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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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. (Note that today's "free beer" software always has a pay version, which shares a codebase.)
The GPL is a judo-type defense against copyright - it uses the attacker's power against them[*]. Take away the power to attack, and the defense goes away too - but since, by defintion, it's no longer needed, that's okay.
([*]Which isn't strictly true about judo; there are plenty of nasty attacks there. Whipping a choke on someone doesn't really use their power against them. But we'll ignore that for purposes of metaphor.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood