Slashdot Mirror
Feedback: Who Owns Ideas
The escalating and increasingly symbolic conflict on the Net between music and movie fans and the entertainment industry seems to drive most people into one of two camps, Ro Sumner writes in response to last week's Slashdot discussion on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and the free music wars.
The problem, Sumner says, is that discussion halts around two central ideas:
"This is theft! Theft is wrong!"
Or: "No, it's not theft, and so it can't be wrong!"
His analysis is accurate. The discussion certainly gets framed this way by media, politicians, lawyers and law enforcement. And the issue is important, because this conflict will surely shape ones to follow between rapidly expanding open-source models of information that allow files to propogate like virii, and historically proprietary institutions -- banking, Wall Street, law, medicine, education and politics, to name just a few.
The battles springing up around the way music, TV, movies and other so-called intellectual property are transmitted digitally -- and in what contexts their creators are entitled to be paid for their use -- are shaping up in the way issues emanating from Washington so often do. They calcify into two eternally warring sides that never seem to persuade one another, and are thus unable to move the discussion forward.
One fantasy is that the Net, especially open source models of communication, offers the promise of a more rational approach. It makes possible an unprecedented range of open and civilized discussion, feedback, ideas and potential solutions. This is said hopefully, but knowing full well that most innocuous Net discussions can be nastier and more brutish than ones that would be called "heated" on MSNBC.
But something about this issue seems to transcend the usual head-banging. The Net's potential for this kind of discussion was reinforced again last week by intelligent and well-informed e-mail from lawyers, programmers, musicians and consumers. Concerns about intellectual property seem to rise above the usual squabbling. Everybody apparently agrees that something is wrong, a new approach needed.
The fact is, culture is already being transmitted freely all over the Net; that isn't likely to stop. But both artists and corporations have rights too, along with consumers. The existing reality isn't making anyone happy.
Sumner suggests focusing on the unworkable nature of the economic model that currently governs marketing culture. "Bits aren't widgets," he says, "and we shouldn't try to sell them as if they are. There are other models. The service model, the shareware model, the freeware/donation model, etc. I think that's the main point -- we need to pay the bitmakers directly, or as directly as we can."
Ian Stoba pointed out in e-mail that the discussions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act centered mostly on the consumers of digital music, not the producers.
"I don't know how well this is known outside the music industry, but no one hates the record companies as much as the artists. Giant record companies routinely write abusive contracts and just flat out steal from musicians," he noted. "The royalty musicians get for the sale of a CD is very small (like $15 per unit). The costs of producing the record, making the video, booking the tour, and marketing come out of the artists share, not the labels?" The artists do not see a dime of royalties until all the label's costs are repaid."
Stoba goes on to suggest that "the Net could be a radically more efficient distribution medium for the musicians as well as the people who buy music. A band could sell a CD over the Net for $1 and actually make more than they do selling it in a record store for $15."
Musician Matt Rose wrote that he was reminded of this quote from Bruce Sterling:
"This is the time to be thoughtful, be expressive, be generous. Be "taken advantage of." The channels exist now to give creativity away, at no cost, to millions. Never mind if you make large sums of money along the way. If you successfully seize attention, nothing is more likely. In a start-up society, huge sums can fall on innocent parties, almost by accident. That cannot be helped, so don't worry about it any more. Henceforth, artistic integrity should be judged, not by ones classic bohemian seclusion from satanic mills and the grasping bourgeoisie, but by what one creates and gives away. That is the only scale of noncommercial integrity that makes any sense now."
Sterling's idea of a "start-up society" -- as good a description of Net and Web culture as anyone has ever come up -- suggests patience, creativity, generousity and innovation. Nice ideas, but they don't seem to appeal either to lawmakers or large entertainment conglomerates.
Rose thinks that most musicians don't want to be millionaires; they'd rather have a lot of people hear their music. "A lot of them think that MP3's and the Internet are the distribution channels they've been waiting for. That's not going to happen if record companies don't let them do it. Every musician I know would be happier if MP3 distribution were an accepted way of getting people to listen to their music."
