Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Leaders Speak About Napster
A huge number of people have been submitting the story
on ZDNet (originally from the WSJ) regarding folks like Linus and others about Napster. Many of the submissions have been along the lines of "Linus Bashes Napster." He doesn't -- he's merely saying that copyrights aren't necessarily a bad thing, and that piracy is a bad thing. As well, there's some good points about the Napster/Open Source relationship -- the article is worth reading in depth.
On the 35-minute ride to work, my girlfriend and I have been discussing the Napster issue. It's been a topic of discussion for the past month or so where we, both groggy and still half-asleep, discuss our differing viewpoint on the issue. I'm blinded by my years of a shareware addiction, she by her budding music career. It's an interesting conversation, where I try to illustrate Napster as a shift in paradigms, a new way to distribute music, or a great 'try-before-you-buy' plan. She'll have none of it. Her standard reply, which she has taken to muttering in her sleep, is simple yet eloquent. "But you haven't paid for it." I agree fully. I try to illustrate that if I download a Yanni mp3, I can decide if I like it well enough to go out and buy the CD. Her obvious reply? "But you haven't paid for it." I realized that it was time for me to shift gears, so I changed my track. "I have no problem with Dr. Dre's suit, but Metallica used to pass out their music for free! It's near hypocrisy! They would give people tapes and ask them to listen." What's the difference, other than now it's being pushed by the demand side? 'Twas throwing words away; for still The little Maid would have her will, And said, 'But you haven't paid for them!'
I'm still not sure that the following issues are being put into their proper perspective:
1) The legality of companies like NetPD to snoop a computer in my house without my permission or a judge-issued warrant;
2) The legality of 'tallica to hire a third party such as netPD to compile information about me and my computer uses without my permission or a judge-issued warrant;
3) The legality of 'tallica to coerce a software company to deny me access to their product based on the data aquired in 1) and 2);
4) The legality of the RIAA's treatment of the internet community as a class; specificially with regard to interpersonal peer-to-peer communication .
Traditionally, legal action involving theft or copyright infringement in directed toward an individual or corporation dealing in "piracy" : the unauthorized *sale* of material, not individuals simpay sharing samples of a material.
The idea of corporations or extremely rich individuals manipulating the law against a large number of not-for-profit individuals communicating for any reason, and treating them as a class, is quite alarming to me.
I understand that 'tallica and the RIAA are concerned about the impact of emerging technologies on their revenue stream. They have a point. But they are stomping around in people's living rooms, and decisions made now could have a chilling effect on the future of our privacy on the net.
If a sacrifice must be made, let it be on the against the rich and powerful, and for the freedom of the masses.
Perhaps it is time to consider alternatives, such as overseas connections, certified anonymous servers, port hopping, tunnelling, encrypted streams and the like. If that's what it takes in "The Land of the Free" to get the government, corporations and the rich musicians out of my living room, so be it.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
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The principle behind it is that artists should be able to make as much money as they want from their product, while everyone else should be forced to pay for it.
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That's a particularly interesting interpretation of capitalism.
The idea isn't to force anything on anyone - you don't have to have most products, so nobody is forcing anything on anyone (unless you're an abusive monopoly, but that's not all that common).
Second, the consumer has some power as well (once again, unless there is an abusive monopoly involved). You can refuse to purchase a product, and if enough people agree with you, they are forced to lower their price or provide more. If it seems like you're being ripped off, it's either because you expect too much or the rest of the population is too complacent and won't stand its ground.
Either way, capitalism is a self regulating system (albeit with a few bugs).
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Unfortunately, the principles of geekhood (which are typically not quite as capitalist) support freedom of information in the form of the GPL, copylefting, etc.
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Speak for yourself. A lot of geeks view open-source in a purely pragmatic way, ie. that it contributes to overall stability, code reuse, and ease of integration - not to mention fun projects to hack on. Not everyone feels that it's a "freedom" issue at all, or that anyone has a right to certain code or information.
And believe it or not, there are lots of kinds of geeks. Some still thrive in the closed-source world, and may not agree with much of the Slashdot party line at all. These guys may not have wandered upon the wonders of the open-source world, but that doesn't stop them from cranking out killer (albeit closed-source) shareware on the weekends more for fun than profit.
[I'm not really disagreeing with you - I think the suit against Napster is retarded, they should instead go after the pirates themselves in they have a problem. I just get frustrated when people assume there is a single 'geek profile' when there really isn't...]
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
According to the story, Jesus did not "pirate" (aka steal) bread. The loaves and fishes did not exist before he miraculously created them. Having created them himself, they were his loaves and fishes. He (and his followers) then choose to give them away.
In addition, there is no report of him doing this on an ongoing and widespread basis, so it's pretty unlikely that any businesses were affected. And even if he had done this a lot, it wouldn't have been pirating. Tough to compete with, but not pirating.
(Heck, he was supposedly a deity, or at least of divine birth. One could argue that as a deity, he had first dibs on everybody's property. But as far as I remember the popular bio, he never tried to take advantage of that.)
(FWIW, I'm an agnostic. But if someone's gonna use the story to make some point, they should at least try to get it right.)
The reason why the RIAA is pissed is quite obvious -- it's the same reason that the software industry is pissed about warez.
I'm disappointed they didn't include a reference to Bruce Perens' excellent comments on the matter. His essay not only weighs what's happening morally, but brings out an important insight: the less responsibly people behave with creations like Napster, the more ammo the greedy have to hit us with. Music Bootlegging with Napster Hurts Free Software. It's a bit frightening....
Tweet, tweet.
When W2K is free & Linux is free - W2K is better.
When W2K is $3299.95* & Linux is free - Linux is the better choice.
*current list price Windows 2000 Advanced Server w/ 25 CAL's.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
So, just to make certain I understand what you are saying.... the onus is on everyone else to make sure that technology never makes it easy to bypass copyright laws which were put in place because technology made it expensive to publish books.... even if we aren't talking about books?
sigs are a waste of space
"Piracy is a bad thing, from an American capitalist point of view."
It's also a bad thing from European, Asian and African views. And last I heard, the socialists didn't hold truck with theft either.
"The principle behind it is that artists should be able to make as much money as they want from their product, while everyone else should be forced to pay for it."
Absolutely wrong. First of all, the artists can make no money unless someone else first wants their product. The amount of money they make is tied to how many people want it. Sometimes this means that artistic products are more dependent on marketing than talent, but hey...millions of fans still want it. Go figure. Second, and more important, no one is forcing you to do anything. No one. There is no gun pointed at your head. No nazis are frog-marching you into the nearest store and coercing you into purchasing Metallica against your will. Believe it or not, you do have free will. It is entirely up to you, and you alone, whether you will buy that album or not.
In case you don't understand it yet, if you don't like that $15 price tag, DON'T BUY IT!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I think that this entire process is fundamentally flawed.
/.'er owns, the majority owns a large number of cd's. Napster can be used in a "good" (by RIAA standards) way.
"Piracy" Sure, Napster traffics in huge amounts of illegal mp3s, but wait a second to examine the process a little more. Most people (or at least myself and others I know) don't rely on Napster as their sole source of musical income. As proven in the previous poll on how many cd's the average
For example, I went down to the store and bought Play, Moby's new album. After buying this, I was really pleased with Moby's music and I wanted to see if I should buy any of his other cds. So, I went on to Napster to demo some songs. The next week, I ended up buying another Moby album, Everything is Wrong, based on the one or two tracks I previewed on Napster.
Napster doesn't have to serve as a means to illegal music. In my own opinion, I think that RIAA and the government shouldn't be trying to get rid of Napster. Instead, they should be trying to work in concert with Napster to fundamentally change it. Wouldn't you enjoy a free service where you could download the latest popular songs in mp3 format, in order to preview the cd? Or how about a fully downloadable album at reduced sound quality? Napster could even retain the free trading system by letting users trade only certain "accepted" mp3's, or by imposing a lower sound quality (say 56kb/s) on each downloaded song. If this were the case, you could download and then buy the cd, helping Napster and the RIAA thrive.
There are many alternative solutions, with shutting down Napster not being one of them. I only hope that the Government and RIAA would look into these, instead of blindly charging ahead in their "anti-piracy" jihad.
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If you mean that they make $5- revenue per sale, I believe you -- but it doesn't really prove anything or make any point. Revenue is meaningless if you're not making a profit ( and in their case, they really need a profit per sale ). All it really proves is that the record companies have either high operating costs or high profits or both. If you were to divide the reported annual earnings by the CD sales ( ie profit per sale ), the number would be a lot less. BTW, If you're saying that they have $5- earnings per CD sale, I just don't believe you.
here's also my personal experience that might help slake your thirst for knowledge. My band's CD's cost us, at most, and in small, expensive lots, about $2.50 to press, including a crappy little lyric sheet insert in four colors. The majors press millions for about $0.80 a copy, tops.
I know how much it costs to press. But you're being awfully naive if you think that pressing records accounts for the record companie's entire operating expenses.
Of course I was speaking in general terms. Obviously people give things away now: but an economy based upon gifts or charity cannot be as prosperous as ours. It's a simple impossibility.
Sure, there will still be *some* art if no one's paying for it, but NOT in the quantity that we have today. This is not difficult:
At zero price there are very few suppliers of any given economic good.
Those who steal from musicians are not only robbing the producers of music; if a culture of larceny builds around that theft, eventually there will be nearly zero producers of music. It's unavoidable. Very few people are willing to give away the fruits of their labor. This is part of why communism is such an abominable lie.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
My comment to the RIAA would have to be this: I want to give you money. I don't want to be taking directly from the artist. /Why/ will you not come up with a way to let me give you my money? Why will you instead sit in the corner with your fingers in your ears screaming piracy?
I agree. I love music and I am quite willing to pay for it. But its time to rethink the way music is sold and distributed.
I think it would be great if there was some kind of system where there was some standard for downloading & buying music via the internet. Imagine a system where you fire up your music browser and it lets you search for and download any songs or full albums you want for just 1 cent per song. You might have an account with $50 in it and everytime you listen to a song it debits the account. After listening to a song 10 times, you might pay a higher rate like a nickel everytime you listen to it, or you could opt to buy the song for a dime - and not have to pay for it anymore. Whole albums could have "bulk" rates; like a quarter. There would be many details to figure out, but I think you get the idea. I would love to be able to pay a dollar, download 100 songs from 100 different bands and then discover maybe 5 bands that I really like and proceed to buy their albums to listen to off my harddrive.
-Jeff
Searching for a better tomorrow...
The author of the ZDnet article is confusing our contempt for the RIAA with a minority view that any kind of copyright is bad.
/.ers contempt for the RIAA has nothing to do with copyright enforcement but rather the RIAA's attempts to stifle technology rather than being creative and embracing it.
IMHO,
Those of us with a keen sense of technology and where it is going know that "resistence is futile" and will laugh at anyone who thinks they can. Just as we'ld probably agree that Amtrak, as a national railway, is obsolete, so to is the physical medium for music distribution.
If the RIAA would realize the tremendous opportunity for profit with all of us having a personal jukebox in our house and charge a nickle per song played, and $1/song for unlimited play, we might actually like them. We'ld save money and they'ld probably pull in twice as much profit as they do now by cutting out the other middlemen and manufacturing costs. This would make everyone happy, I think.
The alure of Napster to geeks is not free music, it's the desire to use the most convenient technology to sample, buy, and store, our legitamately aquired music. Until the RIAA realizes that the FM radio is obsolete and the net is its replacement they're going to wallow in their own self pity, squander their money on legal expenses, and become irrelevant to the next generation of musicians.
--Aaron Greenberg
Remember that copying songs, or TV shows, or poetry is not evil or, necessarily, illegal. Copyright violation is not murder, theft, bigamy, incest or jaywalking. It is violation of a category of law that society has put in place to foster the common good through creativity. Society has decided that efficiency is promoted by installing stop lights at intersections and creating a crime known as jaywalking. There is nothing evil about jaywalking and there is nothing evil about copyright violation -- it is simply the law.
The U.S. Supreme Court decided that copying broadcast TV shows for personal convenience was noncommercial "fair use" in the Betamax case. For Congress to outlaw, and the Supreme Court to uphold a prohibition on copying copyright music from a commercial CD to your hard drive or from your hard drive to your RIO for your own noncommercial listening pleasure would be a stretch.
