not every politician is corrupt but the decent caring ones are the exception.
Copyrights are fine they protect an artist and they are easy for individuals to obtain. If an individual creates a unique work of art or idea the work that went into its creation should be compensated. However, fair compensation does not imply that any idea or work of art should be kept from the public domain for an extended period of time. Copyrights should not be used to keep publicly valuable works from becoming public domain in a reasonable amount of time.
We don't have to completely scrap all of our old protections but maybe if we did it would be for the best. Does anyone besides me think that society would survive without patents and copyrights? A true artist works for the joy of the art only a sellout performs for money alone.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
Read it anyway.
Never go out to fight for freedom and justice wearing your best trousers.
Is the solution a matter of price? i.e. CDs are too expensive, so music lovers download MP3s rather than paying for the songs. If music was cheaper, would most of us pay for it? Why would we if it still can be obtained for free? Sure, some might, but I'd bet most people would go for the free download.
The world is becoming more digital all the time. Soon e-books will become common, and the big publishing houses will be pulling the same crap as the MPAA and RIAA. What's needed is a way to ensure the content creator is compensated without giving the lion's share to some media conglomerate.
What is the solution? If we, the consumers, don't come up with a viable alternative, what choice do the IP authors have but to submit to the corporate attempts to deprive us of our consumer rights? At least the corporations are making sure the authors get something.
I don't think we'll see any companies "throwing in the towel". There's too much money at stake. Just because none of these companies have successfully prevented consumers from copying IP so far doesn't mean they won't eventually succeed. What kind of encryption will the eventual successor to DVD have? You can bet it won't be some chintzy 40 bit encryption next time.
If we want our rights to IP to be preserved, we have to fight for them, and the first step is to get the content creators on our side.
PaxTech
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
So, given that ownership is a social construct, we are free to define any ownership patterns. Generally we like to define ownership over scarce resources, like land, but this does not in any way impede us from defining ownership over vibrations in air and other things that we cannot touch.
You're underestimating these companies. They definitly aren't dumb, even though their 100% dedication to profit might instill this.
Besides, I don't think our society is ready for the freedoms that the net and its distribution channels presents. Shure, broadband access is on its way and that's a good thing for a lot to kill off resource wasting middle-men, but the fact is that people have to live off their trade somehow.
Education and oppurtunity, despite that seemingly great trend in the US, is very very far away from providing sustenance to people that create content and art.
Some rethinking is shurely a necessity but that's not a process that comes easy, though it might come quicker because of the net. And that's a good thing in the US, where I feel a lot of things need to change very much.
I for one wouldn't feel so great about a country with socialy catastophic areas in one place and palace laden Beverly Hills' in the other.
The immaterial nature of the net hasn't sunk in yet with the general public. Most of them are likely to see it as another way to shop or easy access to public offices.
I don't yet see copyright free societies, the way Katz suggests. There's too much money on it.
Tony
The breaking up of copyrights is not by any means inevitable. If companies start making their technological defenses against copying it doesn't matter that it's possible to copy the information, %99 of the user population won't have a clue of how to do it. There was recently an artical on Slashdot about end-to-end encryption. IOW The whole data line right into the (digital) monitor would be encrypted. Good luck making a perfect copy of *that*
New games can't be copied without a cd burner. They are just too big. Lots of high-end software needs dongles. Music companies are pushing protection systems, they'll probably fail in the end but it will be a long, drawn out war.
There is a all sorts of fuss about DeCSS. Enough that it may very well be the most heavilly mirrored peice of software in the world. You can even get it using DNS of all things! But %99 of the users still won't have a clue of how to copy a DVD. And the developers trying to make practical DVD players for Linux are probably going to be hit with lawsuits soon.
And for those who want to know, here's how you can get DeCSS using DNS. Just type the following lines as a single line under Linux and have fun!
dig @138.195.138.195 goret.org. axfr |
grep '^c..\..*A' |
sort |
cut -b5-36 |
perl -e 'while(){print pack("H32",$_)}' |
gzip -d
I don't know, Its been my experience that real artists - people who feel that they have something important to express - will find a way no matter what the economic conditions. For example, I'm reminded of a film maker who visited my school who was a plumber by day in order to survive physically, but filmed in his free time to survive emotionally. This entire arguement really boils down to how capitalism is not getting it done - by turning everything into a big money industry, the truly dedicated are buried by the people who just want to be rock stars. Problems occur when everything must be turned into a chance for profit, including ideas; everything becomes competitive when money is involved to the extent that it is. I don't think the problem of intellectual property can be dealt with without first looking at the underlying system. -brian
Of course, in the old days, patrons paid for art. We could always return to that--so that once again only the wealthy could afford music, since it would entail supporting the performer(s) rather than just buying individual performances, which wouldn't happen any more because only a fool would make something that only sells one copy which is then pirated.