But some artists are understandably worried about releasing music on the Net; people may not want to pay for a CD at all when they can copy it for free. But Stoba says he's been thinking about a system that collects payment for playback, not for purchase, an echo of Sumner's idea.
"What about if consumers paid a very small fee (say .l cent per song played) every time they played a song?" Then a central distribution site (like MP3.com or iuma.com) could collect the usage stats and pay the appropriate royalties directly to artists. Program your player to skip the song you hate on a disc and you'll never pay for it. Play a cut 20 times in a row and the band will get paid accordingly. Stoba's even come up with a collection method: debit accounts established with sites that allow the MP3 player to automatically deduct money as songs are played. Some colleges and universities -- if the record industry wants to be generous and smart -- could collect revenue from music distribution on their sites, instead of dodging lawsuits.
Mikko Hanninen wrote to suggest that there are alternatives to the current copyright system -- like the "Street Performer Protocol" written by J. Kelsey and B.Schneier -- that could ensure that people who are responsible for creative work get paid, while digital information remains freely shareable online.
The SPP is an "electronic-commerce mechanism" designed to make it easier to privately finance public works. Under this protocol, people would put money aside, to be released to authors/artists/musicians in the event that their work enters the public domain. The protocol initially referred to marginal or alternative works, but it has some promise as a new economic model for dealing with Net copyright, in no small part because the Net changes the very meanings of "marginal" and "alternative."
People could pay a single, modest, single fee to an entertainment Web site, which could keep track of the music or movies consumers use and pay small royalties to the company, thus the artist. Like Sumner's debit account, this approach raises a number of privacy and technical issues.But the notion of setting aside some payment for artists is preferable to the cat-and-mouse-game now being played by the entertainment industry and millions of computer users.
That model also gives artists an initial payment, but recognizes that ideas and culture become free -- like it or not -- once they are distributed virtually. This is precisely the point where existing ownership debates tend to break down: there comes a point where content on the Net for practical purposes simply becomes public domain. Payment has to come before that, or not at all.
The first step in approaching issues like who owns ideas online is recognizing that total control over ideas is no longer possible. And it might not even be a good idea economically. The political aspects of the open source impulse driving at least some of the conflict over "free" music -- simple greed and desire are others -- argue that broad distribution of content makes it and the artists and creators of it more, not less valuable.
Their work is seen or heard by many millions of people, they have the opportunity to try out opinions, works and directions in front of their audiences, and they ultimately might be able to turn that reach into economic gain. Nobody's really certain yet. Commercial applications for open source software are becoming lucrative; perhaps there are implications there for other businesses as well.
Despite corporate warnings, "I don't think the current economic model for selling creative works such as books or music albums will collapse under the piracy and copyright theft on the Net," Hanninen writes, "but the fight about copyright censorship and enforcing will get ugly, and having an alternative would be nice."
The copyright fights have already gotten ugly; an alternative would be nice. It would also be nice if real alternatives emerged to the roadblocks currently in place.
Another post came from Spurius (Rei) via earthlink. "The critical issue that keeps surfacing is artist compensation," he writes. The answer he once advocated was a regular fee charged to gain access to all music. Though the fee would be small, it could add up to a substantial amount.
The problem, as Spurius himself acknowledges, is launching a comprehensive system. "Just neglecting the fact that most musicians currently are signed to long-term record contracts, even new musicians would be unlikely to be swayed to join some new system which can't guarantee anything, seems non-standard, technological, etc., unless they were extreme fans of open media."
Gaming models might offer some ideas for dealing with intellectual content, since that's another industry where the same issues press, Spurius suggests. A company that releases a game, instead of selling it, could offer membership to a service that permits consumers to download any game they choose from the server any time.
Instead of offering only its own games, a company could allow all companies to put their games on its server, including people who have already released non-commercial games.
Spurius's idea is to sell culture, beginning with smaller games and projects, and building towards bigger, more commercial products.
From Timothy Lord, Slashdot's managing editor: "A question that arises when it comes to alternate means of paying for content: 'If prices were lower, would revenues be higher?' If it only cost, say, $3.00 instead of $15 to grab the content of a CD, would enough people buy the CD from music companies or designated agents to justify the move? (From the point of view of the producer, I mean.)
