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.
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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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.
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.
> 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.
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+&x
And that really is the heart of the matter.  The piracy argument from the RIAA is really about maintaining control of their distribution channels.  These days I buy all of my CDs used so neither the artist nor the RIAA gets directly compensated.  I would gladly buy direct from the artist (CD or MP3) and pay $10 for a disc.  Until that day comes, I'll just be patient and get my music 6 months after it comes out...
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
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 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.
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 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!