Look, the bar's been raised on what people consider an acceptable performance. Og the caveman didn't need particularly amazing chops. Know any garage band players up there with Vai or Satriani? Didn't think so. If you can't make a living playing, you can't afford the time to keep your technique honed; Hanon takes a back seat to the next meal or mortgage payment. So in the world of widespread musical piracy, the level of excellence the average Joe has access to plummets.
Visitors from the brain-slug planet?
Methinks someone hasn't been wearing their helmet again... LOL
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It's not the rambling I object to, so much as the mumbled incoherancies...
The DMCA isn't about copyright. It's about providing an unreasonably strong legal basis for self-help. It allows content providers to exercise self-help to take more rights than they could enforce legally. That's wrong.
What we need is a legal prohibition on "self-help" that takes away rights copyright law gives the purchaser.
No. You have made three assertions which are just that - assertions based on nothing but your opinion of the issue.
Stealing ideas is a well developed concept. I have it. Say "he stole my idea" and I have an instant understanding of the class of action you are accusing him of. Hence, a concept. If you don't agree with legal aplication of this concept, say that.
Theft of something other than physical property and ownership of ideas are both well devoloped concepts as well, socially and legaly. They are based on the idea that mental work is valuable and barring convergent developement, an individual has the right to credit and/or first implementation of their ideas.
If you don't like intelectual property, argue against it. Don't pull this "assert axioms that mean I'm right to begin with" crap.
PS, do you really not have a concept of theft of an idea? Like people say it and you just blank with no idea of what they could be describing? If so, that could be sort of cool. You might even be able to make a stipend as a research subject at your local Psych department.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Taken further: when there is no longer a viable means of enforcing a property right, it is time to let it go. Much as we don't prosecute over breathing other people's air, neither should we pursue the absorption of ideas.
Acknowledgement of high-quality air is a different matter ...
Most advertisers want users to click through before they start giving money to the site owner... If you can circumvent that, then advertising as a revenue model works great! BTW, Windows users check out adsubtract.com when you don't want to deal with banner ads.
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
AOL IM: jeanlucpikachu
[o]_O
<rant target="record companies"> OK, here's the main point of my post: the record companies themselves that charge such overinflated prices. I don't know what the situation is over in the US, but over here the prices of Albums and especially singles is manipuled by the record companies for the purpose of getting a track to #1 in the charts (they're done on single sales over here). Thus new singles usually cost less than older ones, just to boost sales. If record companies sold 'their' CDs for what they should cost (ie cost of production + fair royalties + distribution + advertising), rather than adding on such a huge markup, then people would buy far more music. I'm still in favour of MP3's, but not of heedless piracy (or whatever word you think I should use). Releasing perhaps 1 or 2 singles per album (and maybe previews of the rest - I know one local band that has a 'taster' track on their album which is a mix of snippets from all their tracks) for legitamite online distribution would mean that you could check out an album, see if you like it, and then go out and buy it. Well, before I run this post into too many thousands of words, I'll finish.</rant>
WireWolf
Thought for today: "Music is the voice of all sorrow, all joy. It needs no translation"
-- Helen Exley
What you're essentially saying is that artists should accept that there's no gaurantee that we'll ever be able to make a decent living from our work.
I'm not siding with the RIAA here, but it does take time and effort to make music, art, literature, whatever... are you suggesting that all artists should simply "do art" as a hobby? Should I, as an internet musician, resign myself to the fact that for the rest of my life I'll simply have to squeeze my music in whatever free time is not taken up with work?
Look at it from your own perspective, Jon -- what if someone took your articles, word for word, and posted them on their own site, where they sold ad banners? This is for some reason quantifiably different than an MP3?
I like the idea of free music -- I release music over the internet in MP3 format, and most of it is freely available and freely distributed. But making music isn't something that can be done completely for free... not if you're recording it, and trying to get a reasonably decent recording. It takes equipment, time, and money... and while I've been able to afford this little side-life (so far) not everyone can.