"How about if middlin' quality files were freely available," Lord suggested, "and everyone was allowed to play, trade, store, collect them -- but the companies more jealously guarded high-quality transfers? Like a lot of people, I'd be much happier to pay $8 for 8 songs I like than $10 for eight I like and another four I never want to hear."
Lord's idea is interesting for several reasons. As hinted at before, corporations and copyright law don't distinguish between "popular" and "marginal" intellectual property. (Imagine the brawls among artists over which category they'd get put into). But cost could be tied to sales, either in the way Lord suggests, or inversely: the more people who buy a hit CD, the lower its costs. A number of websites already encourage consumers to mass - purchase products with the understanding that the greater the number sold, the lower the price. Given the size of the Net, that could result in cheaper music than ever before. But it would also require more imagination and daring than any record company has yet shown.
A lot of people wrote suggesting the creation of a commercial entity of some sort that would allow users to choose their own custom CD's, and to pay only for the music that they want. A number of sites have tried to provide this kind of service, including www.cductive.com/ ( now http://www.emusic.com/). But these sites are somewhat limited in that record labels determine the range of available songs as well as their cost.
A theme running through many of these suggestions is the single fee for aggregated downloads. Instead of paying separately for individual titles, for $50 or $100, consumers could download all the music and movies they want up to a certain number -- say 1,000. The potential volume is enormous. But the industry continuously overlooks the potential behind a vast new audience online.
This instinct to move the discussion past name-calling is significant. But the major problem with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act is that it is not merely a point of discussion; it's the law that now covers intellectual property online. Only in recent months has it become apparent how noxious and one-sized a law it is. The DMCA is a statutory embodiment of the problem that stems from corporations becoming the primary contributors to the political process. Whose ideas are members of Congress going to support and protect? The people who fund their increasingly expensive campaigns? Or free music lovers on the Net, many of whom are disgusted by Washington politics?
The DMCA suggests that corporate pressure can reverse the way lawmaking ought to work: the law seems to have come before the discussion, as is clear from messages like this one from Brad Zimmerman:
"This week I've 'pirated' 1GB of MP3's via my 512K ADSL line. What I also know is that wholly because of MP3's I've bought three Aphex Twin CD's, a Apoptygma Berzerk CD, a Cleen CD, several Beastie Boys CDs, a Juno Reactor CD, etc. Later this month, I'll be buying a bunch of CDs (six, online) and they will mostly be stuff I've heard of via MP3s. What I do is still illegal, though. I know it. I do it anyway. I highly doubt I will ever be caught because I honestly believe there is no money in prosecuting me -- and the music industry, though blisteringly short-sighted, knows what makes money and what will lose money."
Zimmerman believes that most people involved in the free music discussion agree that "something" has to change and, in fact, a surprising number of people e-mailing me last week wrote that they would happily pay for music and movies -- providing that the amounts were small, the access substantial, and that the result was greater options and choices.
One reality moralists clucking about "piracy" don't quite grasp is that millions of people all over the world have amassed vast music archives in recent years, and are understandably loathe to give them up. This isn't about stealing a few songs -- it's about codifying the evolution of an entirely new kind of cultural system.
"Hey wait a minute," e-mailed Mike from St. Paul, "I've been downloading music for free since I was in middle school. I've acquired a rich love of different forms of music online -- jazz, folk, hip-hop, techno ... Now all of a sudden I'm a pirate? Give me a break. I could never afford to buy this. I love music and support a lot of musicians, believe me."
Many bristle at the idea that they can only buy music in the expensive, often mixed-quality form in which the record companies sell it.
Since this issue gets shrouded in moral chatter -- "theft," "piracy," "immorality" -- it seems only fair to point out that music industry works much the way drug cartels do, monopolizing music and its distribution, and exploiting dependence.
The hypocrisy involved in this industry yowling about "piracy" is almost too much to take(the record industry earned a record $15 billion in l999, despite its claims of huge losses exacted by "pirates"), and it obscures the plight of artists whose work circulates widely without payment.
