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The Death Of Intellectual Property
sheath writes: "The National Post
has an article on the possible death of intellectual property as a result of trends on the net. They quote William Gibson as saying, 'This may be the end of a 90-year window when it was possible to make money off recorded music.' Interesting piece from a mainstream (in Canada, anyway) source."
Absolutely. Copyrights, for example, are intangible, but are considered property.
Copyrighted material, on the other hand, is not property, never has been, and never could be outside of an Orwellian world where up is down and black is white.
The Jefferson quote (boy, that's a good one) is an excellent refutation of your outrageous claim. If that's not enough, please check out some of my posts from Friday and Saturday, as they're pretty lengthy and I have no desire to retype them again and again and again.
Remember above all else, ideas aren't like property; an infinite number of people can have them at once. If I 'took' your opinion and also claimed that ideas were property, this doesn't keep you from holding the same opinion.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I think that such a democratic form of patronage will work better than the "pay-per-copy" model that dominates music, or the corporate sponsorship model that dominates web sites.
I'm calling this a "sponsorpool", for lack of a better name, and I'm going to be working on it over the summer. (I'm quitting my "day job" to work on some side projects for at least a few months.) For the prototype, I'm using PayPal to handle payments. (I'm faking the web interface with Curl.) If anyone's interested in more info, drop me a line and I'll update you when I've got something worth sharing.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
If you can justify the $5 million per year Liberace was making or the multi-million dollar pile of cash Micheal Jackson has made I might change my mind.
Easy.
People voluntarily paid this money in exchange for something they thought was worth at least that much. Or, I take it, you know better uses for other people's money -- right?
Besides, what do you mean by "justify"? Do you mean that there is some accounting-ledger-in-the-sky thingy into which one can look to find out exactly what one deserves?
"Er... you deserve $113.45, a dented '79 Oldsmobile and a kick in the ass. Now git!"
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Wagner was considered quite a cult superstar in his day, and some people traveled all over Europe to hear his stuff performed.
I think the rise of the celebrity to the masses can probably be mapped to coincide with the rise of the middle class... a large group of people with enough money and leasure time to obsess over their favorite performer.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Actually, that might not be a bad business model for writers. The simple fact is there is hardly any money to be made by novelists. Most authors do it more or less as a hobby and have a day job as well. An author typically only recieves pennies for each copy of a novel sold.
The weathly writers such as Stephen King and Tom Clancy (and to some extent, William Gibson) made the vast majority of their money through a different application of IP -- selling the movie rights to the novels. Having the novels free but retaining the movie rights would probably work just as well if not better than the current system
Justification: Liberace and Micheal Jackson both did something people wanted, therefore the people paid them money to do it.
This money didn't just magically appear out of thin air and drop into their laps. People gave it to them (through various methods). Just like you pay a plumber or a electrician to do work for you the same goes for entertainers. They are doing work for you so you pay them to do it. If you don't like them then you either don't pay them to begin with (references) or you don't pay them to do it again (poor work) or you even get your money back (really bad work).
Bottom line, there are too many lawyers trained in Intellectual Property law for IP to disappear. It would take the concerted will of government to overturn or ignore IP law, and the bottom line is there's just too much lobbyist money for that to ever happen.
Gibson is underestimating the degree to which MP3's have been allowed to prosper, so as to force the hands of the courts, the houses, the lobbyists, and the competitors. He should know just how devious corporate behavior can be; the back story to most of his multinational conglomerates would probably look like the TimeWarnerAOL agglomerations of today at this point in his timeline.
I'd say more, but I've got some work to take care of. More later, hopefully.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Musicians might have to go back to making money via performance, teaching, and patronage by the wealthy! Oh no! That system would never produce any good music, would it?
you cannot quote someone anymore, due to the lack of intellectual property, and the "ownership" of the written or spoken word, the quote symbol (") will no longer be allowed. Only loose references to someone who might have *used* that phrase or *borrowed" those diary entries from a famous historical figure can be used.