Once a copyright piece of music is legally on your hard drive which is accessible to others on the internet, what should be the governing legal principles? It seems to me that while there are two possible outcomes in theory, there is only one practical outcome. The first is that Congress and the Courts decide that noncommercial exchange is fair use, akin to playing your boom box at the beach. There is no way that Congress will outlaw, and the Supreme Court will uphold a prohibition on file transfer software. There are enough files that aren't copyright and plenty of instances where the copyright holders want to do file transfers to establish the legitimacy of file transfer programs. Using legal software for noncommercial exchange of copyright material could, conceivably be found to fair use. I don't think that will happen.
I think that the Congress and the Courts will resolve this by taxing the users and giving the money to the copyright holders. Users of audiotape and audio CDR's are taxed (they call it a royalty) for the benefit of copyright holders. (For example, see 65 FR 19025, April 10, 2000.) Once the RIAA has either driven Napster into the ground with legal costs, or gotten some part of the exchange process declared illegal, they can get Napster to gather information about what is being exchanged that will be valuable both for marketing purposes and for establishing the tax rate. Remember that even noncommercial colleges pay annual royalties for use of copyright non-dramatic music.
The RIAA has managed to get the U.S. government to tax almost everything that moves for their benefit under the name of copyright. They can't get the Congress to tax the digital exchange via Napster, Gnutella, etc. until the RIAA establishes that there is something illegal going on. Hence the law suits. Once they have established, either through a attrition or a legitimate reviewed legal victory, that there is some copyright violation, the problem is to figure out what to tax. Hard drives? DSL connections? RIOs? Any device that plays MP3? All of the above?
The ironic thing is that MP3's and Napster are almost certainly boosting CD sales. MP3's boost the demand for music by increasing the situations where you listen to your own music rather than the radio. Ripping MP3s from your own CDs is so much more efficient than downloading, checking, and organizing that if you have more money than time, it is more reliable to buy a CD and rip it. For those with more time than money, Napster lowers the average price per song which, depending on the elasticity, may actually increase total dollars spent. Increasing CD sales coincident with the increased use of Napster, if sustained, will mean that copyright holders will get increased royalties along with increased sales.
Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years
Ultimatly I think their plan is to nail the 'questionable' MP3 related services (Napster, MP3.com, etc.) till they have established in the public's eye that MP3=illegal.
This is, unfortunately, working. People seem to think that it is some hidden thrill in using an "illegal" format. They get giggly, it's quite funny to watch. Doesn't lesson the power of Napster, but it does add to its appeal. Forbidden fruit and all that.
Ironically, it won't even be a good cause that triggers the regulation of the internet (like protecting the children, or the usual tear jerkers), it will be commercial interests and big money.
I know this sounds a bit weird, but with the direction we're going, I'd almost rather the government regulate the Net rather than the corps. The gov'ts (at least ours) have people to answer to. The corp just have shareholders. Personally I think people have more interest in rights and wrongs than shareholders who only care about the bottom line and rights and morals go right out the window if it means a fatter dividend. Just my cynical perspective of two cents.
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+&x
I've always wondered about how many enviornmental and property laws Moses violated by changing the Nile to blood.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The production or replication cost of a good has little to do with the price of a good. I think this is the way it should be. Is a day of back breaking labor worth more to society than a flash of insight by a brilliant scientist? I don't think so. It has never been about how hard you work, or how much effort you put into something, or how much it costs to make or reproduce. I don't think it should be otherwise, else we will have a society where drudgery, muscle and the ability to mobilize resources is rewarded over talent.
But unchecked capitalism is evil. A starving man shouldn't be denied food. Similarly, the conduct of pharmaceutical companies and first world nations towards medical crises in the 3rd world is reprehensible. But let's not kid ourselves here: software and music are luxury goods. These are not basic necessities. We can go without them. And the people who take/steal these things do so not because they are unable to pay, but because they are unwilling to do so.
the album I tried sucked - so I take it back.
this has admin costs assoc. with it. I'm sure they still make a hefty profit with all that, but the point is, if I can easily preview (at home) music; I'm less likely to have to return an album due to music taste issues.
of course the riaa will never admit to this. in fact, I'm surprised you're allowed to return albums AT ALL...
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Topic Poll:
Would you pay up to $10 a month to use Napster if it would allow you to share and download any and as many mp3's as you want without having the RIAA breathing down your neck.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
correction: its already too weak. too weakly defined, that is. and very unbalanced.
we need intelligent copyright laws.
intelligent and well-written laws are rarely ambiguous and usually well-followed. its the "hidden agenda" (aka, pork and PAC) laws that have problems.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Don't you see?
The GNU license is based entirely upon copyright law. If it weren't for GNU, Microsoft or any company could take Open Source software, modify it, and sell it without giving away the source code or any documentation or anything. This is based on copyright law.
The record industry's problem with Napster is also based on copyright law, their argument is that Napster is (indirectly) violating their copyright.
-------- "All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away" --Spiritualized
When was the last time you read the GPL?
Without copyright, someone could take the GPL software and change some stuff, and not release the source code. Isn't GPL fanatics up in arms on the BSD license because that license makes this possible.
>>if pay-per-copy were eliminated, there'd be no motive for authors not to share their source code
In your dreams, maybe. They would probably still withhold source code, for no other reason than to get the money made off on support. Who would you trust to support you? The guy with the code or the guy without?
Also, something that never seem to come up in discussions about the GPL: Who are you paying the support for? The author(s) of the software or the distributor of the software? Who is making the money?
Je ne parle pas francais.
Am I the only person put off by the use of the phrase "open source leaders"? As someone who has been working with open source software and basically following the open source philosophy since the 1980s (back even before the term "open source software" was coined), I certainly don't consider these relative newcomers :-) my "leaders".
The people quoted could be referred to as open source "activists", "evangelists", or "reporters". But referring to someone as an "open source leader" is like referring to someone as a "leader of capitalism" - the concept makes no sense.
Of course they have a right to profit. They provide the service of allowing artists to record music to CD, packaging the CD, and distributing them to the stores, that automatically gives them a right to some profit.
Whether or not that means they should get to screw over artists or not is a different story. Dude, if you don't like capitalism, move to China or Cuba or something.
-------- "All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away" --Spiritualized
1) Call friend on phone.
:-)
2) Play 'tallica music into phone.
Now, suppose a company listens in and compiles evidence, then sells it to 'tallica. 'tallica, in turn, sues the phone manufacturer, who then takes away your phone.
This can't happen, for a few reasons. AFAIK/IANAL, there are only three ways for any entity to compile evidence regarding your phone usage and use it in court:
a) The FBI, I beleive, can monitor your phone line without a court order or your consent in some cases of national security;
b) Any authority, with a judge-issued search warrant;
c) Anyone, with your permission.
Therefore, the first defense a lawyer would use is : "How did you aquire your evidence?", and then have the case thrown out on the grounds that the evidence was illegally obtained.
Then, I as an individual, could countersue 'tallica and "PhonePD" for unlawful invasion of privacy. I would settle for a resonable amount of their worth, of course
This is a much, much bigger issue than most people, including the Holy Linux Trio (Torvalds, Perens, Wall) think.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
If this was the only thing that changed if copyright law disappeared, you would be right. That would not be a very likely scenario however. How do you think anyone could make money selling binary copies of software if copyrights did not exist? If copyright law disappeared, the way software is commercially written would completely change. It's hard to say what would happen, but maybe people would pay for the actual creation of software instead of the distribution, and then they would probably want the source code as well. In such a scenario, there would be no incentive to keep the source closed anyway.
Ok, now, without the personal attacks:
I am being picky about a source of so-called news because I like to try and be conscious of the agendas that people speak from when they attempt to influence my behaviour or my opinion. You have only to watch an hour or so of "Ziff-Davis TV" (is that only in Seattle, or do they actually send that out in other areas too?) before you begin to realize that they are the very exemplar of what another poster above stated: they will give you "facts" that support whoever has paid the ad-bill for the next thirty seconds, and getting technical advice from them, or changing your opinions based on the things they tell you only makes you dumb.
Granted, many other news organizations get paid for what they do, but often there is not so closely knit relationship between the products a company sells and the agenda that it promotes in its "objective" reporting. Who likes feeling like they are listening to propoganda?
You may note that in my post above, I don't really state an opinion one way or the other on the Napster/OS/RIAA debate. I think there are lot of valid viewpoints. How do you know whether or not I agree with the article? If I liked it or not? I wasn't making much of a point on the article, just the organization reporting it.
However, I find your personal attack besides the point, and immature at best. I'm not advocating that nobody make money from reporting news. And I wasn't seriously proposing copyright violation. Just pointing out that ZD isn't a natural "friend" of the average Open-Source person, contrary to appearances.
So grow up...
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
I think it's merely the opportunists out there (or as Larry Wall described them "Persons of leisurely moral growth") who think it's a good thing to pirate music.
;-). No, you do what RMS did: you live as close as possible to the way you want to live WITHIN the laws that exist, and campaign furiously to have the laws changed.
Yes, GNU and people like RMS have serious problems with copyright law as it applies to software, and RMS has said he has similar problems with regard to musical recordings. However, just because you think a law is stupid doesn't mean you break it (c.f. chaos
Let's face it though: copyright law does need to be revised. I don't know if it needs to be thrown out or not, but certainly the terms under which it came into existence don't match those of today. The original copyright law was put in place to protect publishers because the cost of publishing material was very expensive and they simply wouldn't make the investment in the first place if the investment somehow wasn't protected.
Fast forward to today: members of the RIAA are really not "music publishers", at least in terms of what their core compitency. If they were focused on publishing, than things like MP3 and such would be welcomed with open arms because they reduce the cost of publishing. No, the RIAA members are mostly packagers/marketers of music. No slight against them, as certainly there's a lot of sunken costs involved in doing what they do (it's just that actually pressing the CD's is not a big part of it). Certainly THEY want to protect those investments.
However, if we look at the origins of copyright law, when it was put in place there was a net benefit to the public: more books got published because publishers felt their investment was protected. Fast forward to today: more music gets packaged/marketed???? Do we really need that? Do we need it so bad that it's worth giving up some basic rights? I guess the answer is somewhat debatable, although I certainly don't see one side of the debate.
Regardless, the nature of what copyright is protecting has changed tremendously, and to that end it's worth revisiting the whole thing. I guess the DCMA was an attempt to do that, but the problem was that it started from the perspective that these copyrights had to be protected, and it's only real goal was to extend the protection of copyrights in the face of the technilogical "adversity" which was increasingly making them irrelavent.
Technology made copyright relevant in the first place, it's sad that lawmakers aren't recognizing that it's increasingly irrelvant.
sigs are a waste of space
No, the bread, fish and wine that Jesus multiplied or created was freely given to him by others. In the Wine Incident(tm), he specifically sought permission first before he changed the water into wine. In the Loaves and Fishes Incident(PatPend), people voluntarily gave him some bread and fish.
I'm guessing that this Open Source Thingy(c) must really be a religion, cause they keep rewriting the Bible.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The GPL would not be necessary without copyright law!
The GPL exists to protect your rights to use, share, and modify software. Without copyright, no one could stop you from using or sharing; and if pay-per-copy were eliminated, there'd be no motive for authors not to share their source code, and as more people understand the necessity of open source for quality, every reason for them to do so.
Your argument for the destruction of copyright is intrinsically immoral. It would mean that the producer of a given piece of software, or of a given song, or of a given book, would NOT own what he has produced, because he would NOT be able to retain control of it (unless he kept it as his personal secret, to the deprivation of the rest of us).
In short, your viewpoint would result in the THEFT of these products from those who created them. So what incentive have they to continue producing? ANSWER: NONE WHATSOEVER.
You may suggest that they can earn money by "supporting" their product. Fine. Let's consider this.
How does a musician "support" his music? How does an author "support" his short stories or books? How does an artist "support" his painting? By "debugging" it?
More importantly, who are you to tell a producer how he may use what he creates? It belongs to him, not you! This is why your argument is intrinsically Marxist: you deny that the producer owns what he creates.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
And that would be a devastating counterargument- if that had been the claim. But it wasn't. From an economic standpoint, the question of losses is not how many people gain unauthorized access to the work but the number of people who substitute unauthorized access for authorized access. IOW, how many people download MP3s instead of buying the CD. The RIAA wants us to believe that they're losing billions of dollars, and they make that claim based on the falacious premise that everyone who downloads MP3s is doing so instead of buying the CD. In fact, most people who download MP3s weren't seriously considering spending their money on the album anyway, and many of the people who were considering buying the album go on to do so (or already have done so) in addition to downloading.