"It is not OK for you to let teenagers (or anyone else) pretend that the 'piracy' of movies or music is morally OK," Zimmerman writes. "If we don't agree with the law, let's change it."
Well said. Until reasonable systems of compensation and distribution are in place, the music-industry / listener schism will only deepen, to the benefit of neither.
The problem is that nobody gets to see the patent until it's granted. Then it costs big bucks to dispute it in court. Corporations are concerned with the bottom line. If it's cheaper to just pay the royalties, that's what they'll do. Then the bad patent stays on the books and the little guys are the ones that get hurt. They can't afford to pay and they can't afford to dispute it either.
The other problem is that they keep giving patents on blatantly obvious stuff. Things that are so commonly known that nobody bothered to document them. So someone goes to the PTO and says, "Check out this great idea i've got." The examiner (during his ~8 hour search, which presumably includes the time to do the paperwork) can't find any documented use of the technique, so he awards a patent on some trivial idea.
The Amazon 1-click patent is a pretty good example of something that is obvious to someone skilled in the programming field. It was a pretty obvious use of cookies. Big deal. It doesn't deserve a patent just because nobody else had decided to implement it, or at least they didn't document it if they did. It's just too similar to too many other things out there. Are we going to hand out patents for every minor modification of an existing idea? I'm sure we will if the PTO is the only one deciding these things. That's how they make their money after all. The more patents they can crank out, the more money they make. Sounds like a pretty screwed up system, doesn't it?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Yes, but a lot depends on the specifics of the crack. If you've got a system where anyone can redistribute a file, and anyone who uses it automatically pays for that use there is a serious problem when someone redirects the payment to themselves.
Frankly the system that was in place earlier in the 20th century was more or less decent, when coupled with common sense. Sadly we are in a bit of a common sense drought in certain circles, and the copyright laws have been getting more and more oppressive to the public (which is pretty contradictory as these laws are there for the public, not for the artists)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
A simple idea, a really simple one, without risk of any kind, that would'nt change their revenue model at all, and that would enable them to sell MORE ...
Here's the starting point: you've heard about a product, you want to get a grip of it. In the proprietary software business, 99% of the time, they allow you to download a crippled (functionality or time-bomb) version of the software. You want to try it, you download it, or request a demo CD. It's a good idea, it's respectful of the customer, and it fits extremely well in the proprietary software business model.
Now, s/software/music/, s/product/song/. You've heard about that band, or you've heard it briefly ... and you want to hear more of it. Why don't they just offer a crippled, low bandwidth, freely redistributable version of the tunes they sell? Say, they encode it at 32kbps. It gives you an idea of it, you can somewhat enjoy it, but if you like it at least a little, you'll feel compelled to buy the high quality version without a doubt!
And it's so simple to implement. And they would get benefits from people passing their files along to friends.
BUT THEY DON'T DO IT! Because they don't get it. Instead, when they offer files on their websites, it's 10sec long excerpts, low quality, unsaveable real audio files. And they expressely repress you from distributing/copying it! (As if there was any kind of worth in them).
Instead of trying to get the best out of the MP3+Internet medium, they fight it. They will lose. Good riddance.
A man goes to a trade show and tells the security guard "I am the greatest thief of all time, and I will plunder this trade show". This worried the guard, so he kept an eye on the thief, and on his way out, searched the thief.
The thief returned the second day and said "I stole many things yesterday, but today will be better!" The guard was now very worried, and at the end of that day searched the thief. After he found nothing he asked the thief "What are you stealing?" And the thief smiled and said, "I am stealing ideas!"
The moral of the story is that ideas cannot be kept locked up in boxes, buried in vaults, or kept behind the magic of technology. They cannot be imprisoned.
You, friend, are an accoustic musician, as am I. For us, performing makes much sense.
However, there are such creatures as "recording artists" in truth: artists who use electronic means to produce a recording as their work of art. For such as they, the concept of live performance is an absurdity.
Sorry, just had to play devil's advocate. I am highly sympathetic to your point of view (More Gigs Good!), but it doesn't work for all of what we today consider music.
