Slashdot Mirror
The MP3 Troubles Continue
We've been choking on submissions about Napster and MP3 so here's a selection of them: Alexander Burke shared this ZDNet Article about how TVT Records (the fine folks who bring you Snoop Dogg) is getting into the let's-sue-Napster game. Borodir wrote in about how Suzanne Vega influenced the mp3 compression format, and Slashdot reader Napster Online told us about the Salon interview with Napster iCEO Hank Barry. Here's an editorial by John Perry Barlow about the whole Napster mess and a finally a ZD UK story about MP3 pirates
going to jail in the future.
First, there are other ways than pay-per-copy for people to get paid for making art, music, literature, and software.
Second, people can, will, and do create stuff without getting paid for it. I've spent hundreds of hours making poetry and music, resulting a total material compensation of one free meal at the sadly defunt Planet X coffehouse (for an Italian sonnet contest I won), a few free beers at the bar where I often play at the open mic, and a grand total of maybe $50 in cash.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
As far as the article about going to jail for downloading MP3s, how can this be shown to be illegal without a search of the downloader's home to prove that they didn't have the CD from which the song came?
On the other hand, this may become the newest excuse to break into people's homes. They got Al Capone with taxes, maybe they'll get people in the future for downloading Mp3s.
Slashdot is old news. To get the real scoop, try GeekFlavor.
i really like things that are free. it would be really nice if more things were free. i would like to get my music for free. however, i would also like to get my car for free. there are simply some things that are/never-will-be free. it is unfortunate, but deal with it! napster is great, but pirating songs is not great. we get upset when people violate the gpl, isn't it understandable that other folks would get upset when people violate their licenses? sure, cd's shouldn't cost as much as they do. stealing cd's is a sure-fire way not to get the price of music to go down! just because we don't like the law doesn't give us license to break it (especially when we depend on it ourselvs (gpl))...
</flamebait>
After all the mess with Napster, mp3s, et alle, its good to see a band doing the Right Thing with mp3s. They Might Be Giants has a very 'geeky' and loyal fan base, but has trouble with record contracts. So, they get together with emusic.com, and say "We want to put out a mp3 only album". It sells wonderfully, even if its only a collection of bsides with a few new songs. A few months later, they add a mailing list, and people subscribe to get the latest TMBG news and here's the kicker: a FREE mp3 from the band with a short story behind that weeks selection. It may be a song from a live show that was particularly memorable, it may be a new song they're fooling around with, doesn't matter, the fans love it. Just last week, TMBG decided to put their upcoming EP on emusic.com. You pay $7.99, and get to download the 7 or so mp3s, and they then mail you the cd! Wow! Does it get any better? You've got fans that aren't mad at you, you get your music out, you make a couple bucks (probably more than you would if you had to deal with a record company), and people are generally happy! Whats so wrong with that?
--
Donald Roeber
Donald Roeber
Generating 2048 Bits of Randomness...
I'll probably get moderated down for this, but...
If the music industry wants to throw the book at someone who makes copyrighted, commercially available recordings available for anonymous download, they have every right. Especially if the artists themselves are sick of having their recordings ripped off on a massive scale.
There is a difference between lending a CD to a friend and making it available to millions of strangers.
Sooner or later the RIAA or an artist will subpoena ISP logs, and some l33t mp3 p1mp will end up as Bubba's new bitch. And he'll have nothing to blame but his own stupidity for thinking that his IP address is sufficiently untraceable to commit a crime.
Popular artists Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Antonio Vivaldi have also filed claims against Napster. Said Mozart: "It is thieves and pirates like these Napster people that drove me to my death, while I was so young. I want my own back!" Bach notes that "(C)lassical music is only dead because people don't buy it. They would, but Napster lets them have it free."
In a related piece, Russian artist Stravinsky is hoping to use Napster to jump start his popularity in the U.S., which has declined somewhat since the advent of radio.
I. Thou shalt have no other MP3 Search Engines before Me
/kill a Napster user unless you are Metallica
II. Thou shoult not make unto Napster any incomplete MP3s
III. Thou shalt not take the name of the lord, Napster, in vain
IV. Remember to use Napster every day to keep it holy
V. Honor Napster's Father, IRC, and its Mother, Fraunhoffer
VI. Thou shalt not
VII. Thou shalt not try to pick up horny thirteen year old girls on Napster
VIII. Thou shalt download MP3s that you do not have the CD of
IIX. Thau shalt not lie to Metallica just to have your account re-activiated
IX. Thou shalt not covet thy Neighbors DSL connection
X. Nor their MP3 Files, or any other 'property' of thiers
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Somehow, after all these months of legal fighting over MP3s, I'm getting the feeling that it's already too late to stop the flood. We are seeing more and more lawsuits filed against sites like mp3.com and, at the same time, we are seeing more and more people trading the mp3s over the net. Don't beleive me? Just log on any IRC network and do a channel search on "MP3". Their average user load increases at about 5 a day, and when the channels get too crowded, another one forms.
My point? Net users (especially young people, who don't have a lot of money to spare) have been accustomed to having free music. Sure, most still pay for cds, etc. Don't we all? I'll be the first to admit that downloading mp3s can lead to buy cds, as it happened to me, and not only once. But the fact is that very few of us are paying for more than 50% of their music.