The point is that, functionally, exchanging MP3s using Napster fulfills a role much closer to listening to the radio than it does to buying albums. People want to have a chance to listen to new songs, to listen to a new album before deciding to buy, etc., so they listen to the radio or download MP3s. When they find something they like, they still go out and buy the album. The advantage of MP3s is that you can actually pick what you want to listen to yourself instead of having to hear the same dozen songs being repeated every hour on the big radio stations.
This comment is at least partially valid, but there are two significant caveats. One is that the RIAA does, in fact, act as a cartel. They were recently caught red handed engaging in price fixing and had to promise not to do it again. The few biggest music companies don't completely control the market, but they do exert considerable control in a way that tends to drive prices higher than they would otherwise be.
The other aspect is that copyright law does give artists a monopoly over the sale of their products. I don't object to that, as it is the function of the copyright and serves the purpose of rewarding those artists for their work. Nonetheless, you can see the impact of those monopoly rights by comparing the price of works that are still under copyright to those that are in the public domain. Compare the prices of Bethoven albums to Metallica. Any orchestra can record Bethoven, so there's vigorous competetion and you can get anything from cheap $5 recordings to ones by the best symphonies. But those ones by great symphonies are still generally cheaper than Metallica albums, because Metallica has the right to keep anyone else from recording and selling their music.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
The only artists who benefit from the system are those that sell massive numbers of albums and, through that process, increase their leverage with the record companies and thereby negotiate higher percentages of the gross income. The majority of artists, however, make next to nothing -- from their meager 8 to 10 percent, the company deducts marketing costs, tour bus rental, etc. etc. In spite of the contract, these bands end up depending upon ticket sales at concerts and shows for income.
So, I guess it's no wonder that it's the fat cat artists like Metallica that have weighed in against Napster. I would guess, however, that most of the artists/bands out there would love to do away with the system as it stands. Several bands took a successful end-run around the record companies in the pre-Napster era -- fugazi and ani de franco come to mind -- but with Napster and Gnutella on the fly, the mechanism is finally in place for artists to connect with appreciative fans without the financially cumbersome middleman of the record company sucking up the profits and working the payola. In other words, I think Nap/Gnu will be a good thing for artists as well as the audience -- only the companies stand to lose...
Ah!
I didn't realize there was that much of a difference! I thought the RIAA was a sort of bizzare "record label council" and was, in fact, all the record labels speaking as one. I'll have to do a touch more research.
The main thrust of my post still stands, however.
-------- "All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away" --Spiritualized
What on Earth makes people think that the opinions of a bunch of open source "gurus" has any more validity than the IANAL post of the average /.er? Just because these people have created some software which has become popular with the elite geek crowd, their views on society, the law and everything else is not something that we should be bothered about.
Just because somebody is good at one thing doesn't make them qualified to talk about anything else as if their opinion really mattered to the world. These people may be able to program, but they're not lawyers, they're not politicians and they're just not qualified to share their views on this subject.
This is especially annoying since these are amongst the greatest of the /. "heroes" of open source, and true to form we are bound see /.ers rush in to fill this story with plenty of "I agree with Linus!" posts. When will you zealots learn that just because someone programmed a halfway decent kernel they do not have the answers to all of life's mysteries?
I would have thought that Linus would agree that Napster is not to blame it is the users that are misussing a service.
We all agree that it is wrong to go out and rent a movie tape it off then give copies away. But would we blame blockbuster for it if people were caught doing just that?
Metallica would not bring this lawsuite against it's listeners. The band said as much on its website. Metallica is suing the wrong people. Now that the users that were trading metallica mp3s have been baned I don't see how they still think they have a case. The only people left for metallica to sue are the users and they won't do that because 300,000 people == bad press.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
Here's a smart article on Slate by Rob Walker that might give some posters around here something to think about. In particular, it points out who the Napsteroids might be getting into bed with. Worthy crusades against rip-off music conglomerates do not justify ripping off other people's intellectual or artistic work. Which is why OSS works within the framework of property rights and copyright law, and not outside it.
Greetings Yeah even though mp3z might land in jail it made a "better man out of me" and some brit has my money ... violence and misogynist ... not to dis rap but um but I don't refer to mygirlfriend as a gardening tool ... to each his or her own, but rap is not my cup of tea ... so searched for alternatives Ani DiFranco, RATM, Indgo Girls; great vibe but I wasn't to hot on that style of music. ... great beats and great music ... and it was much more positive IMHO than rap. As it is not marketed for the U.S. I couldn't go to my local record store in the middle of nowhere and find any good trip hop as it is mostly from Europe ... I started downloading mp3z figuring out what I liked and what I didn't like in trip hop (e.g. although tricky is big in trip hop he doesn't top my list) ... so 5 months later have currently own 10 trip hop albums which none of them have ever been on the U.S. top 40 and I have no regrets ... I am now a more informed customer, the RIAA had little control over how I like what I like and I don't have to listen to music which demeans women and promotes violence; as now I know there are many options out there. So no more dre and similar negative rap acts ... hello Lamb and Kruder & Dorfmeister
I agree with the poster... I won't listen to Dre. any more and not because of his involvement with napster but because of my involvement with mp3z.
I used to listen to rap and I never agreed with the message it sent
I found the light; I now suck bandwith
I was browsing one day though shoutcast and live365 and discovered trip hop
Forty years ago the government stepped in and shut down then practice of "payola." Payola involved record labels paying radio stations to broadcast new songs to the public in the hopes of driving up record sales. The record companies were very angry that the government wouldn't let them pay to "serve" their copyrighted material to all radio "desktops."
The record companies want to hook you with free music. The Napster controversy is about who gets to decide on the bait: the major labels or the listeners.
The GPL draws all of its power from the fact that the person who created a work owns strong copyrights to that work. The owner gets to determine how that work is used, and the owner has the right to put the GPL on that work.
If we weaken copyright law, we hurt ourselves.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Now this is getting a little much. Why would I care what Linus has to say about Napster. What does this have to do with Linux? What will be the headline on Tuesday? "Tell us Richard Simmons, what do you think of napster?"
Everyone can try to sugar-coat napster, but the honest truth is that its a tool for piracy. I would venture to guess that at least 95% of Napster users have downloaded a song, really liked it, and did not buy the cd. Not that I have any moral objection to this. "Rock stars" have become just part of the huge corporate machine that is the recording industry in this country. Most of us do not even really think of big recording artists as people, but more of a untouchable fictional character. Its hard to have any sympathy for people that we all imagine are spending their cd profits on coke and skanky big haired groupies.
www.bleepyou.com
I think there are plenty of comments here that adress this whole issue pretty well in all.
Copyrights are not always a bad thing. It enables authors to make a living on what they do. That's good for everyone economically wise. The problem becomes some of the stupid things that come of this. The incompatibilities and security issues that have been created by the old vision of closed-copyrights have caused havoc. GPL and some of the other licenses fix this nicely by keeping credit to the author alive, yet allowing others to learn and get more information for competeing or partner software.
This is yet another economic Good Thing. Competition drives quality up, prices generaly down. Partner or complimentary products drive demand for BOTH products up.
Now Napster itself is a GREAT idea, just limited in control by the mp3 format itself. There is no way to know if a piece has been specifically copyrighted or not.
Napster should do the following, if the SDMI shit gets correct for once (none of this one-song for one-device shit - allow each person an ID and have all the devices he uses to read this ID and link it to the copyright of that song.):
1: If there's a copyright on the file, and the owner has the correct CID (copyright ID) allow it to be shared at a low bitrate or allow the user to not share at all. This prevents direct copying of the songs to try to bypass the copyright, but allows others to preview these works (no longer do you have to worry about the artist or record company providing previews, if someone has the real thing, they can preview it on the Napster).
2: If the user downloads a preview, have ready links for the person to download or otherwise acquire the song through the correct channels, and get the real copyright version to work with his CID.
3: Works that are not copyrighted, ie. Live performances, remixes, unsigned artists that want to get out there fast, generous artists that offer to give away a few songs, can be shared at no bitrate penalty or price penalty. Neither can these works ever be copyrighted by anyone - once it's tagged and out there, it's done.
So one can acquire one of these CopyRight ID's (smartcard I'm thinking) for a fee (nominal type - cover the cost of the card and maybe some make-the-RIAA-happy money, US$15 or so) and the card works for any work in any system that can play the work from any medium, CD, DVD-A, Internet, etc.
Now I think this can make some people happy - I think the RIAA can be happy that advertising doesn't have to be quite as big of a deal for specific albums or songs, just artists. The artists also get to control their precious copyright and get a little money for the ones who appreciate their music. Users can get remixes and demos from unsigned artists for free plus preview whole songs or whole albums for the small quailty penalty.
Frankly this is how I justify using napster - if I like a song I hear somewhere - i go and find other songs from that album, if I like em I go and buy the album if it's available, if not, I am perfectly happy with keeping those not-so-legal mp3's, since I had no chance to get them more-legally.
--onyx--
(feel free to moderate 'offtopic', as this is, well, offtopic)
---
I see "piracy" as about as serious a threat to the fabric of commerce and society as speeding on the road.
---
FYI -
"In 1995, 644,000 people received minor injuries in speeding-related crashes. An additional 77,000 people received moderate injuries, and 42,000 received critical injuries in speeding-related crashes."
Apparently, there were 41,798 fatalities in total in the United States in that year.
Source: http://www.nhtsa.dot.go v/people/ncsa/FactPrev/spdfacts.html
...whether or not this is serious is left as an exercise to the reader.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
You have demolished your own credibility. You don't even know how copyright works, and yet you have the temerity to babble about the credibility of those who hold copyrights on useful software.
For your information, O Ignorant One, no lawyer is required for a published work to be copyrighted. A published work is protected by copyright as soon as it is produced.
More, this lame response of yours fails to address the point I made: that one who holds copyright holder on popular software has far more prima facie credibility in speaking about the importance of copyright than does a slashdotter who doesn't. Of course, they may damage that credibility by how they use it, but your weak criticisms (which amount to nothing more than "I disagree with them, so they have no credibility!" Lame) do nothing but destroy your *own* credibility.
Only an idiot would purposefully saddle themselves with Richard Stallmann's viral piece of communist manifesto. Personally I perfer the BSD license
Then you are not as large a hypocrite as others. Good for you. Nevertheless, to the extent that the BSD license differs from releasing a published work to the public domain, it too depends 100% upon the validity of copyright.
Unless you expect producers to release their products solely and exclusively into the public domain, copyright is essential. And if this is really what you think, then you are a nut who wants to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Have a nice supper, but don't complain about your poverty!
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
More likely what happens is that you download a song by Moby, decide you like it, and buy an album. Tomorrow you go and download something by Dr. Dre and discover you like it so you buy one of his CD's rather than buying that second Moby CD (thinking Moby is "safe" since you already like on of his works). Internet music sampling makes consumers less predictable because they can actually make informed musical decesions. As a result the record companies have to work harder (read produce more albums from a larger array of artists) to keep earning your money. This isn't about piracy or artist freedom to RIAA, it's about keeping the consumer where they can market to them more successfully. Douglas Rushkoff outlined this very well when he wrote "Coercion" (before Napster hit the net). RIAA knows you'll buy more albums, they just can't figure out which ones they'll be.
Ultimatly I think their plan is to nail the 'questionable' MP3 related services (Napster, MP3.com, etc.) till they have established in the public's eye that MP3=illegal. It's obvious they do not like the format, but since they cannot sue a format (I'm sure they looked into it) they will try to hit everything associated with it.
The wierd part will be when they go after "traditional" internet services. I imagine when someone at the RIAA discovers usenet and IRC, they will turn to the government for help regulating the mp3 traffic in these channels, then all hell will break loose.
Prediction: What's sad here is that companies blindly "jumped into" the internet expecting it to play by their rules. When it didn't they raged at the fact that there was no controling authority over it.
So finally, despite our best efforts, there will be control over the internet, perhaps by the UN, or just some international treaty. Sure there will by some renegades and 'black market' ISP's but overall the major providers will comply.
Ironically, it won't even be a good cause that triggers the regulation of the internet (like protecting the children, or the usual tear jerkers), it will be commercial interests and big money.
Finkployd
"Go Metallica, die RIAA"
I couldn't have put it better myself.
--
E_NOSIG
The music industry is a closed market. If I like an artist's music, I am forced to buy it from his contracting company, regardless of the price. This is unlike the software industry, where I have options. The record companies do not have to compete on price. They just have to sit there and squeeze the music lovers dry.
Here's what we can do as music lovers:
Give up listening to commercial music altogether.