Besides, I just patented "the use of punctuation marks to indicate a direct quote"; feel free to use double quote marks (or any other punctuation mark), just be prepaired to pay a royalty to me...
Just think if the lending library did not yet exist; if the only way to read books was to go and buy them.
Now suppose that Benjamin Franklin was alive today and just now proposed the idea that large buildings be constructed with taxpayer dollars and more of those tax dollars be used to purchase books and magazines (copyrighted material) so that the public can come anytime and read these materials freely.
The print publishers would FLY INTO A RAGE and call Franklin every dirty name they could think of from "thief" to "crook" to, yes, even "pirate" who is "opposed to people profitting from their hard work" and "taking the food out of baby's mouths bacause writers won't be able to support their families anymore", and how all publications and writing will end because there's no money in it anymore.
Of course, today, Franklin would have proposed that libraries included software, video, and audio, and indeed, all copyrighted works. Today, many public libraries today do lend VHS and CDs. And it wasn't just for the purpose of education and betterment of the public. Most books were an entertainment medium in the 18th century as much as movies are today. So don't isolate Franklin's idea as having only altruistic motives.
Who would say that closing all libraries would be a GOOD idea? Very few I'll wager. Why should it be any different when it comes to CDs/movies/software than it is with books/mags?
And oh yes, despite the existance of libraries, (gasp!) people still make money and can even (choke!) earn a living as writers and publishers. Well imagine that. Free access to copyrighted books and magazines didn't kill the industry after all. In fact, it expanded it. Just like VHS rentals home video sales resulted in Hollywood making more money today from home video sales than it ever did or ever will from theatrical ticket sales (despite the Great VCR lawsuit against Sony's Betamax).
Ever rent a movie, video game, book, or magazine. Then you too are as much a pirate and thief as you label others to be. Libraries even install photocopy machines at taxpayer expense. What's all that about? I see no harm here.
Personally, I don't see this as ever really stifling IP. But if it does, the free-market has a natural counter for it. People will simply stop producing ideas. No one (read much less people) will enter a field where the prospects of earning a decent living are substantially lower than in other fields.
Eventually, the shortage of new ideas will add value to the ones that are there, and mechanisms will come in place to protect IP again. Even open source programmers need to eat. Intellectual Property is the basis for innovation, and whatever it takes, society will keep innovation coming. The market will demand it.
Of course I use Microsoft. Setting up a stable unix network is no challenge
Can someone define "Intellectual Property" for me? I've always been a bit shaky on the definition.
___
A requirement of creativity is that it contributes
to change. Creativity keeps the creator alive.
___
I'm an exhibit on the mounted animal nature trail.
He doesn't. He either 1) Pays a fee. 2) Uses IP that his label owns. or 3) Settles the lawsuit afterwards.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
*very* few musicians ever reach the amount of income you're talking about.
Are you telling me that if I sell 20 Million albums, I shouldn't make any money from that?!
I'm sure the pile o' cash Jackson had was from advances; IIRC, his last couple albums pretty much tanked.
We could hold the same argument for actors: is Tom Cruise 'worth' US$20 Million a picture? His acting is OK, but if his movies bring in a lot of cash at the box office, based on his 'Star Power', then the money paid is 'worth' it, right?
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
AFAIK, stealing a riff or a few chords is unlikely to put you in court. BTW, IMO, there's a difference between performing another artists work and simply copying it. IMO, the former should be allowed if you don't claim it as your own work -- because re-interpreting is defensible as a creative act. So is plagiarising a riff. However, electronic copying certainly is not.
BTW, scatterbrain wrote a whole song consisting of plagiarised riffs. Frank Zappa also stole other people's riffs ( largely for satirical purposes )
In other words, if I write a song, and it is recorded, I no longer have control over the spread of said song, and my song must stand on it's own value.
It's a nit-pick, but I think that statement mischaracterizes Jefferson's words. Jefferson was saying that there is no natural property right inherent to the creation of work.