----------------------------------------------
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
The march of progress, however, makes it easier and easier to create, market and distribute such content, enabling individuals and small companies to produce their own, and even make money in the process (no matter how ideological you are, there always lurks that bottom line).
Whether indy labels, free music archives, independent filmmakers, or global enclaves of thousands of hackers making free software, these independent types are starting to provide content with more creativity and variety than was ever possible under the media behemoths. Soon they'll give the Big Guys a real run for their money.
Of course, the Internet accellerates this trend a thousandfold. For Big Media, the Internet is Pandora's box, but for the rest of us, it's our Prometheus.
Sooner or later, this independent effort will force all content providers, big and small to provide their wares at reasonable prices, and the Big Guys will feel the pinch... especially when the rest of the world realizes that they don't even need to pirate anything anymore, due to the proliferation of free and low-cost content.
Although Big Media knows they need us, their dirty little secret is, We don't need them.
And they're scared.
--
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
Notice how every example you stated was of the Catholic Church as patron? The patronage system did allow artists to work, but the artist's work was dictated by the agenda of the patron. Is this a bad thing? I don't know. But it does tell me that there are many forms of expression that are unlikely to attract a patron with the resources to give the artist the means and freedom to work.
In a way, all commercial sale of art ( including performance licensing) is distributed patronage. A million individuals might pay $10 each to support an artist, acting as patrons or consumers - same thing. Or one person may pay $1 million. Which is more likely to result in a greater variety of expression?
OK, didn't Jon Katz post a story similar to this a few weeks ago, albeit a few hundred lines less?
That comment not withstanding, the whole point of the story is the same as the last one...we should all be able to download MP3s as we please, because it's some kind of "evolution of an entirely new kind of cultural system." I hate to have the unpopular opinion in this matter, because I too have a decent collection of MP3s on my drive, but theft is STILL theft, no matter how much utterly boring verbiage Katz uses to justify it. At least this time Katz acknowledges that some people knowingly download MP3s, rather than his last argument of "Well, they didn't know!"
As you put it Katz, "culture is already being transmitted freely all over the Net." That doesn't mean that downloading MP3s from the latest Filter album is justified. I too would like to see a change in the current law on copyrights, but rather than babble on Slashdot about your absurd utopian views which drag three flames for every regular post, how about DOING something about it?
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
The music industry would love to distribute music over the net as long as they get their cut. When casettes came out, they had the same concern as they do with MP3s. The MPAA had the same concern with BetaMax as they now have with DeCSS (imagined, not real).
Especially now, where you can make unlimited copies that do now show generations, they are even more concerned.
Some of it is valid. But, their actions are overactions and inappropriate.
There are companies selling copyprotection for software at SD 2000 in San Jose. There will always be people making illegal copies, no matter how impossible (yeah right). But how much of this is really lost revenue?
If I have a photographic memory, do I have to pay royalties everytime I repeat lines in a movie?
Fight Spammers!
If artists arn't happy with big compaines.... And consumers arn't happy with big companies...
If we could figure out some way of making sure that artists get paid, but can still distribute on the web, (and the above artical has several promising ones), and if we could convince enough artists that it was safe, then the other artists would probably eventually follow, and we could all just quietly move away from big companies, thus making everyone happy. (Except the big companies)
of course, they're the ones with the cash, and so they probably wouldn't go down quietly, (I think they already sense that the end is near, hence DMCA and it's friends) but if enough artists and consumers simply walked away.... then the big companies would just quietly curl up and vanish.
Wouldn't that be nice.
Everyone has to learn about a band before they can be fans of that band. Tape trading allows new fans to check out bands. It is It is very similar to swapping mp3s (or other formats) on the web, only it has been around a few decades longer. in fact, the web has allowed for quicker and more trades (see links at end of post for more info on this). This has resulted in a boom to the jamband scene.
So others know, the scene is not made of just the big names you know of (and that many people think of as "hippie dippie bands"). There are in fact hundreds of bands in the scene that range from a more classical jam style to jazz to funk to Latino, etc. There is no one style of jamband (Check out Jambase.com for dates of a jamband playing in your area).