Listen only to artists not associated with RIAA and RIAA affiliated recording studios.
Listen only to the music that you already own.
Do not download any commercial music.
Do not listen to any radio station playing commercial music.
Explain your stand to people you meet, online and offine, and discuss these issues.
Personally, I follow all these.
Trade music if you please, but trade the music of new and deserving artists. Artists who share the same beliefs as you; about music, technology, the web and the future that will be.
Wow, you're one of the most ridiculous people I've ever run across:
1) Your philosophy seems to be, "it's OK to pay for an artist's work if they don't sell out, otherwise you're being lazy by going to the store and buying a CD"
2) You ridicule someone not for their musical taste exactly, but because an artist they respect and admire has done a fucking AD?
My god man, take that money you saved on that album you burned and buy a fucking clue.
-------- "All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away" --Spiritualized
OK, yes, RIAA is the Devil Incarnate (TM). Yes, Napster is mostly about stealing music for kids who can't pay the oligopoly prices for CDs (which the FTC just forced to allow lower pricings for). Yes, if I just want one song for a quarter, I'm gonna get it somehow.
But, and this is critical, the point is that an MP3 is mobile. I can pop MP3 songs into my directories for The Sims (which I paid for), recorded from CDs that I paid for, to play in my home as background music. One of the CDs that I ripped has music you can't buy in the US, as the music industry decided that they won't let me buy it. Because Yanks don't buy French techno. And they don't listen to Brazilian electronica.
But they do!
That's why Napster is not bad, it's just not always good. There is music they won't let us hear, music I will get at any cost, and music I am quite willing to pay for. And thanks to sites like mp3.com, I have CDs that I couldn't buy (ok, except for the cool music store in my neighborhood of Fremont, Sonic Boom, located in the Center of the Universe).
Until the music industry gets that paradigm, they will lose.
Will in Seattle
>But would we blame blockbuster for it if people
>were caught doing just that?
Not Blockbuster per se, but...
Our good friends the MPAA DID *try* to destory the entire VCR/Videocassete industry before Blockbuster ever got started and Wayne H. was just another Miami garbageman.
There was a rathar well known case between Sony and the MPAA that went all the way to the supreme court, which basiclly tole the MPAA to stuff it.
The MPAA was claiming that Sony's betamax tapes (and, by extension, everyone else's VHS tapes) were nothing but a tool for piracy and would destroy the movie industry (sound familiar?) and a bunch of other nonsence.
Hmmm, I guess since videotapes were SURE to *destroy* the movie industry, the MPAA that has been persecuting anyone who so much as mentions the word deCSS is just a figment of my imagination, eh?
How ironic that Sony, after taking the VCR to the supreme court, is now in bed with their old enemies and sideing with the RIAA against napster and the MPAA against deCSS.
Those who do not learm from history....
So who's going to take the MP3 format and deCSS to the supreme court so that the RIAA, MPAA, and their stooges like metallica can be told, finally, to stick it?
The ACLU appears to be sitting around doing dick about it. So I guess it's time to cancel my membership with them, and switch over to the EFF, who sure seem to be more on the top of things these days.
john
Imagine all the people...
But goddammit, snippets suck.
Yesterday evening, I'm sitting at my computer. I get an itch to download some Whiskeytown. So I go to CDNOW.com to see if they have a new album. (A great band, BTW -- sort of like a laid back Son Volt -- if that's possible -- but I digress...)
Well, they don't have a *new* album, but I see an album of theirs that I don't own. I scroll down the CDNOW page and see the ubiquitous Real Audio 'snippets.'
And, WTF? only some of the songs on the albums have snippets -- and GODDAMMIT! -- the snippets are 30 seconds long.
I don't mind the reduced sound quality, but for chrissake gimmee samples of all the songs! What, you're playing some tease -- some game?
"Hey, bud, here's a couple snippets. We can't give you all of 'em, but, um, take a snippet from track 1, track 2, and, er, let's skip down to track 6 and 7 -- here take these. See, if we gave you snippets from all the tracks, you'd probably not buy the album, right? So we gotta control the snippets you listen to. Plus, ya know, we got disk space issues to consider. Imagine the fucking chaos that would exist if we snipped snippets from all the songs!"
This alone gets me a little peeved. But -- there's more! The brilliant propellar head that snipped the snippets decided to start the snippets at apparently random intervals of each song. So instead of just -- for the love of GOD! -- starting the 30 seconds at the BEGINNING of the track (What? At the beginning? You're kidding, right?) Zippy the MSCE/Multimedia specialist decided to, oh what the heck, start the snippets 30,40 seconds into the song during a particularly long silent space so it's virutually imposible to get any coherent sense of the song.
Yes, yes, this, my friend, is what snippets are for! Hell, yes, that's what they're for!
Lets reduce to the sound quality so that you hear more hiss than music and -- lets really remind the consumer who's in charge -- let's rotate the points where each snippets begin and give them, say, 27 seconds of crappy, disjointed audio) and -- wait, there's more! -- let's just give the buyer a few tracks -- not even the good tracks! Let's tease! Yes, that'll rope 'em in! The snippet tease!
A suit in the backroom: "Snippets? I dunno. Give these internet scavengers more than a few seconds and they'll find a way to SCREW us!"
Zippy the MSCE Propellar Head: "Hey, wait boss: we thought about that. We'll just do a tease. Tease sells, you know."
"A tease! Ah! I love it! The snippet tease! Yes! Zippy, that's the way to sell albums! Let's tease the listener. It's like local news, right?"
"Right."
"Is the milk your drinking loaded with lead? Find out at 11."
"Ha!"
"Ha! I love it! Tease, tease, tease!"
Is it any freaking wonder people are sick of the RIAA? Everything is a marketing tease. (Heck, see my other posts about Roland Barthes, Death of the Author, and Lars, but I digress...)
Everyone is trying to control everything I do. Why? In the name of art? Hell no.
In the name of profit.
Profit for the art?
Hell no.
Profit IN SPITE OF the art.
Fuck art. Fuck Lars. "But, um, Lars? James?" -- high pitched whisper of a pimply-faced record company exec worrying about buying his next Porsche -- "Could you boys go and make us another one of your albums?"
"Why sure, Mr. Record Company Suit."
"See, because, um, while I don't really understand your metal, um, your art, we here at the record company sure do like the profit that your stuff -- er, your *ART* I mean -- the money that your art makes."
"Why sure, we do to! Right James?"
"Right Lars."
There is two points to be made here, what is legal and what is moral?
Under the (USA) law now, even if you disagree with the laws, even if the laws are completely wrong, it is still the law. What the copyright laws say for *most* Music CDs is that you can not redistrubate any content of the CD without permission. The RIAA, Metallica or anyone that has the right to give permission to redistrubate CD content, did not give anyone permission to post them to a large user base (whatever that user base may be, in this case napaster) in any form.
Legally, the RIAA is right. Under the law it, they own the content that is being posted, and it is being posted without there permission.
This (most "commerical" mp3s) being posted are copyrighted, and who ever owns the copyright can basically do what ever the fuck they want to within the copyright.
Hell Cowboy Neil could sell his music on 8 track tapes and have a copy right "you can only listen to this music under Sony 8 Track tape players and the owner of the 8 track is the ONLY one that can listen to the music, you can't even listen to the music when or where someone else can hear it", sure it is stupid, about as dumb as most copyrights on CDs now, but that is Cowboy Neil's right, just like the right the RIAA or who ever can impose any copyright on their "IP" as they want, as long as it doesn't void any other copyrights or break a law... well pretty much you get the idea.
Legally the RIAA has a strong case, but not against Napster. Listen, if you buy 2 VCRs and use them to bootleg porn, can the porno industry sue sony for "helping" prevents bootleg porn? Hell no. You can walk up to any head shop and buy a one hitter or bong, I mean err uh some smoking device or tobaccoo pipe. These bong as sold as tobaco smoking devices, pretty legal in USA, but who the hell using them for smoking tobaccoo? No one, everyone smokes pot or crack out of them, but they (the head shop) still can sell them, because they aren't implying you use them for illegal purposes (pot and crack are illegal in the US)
The Head shop says "Hey man, these are for uh wooow did you see that, *cough, cough* oh head rush, what where we just talking about? oh yea, these devices are not for illegal purposes, you can only smoke legal substances out of them man, like toboccoo or something. If you get busted it is your own fault dumb ass, you got a lighter?"
The same way napser say "Hey man, do not trade illegal or copyrighted files over this services man or we will ban you ass. Oh you are one of the people that got banned for illegal meticalla mp3s? screw off, this is only for legal purposes only"
I seriously doubt anyone can sue napster over copyright, hell if you can sue any service for having mp3s on it, I could sue AOL, newsgroups, irc servers, web sites, ftp operators and about anything on the Internet. Hell I could uuencode a bunch of mp3's and post them to slashdot or wet_and_greasy_used_porn.com.
If they can sue napaster they could sue about any service on the Internet, and by putting all services on the Internet out of business, guess what NO MORE INTERNET. I doubt this will happen, cause it would really piss of Al Gore (since he created and invented the Intenet with his bare hands), and Al can kick some ass when it comes down to it...
I think the RIAA can and has the right to sue the users that where posting or sharing these files on Napaster, will they? I don't know, but they own the copyright, and if they want to, they could.
Point being, right or not, copyrights exists. Right or not, people that own the copyrights can pretty much get anyway with any dam thing they please under they copyright with their "IP"
So we (open source zealots and slashdot trolls) can do a couple things here. We could continue to break the law, even if it is a stupid law. Find a way to change the laws. Work closly with the RIAA to find a "middle ground" that everyone is somewhat happy with. Troll. Only support artists that release their "IP" under freindly copyrights (check mp3.com). Bitch about it or go view some porn...
I don't know about you, but I am dam hungry, haven't eaten all day, I am going to grab some dinner, what where we talking about?
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Paying per song is ideal. However, how do you figure out cost/song? For example, I listen to alot of progressive rock music: some Yes albums have 3 or 4 songs on an album. Should the cost of one of these songs, which is say 1/3 of the entire album length (say 20 minutes long), be equivalent to a song off a Beatles disc (one of sixteen 2 min 30 sec songs)? Should the cost be based on time, or whatever the recording artist deems appropriate. For example, on some albums there are small intro tracks of 30 seconds or less, maybe of someone talking or whatever. Should there really be a set fee for all songs, where I have to pay the same price for a 30 sec as for a 3 min+ song? I am just curious about how to go about this.
> Even better, where are the genius record companies when you're looking for
/How do we legitimately pay for our MP3s/? I'll chime in myself as one of many who have downloaded MP3s (on my pathetic 56K connection) and then bought the album, at least before I started my boycott of commercially distributed music. However, what if there is only one song on the CD that you want? Many people say "just buy the single", but many, many times, the song that I want is /not/ the RIAA-blessed single.
i stribution. I'd adore the ability to pay for certain songs and have them burned to CD and shipped to me. But it's not there.
/Why/ will you not come up with a way to let me give you my money? Why will you instead sit in the corner with your fingers in your ears screaming piracy?
> a place to _buy_ your MP3's? Nope, I can't find ane MP3's for sale on Metallica's website.
> Well gosh darn, instead of crying, DO SOMETHING!
This is an excellent point, and I think perhaps the crux of the MP3/Napster debate. I don't think that many of us would champion ripping the artists off -- at least, not on such a large scale. But the question is:
I'd love the chance to download MP3s for price-of-single-less-cost-of-physical-media-and-d
My comment to the RIAA would have to be this: I want to give you money. I don't want to be taking directly from the artist.
They'd never answer, of course. It would destroy the case they've built up for themselves, where the eeeevil internet community is stealing from them because we're all greedy bastard 'hackers'.
"And then they have the gall to use the holy word 'copyright' to try and maintain their slipping control," Torvalds says. "That, I consider to be immoral. Go, Metallica. Die, RIAA."
/. poster's comments, is, IMHO, shaky at best.
:-)
And you gotta love Larry Wall..
"Persons of leisurely moral growth often confuse giving with taking."
And (to add in a nice way) people who confuse stealing and sharing have ceased any moral growth whatsoever.
To base the whole thing (connection of Napster and Open Source/Free Software) on a Katz(?) or any other
The ideas cross but they are not exactly parallel.
--
+&x
Wait, didn't the article originally come from the WSJ?
There's tons of free music you can download on Napster. Lots of old music that isn't copyrighted anymore. Lots of live concert recordings that the artists have consented to distribution (even Metallica allows recording and distribution of their music. Not everything on Napster is a copyright violation.