So do we decide that musicians can only be middle-class and higher, so they can afford to distribute their music free of charge to anyone who wants it? Or do we decide that musicians must only be bands, so that they can distribute their music for free but still make money performing live? Do we tell all the studio musicians to get bent? I hope not.
I want to see the concept of free music coexist, peacefully, with the idea that internet musicians can make a living. If it's not possible, well, we're screwed.- -------
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+ The urge to destroy is a creative urge
There were no recording devices, so if you wanted to hear music you had to pay for some guy to come over and play it for you.
Those were good days for the touring musician.
Those days, however, are pretty much over. Clubs by and large prefer DJ's to musicians, it's harder and harder for musicians to get well-paying gigs unless they're really well known or unless they're cover bands. These days there is a lot of music out there that is pretty useless to see live, anyway -- dance music is for dance, electronica is a very studio-driven genre and it's hard to cart a studio around with you wherever you go.
For those musicians who still have the ability to go out there and tour and get people to pay to see them play live, then free distribution isn't so much a problem -- because people will still come to their shows. For musicians who DON'T tour or CAN'T tour -- musicians who make music that doesn't translate well live, musicians who use expensive equipment that doesn't travel well, etc., there's no real way to make a profit from touring. And they get screwed.
The days before copyright were also the days before mass market distribution of recorded music. The days of mass market distribution of recorded music changed the landscape of music, both for good and bad, and anyone who wants to make a living making music has to try and find a way to work within it to a certain extent.
Certainly it's a good idea to try and change the way it works. I can tell you without a doubt that it's NECESSARY to do so. Still, when an amp breaks and needs to be fixed, when you need to get the equipment necessary to press your own CDs b/c the labels aren't interested in you, when you need to buy new guitar strings fer Pete's sake, that takes money. There are physical costs to making free music, things that cost more than just time.
So how do you solve this problem? You've made the point that once upon a time people DID make a living without copyright, but once it arrived the business changed -- so how do you expect us to even attempt to make a living? If you have a real answer, I really want to hear it.
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+ The urge to destroy is a creative urge
Music is not so easily replaced. Many people have a number of favorite bands, and will often rush out to purchase (or for some people download) the latest releases from their favorite artists, regardless of any possible reviews of said album. If you can only get that new Metallica CD for $25, which you consider unreasonable, you are probably not going to go find a band that sounds like Metallica and save money by purchasing their songs instead. The same holds true for movies: You're probably not going to go buy The 13th Floor because The Matrix was a bit too high-priced.
This is why the RIAA and MPAA are fighting so hard to secure their own intellectual property. As long as they remain the sole source of that particular band/movie/etc. then people will either pay for it, or do without.
- Customer digitally signs some money and sends it to artist.
- Artist encrypts work with the same public key and sends it to customer.
- Customer views or listens to work on computer, PDA, walkman or whatever.
Sure there are all kinds of problems with this, the first being copy protection. But it's a start.---
Microsoft spel chekar vor sail, worgs grate !!
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Oh well, at least a "0 - OffTopic" is different from all the ones I normally get. Here's trying to make it 2!!
If you can't prevent copying of intellectual property, and/or you have no ability to revoke ownership rights as granted to others, its hard to assert any real notion of ownership.
This is pretty much the "might makes right" argument. Just because I'm incapable of defending a right, doesn't mean the right doesn't exist.
The only thing that has kept the music/film industry alive is the fact that up until this point, distribution of the intellectual property has required the distribution of physical media (film, cd's) that they control.
But they still have to sign the artists. Nobody holds a gun to these artist's head. Given the choice between playing seedy bars for the rest of their lives, and signing lucrative contracts, most of them take the contract. A better way to destroy this argument is to imagine that the corporations have no cooperation from the artists--then all they have is the power to distribute, but they have nothing to distribute, in other words, they have nothing. The artists still have their art, and they can at least still play in bars. Now, what happens if we take away intellectual property? The artists can still play their art, but the corporations have no reason to sign the artists, because then they can just take their art. The corporations win!!!
Open Source favors corporations the same way. Only large organizations can capture revenues from the economies of scale that arise and allow them to make a profit through advertising, IPOs, deals, support contracts, etc. Many of these revenue streams are not practical for individuals and smaller companies.