What I am trying to say is what the jamband community has known for a long time, allowing your music to be traded free of charge to the public, can pay off in many other ways in the long run (more ticket sales, album sales, merchandise sales, etc.). We are in a new age, where record labels need to learn that a 35 minute CD for $16+ is no longer acceptable, and the fans have the power now to prove this. As it has been said many times before, labels are going to have to figure out new ways of doing business because the old model just doesn't cut it anymore. These labels have to come to a realization, stop fighting the inevitable, and change their models of business. We are in an age where the consumer has the upper hand, and many more companies are learning this the hard way.
If you are interested in seeing more of the jamband community and how it operates check out these sites (these are only a few of the thousands of sites on the web about/for tape trading, if you are seriously interested in more sites or information just follow the links from these pages):
etree.org - This is a community dedicated to freely trading tapes (only of bands that allow it) via shorten format (a non-lossy form of compression).
Sugar Megs - a community that trades full shows in the mp3 format
Let's be realistic.
u ct placement|websites> there is compared to that aimed at the 30+ crowd.
I don't have the facts on this one - maybe someone else can find them - but personal experience and common sense says that an overwhelming majority of record company revenue comes from people under the age of 20. There's a decent amount to be made on 21-25 year olds, but once you get older than 25, the desire to follow the music scene & buy records drops precipitously. Just looking at the marketing for music tells you this - think of how much teen- and college-oriented music <magazines|promotions|television|commercials|prod
Music marketing is based on this. Record companies produce the albums/artists they do, because they know the revenue can be SCALED, through both exposure to the right consumers and through lifestyle "propaganda", establishing which acts are hot or not. They're not so interested in acts that they can't leverage though these techniques. You can't build a huge business on "quality" acts that sell on their merits, simply because there's no way to predict (especially before the album is made) what the general public is going to go crazy over.
But you can predict returns on investment when you apply marketing over a broad range of music, aimed at a demographic that is easily manipulated through ideas of "popularity" and image ("I am what I listen to" is an almost universal identification badge for 18-15 year olds, at least the ones I know). Record companies are about leveraging the somewhat unpredictable, but nearly universal human behavior of listening to music into a predictable stream of revenue based on marketing.
Now, combine with this the fact that MOST members of the age group in question are a point in their lives where they haven't really developed a strong ethic towards voluntarily giving away their money "just because it's right". Before you all start howling, yeah I know YOU aren't this way and that YOU support the artists and that YOU are happy to pay money for the stuff you think is good, but look around you - teenagers & college students are the prime customers for the record industry, and they're the prime "sharers" of intellectual property. Arguably college students are more motivated to do the right thing, but they also have much less disposable cash. The basic capitalist assumptions of limited resources and unlimited demand probably has no better example.
The music industry knows who pays their bills - a segment of society who, given the chance, would gladly not pay a dime. Sure, people talk about going out & buying CD's after listening to downloaded MP3's, but how long is that behavior going to last? At some point we're going to reach the price/MB level where portable MP3 players like Rio are cheap enough that you will be able to carry days of music inside them, with a virtual Tower Records of material stored on your hard drive. Music will be, in all likelihood, sold through some medium whose end product will resemble a Rio-type device anyway, so what's the incentive to go out & buy the exact same thing you already have. Altruism? Maybe for the loyal 1% of the music listeners out there, but I don't think record companies will settle for a compromise of 1% of their current revenue.
The same thing goes for computer games - I spend a lot of time reading gaming-related message boards, and the only people out there talking about pirating software are teenagers & college students. It's no wonder these industries are worried. But to put it in perspective, when Katz talks about the record _industry_ raking in "15 billion" last year, realize that's pretty puny in the world of consumer markets. Philip Morris alone rakes in about 10 billion a year on domestic revenue of tobacco - 20 billion on international revenue; now add all the revenue for RJ Reynolds, plus all the other tobacco companies around the world (a huge number of them are state-owned enterprises), then add cigar revenue & smokeless tobacco, and it pretty much makes music revenue look like a joke. I'm not making any value judgement on tobacco here - just citing an example of other industry revenue.