Burris
An analogy is not an argument. Your analogy not only doesn't make your point, and is severely flawed. Of course you don't mind that someone copies your computer, provided that you don't lose income as a result
A better "analogy" would be theft of services. The services may not be tangible ( and it might in some cases be difficult to argue that the service provider actually "lost" anything ) but that doesn't justify stealing them.
Do you have a source for your $5- figure ? Thought not. You are using ficticious data as a foundation for an attack. I find it very hard to believe that most record companies record annual earnings of $5 x the number of CDs they sell. It may not have occured to you, but they do have these things called "operating costs".
in a country where the average yearly income is 40k, how can these suits justify making $5 million from a few months worth of work ?
Why ? Because CEOs usually get paid more. Because the record industry needs to offer competitive salaries to their executives.
didn't Joe construction worker spend so much of his time to build the studio in which the band made it's recording ? how much money went to him ? NONE.. >
This is a flat out lie. Joe was paid a salary, and that salary is directly or otherwise one of the many operating expenseses ( which you seem to have ignored ) of the record company
don't we have a right to know why we're being charged so much for a music cd ?
What does "charged so much" mean ? Why do automoblies "cost so much" ? Why does food "cost so much" ? What does "cost so much" mean ? Many of these companies are publically traded -- the publically traded companies have to release quite a lot of information. You can probably obtain their shareholders report or something similar if you really want to know.
and i've looked in the wrong place..
L:ooking on slashdot for information ? Yeah, you've definitely come to the wrong place.
I'm not an NSA cryptographer, but unless the NSA knows of some magical math, I don't think the NSA is cracking 128 bit RSA keys (for example) in a few hours, no matter how much computer resources they have.
I can factor a 128-bit integer on my TI-89 calculator in just a few minutes. The TI-89 is not a supercomputer by any standard: it uses a 10mhz m68k CPU and has just over 1mB of memory. If you can factor the public key, you can decrypt any messages encrypted using it.
I think you're confusing symmetric cypher key strength with asymmetric key strength. While a key that is 128-bits is considered strong for the latter, it takes roughly ten times that length to be good enough for use with the former.
Unfortunately, the principles of geekhood (which are typically not quite as capitalist) support freedom of information in the form of the GPL, copylefting, etc.
These two things are not compatible. People are forced to choose between two things that are acceptable to varying degrees by different people.
Got Rhinos?
Since when has Open-Source ever been about stealing IP from others?
The thing I've always thought was the best part of the Open-Source mindset, is the fact that it's set up to help you learn, not to give anything to you. As put by some wiseman, "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime". Just because you have the source, does not necessarily mean you can do anything with it unless you're willing to take the time to figure it out.
Pirating MP3s has nothing to do with Open-Source. It's just stealing fish.
That said, I still disagree with Metallica's lawsuit against Napster. It's like trying to sue a hammer manufacturer because some psycho used a sledge to kill one of your family members. You have every reason to be upset, but it's hardly the tool's fault.
Ban Napster and you've laid down the groundwork for the government to shutdown/regulate the entire Internet. It maybe a tool that is primarily being used for evil, doesn't change the fact that it's just a tool.
-Tommy
------
"I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."
"I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
He's right, the system is fundamentally flawed. The existence of the Internet, and digital copying technology in general, destroys the utility of copyright law as it stands.
Some new system needs to evolve. Some guy up above ran an interesting thought experiment to try to determine the price of a song. I'd prefer to go about it from the other direction.
How much should a top artist be paid?
As a means of sort of arriving at a number in a vaguely plausible fashion, try this: A top programmer (who's not the owner of a business with employees besides themselves and their immediate family) can make as much as, say, $200k per year. Lets say an album of 12 songs takes about 3 years to produce. Lets say that music is twice as valuable to society as the program the programmer would produce. And, lets say being a 'top artist' means they're popular. Say, selling above 1 million albums qualifies you as a top artist. And, finally, lets say a band is on average about 5 members.
Working through the numbers on this looks like this:
($400k/yr * 5 members * 0.25yr/song) / (1e6 copies) = 50 cents / song
Hmm, and songs cost about $1.25 apiece on a standard CD. That can't all be production and distribution costs. There's a whole HUGE amount of money going somewhere it shouldn't. Over the net, I would guess that product and distribution costs would add at most 25% to the cost.
The $0.50 result was not a target. Perhaps, subconciously that's what I was doing, but I think the number just fell out. Of course, I don't know how much an artist who sells a million copies makes from the album. I'd be interested to know though. I bet, despite the incredible price, that the artist actually makes a lot less.
As I said, I think the system is broken. I don't know exactly how to fix it, I just know that RIAA needs to die, and for me Napster is a means to that end.
Although, strangely enough, Napster has also induced me (against my better judgement) to buy CDs of interesting artists. :-)
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
IT doesn't even have to do with MP3. MP3 is a trade-off necessitated by where bandwidth is TODAY. Tomorrow, pirates may not even need MP3, they'll be able to download direct audio-format songs over the internet. Unwatermarked, unencrypted, uncompressed.
This started when the music industry switched from Analog to Digital. It was possible, then, but very difficult, the hardware wasn't quite there yet. As the technology improves, this starts to work on a broader scale.
And if they drive these people off the internet, it will be back to modems, telephones, and BBSes. Private networks.
And we can't stop the tidal wave of bad cliches either, because the cat is out of the bag, the genie is out of the bottle, the toothpaste is out of the tube.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
If a song it the writer's intellectual property, why mustn't I pay him to play it myself, say on my piano? Because it's not practical to enforce such a restriction. Our intellectual property conventions have arisen in accordance with technology and circumstances. Once upon a time, printing recordings of music was an expensive undertaking, and thus centralized and easily controlled. Technology dictated ethics: copyright laws were deemed good, at least in part, because they were enforceable.
Now things are different, and intransigent souls, predictably, are demanding that ethics dictate technology. I cannot imagine them winning. What I can imagine them doing is making random people's lives miserable by sporatically attempting to enforce an unenforcable law.
Say Metallica wins their law suit... what does that change? Is there to be an unending string of reverse-class-action lawsuits by every musical group? At least by those groups who can afford to defend their intellectual property...
Or say Napster gets shut down. What about Gnutella and Freenet, not to mention tomorrow's God-knows-what super-sneaky encrypted system? Can they be stopped, short of shutting down the Internet?
I was quite young when I learned an unpleasant fact about property: if you can't enforce your rights, you haven't got any. Now in most matters we depend upon government to protect our property rights, but the same rule applies... if they can't enforce them, you haven't got any. What we need to be considering are practical plans for a sustainable system, not pie-in-the-sky discussions of what's right.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
Do I think that the age of copyright as we know it, as applied to recorded music is going to have to change? yes. Do I hate record companies? Yes.
Do I think that people have a right to share music? Kind of.. but I also think artists themselves have a right to their material.
Let's face something here.
1) Pirating music is *ILLEGAL*. It doesn't take any bending or twisting of the law to make it illegal..it's plain and simple. This fact may change in the future, as technology changes... but right now, the law is very clear. It is ILLEGAL.
2) Two things really bother me here in this lawsuit, and they contradict one another if not seen in the right light. Look at it this way.
a) Firstly, as probably many others feel, I am angry that napster is being prosecuted based on technology. I see it as technology being prosecuted.. because to those of us in-the-know... ftp servers as well as napster. Irc. Everything else.. the net already allows us to transfer data around.. napster is just one way of organizing that data for retrieval. So from a pure technology point of view... well.. law has no place in pure technology!
b) From another point of view though... consider napster again. These people, napster, have tried to get FAMOUS and SUPER POPULAR, and to make MONEY (well.. they are a corporation, no? it must be in the plan somewhere) by starting napster, a tool that they KNEW DAMN WELL would only be popular because it empowered people to PIRATE MUSIC. Please. Spare the tripe about legal music. yes. I agree. TEchnically napster can be used for trading legal music. The fact is.. these poeple tried to become famous (and have succeeded) by helping people break the law. Period. Crappy software. Shitty interface. not really very sophisticated at all...
if I contrast this to gnutella.. the principle is different. Gnutella is not designed specifically to share music.. but it'smore than that. What they were trying to do was create a flexible way to share and search data that would be free of censorship, period. Yes, the undertones are that it is for doing illegal things.. but the principle is different, more noble. Gnutella tried to give people freedom. Napster tries to help people steal music.
Just because you can shoplift doesn't mean everyone should. We're going thru a massive public education program right now and every ip worker needs to try every chance they get to enlighten folks to the rules, risks and punishments.
In fact, the more OSS advocates stand up for copyright protection the better oss projects look - I mean, if someone can rip off a copy of W2K it's way better than any Linux distro - but when you force people to factor in the $799 or whatever price tag per install then Linux et al are clearly the better choice. You either have to pay someone else (Msft) to do all your work, or you can do some work yourself and save a bundle.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It's a story about fighting injustice, and the idea that the good guys
might be the bandits in the forest, and that's better captured by the
`rob from the rich to feed the poor' than it is by your nationalist
take on it.
(Not free as in beer, necessarily, just free)
Got Rhinos?
I think this is a very interesting comparison - these artists are established, and they're using copyright law to their advantage, which it's tough to fault them for. But no one involved in the lawsuit seems to be addressing the question of whether this system of distribution is healthy for artists and music as a *whole*; instead, a few rock stars are complaining that they're getting robbed. Well, yes, they probably are, under current law. But maybe they should take a step back and recognize that the primary beneficiaries of the system they're defending are the RIAA, and NOT the artists. Bearing that in mind, they should maybe think real hard about whether they want to do their part to continue propping up the system.
I'd like to think that Limp Bizkit, Chuck D, and some others are doing it for that reason.
-brennan
He was rich too, what's your point? That Robin Hood should have robbed him as well?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Mike,
I read your article with great interest.
Personally, by applying 128-bit encryption to audio, video, and book text files, it will be just about impossible to break the encryption. People forget that 128-bit encryption is a VERY tough nut to crack--even the National Security Agency, the largest user of supercomputers in the the USA, can only decrypt a single 128-bit "key" at a rate a once every several HOURS. That means that it will take a hugely-massive Beowulf array of Linux workstations working in a single-room LAN to seriously consider breaking 128-bit encryption, and frankly, most of the world's hackers cannot do this quite yet.
I would charge a this rate:
Audio albums: US$4 for full album, and US$0.40 per song.
Video movies: US$6.50 per movie.
Book text files: US$4 per full book text for "hardback" releases, US$2 for "paperback" releases.
With these very low prices--reflected to consider we no longer have to pay for media and packaging costs--the incentive for piracy will drop to near zero.
(As an aside, I'm surprised that someone has not considered taking the DiVX format and converting it to a 128-bit encrypted format as a medium for direct-Internet sales of movies. Given that most movies are around 650 MB in size in DiVX format, anyone with a broadband Internet connection can download the movie pretty quickly.)
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
You see, just as there is a True and a False, Left and a Right, On and an Off;
There is also a Right and a Wrong, and a Legal and Illegal.
It isn't Them against Us, it is Us against Them.
Do you think you have a Right to other people's music? No, you are Wrong!
If they wanted to give it to you, they would---but they don't. They only give to paying customers.
It hurts you not.
That is all I have to say. That is all that needs to be said.
>Before you compare, "stealing" music to
>"stealing" a car, consider the following:
>Can you touch a car? Is a car a physical thing,
>tangible?
>Now, can you say the same for music? What's the
>difference between a $2.50 blank CD from Pick N
>Pay, and a "%Band Name%" CD ? To me, very little.
>They are physically tangible only at one layer:
>the physical, CD layer. The music is just a
>bunch of ridges and gaps.
Quite right. But I'll use computers as a better analogy in this instance.
I would actually be quite pissed if someone were to *STEAL* my computer.
But if anybody out there would like to build their own COPY of my computer, I would be more than happy to provide you with the specs. Hell, I could even give some of the part numbers in addition to brand and models. You could make an exact DUPLICATE, and I wouldn't give a damn. Good luck finding some of the parts tho... there's some OLD stuff lingering in there.
But I would still be quite mad if you were to STEAL it.
john
Imagine all the people...
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Consider that the RIAA loves to market shitty bands to you (the 1 hit wonders). They have one good song on their entire album. They release this song (and no others) to radio stations. People hear it and think "ahha - this band is cool I think I'll buy the album".