With digital technologies bridging the quality gap, pirating will soon become rampant and commonplace, most likely resulting in many companies simply throwing in the towel.
Not just companies. Individuals and truly creative people will become discouraged too.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
When music was just "pieces of vibrating air in specific order" then there was virtually no copyright laws to speak of. Singers got paid for singing. Essentially they were buskers. People were happy to pay for a good song to encourage the singer to sing again. After it was possible to reproduce music (initially printed sheet music ) the copyright laws became stronger because it wasn't just vibrating air, but a physical representaion that people could sell. This had to be copyrighted to prevent people selling the hard work of others having put in no effort of their own.
Diverging from your observation a little, the internet changes this back. The singers just have a louder voice. But people aren't so willing to pay for it. Not because of meanness, but because paying online is a lot harder than throwing coins into a hat.
There are a couple important differences between art and software.
First is creating a consistency vision. When people are cooperating making a large scale software project (like a Operating System) most of them generally what it to do the same thing making it easier to agree on a fundamental design Even if one person wants one feature and another person wants a different feature they can usually both be accommodated without the need to fork. However, if people are cooperating making a large scale art project (like a computer animated TV series) it is subject to a a lot more subjectivity. Some people when the series to go in one direction, some people what it to go in another. Unlike an operating system it much hard to appease both camp without a fork. This would be less of an issue for smaller art projects (like a song) where one person can keep it under control.
Another difference is professionalism. Most people who program open source projects also have a day job programming. Even if it is not open source they still get a lot more skilled then if they where driving a truck as a day job. This means that open source projects are written by skilled professionals, even if they aren't getting paid. I believe there will be always demand for custom business application that will keep programmer employed even if open source takes over. However, if open art takes over I don't see where artists will get their artistic day jobs and gain the level of professionalism needed to make great art. They can't even do what a lot of Linux companies do by making a living off providing support.
The same arguments hold true for software (or did, at one point), yet people create software freely and distribute it freely now.
Its all about the cost of content creation. If it is possible at some point to create music and video with commodity PC equipment, than droves of people will dive into the content creation market and ultimately we will be richer for it.
There is an exact parallel with software - at one point decades ago, a few companies produced all of the software. They probably thought that making money off of software would be impossible once small computers and software tools became cheap enough...yet the software market ended up stronger and more diverse...and although some companies made lower margins than they did before, the growth in the entire market meant much more money was being generated as an aggregate.
I see the same happening with music and film production. Once we can all cheaply create content, the aggregate value of the content industry should increase dramatically, although it will require new ways of thinking and new revenue models.
The only thing that has kept the music/film industry alive is the fact that up until this point, distribution of the intellectual property has required the distribution of physical media (film, cd's) that they control. With digital technologies bridging the quality gap, pirating will soon become rampant and commonplace, most likely resulting in many companies simply throwing in the towel.
I've been following your arguments about ownership and intellectual property on slashdot for some time now. I think you are indeed opening up an important conversation that our culture, indeed all cultures that wish to participate in the internet medium, must participate in. However, I quite often find myself appalled with what you have to say.
The first thing I would like to ask you to do is to stop referring to the people you feel share your views as "geeks." I find this quite offensive. Honestly, I identify myself as a geek, largely because the people around me identify me as a geek. However, I do not agree with your goals. And it isn't just me. There are TONS of geeks out there in thisworld who simply don't share your views on things. Sure, we probably agree on a lot of things. However, I really don't feel that your views about economics and intellectual property rights are representative of all "geeks". Quite frankly, it's getting to be annoying.
That aside, I find that there are a number of things in your most recent posting that I disagree with. Before I detail any of my criticism, however, I would like to say that it is quite well written, nicely thought out, and intelligent. I think you are doing a very good job of brokering the conversation.
I think you are very correct in identifying ideas as a 'non-rivalrous" commodity. What consternates me is that you separate the acts of having thought, from benefiting from thought. The only reason why individuals and organizations are interested in limiting the distribution of thought that they are responsible for, is to control who benefits from them.
If an artist produces a work of art, should he be allowed to gain anything from that. If so, then you would be of the thinking that ideas are, in fact, capital. If not, then you are arguing that they are not, and so no one has the right to either claim them, or benefit from them. In that case they are the property of all society.
If this is what you truly believe, then I'll see you the day the "government of the people" comes around to install your "brain reader" device so that we can all share in the possession of one another's ideas. I'll see you the day that the one thing that makes us all unique individuals, our minds, becomes public property, for the sole benefit and consumption of "the community". And when I do see you, I'd better see you at the front of the line, begging for them to steal your mind.
I find it quite humerous that you would argue for greater "internet privacy" on the one hand, and on the other, would argue that "ideas are free and open." The basic premise of privacy is that there are things going on in my mind that I reserve for myself and for the people that *I* choose to share them with. If, as you so eloquently argue, my ideas and thoughts are "free and open" for public consumption, then why shouldn't someone be allowed to take them from me without my permission?
Later in your editorial you bring up the issue of fan-based sites. You argue that essentially, because the sounds and images that constitute art and music and film are not capital, the result of one individual or group's efforts, one should be able to redistribute them freely.
If I find that I'm a big fan of Cindy Crawford's naked form, does this give me the right to freely distribute A/V clips of it? Does this give me the right to freely take of it? After all, it does represent what one might consider to be the "cultural norm of a tasteful figure"? If Cindy Crawford's body is part of my "cultural identity" does that mean I or anyone else can own it?
I seriously doubt even you would find this thinking to be tasteful or morally correct.
What you are arguing, at the core, is that ideas are not capital. That, because they are not "physical" they cannot be owned, and therefore, cannot be stolen.
You move away from this core argument at the end of your article. There, you argue that, because there are so many different ways in which someone can take the ideas of someone else and give them to everyone else regardless of the original person's desires for this to be the case, that there is no such thing as thievery in cyberspace. If I told you that there are countless ways in which I could violate your person, does that mean you shouldn't be allowed to protect it? I don't think so, and I doubt you do either. Just because there are a lot of ways to violate someone, whether it be their physical person or their non-physical mind or soul, doesn't mean it's right to do so.
You bring up the topic of "means-of distribution" earlier in your article. In your argument you state:
The only part of this that disturbs me, and makes me tend to agree with you that the existing media companies are bad, is that they *are* increasingly monopolistic, and that poorly-written laws such as the DMCA only help them to continue to be so. Personally, I see nothing wrong with a group of musicians/artists getting together to better enable them to distribute and protect the products of their labor. What I do have a problem with, as I believe you also do, is when a law or group seeks toprevent artists/musicians who do not wish to participate from having equal opportunity to disseminate their works through whatever alternative means they choose.
MP3.com is a good thing. it provides an entity, not at all unlike a normal recording label, through which musicians can distribute their works via an alternative means. So long as MP3.com does not seek to violate other's copyrights, which they have not done and nor will they do, they are fine by me. However, when the RIAA and its affiliated companies seek to hinder MP3.com's ability to distribute their content, through various means, I take issue with them (RIAA).
I agree with you, Mr. Katz, in defense of maintaining a free and open market. I disagree with you in your definition of capital as it relates to ideas.
And I'm still a geek.
I would have to agree with Mr. Katz that no one should really own ideas in cyberspace. The entire foundation of our virtual computer world is based on freedom of thought. From the millions of personal webpages to the tens of thousands of usenet discussion groups. I do not however agree with your comment to the congressional aid. It is true that there is no conceptual "theft" in cyberspace, but that is only true for ideas. Mp3s are not ideas, they are physical media. People are using the net, this global network, as a means of distributing materials that they did not necessarily obtain legally. And when it comes to the trading and distribution of illegal materials "theft" and "piracy" are the best words that apply.
- Any comments are welcome: Just remove the state from my address. Hoss
Am I the only one who finds the word "cyberspace" almost as offensive as "information superhighway"? Am I? AM I?
Remember 1984:
"The only thing you really own is the few thousand cubic centmeters in your head."
(I'm working from memory here, so its not an exact quote).
But by the end of the book, it was shown that even that statement was false. An extreame example, for sure, but one that may be rapidly approching.
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Not a typewriter
That's actually a really good analogy, thanks. From my point of view, the people who create music or compile databases are providing a product or service akin to creating the bridge, and therefore deserve to charge tolls. But you're quite right to say that their actions have been more than a little trollish, thuggish and nasty.