What the post omits is Jefferson's statement that there is an artificial property right created by men. Jefferson even seems resigned to the concept as an inheritence from British law. That he considers the right artificial does not automatically mean the right has no merit. Again, it's inclusion in the text of the Constitution implies the framers thought it was a good idea.
Where the original post is dead-on is in pointing out that this is the same debate we face today.
Now to pick on myself -- it was poor word choice for me to characterize the Bill of Rights as an affirmation rather than an enumeration. The Ninth Amendment actually refers to, "The enumeration of rights...." The whole text of the Ninth, however, makes it clear that the framers believed there were more natural rights than could possibly be enumerated.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Mozart died broke.
Actually, no. Check out The Pauper Myth
A brief excerpt: Mozart was never poor. He and his wife moved in an expensive set in an expensive city. The loans that he asked from Puchberg in 1788 were so that he could maintain his standard of living, certainly not so that he could keep starvation at bay.
This whole argument over IP law and technological revolution really has me in stitches. Only 190 years ago, big business was hanging Scottish Luddite protestors whose complaint was that the advent of a new technology (the weaving loom) was making their traditional life style redundant. That sort of makes the internet and big bandwidth the 'loom' of our generation.
Isn't it great that this time we are putting the run on the big buisiness.
They're controlling what people want? How? Mind waves? Sure, they'd be thrilled if I would pony up money for the Backstreet Boys, N'Sync, or Brittany Spears... but I'm not. If you don't like the music being offered, don't buy it.
Yes, the corporations are using advertising and such to push them but that doesn't mean that you have to buy the product. I've seen ads for tuna fish with cute talking fish and such. I haven't rushed out and bought it though (I hate tuna).
I've said it once and I'll say it again. No one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to buy something. You can even say that the saturation of the advertising is forcing people to buy it or want it but then you're just making a argument for a weak willed person who can't say no or make up their own minds just because it's thrust in their face on a regular basis.
To sum up: People do what they want for their own self interest. They buy music because they want to (for whatever reason).
And as a side thought why not try and make a go of a different mode of distrubition or just a new tack on the old model. Invest in some good recording equipment and a rack of CD burners and make the music you think people will like. Distribute it over the internet, go to concerts and sell it, talk to local record stores and get them to carry it, charge people a few cents a song to listen to it online or download it off your servers etc. If you have a good product then you will be rewarded for your efforts. Try and put into practice the alternate methods of distrubtion that you read about all the time. See if it really works. Be prepared for some of them to fail. You never know. One of them might work out unbelievably well and make you rich. You never know. In the end people will remember you for what you did not what you said.
You're right, they put approximately $20M into advertising; someone called the BWP an "ultimate experiment in mass marketing." Moreover, the $35,000 figure which everyone seems to know was obviously a part of this marketing campaign.
:)
Even though marketing types are constant subjects of laughs in software industry, don't underestimate them - some are VERY good at what they do - remember the BWP every time you say something like "marketing people are dumb."
... which, however, doesn't disqualify the statement "I hate marketing people"
>>Producing CDs costs them pennies yet the CD
>>prices have stayed at $14-18 for the past few
>>years.
>This is, simply put, a load of cr*p.
Well, it would take about $3-4K worth of consumer grade hardware & software (the most expensive part being the special printer to duplicate the artwork on the CD itself).
You'd buy the raw materials (blank CD-Rs, jewel cases, glossy paper for the liner notes, etc) in bulk.
Once everything was scanned in and set up properly, I'd be able to duplicate a copy, that the average joe couldn't easily tell from an original, every fifteen minutes at a cost of a $1 per.
Bump my equipment budget up to $10K and I could do about 20/hour still at a cost of $1 per.
And that's with CONSUMER equipment you can find advretised all over Computer Shopper, Macworld, or the like.
The record companies have CD fab machinery that cost millions, and can spit out thousands of CDs an hour. Plus, they buy the raw materials in much greater bulk than is possible for me.
I don't find it implausable AT ALL that the RIAA minions could produce CDs cheaper than myself by AT LEAST a factor of ten.
john
Imagine all the people...
Consider a practical function of record execs. They filter out the lesser talent and promote the greater talent.