I have absolutely no sympathy for the media copiers out there. I'm actually a programmer - I make money for my output, and people who copy my work are not doing me any favors, even if I'm only getting 1/15 of the sale of my work as "profit" (which is a pretty damn high return on investment, when consider how much capital the artist is risking). Let's not forget the artists are receiving a lot more than just money from their record company deals - they're getting fame & exposure (most artists know they could be making better money at day jobs) & the chicks. You hit it big, you get to pick out a runway cutie of your choice).
So what's the real issue?
Ironically, should the existing system go down the tubes, and the whole thing becomes a cottage industry of artists selling directly to their audience, I don't think much will change for people who enjoy listening to music. Unlike the other entertainment industries such as movies & computer games, producing the product in music doesn't require a lot of capital - it can still be done by an individual or small group, and boutique recording studios are everywhere now. Movie studios & software publishers still fulfill the role of financiers for their industries, and an "open source" model would probably wreck them - unless you're all happy consuming "Blair Witch" budgeted films for the rest of your life & playing shareware games (both of which have produced good products, but let's face it, we all like to consume big budget entertainment that can only be made if there's some guarantee of a huge audience seeing it, and if the risk of failed ventures can be distributed over the winners).
But great music can be made & recorded on the cheap. While I was working at Philip Morris, they would periodically jetison product lines that they couldn't leverage anymore - two classic examples were Kraft caramels & Kraft marshmellows. Despite the fact that when people think of caramel cubes, they see the little white Kraft words wrapped around the outside, PM realized that it had become a commodity item, and that their branding could no longer allow them to carry enough premium to make it worthwhile. They sold off that portion of the business (maybe even the brand image) to the generic caramel manufacturers of the world. The media companies are probably going to have to realize that the days of making a billion dollar business out of music marketing will go the way of the buggy whip.
I can't see why I should be paid when someone listens to a recording of my music. I just can't see it. I get paid when I perform. People come to hear me play (or I'm paid by the owner of the venue). WHYINHELL should I expect to be paid when I'm not doing anything?
Recordings of my music may create demand for my live performances. Why should I do anything to reduce the distribution of recordings?
If I'm selling a recording, I expect to make good the cost of the media. Distribution on the 'net kinda makes that point moot :-)
My only concern are OTHER artists who play my material in live performance.
-Eldurbarn
What I really like about this RIAA vs. everyone on the planet battle is that they keep crying about how the artists are hurt by MP3 transfer. Well, they posted huge profits...so they aren't being hurt. For a second, let's take a look at the RIAA argument.
According to TLC in their VH1 "Behind the Music" interview, they got a whopping...56 cents per CD they released. (BTW, the 8% sales tax on the CD ends up being $1.12 on a $13.99 CD...twice what TLC got per album.) So, if their album sold 1 million copies (extremely successful.) they all got, total...$560,000. Or basically $186,667 for T, L and C, respectively. Meanwhile, there's $13,430,000 floating around from sales of THEIR album that they aren't getting. Granted, it does cost 3 cents/CD to press, master, and mass produce a CD.
The RIAA wants to talk about *US* hurting the artist? Why don't they just GIVE the ARTIST MORE MONEY? The part in Katz' article about artists being able to sell their own music on the web at $1 a CD and make more than they get out of their record contracts is TRUE. (Although Jon really didn't have to rewrite Dune to make 2 or 3 points.)
I'm a huge They Might Be Giants fan. Recently, they released an album on the web, in MP3 only format. It cost $8. While browsing around on Napster, every once in a while I look for TMBG songs, just to see what's floating out there. Although the producer said the album was "the most successful internet only album ever" I have NEVER found any of the TMBG songs from that album on Napster. (although there are upwards of 3 terabytes of MP3s shared on Napster on a given day now.)
So why is this? Artist loyalty? Amongst pirates? Yes...it exists. Maybe people are tired of giving upwards of $13 million to bastards like Suge Knight and that music thief Puff Daddy. Hell...Jennifer Lopez couldn't even afford to wear a real dress to the Grammys...she had to wear a curtain. (nobody ever said all side-effects were bad.) I'd much rather pay $8 for an e-album where upwards of half went to support the band than pay $13 to a producer and a half dollar to the group that does the actual work.