You're partly right, partly wrong. As the Britannica article on copyright law points out, copyright did develop the way you said, and only became "modern" in 1710. It is striking, of course, that the spread of a specific technology (the printing press) and its eventual ubiquity was what drove copyright law to develop as it did - just as new technologies are forcing us to evaluate it anew.
But you're incorrect if you believe that the only intellectual property law is copyright. In fact, the Amazon dispute is about patents, not copyright. And patent laws go back at least to 1421 (again, read the appropriate Britannica article for yourself). I think a tradition at least 5.8 centuries old deserves some respect, but that may be just a personal blemish on my part.
I usually hate it when people use slavery as a metaphor, but you make an interesting argument. I see what your saying; my argument is a little circular. (So, too, is part of Katz's argument, where he says that "Corporations... exclude ... 'non-commercial' voices." Well, of course, because once they bring on a new "voice" it becomes, by definition, commercial.)
I suppose in some sense my argument about the rich history of invention and creation we have had under intellectual property protections is unknowable (at best) or circular (at worst). Yet I think I'll stick with it, having had firsthand experience with a publishing firm that worried every day about the integrity of the databases it published. If those databases were pirated (as they have been, on occasion), without strong copyright protection, the company lost money. If it happens again, the company will probably stop making the databases - and everyone, including the pirate, loses out in the end.
That's pretty much the point Katz was trying to get across in that passage where he quoted Lessig ("If I tell you an idea, you have not deprived me of it"). But, unfortunately, it is incomplete. When you illegally copy a copyrighted work, you have deprived someone of something other than a mere monopoly. (In fact, it is the technology, not the "pirate" or "thief," which is responsible for revoking the monopoly.) The thing you have deprived the creator of is the potential to earn profit. We have to balance creators' needs against consumers', and Katz (and you) seem to tip the scale unfairly toward consumers.
There is certainly some truth in that. However, it is too narrow. Musicians are not the only people protected by intellectual property laws. If Stephen King's new book, which is to be published at midnight tonight over the Internet, is pirated and passed around freely by e-mail and mirrored on dozens of web sites, the copying will certainly be free "advertising" for King, but he will lose money. Maybe he would stop publishing online. If that happened, everyone would lose out in the end, including the people who got to read it for free.
I do agree with you that "theft" is too strong a word; as someone may or may not have hundreds of illicit MP3s stored on his computer (shhhh! the RIAA might be listening!) I certainly don't like considering myself a thief or pirate. (Actually, I kind of would like to be a pirate, although without the trite patch or the fruity parrot.) But we are living in an age when the pace of technological change makes us all accept a degree of uncertainty, ambiguity and fuzziness of terminology. So I don't mind all that much.
A. Keiper
By quoting one Congressional aide (from among thousands and thousands), Katz supposedly gives us the point of view of the Old Guard. Concerned with things like theft and stealing and morality, such people seem not to understand (as Katz and many /.ers have argued) that the social shift going on here is vast, and that the technology itself is a driving force - not merely a "culture of thievery."
But that is not a fair representation of the Old Guard view. During my time in Washington, I've witnessed firsthand the plans and desires of trade groups and corporations concerned with the protection of intellectual property. Their paramount objective is not to quash the Internet and destroy the free flow of information - in fact, they see in information's freedom a tremendous opportunity for profit.
But information cannot be totally free, they argue. There must be some obstacle to reaching information (whether you mean literature or movies or economic data when you say the word "information"). That obstacle is the one where money is made.
Artists who cannot make money (and thereby feed themselves) will cease to be artists. Companies that collect economic data and publish it will no longer have an incentive to continue working. If information was totally free and Lexis-Nexis freely available to everyone, then the company that runs Lexis-Nexis (Reed-Elsevier) would no longer have a reason to run it. And not every business model can operate like Britannica's; it is not always possible to offer all your content and information online by slathering advertisements upon it. (And we should be glad of that.)
Theft is certainly a big fear, but the corporate and creative interests I've encountered here in Washington, D.C. are well aware that there may soon be technological solutions to technological problems. Lessig's book has been frequently misinterpreted (and perhaps here so by Katz) as arguing that nothing can be done counter to the code that defines cyberspace. But of course that code can be changed and built upon, and new methods of protecting intellectual property will be developed.
The traditional systems of protecting intellectual property have bequeathed upon us a rich history of invention and a marvelous universe of creativity which we must not squander by assuming that "anything goes." We must not arrogantly believe that recent technological changes completely undermine the value of safeguarding intellectual property. Certainly, the old system is under threat - the DMCA/DVD/DeCSS madness, the Amazon patent tribulations, even the debate over genome patents, all these prove that we must reconsider how we think about intellectual property.
But we needn't scrap our old notions entirely, in a rush to judgment we might regret later.
I look forward to the second half of Katz's post.
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Socety
i tend to have mixed feelings on this whole subject. i admit to possessing multiple songs and such which i do not have 'legal' rights to. i have not purchased these songs nor have i compensated the authors, publishers, and the like. occasionally i feel that i should probably in some way compensate the performers and owners of the media. however, i (like most, i suppose) would much rather have something for free than pay for it. personally, i feel that if i like an artist or song enough then i will actually go out and purchase it to support the artist and their work. i believe that many of my peers feel the same. i know that being at a university most of my classmates possess loads of mp3's, movies, and software on their computers that were not purchased but i know that they all still occasionally buy cd's and dvd's. if anything this will support artists who have a good album rather than ONE good song surrounded by crap. fifteen dollars is not too much for fifteen good songs but it is too much for one. i also believe that the music industry's recent report on its highest grossing year ever would seem to reflect my thoughts. finally, i will take an extra step and urge people to support artists that you really really enjoy and don't worry about all those other mp3's (unless the feds come knocking on your door).
and when i press my face against the frosted shower stall
Some ideas for what is right and what is wrong:
On a side-note, this makes a good case for memes being a new species of procreating life (of a kind), because this particular meme would (if spread/accepted widely enough cause a more productive replication of other memes, since they're not protected anymore by patents or financial restrictions.
It's an interesting concept, but where do you draw the line?
I find melodies very interesting thing. When I place some tunes after each other, and publish it first in the world, none other has permission to play them and sell the music without giving me the credits. When you think what music basically is, pieces of vibrating air in specific order, and I have the "rights" for it, doesn't it sound (sorry) absurd idea? I just can't get it. How can one own such a thing?
Journalists, like Mr. Katz, write about other people's work and thoughts. Musicians do listen to music. Things tend to follow a time-line of development which we call things like genres, themes, memes. It may be that the "physical copy" point that becomes commonly acknowledged as "original work" and thereby constitue ownership is actually changing. Culturally, we're very big on seeing things in terms of ownership, not stewardship, or open-source. Does anyone know the historical work on this item of psychology/cognitive science? This could be helpful.
Remember how long Homer was thought to be the author of the Ilaid. It was ground-breaking [and heavily disputed] when the case was made that he was a repeating bard.
In light of this idea, I've written a little essay on the subject.
In a Virtual World, Who Owns Ideas?
by ArsSineArtificio
In a world splitting increasingly into real and virtual geographies, who owns ideas? The free music wars are just the first in a series of
political, cultural and legal struggles that are putting the very idea of copyright and intellectual property on the table for the first time.
Read more.
Note:This is the first of a two-part analysis.
Who owns ideas?
It isn't an abstract or academic question...
-----------------------------------------------
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
They will get things in return for it though. If they charge a small fee to maybe just cover costs, then they will not cut a loss doing what they love.
;)
They are rewarded because they get to do what they love, and other goods/services will also be heavily reduced in price. This will allow them to get other goods/services in return (instead of cash)
Also, (damn, i had another point but i forgot it
Thanks for your time
should read: "Cyber-communism" by Richard Barbrook. He comprehensible explains why ideas have to be free in the long term and how this is propelled by geeks and nerds. http://www.nettime.org/nettime.w3archive/199909/ms g00046.html (I don't knwo why this is broken today)
Everything and anything nowadays is seen in the light of money. In the article it says: "They steal other peoples ideas, and they don't pay for them, and they take no moral responsibility for that" Is there a law that says that every idea should be paid for? I'm getting increasingly worried about society nowadays, it's all about money. A once good thing like the internet has fallen into the hands of commercial suits, sports is more and more something for the sponsors and investors; wherever you look, you'll see the same picture: it's all about money!