Or one could say that they filter out the less marketable and promote the more marketable.
Yes, but ask yourself this question. Which one of these are you more proud to say:
1) Well, I work the register at McDonalds for a living.
2) Well, I program computers for a living.
Money isn't everything, but it would be nice to keep more after taxes.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Mainstream (In canada?) what do you mean by that?
Gibson is by no means a 'mainstream' celebrity in Canada.. at least, no more than he is in the rest of north america....
"While frightening to some, this new reality will not destroy all creation of wealth through inventiveness or artistry. People, including this techno-pirate who downloaded the film, will still go out to the theatre. People will still buy newspapers. They will still listen to commercial radio and television and still pay for CDs." People will not necessarily pay for CDs. People will go to the theatre for film, but for concerts-- some concerts are truly performances, whereas some concerts are impossible (industrial music is often better listened to studio-mixed than with some guy on a stage trying to do it in front of a crowd). Fewer and fewer people are buying newspapers, as news reported online is more up-to-the-minute and often more complex in its detail. These things will remain, of course but the difference is this: they will no longer be the source of major profits. Newspapers will have a harder time making the big buck. Artists and musicians will not be able to make their money in the same ways and the same quantities as they do now.
Do something about world hunger. Click here
The death of intellectual property? Please, don't make me laugh. I haven't read the article but I doubt it's saying anything worth the time it'd take me to read it.
The net is not going to really change anything fundamental long-term, it'll just change the arena that it's done in and the tools that'll be used. At the moment the net is just going through a transitional phase where people, companies and governments are still trying to determine what it is and what should be done about or with it. Sooner or later, and it'll probably be sooner, the way the net will integrate into people's lives will become apparent and it'll be business as usual.
All the current rampant law-breaking and theivery is serving to do is get the net regulated faster than it would have been anyway. And it's giving both corporations and governments a great excuse for flexing their muscles in the international, rather than national, arenas. Instead of being able to pass laws in their own jurisdictions, the net is giving countries like the US an opportunity to push it's laws, and hence itself, into other countries. Truly, a globalists dream - the American hegemony extending itself into every country in the world.
No, intellectual property won't die thanks to the net. Unfortunately, I doubt the same could be said about freedom.
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
Which brings an interesting idea indeed. If I'm at a gig and somone asks me for a light from my cigarette I've never known anyone even TRY to impose the restriction that I can't use that cigarette to then light another in turn. Perhaps if we make second-line relighting illegal and allow people (me!) to charge for First Generation lighting up we could build up a whole industry, protect it by laws, and this industry could then fund political sellouts to keep these laws for them! We'd make MILLIONS for the country.
It's genius I tell you, I'm off to meet with my local MP and bribe^h^h^h^h^h^h convince him to get such a law passed immediately. I'll be in control of ALL the cigarette lighting in this country before anyone even knows what's going on. Bahahahaha.
Don't forget, Pirate Lighting up is KILLING cigarretes, phone the Federation Against Cigarette Light Theft today!
The obscenity of how rich you can become twanging a guitar or tweaking a computer to make sound may well come to it's deserved end.
.oO0Oo.
I work in the music industry and the distribution of wealth within it is a constant source of irk.
If you can justify the $5 million per year Liberace was making or the multi-million dollar pile of cash Micheal Jackson has made I might change my mind.
The global market certainly makes it great to hit big and I don't doubt the hard work that goes into the music business but it is greatly overvalued due to the costs of reproduction and the size of the market.
They will die with a shout not a whimper but die they shall.
Hopefully the cult of celebrity will start to die with it but we've got a long way to go.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
As much as I disagree with how both the American and international IP systems are organized, I can understand how artists might like to maintain some control over their works. I mean, look at how great works of art and music have been used to peddle all sorts of junk on TV. Or how protest songs of the 60's are used to promote happiness-through-consumption now. I'd hate to create something only to have it used a few years later to sell breakfast cereal.
I disagree a little with your interpretation of Jefferson's words.