Don't hide your hand in the sands there, I know some of you will avoid any kind of piracy, but you just can't fail to see that it's not the case of the majority. I think that artists will simply have to adapt, probably by selling their tunes directly to the customer over the net at a very reasonable price, say, US $50 cents, so that a lot more will be willing to support their favorite groups. It's certainly sad news for the record industry. However, I think they will have to drop cd production to go back to what is their primary goal, after all : publicity for new artists. I'm sure they will be able to find a profit on the net, as everyone will eventually have to. It's the dawn of a new economic model, in which providers of products and services will have a more "direct" access to their customers than they had previously.
The net will make it easier for everyone with a genial idea to profit from it. Because here it will matter less what you will hear about a product from publicity, but more what you hear your friends saying in chat rooms, forums, etc. It will finally allow customers to decide for themselves what's a good idea and what's not. Innovations, (true ones, not the kind claimed by Microsoft) will come with less resistance and will have a better chance to impose. Truly, a new kind of economics.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
Anyone know who's representing TVT?
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Eventually we will be able to make digital cameras that are equivalent to eyes in terms of size and viewing range and all the technical aspects. Then we make microphones small enough to fit in the ear. Then we will have digital storage to record everything we see and hear. Combine this with a wireless link and the entire world can share.
What will copyrights mean then?
You read a book, you are scanning a book, once you read a book anyone can read a book.
You see a movie you record your exact vision and exact sound. Then everyone can see the movie through your eyes and ears.
You hear a music, everyone hears music.
Once technology progresses enough to replicate our actual organs' capabilities, there will be no use for copyright. You will be able to replay experiences exactly as you experience them. Others will be able to replay those same experiences.
We are not there yet, but OCR will progress until we can reliably scan books just by photographing or reading them.
Minidisc and mp3 recorders will get smaller and smaller.
Digital camcorders will shrink.
We will probably not achieve perfection of the replication or sights and sounds, but at what level of quality will it not matter. The audio-philes will still be upset, the video-philes will never be pleased, but most of humanity will be able to share everything they experience at a sufficently advanced level of quality.
What then? There is no copyright, unless you ban all recording of anything. This might be possible, but is it ethical to assume that something you can see and hear you can't record? Why? You are already experiencing it, are you not allowed to have memories? Or is it only ethical to have bad memories.
What about hearing aids, or vision aids for people will impared sight? Are those illegal. Can they be modified to record?
What does this mean now. Can I carry a digital camcorder around everywhere I go, watching movies, visiting concerts, probably not. Why not?
We must start thinking about what happens when technology changes all our old assumptions. This is merely the beginning.
Sure it does, if the law is unfair. It's called civil disobedience.
Unfortunately, I don't think this law is unfair. However, should a law infringe on our basic natural rights, then it is not just our right to disobey it, it is our duty as well. At least accoring to Thoreau, who has inspired some really great people in history. But the next time something like DeCSS happens and you want a historical context for spreading the source around, remember Thoreau's essay.
Disclaimer: No, you really don't have a right to break any law you disagree with.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Try this search and tell me that doesn't make an impact.
Follow your own links. I see a couple of hundred names on the most populated sites - and fewer than ten names on most links.
The search returned about 280 pages. The Fermis out to maybe ten thousand names, if you're *EXTREMELY* optimistic.
Contrast that to the vast number of albums sold. Looking considerably less significant, isn't it?
Of course, the industry has a few words about the impact on sales as well.
Looks like a typical fluff piece written by a third-party journalist. What of it?
Now, about those figures... look here, here and since some fans even feel they are directly harming metallica they've setup a site to pay lars back.
Your first link states that CD sales are declining near universities. By 7 percent.
What fraction of the population goes to university? Relatively small.
What fraction of the population buys CDs? Relatively large.
You become Enlightened.
Or, take the geographic approach. Assume that 5% of all stores selling CDs are near a university. They've had sales drop by 7%. This gives you a whopping 0.35% sales hit. Not looking terribly significant.
Your second link seems to be another third-party journalist article advertising "GoodNoise". There is a link included to an RIAA statement providing "evidence", but this link is dead. This article, lacking a critical component, supports neither of our cases.
Your third link, to the "pay Lars" site, lists a grand total of $399.00 raised at the time of my viewing (during the writing of this message).
If the number of people on this site is supposed to be representative of the number of people boycotting, then the boycott is in a sorry state indeed.
Let's take the more plausible approach, and say that the ratio of payLars-ers to boycotters is equal to the ratio of boycotters to CD buyers. This boosts the number of assumed boycotters very substantially.
It's still not enough. To make the numbers easier, let's assume that Metallica makes the piddlingly small sum of $4 million on sales. Using the ratios above, this gives an estimate of the number of CD buyers per boycotter as being sqrt($4m / $400), or 100. Again, the boycotters are at at most a 1% level.
Try this again with Metallica's real income. Or better yet, stick to counting boycotters themselves so that you have a real number.
Summary: Your figures serve only to underscore how few boycotters there are, compared to the CD-buying masses.
I eagerly await your rebuttal.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.