:) A "standard" ...And Justice For All song price (9 songs on the album, so let's say $1.50 each). The song "One" might cost you 6 bucks, since it was heavily promoted on the radio and MTV.
Soon they learn how worthless this band really is. But it's too late, the consumer has already spent his $15+ on the album. Which is exactly what the RIAA wants, and exactly why they oppose mp3 trading.
Because of this attitude, the big labels probably won't adopt a pay-per-song system anytime in the near future. However, if they did, it's very likely they would have a "standard" song price for a particular band/album, plus "premium" pricing for popular songs.
For example, take... oh... Metallica
So overall, they could make more money per album, if people bought all the songs. What scares the RIAA is that people will only buy a few songs because most bands they promote these days are utter crap.
Best regards,
SEAL
You know, it's awefully weird to have ZDNet posting something about "moral compunctions" that is obviously slashdot-bait.
/. just like MS. Just like the RIAA.
I don't like the oily feeling I get when I read their articles, knowing that their idea of news is tied directly to their revenue from ad-driven articles aimed for specific audiences. They obviously by now have identified slashdot as one of those target markets, and makes news stories that specifically "bait" everyone here into clicking onto their page.
I think I'd prefer if when news from them came out, if it was _really_ necessary to see the article that someone would post the text here, so I wouldn't have to go to their site. Oh wait, they'd probably sue
Don't be fooled by this non-freind of Open source, and don't be baited into silly anger at their statements...
("slashdot, a site for novice linux enthusiasts")
(WTF? No bearded smug people from VAX days read slashdot anymore? Silly ZDNet!)
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
Analogy fails, quite badly. If you want to create music, and give it away, go for it.
(Geez, talk about messiah complexes ...)
RMS is the only one here who seems to have it straight. The existing system is flawed, and the only way to work it out is to, as Chuck D of Public Enemy put it, "Fight the power! Fight the powers that be!"
If you want to "Fight the power" you should stop listening to RIAA-pimped music altogether. Stop watching MTV. Stop listening to commericial radio stations. Don't buy their crappy CD's. Don't buy magazines with photos of Britney Spears.
Otherwise, you're just as clueless as all the people that complain that Microsoft is a monopoly, while using a pirated copy of MS Office. Using Napster is the moral equivilant to giving the RIAA the finger. They might not like it, but it sure as hell doesn't hurt them. If you're gonna be a tough monkey boy and "Fight the Power", then fight it in a way that hurts them. Hurt their influence and pocketbook -- stop giving them any money at all, either directly through album sales, or indirectly through advertising revenue.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
I was speaking to a friend of mine about this topic and we covered some interesting ground. I don't much listen to music of any kind, let alone pirated MP3's, so I was trying to understand from him exactly to what extent he was really being honest with himself and me about the ethics of copying.
/. referred to an article by Bertrand Meyer in which he argued (fairly cluelessly I thought) that this was only a difference in degree, not in quality. But he failed to reflect that the reverse of the same argument can be used to examine the ethics of charging for physical commodities. Maybe it is only "just" to charge for an apple or a hard drive because they are so expensive to reproduce. If apples materialized out of thin air at the whim of a hungry man, would it still be true that the original breeder of that particular apple variety could ethically charge a price for the long-past labor of creation?
:)
We all have grasped by now that electronic information (from software to music to books, and so on) differs from physical commodities in that the replication price is virtually nil. Yesterday
In the MP3 discussion, my friend commented that he would gladly charge for music if it were valued at something closer to it's "true" value. Leaving aside the confusion of a line of argument that tries to assign some kind of intrinsic value outside of a free marketplace, I asked him what that fair price might be. He said 50 cents per song would be just if that meant he could download the song quickly and hassle-free.
Well, I respect my friend but frankly I thought he was lying. It's easy to say that you would pay 50 cents for something you can currently get for free. I might agree that 50 cents is a reasonable price to get a Camaro delivered to my doorstep if all I had to do otherwise was walk down the street and take the keys out of the glovebox.
So I tried to reverse the situation, to find out what he really thought a song was worth. He thought of a song he liked, and I asked him how much he would require me to pay him in return for a promise that he would never choose to listen to that song again. Of course, he could listen to it if someone else were playing it, or if it happened to be on the radio, but he could never again decide of his own volition to play that tune.
He thought about it for a bit, and then *still* said 50 cents. It may be that the didn't really like the song that much, or it may be that he was still fudging the truth, but I'll take his word for it. You may come to a different answer, and if you do then perhaps you haven't been completely honest with yourself about your motives. It *is* possible to believe you're serving the side of virtue when in fact you're only looking out for your baser desires. I hear it even happens on slashdot
So the next time you assign a value to a commodity that you can get for free, ask how much it would be worth to you to go without it. Think of it as an exercise in self-inspection.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
I think the success of Napster may be in part due to the demand for the MP3 format, for which there are no legal sources outside MP3.com. Encoding their own might beyond your less technically literate Windows user, as used as they are to the point and drool convienence to which Microsoft has accustomed them.
Of course the RIAA and the MPAA would like us to move over to a pay-per-view world where you have to give them money every time you want to listen to a song or watch a movie. To that end they'll need to outlaw every format that might allow for free viewing and free distribution. Napster is not a threat because their copyrights are being violated. Napster is a threat because the distribution model might give people ideas.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I don't pretend to believe that trading MP3s is legal, or should be. But when there are lawsuits against companies like Napster or mp3.com it outrages me. These companies are not breaking the law, they are providing a service that can be used for good or not-good.
It is legal for me (or you) to have mp3s. I have almost every one of the Beatles' songs on mp3, I also own every albulm. I made most of the mp3s myself, but occasionally I didn't have the time to make my own and I set up a program to download a copy. Is that illegal? I still own and paid for the CD. I literally have gigs of mp3s and an entire box of CDs, it's much easier for me to set up a list of songs off of xmms then on my stereo. But if they keep suing compaines that provide a mp3-related service I'm not going to be able to play those files (then what would I do with that 20gig drive?) because there will be no WinAmp or XMMS.
Fine let everybody pretect their copyrights, but I must protect my rights to use this file format!
Devil Ducky
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
If it really bothers you set up an ad-free mirror on some free webspace and post it here. I'd rather go to the rogue site than keep lining ZDnets pockets.
>But what inspiration does a person have to go and
>buy a cd when they could download and burn the cd
>in much less time than they could go to a store
>and buy it?
Actually a couple...
1)
Convinence: I can take a CD with me anywhere. My car (no in-dash MP3 player in my budget yet, but plenty of CD options), the bus, the subway, the beach... pretty much ANYWHERE that I do NOT have a high speed connection to my MP3 archive at home, or to napster.
2)
The big one.
Compared to real CDs, an MP3, or an MP3 converted to red book and burnes to a CDR, SOUNDS LIKE CRAP!!! Even @ 196 conversion, there's still a noticeably lack of quality. Sure, you might not be able to tell the difference on those crappy computer speakers, or on those $2 headphones on your discman... but on a GOOD stereo, with REAL speakers, MP3s sound like CRAP compared to the real thing.
And #2 is the big reason that, while I have a hefty collection of MP3s for convinence and previewing, I also have a huge CD collection. Any MP3 worth keeping is worth buying the CD, partly for the convince of listening to my music at work and school, but especially for the quality. And if it's not good enough to buy the CD, it's not worth listening to, or keeping on my HD when the next cleanup day comes along.
And I can't help but wonder when the RIAA and their stooges like metallica, dr dre, et al. are going to realise 1 and 2.
john
Imagine all the people...
Remember what DB released his Hours cd on the net? Yeah, pretty cool until you saw the price, 17.99. You get no case, no liner notes, no CD, just some data.
Maybe the record companies have learned from it, maybe they haven't. Especially when you consider how inflated the price of a CD is. I'm sure the RIAA is busily trying to find a way to sell MP3s online with an even bigger profit margin than normal CD purchases. A simple how-much-are-you-willing-to-pay vs how-many-are-willing-to-pay equation will decide the new inflated price.
I wasn't trying to aim my post as "pro-Napster", more along the lines of "what RIAA really is concerned about". RIAA promotes ideas that make marketing easier (top forty lists based purely on record sales, not on listener requests) and squashes those that cause them to work (early electronica music sans "stars"). The whole IP and piracy talk is just the spin machine in motion. Do you think law makers would give a damn if they raised the banner of more difficult marketing?
It's still a big game, and the record industry will always be winning, I think.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I think that very few people would argue for piracy. It is generally accepted that copyright holders deserve to receive some financial benefit from the work that they produce. However, that is not the issue that is relevant to the Napster fiasco.
Napster never encourages or acts as an accomplice to music piracy in any form. It is simply an open forum that allows for the distribution of music files, plain and simple. Since none of the files that are exchanged ever reside on Napster's servers, they are in never in possession of pirated music. While some users utilize Napster's network for legitimate MP3 distribution, some abuse it and pirate music. The fact is that Napster, who is merely providing a service that can be used for legal, ethical, activity is being blamed for the abuse of some of its users.
The RIAA should pick a fight with pirates directly, not use Napster as a convenient scapegoat.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
What color is the sky on your planet? As much as Napster tries to blush and flutter its eyelids and say, "Golly! We never intended our service to be used for illegal MP3-trading! We thought there were enough people out there who wanted to trade only legitimate MP3s that it would be worth writing software and forming a corporation!" the idea is just so ridiculous that a judge would have trouble controlling his laughter enough to render a decision.
Their are legitimate uses for napster and people who use the service for legal files. That their are legitimate uses for the service is enough to warrent its continued existance. Maybe you would like to make IRC illegal since it can be used to trade files. Or maybe we should make FTPs illegal because many people use that transfer protocal to trade warez?
By your definition we also need to make it illegal to own a vcr because it is mainly used to make copies of copyrighted content. We also need to throw all the people who sell ciggarette papers in jail because we know that most people use those to smoke pot, not tobacco.
Think about it would you want to own an ISP that had to fear constant lawsuits because of what its users might be doing? Napster is a service, yes it can be used for doing things that are illegal but so can a hammer. Like a hammer napster is just a tool. Blame the people who are misusing it not Napster.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
>How long has Napster been out?
Dunno, exactly.
>How long have people been trading CD-quality
>MP3's via it?
It's never happened. Even at the 196 bitrate (the highest you regularly see on napster) an MP#, or an MP3, converted to AIFF and burned to a CD, will STILL be inferior to CD quality. That, and convinence, is why I have an extensive CD collection backing up my MP3s with high-quality audio.
I can understand the clueless, such as the the RIAA, metallica, dr dre, et al. not getting it, but you, as a slashdotter, should know better. The MP3 format purposely excludes part of the audio from the compression. And no audio compression scheme yet invented, not even the highest bitrate MP3, will decompress to a red book track equal to that from which the MP3 was ripped.
Sure, you might not be able to tell the difference on the crapy speakers hooked up to your computer, or the $2 headphones on your discman. But on a REAL stereo, with GOOD speakers, I GUARANTEE thae there's a difference.
Which is why CD sales are STILL increasing, in spite of napster "destroying" the industry. MP3s are no threat to any band that gets it. It's just too bad that there is such a seious clue shortage at the RIAA.
john
Imagine all the people...
Firstly, walk into any non-bargain-bin CD shop, take a CD case up to the counter, say "Can I listen to this?", and they'll let you, free of charge, perfectly legally.
Secondly, noone is twisting your arm behind your back, forcing you to listen to certain music. If you think the deal is bad, or the risk is too great, the answer is to BOYCOTT the product, not to steal it.
Thirdly, the world does not owe you the fruits of other peoples creativity. If you want free music, download some amateur works from mp3.com, or buy a guitar and make your own. If you think that mp3 is a viable distribution medium, then go around convincing _artists_ of that -- if you achieve this, then the record companies will become irrelevant.
If you want the record companies' music music, however, don't whine about the terms they ask - it's their product. If you didn't consume it, they wouldn't exist. If you consume it without agreeing to their terms, you're a criminal. Pay up or shut up.
Charles Miller
(Having fun being moderated down for the totally unacceptable crime of disagreeing with the slashdot mob mentality...)
--
The more I learn about the Internet, the more amazed I am that it works at all.
Your basic point is correct, of course -- the MPAA does want to control the movie biz. But DVD encryption isn't part of that plan.
MSK
There goes the argument that data/code/music should be free and unfettered by copyright/patent/trademark laws. I mean, Linux is the GOD of this community right ... and even though he protects his trademark (using *linux* in a domain name requires his approval, reference slashdot search) and is in favor of copyrights, the majority fight to keep Napster a float.