What he is really saying is that the protection of ideas is a recent social creation. Ideas are not "naturally" anyone's property. He is questioning the need for such an artificial protection, but stops short of actually condemning it.
Remember that the writers of the Constitution were very concerned with the idea of natural rights. Natural rights are inherently part of being a human being. They are not "granted" -- you get them just for being born. Jefferson is saying he believes what we know today as IP is not a natural right.
The Bill of Rights reflects this philosophy. It is an AFFIRMATION of rights, not an ENUMERATION of rights.
The Consitution DOES provide for IP protection in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 -- "To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." Had Jefferson and the other Constitutional framers been opposed to these artificial restrictions, this clause would certainly not exist. This is NOT a contradiction, Jefferson is merely expressing his reservations in this letter.
Nevertheless, he clearly believes it to be an artificial right. The U.S. would do well to review its IP law in this light. Perhaps we are concentrating too much on "securing... exclusive rights" and not enough on promoting "the progress of science and useful arts."
The concept of IP protection may not be fundamentally broken. It may just need some tuning.
(Side note -- a Jefferson quote did not spark a Second Amendment debate on Slashdot? What are the odds?)
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
The Blair Witch Project is only an example of how a relatively cheap to create movie made lots of money because lots of money was put into its advertising. Based on the inundation of commercials for the BWP I am sure that much more than a mere $35,000 dollars were put into the advertising.
In the day of the Internet the adage still holds true:
It takes $$$$$$ to make $$$$$$$$$$!!
"A sample size of one is really just statistical masturbation."
For a recent, interesting handling of IP issues, see http://www.nap.edu/books/0309064996/html/ .
Look at music as an example.
Hypothetically speaking..
if music piracy (for free, not for-profit) bankrupts the music industry as it is now.. and artists can no longer make money off recording albums... then certainly, many artists will not make music anymore, and many new ones will choose different professions, as there will be no chance for them to make money. And then, society will be without the music it wants.. so what will happen?
Simply... *something* will work itself out so those who want (demand) can get what they want (supply) from those who can produce the goods. IN other words.....
is the music industry as it is doomed? Certainly.
Is it the end of music? Not on your life.
I was actually disappointed by the article because it doesn't look forward. If IP law is stuck in the 1800s, how did people become billionaires in the twentieth century? And, based on this past history, who's to say that new forms of separating people from their money won't be found by the recording industry greedheads?
I wouldn't be surprised to see Napster and every other site offering entertainment content get so wrapped up in litigation that their great-grandchildren are indentured workers. I can see sites avoiding any possibility of being wrapped up in this controversy resulting in MP3 dying except for personal use on personally owned CDs.
Personally, I would like to see the levelling of the playing field that the article mentions - I think it would be a real change in society and one for the better, but I wouldn't count on it.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Since someone else posted the ideas of Thomas Jefferson, I thought that some people might find the views of John Stuart Mill, the author of On Liberty, interesting. In the following quote, he is mostly concerned with patents, but considers copyright to be analogous in that it is a monopoly that is granted by the state.
From Principles of Political Economy, book V, chapter 10:
If you're in the US, that's not really true. $6- per hour is about 12K if you're full time, and the tax would be next to nothing ( less than 1K). The marginal tax rate at 12K is still low , and probably doesn't jump much by 30K. You should be taking home about double the money you earned at MacDs.
But a CD-R copy of a CD is virtually identical, and a MP3 copy of a CD is good enough for most people.
Some of it is a bit far-fetched, but the idea is certainly interesting. The most important part of the editorial is that it explains the reason copyright was put together in the first place. The major reason that copyrights were created is so that there would be more music for the people to enjoy. The fact that this allows artists and corporations to profit from it is only a side effect.
--
But both the CD-R and the .MP3 are a pain in the ass to get, one because the download time is huge unless you're on a T1, and the other because finding the files is tricky (all I ever find is dead links, and after an hour I give up. Obviously I'm doing something wrong, or I don't know the right places to go, but still...).