Producers do actually do some hard work, but it's not 24 times as much work as the artists do. I'm all for supporting the artists. But I ain't about supporting some guy sitting on his ass, and milking my groups, bastardizing their work, and then discarding them. It's time for a paradigm shift. It starts with MP3s and e-albums. Support them.
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In order to get their music onto a CD and into a "record" store, musicians sign a contract. THAT's why they can't put their music out on MP3, and all of this distribution stuff is illegal. Let's say I come up with a company called "Net Music Distributers" and sign some musicians to a contract, then the terms of payment and distribution can be named in that contract - including (obviously) Net distribution.
Music is being considered an idea, and placed on a similar plane to software, which is also an idea. But there's a rub, and you have to go to ESR's "The Magic Cauldron" to get it. 95% of software work is in-house, not for sale. Those 95% of the programmers are being payed for solving problems, not putting software on the shelf. (or other distribution medium.) Inasmuch as they may use, and thereby contribute to free software, it becomes a win-win situation. Their job is done, and there's more free software.
But music is a bit different. While there is some 'captive music', like weddings and parties, most of the money in the music industry appears to be in the sales of recordings. From what I've heard, even/especially concert tours don't really pay, because they're so expensive to run. They essentially act as non-profit (for the musician, any way) advertisements for the recordings.
We need a way to pay artists. We just can't lump them in with programmers. The same applies to games, along the ID software model. The engines have been released under GPL, but the artwork is still owned.
Once we come up with a way to pay artists, and once some artists buy into it, the existing system is just legacy. It's in the contract.
It's also interesting to note that the RIAA and MPAA are both downright paranoid about electronic distribution. Could it be because they know that they're ripping us off? How about that cassette tape that costs $10, and the CD that's CHEAPER to produce, but costs $16? The movie industry had a clue, once, when they reduced the price of movies from the $80 range down to the $20 range. But they appear to have lost it. The DVDs appear to be taking the lead from the audio CD. When the infrastructure is fully in place, I expect DVDs to cost less than VHS, but the price to always be a premium. How about taking the old computer price/performance curve and applying it the music/movie recording industries? They're bootstrapping off of our technology, and walking a different price/performance line.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
There has been one overriding and ingnored point throughout all of these debates. One that has not been discussed because then we might have to forget about our all important internet and focus on what the real world is doing.
And that is simply that this is not a new problem.
Everything that has been talked about here, from the inadequacies of the notion of IP to the woefully anti-consumer laws that have sprung up to protect it, but it is nothing new. We have seen people, and even Katz himself, quote Jefferson from over two centuries ago. And yet nobody picks up that this is not new.
The Internet has not caused this problem, and quite frankly, the Internet is not going to solve this problem.
So far every solution proposed has been that some sort of change is going to have to happen. From the one extreme of simply giving up the various ideas of property through the spectrum of changing the ways we pay artists and thinkers to the opposite extreme of creating technological ways to make sure everybody pays no matter the thought used. Yet, none of these will be satisfactory to everybody invovled.
So here is what I propose.
Let's go back to the tired and true method that was used centuries ago. Patronship.
Why does this work? Well, people (the public at large) got to view/hear/touch/whatever the works the artists and thinkers produced. The artists/thinkers invovled got paid, a roof over their heads and a creative outlet. Everybody was more or less happy with the arragnement. If, as an artist/thinker didn't like your patron. You put yourself up as work for hire and ran out the time with your patron. Then you got the patron you wanted, and if you were important enough, your new patron would give you whatever you wanted. The patrons got the prestige of saying that you worked for them, and mostly fell overthemselves keeping you happy.
And in the end, the public could take your ideas, apprecate them, and build off of them if they could afford (in terms of material, not licencing) if they so desired.
Think about it: How many current artists have been inspired by works like the Cistine (sp?) chapple? How many by Beethoven and Handel? That's the system they used. It worked for them.