... especially when you KNOW the data they are exchanging is protected by copyright, hell you even CATALOG it for easy searches.
... how much cash are YOU willing to part with for that MP3 you just pirated off Napster ... thank you, you just proved my point.
So this means that the zealot thieving masses who feel they are above copyright/trademark/patent law because they are fighting the "good fight" have two options, WAKE UP and smell the rights of content owners or continue to fight for piracy tools such as Napster and discredit yourselves even more.
Sure, peer to peer file sharing is not a crime, but creating an environment to where 95% of your users knowingly break the law is
I see Napster as an arrogant attempt to "challenge the status-quo" in the music industry but unfortunately the "status-quo" they are challenging is long standing copyright law, and they will and deserve to lose.
I support MP3 as a format and an artists right to distribute music they create and own any way they see fit, and for those who wish (or are bound by contractual obligation) to remain part of the juggernaut that is the RIAA, they too deserve the same copyright protections as any other copyrighted material which is published regardless if you agree with how they choose to publish.
Those who fight for Napster are only hurting the cause of "freeing content", and they know it but the ability to get free music that they would otherwise have to pay for clouds their vision and shortens their perspective. And they claim the RIAA are money hungry greed hounds
Yeah, I've heard of representative government. I think it's a good idea. We should give it a shot, one of these days.
I agree with you, many people like to have the actual CDs and a recent research (I guess that this were reported here) with the popular MP3 encoders showed that they are actualy less quality then the CD itself.
I think that if put a few bells and whistle into the CD every one will buy it, even thought they already have it on MP3.
Napster is a good thing(tm) for several reasons, like for instance geting musics before buying a cd or distribute your backyard band to the world.
Well off course pirate music is bad for every one. So is pirated software or books, but how can you stop those? Ban xerox machines? Start using some kind of unique ID in each computer?
The music is entering the hall of the "easy to copy" media, just like books and software already are. Well cheap xerox existed since I can remember needing it, and there are still very rich authors and editors. Software is easy to copy by definition, and there are M$ and other companies that sell software.
The music industry and artists will also survive, there is cash in other places. There are clips that people want to watch. There are beautyful/colorfull booklets that comes with the CDs that dosen't come with the MP3s. And off course there are live shows and concerts.
Soon the movie industry will be in the same place, an they are alredy fearing those days....
--
"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
With the advent of the internet, many of the current media providers have found themselves on the defensive. Newspapers and magazines feel threatened by the web; movies, television, radio, and music distributors are lashing out against filesharing of their content; software companies are complaining about rampant piracy of their products.
This situation is deteriorating with the addition of new legislation and new lawsuits to the scene. The Motion Picture Association of America is suing the makers of DeCSS (a tool that allows DVDs to be read to a file for viewing or copying), the Recording Industry in general seems to be suing Napster, MP3.com, and anyone else that they see using the MP3 music codec, and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act has basically criminalized "fair use" for anything that uses encryption to prevent copying.
The Problem
Most traditional content providers make their money by charging consumers for their products based on the media that they buy. Book publishers sell printed book, newspaper companies sell newspapers, record companies sell CD, tapes, or records. For most of our lives, this has been the only way to do it. If I want the latest Terry Pratchett novel, I have to go to the bookstore and buy it. They even make additional money by releasing hardbacks first, so that the devoted fans will have to pay 2-3 times more than the paperbacks will cost if they want the books in the first few months after release. The internet challenges this entire revenue model by offering an alternative distribution system. Traditional media is based on the sale of the physical medium. Since most types of content can now be digitally encoded as files, the physical medium is not a limiting factor. 100,000 recordings of a song can be copied with no degradation, no media cost, infinitesimal distribution costs, and no additional sales commissions attached. This sounds great, doesn't it? Economics 101 says that demand will always exceed supply, and drive the price up. Well, the supply curve just went through the roof, so shouldn't this mean that the price should go down? The problem is that the sale of items cannot be mandated for copying to take place. Simply put, there is no way to physically make someone pay for items that they have copied from another person. Legal requirements against copying protected materials will be about as enforcable as the 55 mph speed limit has been on metropolitan interstates in the long run. :)
What's At Stake Here
Many computer users may feel that this is fine. "The music will always be free" proclaimed one in a recent article. That very well may be true, but musicians will continue to have to pay rent and buy groceries. Therefore, some method needs to be found to allow them to make money from their efforts.
On the other hand, groups like Metallica and Dr. Dre can only lose by their lawsuits and intimidation tactics. The word "Boycott" may not hold the threat that it once did, but their fans will remember their actions for quite some time. Many people are simply tired of the inflated prices for movies, CDs, software, and other items that are now media-independent, and are taking things into their own hands. They know that they're not stealing, since the "injured" party has not lost anything; they simply haven't gained anything either. The net outcome to the artist is the same as if they had simply not bought the album at all.
While each of these viewpoints are correct, a solution must still be found for each. If prices aren't drastically lowered for media-independent content, many computer users will simply stop buying movies, CDs, and other items they can "pirate" for free. But if revenues diminish for the artists, the content will suffer (as many would argue it already has for television).
Fortunately, there is a solution. I'm not the first person to have thought of it. I doubt that I'm even in the first thousand to have thought of it. I just haven't seen it in print anywhere yet in it's entirety.
The Solution
Lower the price for file-based media content. Drastically.
Yes, I know that this is a blinding flash of the obvious, but it's well overdue. How much does an album really need to cost, once you remove the cost of the media, the shipping, the warehousing, and the retail markup? How much would you earn in additional sales?
The key to defeating piracy is simple. Reduce the price and piracy goes away. Downloading a CD from the internet on a slow connection might take up to two hours, depending on your speed and if you get disconnected from your (often unreliable) source. Software often takes 4-6 hours and movies could take days. This assumes that you can even find what you're looking for, which can be a hit-or-miss process for many items. Even a straight CD-to-CD copy will often take an hour if you have a CD Burner and may not always work.
If companies were to reduce their prices and make their content available for paid download online from high-speed, reliable servers, they would not only stop the vast majority of piracy, but they would increase their own revenues fairly substantially. Copying would still be possible, but the effort required to do so would not be worth it.
The model I think would work best is along the line of "Everything for a buck". Why that amount? Because one dollar represents a psychological cut-off point in most people's minds. It is throw-away cash that can be spent with no guilt. How many people do you think would have paid $1 to download WinAmp? How many would have downloaded the Matrix Soundtrack for $1? I'll bet that it would have amounted to more money than was earned.
I sincerely doubt this would affect the current market for conventional media either. People will continue to buy CDs, DVDs, and books if they have no computer, have no internet connection, or simply don't wish to be chained to their computer to enjoy these items. In fact, people who download these items onto their computers will often buy the media afterwards for the convenience, if they enjoy it that much. In the case of television, this may inject some life back in the media, if broadcast companies would allow download of old shows and episodes (and we mean complete series, not just snippets).
Specifics
CDs - Allow download of complete CDs for $1 ideally ($2 if necessary), or $0.25 per song. Royalty is paid to artist, company pockets the rest. Could also profit from banner ads on download page.
Movies - Allow partial download of movie (first half) for free to get people hooked. Require payment of $1 for download of entire movie. Link to sale of physical DVD or VCR tape. Make money on banner ads.
Television - Allow download of TV shows at $0.25 per 30 mins. This includes shows that are off the air, as well as previous episodes of currently showing series. Include commercials, which can be fast forwarded (but often aren't; people have gotten used to seeing them and often forget when they can fastforward). Make money on banner ads.
Books - Allow download of first half to 3/4 of book for free (many publishers already do this.) Allow text, HTML, or word doc download of entire book for $1. Link to sale of physical book. Make money on banner ads.
Software - Allow download of popular software (games, common apps, OS's, other "must-have" software) for $1. Sell printed manuals separately (this is commonplace). Have easy on-line registration. Make money on banner ads.
Critical to this is the ease of payment. All payment should be through credit card or some equivalent secured online payment. Note that this will make the credit card companies very happy and would make for excellent partnerships with them.
Don't worry about encryption or copy protection. Encryption cannot succeed, since the final product must be decrypted to be used. DVDs could have unbreakable encryption, but all that a viewer needs to do is set up a video camera, point it at the TV screen, and digitize their recording. Same with audio. If you sell your products at a reasonable price, most people will have no problem with paying that price. Some unauthorized copying will still take place; simply point out the ultra-low cost of legitimately purchasing the product to flagrant abusers.
What I have suggested above is one of the better ways to go. I would urge media executives to consider this and implement it. A few final points should be made, however.
If companies continue to try to enforce their inflated prices by lawsuits against companies like Napster, MP3.com, and individual users, they will rapidly find themselves running out of targets without solving the problem. New technologies are being developed specifically to mask the identities of users and decentralize the location of the files. Who will you sue when the program has no controlling company? Who will you finger when the users and file sharing are anonymous and encrypted? How will you block their access if the software can jump ports or sit on port 80 (requiring Web Access to be blocked in order to block the program)?
The business of media content is changing. The dike is leaking and the industry is running out of fingers to plug the holes. The rewards for adapting to this new reality could be enormous; if you lower your prices by 90%, but have sales increase by ten fold, you can come out ahead. But if you don't change, you may find that you don't have a industry anymore.
Mike Dickinson
meridun@templeton.gt.ed.net
Notice: This article may be retransmitted freely, but only in it's entirety and with credit for authorship given.
While you do present some good points, refering to Slashdot readers as dorks also includes yourself, as you are a Slashdot reader. You should not allow your self-esteem to lower itself to that extent.
Consider yoga, kung-fu, suicide or some other form of mental relaxation.
BTW, the market _did_ adjust for the high price of CD's. They're not buying as many CD's anymore. Apparently people trade tunes via Napster now. I guess the Marketing and Engineering geniuses that you refer to as being more apt to knowing about these trends hadn't anticipated this!!
Score: 1-0 for the Slashdot Dorks(tm)
The article suggests that readers may be surprised by Linus/etc's reaction, because of an assumtion that free software is "vaguely socialist".
Since when has socialism meant "stealing is OK"?
--
Well, first off, I apologize if you took my "you"'s to mean you personally. When I say "If you do this", I meant it in the general sense of "If someone does this". I never meant to accuse you of being a pirate. Also, I quote here: "The legality of companies like NetPD to snoop a computer in my house without my permission or a judge-issued warrant". See, you were doing it yourself. Finally, you're jumping into an argument about something that you just admit that you don't use (and your lack of knowledge there backs up that claim).
Now, second off. Who's the ass here? I never resorted to name calling or bashing, yet you feel that you must do that to win the argument. Try winning with facts and for bonus points, don't make them up...
When I invite a police officer into my house for a cup of coffee, or as a friend/neighbor, that's completely different from that officer entering my house on offical business. The courts have already decided that.
Ah, but do you think that if you posted a classified ad in your newspaper for 20 kilos of heroin, that the police would be coming over for coffee? That's exactly what you're (in the general sense in case you didn't catch that) doing when you post the list of songs that you have available for download on Napster's service. You're basically posting an ad for your songs. That's public info there buddy and it's not illegal for someone to use that in the legal system. I can't say whether that info will stand up in court, but it's sufficient proof for Napster to ban those users.
The phone company can monitor my line -- only for the purpose of "quality testing" -- and for no other reason. The courts have decided that as well.
Yes, well there is a little bit of difference between you calling somebody and posting a listing of your songs on-line.
NetPD, 'tallica and the RIAA have done far more damage to the public's right to communicate that the public has done to their revenue stream. It has to stop. Can't argue with that. I think so too, but you're own arguments are about what's legal. Does the public's right to communicate mean that they can communicate illegal info? NO. Therefor, whether what they are doing is good for the public or not, they are doing what they are legally entitled to do.
Your accusion of my criminal behavior, without any facts, proof, or evidence, when I have violated no law, is exactly the point I am trying to make. Thank you for making it for me.
Heh, after you go off calling me a fool and an asshole for "assuming", you assumed that I was accusing you. If you've read this far, you'd realize that I wasn't doing that and I've already apoligized if you mistook this for that.
People are innocent until proven guilty, and that proof must be obtained legally, or at least that was the case until morons like 'tallica, the RIAA, and you spewed their dollars and/or idiocy on an ignorant legislature and judicial system.
Tell you what, let's let someone with a little more intelligence try to make that decision. How about the courts? That's what we pay them for.