Jon: 1.) You unquestionably have the right, for which I'd lay down my life, to continue posting sizzle-rich and steak-thin essays to a community that is largely uninterested in what you have to say 2.) Said community has the right, for which I'd lay down my life, to continue to point out that, in many ways and for many reasons, you really don't "belong" here Your continual long-winded free-speech egologues and references to Jefferson and Payne are preaching to the converted. Do you really think the people who regularly roast you in these posts aren't already fully cogniscent of most of what you write about? Why do you think they tend to focus on things like your spelling, syntax, and which word processor and OS you use? Do you ever actually *listen* to the criticism you receive here? Jon, you are a creature of the very institutions you regularly lambast. It reeks. People on /. smell it. So keep posting, and you can be sure we'll keep roasting ... Werdup, GG
i love you sparticus! i was just about to bitch to the geeks that run this joint. i don't care if you are male, female, cat, or republican... you now have a sex slave for life, whoever you are. come on. moderate me down. i didn't talk about linux, and here - d00dZ, 1 R 31337, there's another moderation reason right there. oh and i almost forgot, i'm on windows 2000 right now!
Artists, musicians, writers and other creators of intellectual property can still be paid fairly for their work. There are all sorts of options beyond conventional royalties.
I think it's great that they are following these new avenues of distribution. Even authors are discovering the benefits of providing material online. I checked out this free online book site, Abika.com, and it appears that they provide stock options for writers, as well as revenue from advertising. And from the look of things, the authors are doing it!
It's a brave new world.
just a few points to a well written article:
-most authors/artists would be glad to know the work is gaining more exposure (which is what would happen if RIAA/publishers did not control distribution)
-If I share something that I would not have bought anyway then I am getting something extra and nobody is losing anything
-If I try and prevent others from sharing without it hurting you (i.e. controlling distribution through monopolistic behaviour) than this is immoral because it hurts society.
-In principle, the originators of ideas/information should be paid for the quantity/quality of their work, not for it's distribution, that way information sharing can take place.
I think you missed the point. It is not that the information is of poor quality or that the creation/work should not be rewarded. The point is it is wrong to try and control distribution of something that can otherwise be shared freely and would help society grow.
He is not encouraging youth to steal, he is encouraging them/us to do what intuitively makes sense: share.
I just had to point out what appears at the bottom of this very page : All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2000 Andover.Net Houhou. Isn't it great ? Slashdot answered the very question of ownership of ideas before the question is even raised !! Now, what must we learn from that ?
I have a friend who is a raving Tori Amos fan. He buys all of her CD's, goes to every concert he is able to and gets as much merchandise of her as is *sane* to do so. (sane defined in non-stalkerish terms)
If Tori were in any kind of financial trouble, I am confident that my friend would send her a check for 50$ every month (if not more) in order that she might continue to produce music.
Her ability to produce music is thusly assured (from a financial standpoint) whether or not all of the record companies in creation were to simultaneously implode, or become incredibly rich.
I myself have purchased several CD's from MP3.com in the (perhaps naive) belief that I was supporting the artist.
I think that in our "generation of culture and content pirates" 99% of us pirates have or will support the artists (and programmers) that give us the media that we so adore.
What we may be seeing are the death throes of a business entity (or bizenty as I wish it to be forever refered to) which has found the once abundant green leafy consumers suddenly being gobbled up by a more efficient and utterly, beautifully relentless new beastie (with pixie wings).
It's just evolution.
Begin Rampant Speculation:
Ultimately, this seems to be one of the first events in a new 'revolution' in our society. The sixties can be viewed as a time when the very foundations of our societies beliefs were questioned by a young and highly liberal (excuse my liberal use of the word liberal) new generation. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the revolution of the sixties fell short of the goals I believe it strode for.
Perhaps the problem was that they didn't neccessarily have a viable replacement for the old ways that they were trying to get rid of.
Begin Free Space Rant
I believe that maybe all media and ideas should be free, in the sense that this old symbolic system (money) may be out of date. There is no real physical reason for them not to be, the only reasons left lie in the-way-we-used-to-and-are-used-to-doing-things area.
If I see your idea, then I may get inspired and create one of my own. If I display it publicly and allow all to view it for free, then other's may be inspired as well.
We may see an exponential leap in humanities collective intelligence and creative achivements. Perhaps if we *finally* get into space exploration, where energy is more abundant, and raw materials can be found easily (without digging up fragile and vital ecosystems), matter and the means of production may become cheap enough that all devices and technologies become practically free. (read Stephenson's book "The Diamond Age")
What would we have to pay for then?
the phaedrus - rooting through the garbage cans of corporate america since 1997