Well, I'm sorry that I just wasted my time preaching to a troll. You quote a lot of laws and then try to compare something totally different with them. This isn't a little kids game where you get to try to shove the square block through the round hole with a hammer. I can't argue with the laws you post but I most certainly wonder how you think that this case has anything to do with them. Oh well, you can flame away at me if you want. Just remember, every name you call me just detracts from your message. Calling me names just makes you look childish and says that you don't even think you could win this argument without being abusive. Well, I deal with you people all the time, it doesn't work. But you've already proven that :)
kwsNI
Because, unlike the average /.er, Mr. Torvalds and Mr. Wall have created copyrighted works that are enormously popular.
Are you a GNU zealot? You do realize, don't you, that the GPL depends solely and completely upon the validity of copyright? That without copyright, the GPL is so much toilet paper?
These people may be able to program, but they're not lawyers, they're not politicians and they're just not qualified to share their views on this subject.
And I suppose that you *are* somehow more qualified than they to offer a viewpoint? Has it escaped your notice that any copyright holder has an obvious interest in seeing the copyright protections of all copyrighted works upheld? Today, the RIAA; tomorrow the GPL. You can't have it both ways.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
In my remembrance of the myth, the Sheriff was injust, the Abbot was injust, and Sir Guy was a toady to the injust. The villagers taxed into poverty were the oppressed. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the rich and poor, as those who had any cash (stealable) wealth in that time period were not involved in the dispute (which was between the feudal lords and the peasant serfs)
I utterly reject the Dennis Moore philosophy of making sure everyone has precisely the same number of lupins.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Speaking in terms of simple economics, there was almost no demand for a means to trade legal MP3s back and forth like that. If they were legal, then you could just put them up on a plain and simple webpage or FTP for people to download, with no fear of legal repercussions. Illegal MP3s, on the other hand, had to be hidden behind multitudinous pop-up-window-spawning sites, or IRC 'bots, or other means, to prevent the legal people from finding them, and there was simply no good way to swap them back and forth easily. So, there was plenty of demand for an easier way to trade them. When someone produced a way to supply that demand, naturally everybody hopped on it.
That's a straw man. Unlike Napster, those items have legitimate uses that make up a substantial fraction (e.g., more thanNews Flash. If something is used for illegal purposes 99,999 out of 100,000 times it is used, it is perfectly justifiable to ban it on the strength of that 99,999. The one legitimate user can find other means. (And yes, I admit to making those numbers up. They're conservative estimates, I imagine the actual truth to be at least a couple more powers of ten in my favor.)
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Don't worry about it. Regardless of how much legal action there is or how many laws are passed about it, nothing will stop the current process in which people are rediscovering their freedom to communicate peer-to-peer.
The corporation-centric and government-centric world is dead. The noises and thrashings coming from that quarter are the death throes of dinosaurs, nothing more. They can still kill you with a bite or a swipe of their tails if you're within reach (the moral is, don't be), but their days are numbered.
Short of the net being shut down, this process is unstoppable, and it'll lead wherever technology allows it to go, not where money, power, nor yesterday's perceived notions of right and wrong say it should go. The future is no longer in the hands of men bearing robes or commanding armies, because they won't (apparently) cut off the communications that would put them back in the driving seat. Real power has moved.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
And thus another debate begins.
Look: copyrights are, in principle, good. The fact is, everyone has the right to share his stuff on his own terms, so long as said terms are fair. Copyright is a balancer in that. It defines some things which must be included for the terms to be considered fair (fair use, and expiration after a set time). But it also makes sure those terms are kept. It's used by the GPL to enforce its terms (I'll share this with you, but in return you have to share it too.)
This is why UCITA and DMCA are bad; they allow corporations to set unfair terms (no negative reviews, no reverse-engineering for compatibility, no right to see the terms before agreeing with them, etc.)
However, that's a double-edged sword. Look at the standard terms for a CD. OK, you've bought the CD. You can play it as much as you want. You have the full terms of fair use. You can even play it for your friends, so long as you don't try to make money off of it. You can even lend it to a friend. The only thing you can't do is make a copy of the music and give it to a friend (or give said friend the original and keep the copy for yourself). This seems fair enough; you paid your dues, they should have to pay theirs. Now, the price-fixing the RIAA does is highly unethical, and they need a DoJ slapdown in the worst way because of it, but that's another issue that this post isn't meant to address.
This said, I don't like what Metallica is doing. They certainly have the right to be suing over piracy, but the arguments they are using are extremely hypocritical (saying they're disgusted at the fans "treating their music as a commodity" when that's just what they do themselves). Let's face it, it's all about the money, and they ought to be honest about it. Of course, that'd be terrible PR, but it's still the truth.
As for RIAA, MPAA, etc, they're just plain scared. The Internet and computing technology, particularly as the infrastructure thereof matures, is going to render them obsolete. Right now, software exists that allows a person at home to theoretically make movies with special effects surpassing what many Hollywood films had not even ten years ago. Sound processing software exists for recording music, and CD burners and duplication firms exist to distribute it. With a decent Website and e-commerce software (some of which is Open-Source), I could publish and sell a book without ever going to a major publishing house.
That's why MPAA is so worked up. They aren't afraid of people using DeCSS to decrypt DVD's; they're afraid of people doing the opposite: making their own DVD's. Without going through them. It's why RIAA is so worked up; artists could use MP3 or related formats to distribute their music. Without going through them. In short, they're very quickly becoming obsolete, relics of the past which will die out as technology evolves and "natural" selection drives them out. They had a chance, once: had they embraced the technology early on they could well have enjoyed their dominant position even as smaller companies and individuals came into their own. But this can't happen; they sat on their hands for too long and now it may well be too late.
People have said in defense of piracy that "you can't stop the technology." They're not right to defend piracy with that argument, but the statement is still correct. You can't stop it. All you can do is embrace it. Problem is that RIAA pushed MP3 away for too long, and MPAA is doing the same with similar technologies. It may well no longer embrace back. And that's their fault, not that of the technology. The corporations had their chance. They blew it. And now they're going to reap what they've sown, and it won't taste good. I only pity the innocents who had nothing to do with it, but are going to feel the fallout because a few fatcat execs were too scared to take the plunge.
I personally don't see anything intrinsically wrong with copying stuff. I see "piracy" as about as serious a threat to the fabric of commerce and society as speeding on the road. We have built for ourselves a Star-Trek-style replicator for digital artifacts, and I think it's quite silly to pretend it's wrong to use it.
However, I think Linus et al recognize that respecting duplication/distribution restrictions is the only mechanism by which the GPL survives. The GPL says you can make copies, but only if you do certain things. The music publishers say you can't make copies at all for any reason. This is an extremely childish point of view, and we must work to help them realize this. Nevertheless, until they make a different decision, we must observe their wishes, however strenuously we may disagree with them.
So while I would very much like to see all the spoiled brats at RIAA sealed in a pit of their own filth, I must reluctantly conclude that we need to observe their distribution restrictions. Ethically, we must do this if we realistically expect them to observe the redistribution conditions in the GPL.
(BTW, it's interesting to observe that Open Source works, which derive considerable independent value from your ability to make copies -- in addition to being of generally higher quality -- are generally distributed at no cost; whereas closed-source works, whose value is diminished by prohibitions against copying, costs money.)
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I don't use Napster. I've never used it, in fact. I think the people who say that Napster won't cost the music industry money are kidding themselves. The music industry will lose money if Napster or one of its cousins works. A lot of money.
However, the idea of the music industry losing a lot of money is, in my mind, not necessarily a bad thing.
I just can't help but wonder if the people who use Napster understand that the music industry could be radically changed by their actions. I mean, I've heard that most of the stuff on Napster is crap - Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, etc. If Napster/GNUTella/FreeNet really take off, to the point where Big Music just bites it, it will mean no more Britney, Backcrap, etc, forcing Napster-ers to listen to music that isn't overproduced to the point of being bad.
I can't condone the actions of people who illicitly copy information across Napster. It is illegal. It will hurt those companies. And that's (as Stuart Smalley would say,) okay. I do believe in the free exchange of information, and I can acknowledge that Big Media is against the free exchange of information.
Alright, I seem to have forgotten my point. I guess it's this: I wish people would choose a side other than "Napster doesn't hurt anyone". Either pick "Napster hurts people and I'm okay with that", like I have, or "Napster hurts people and I'm not okay with that".
Choose! CHOOSE!
This sounds good and is a nice principle, but it encounters some problems with reality. The whole RIAA argument is based on bad economics. They are, in essence, claiming that every illegal copy represents lost sales and that they would thus make X billion dollars if all of those people would just stop ripping them off.
But we all know that's a bunch of crap. Most people who are downloading MP3s aren't likely to buy the album at the price that the RIAA wants to charge for it. Many of the people who download the music and decide that they would be willing to pay full price for it do so.
This is actually the classic reason that monopolies are bad for consumers: the price for a good that maximizes profit for the monopoly results in fewer people getting the good than would receive it in a competitive market. Illegal music copying undoes some of the harm to consumers, albeit at cost to the RIAA monopoly.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
I don't understand this.. the artists work countless hours makin their music, then the editors/sound producers work their hours.. a lot of work goes into the publicity.. and a lot of money too.. in the end .. an individual
.. sometimes wrongly.. for not paying me as much as I'd like to get paid.. (health insurance, building maintenance, the company isn't profitable yet... etc etc.).. but what about the RIAA ?? don't we have a right to know why we're being charged so much for a music cd ? if there is
buys a new cd for $16-$18 (go to any CD store in new jersey).. how much profit did the Recording company make from that one sale ? atleast $5..
now imagine selling 1 million of these cds..thats
a $5 million profit. How much money do the artists get from this profit ? I don't know.. but I would wager to say not very much..
How much of this profit goes back into giving the
secretaries,agents their money ? not very much again.. yet the RIAA has everyone thinking that they need these high profits to stay in business or their artists and the execs will die of starvation.. in a country where the average yearly income is 40k, how can these suits justify making $5 million from a few months worth of work ?
Didn't I work 70 hours last week ? just like the artists did ? didn't Joe construction worker spend so much of his time to build the studio in which the band made it's recording ? how much money went to him ? NONE.. How much money did I make for my 70 hours of work ? none compared to these artists..
my point is that for everything I do, my company can justify
a good explanation for these high costs and i've looked in the wrong place.. please direct me..
But you don't get to control which songs you hear snippets from. They'll give you the best off the album. Napster allows you to demo the good and the bad. I don't know how many times I've bought an album b/c the song that got radio play was great, but every other song sucked. They aren't going to stream the sucky songs to you on the web.
You cannot create a service intended primarily for illegal uses and then defend it by claiming that it could be used legally. That won't fly.
Guess what? When the RIAA comes across websites where people have posted MP3s, they inform the ISP under the DMCA to take it down or they will sue. Back before the whole Napster thing, there were articles about how they were starting to use web spiders to try to track these people down.--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I mean, think about it: What here is news? Did something happen somewhere, did some fact that the slashdot population needed to know come up?
NO! ZD was probably just looking through their quote file for Linus Torvalds, and found something off color. They call him to get a juicy quote, and then bounce that on over to the other "OS gurus" to get their reactions. Post em all up, with a headline that's guaranteed to make a slashdot reader twitch, and BAM! You got yourself 500,000 ad impressions, with little-to-no effort. Sure, Linus hedges his statements at the end so that the actual quote isn't really all that inflamatory, but they seperate that part and put it down into the bottom. And what goes at the end of a story? The junk they don't care if you read it or not! They've already downloaded 50 ads to your screen by then...
(sigh)
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
But hey, it's ZDNet, so what do you want? I'll also state my opinion right off that Linus, and Larry are great programmers, not gods. Anyhoo:
...
.mp3s? Radio stations aren't going to play it (particularly if it's not a single), and it's not going to be on MTV. The INDUSTRY doesn't care if you like it or not, so long as you buy it. However, I don't want to buy if I'm not going to like it.
Indeed, those lost sales
And where are the stats on that? the record industry was UP last year. I'd like to see a comparison of downloaded songs versus an individual artist's sales. How many metallica songs were downloaded compared to how many albums were bought? and how do the sales trends measure up against the last 5-10 years?
specifically, music that might otherwise cost $15 a pop
If this were still the case, then it wouldn't be an issue. But mainstream music costs $18-20 per cd these days. Less used, but the band doesn't make any money there either. You'd be best off trying to sue all the used music stores (which I'm afraid isn't far off).
what I DON'T see happening is anyone proposing a solution. How do I hear new music if I can't grab the
my fucking lord, I agree with RMS on this one.
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.