Anyway, I'd pay for the convenience of getting the real thing. But I wouldn't pay the unreasonable amounts companies are asking now ($3.99 for one song?).
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
No. Re-read what Jefferson said:
This means society may give you the right to sell your song, and have people to buy your song (and thus have you profit from it) as an encouragement to you to write more songs. Of course people do not have to buy your song--but society may give you the exclusive right to profit: that is, society may give you the right to force other people not to sell your song, or otherwise distribute that song in a manner which prevents you from profiting from it. That is, Jefferson is describing the state of affairs that we currently "enjoy" today.
However, it would be arrogant of me to assume that anything is owed me.
No. What Jefferson is saying is that "rights" are things that arise out of a social compact: that your "inherent" right to possessions such as owning land or owning your clothes, or your right to profit exclusively from ideas you create (such as writings, music, inventions, etc) doesn't exist. "Rights" as such arise because we as a society agree to give eachother certain rights, such as the right to property (through enforcement of laws preventing theft) or rights to "intellectual property" (through enforcement of laws that prevent IP piracy). Other rights arise similarly: your right to life, for example, is only as good as our society's acknowledgement of laws against murder.
Just because these rights are man-made and not God-given or inherent to nature doesn't mean you're arrogant in thinking that you should enjoy them--any more than you should feel arrogant in thinking that you have the right not to have some mad-man come over to your place with a baseball bat and turn your skull into red-colored tapioca pudding.
How can I charge a price for something that no longer costs me anything? And how do I determine a price to charge another man for something that holds no value to him until it is given to him, especially when it may be of no value?
A thing has no value if it costs nothing, either in time, space, or material goods to reproduce. Unfortunately, even ideas take some time, and if they are recorded, take space and material goods to reproduce. Further, any idea of merit probably took a master artist a non-trivial amount of time to create. Perhaps some artists feel the reward of creation is it's own payment--but most people live in the real world, and the time it took them to create their idea was time they don't have to spend to make money to put food on their table or a roof over their head.
I'm always fascinated when people quote our Founding Fathers in order to justify things like erasing IP laws. Not only for the obvious reason that these people lived in a different time with different values--in a world where slavery was acceptable to many, where women were considered not to have an immortal soul and thus were no more spiritually valuable than a small dog, and in a world where only the landed arristocracy were given the vote.
But also because our Founding Fathers had completely different ideas about what should--and should not--be included with our Federal Government. And it wasn't until around the early 1800's when the actual shape and form of our Federal Government was really established--it took almost a couple of generations for people to "get it right", so to speak. (I'm refering to a number of Supreme Court decisions which were used to "fine tune" the accepted interpretation of the Constitution.)
While it is instructive to quote Jefferson, we're talking about a generation of people who were still trying to figure out if the Federal Government should be exclusively responsible for issuing currency, for heaven's sake! If they were still debating the idea of a central currency system (which wasn't even brought into being in it's current form until the early part of this century), then what makes you think their ideas about intellectual property rights would be any better formulated?
The point that I believe Jefferson is trying to make is that the value of Intelectual Property cannot be quantified in the same way as Physical Property is.
If I give my house to another person, I can no longer occupy that house, therefore it is within my rights to demand a payment, of the house's value to me.
When I write a song, and give it to another person, I stand to lose absolutely nothing. The song is still with me, except that now that person has the song also. Therefore it is only fair that I demand payment, of the song's value to them, and unfortunately, only they are able to say what that value is. More unfortunately, they themselves cannot determine the value of that song to themselves, without recieving it first.
That may sound a bit unfair, but consider the what road the alternative leads to.
The reason that the Major Labels (in the case of music) have been able to profit for so long despite these facts, is because of the lack of technology, that did not allow copies to be inexpensively made, of decent quality. But with new technologies emerging constantly, one can assume that one day, you will be able to record everything that one hears, as perfectly as it was heard the first time. What then?
Do you really want to allow Government (I'm sure that not only would they desire the job, but several individuals would scream for it to be done) to screen everything that you hear, to determine whether or not you have the right to hear it, or should be billed for it? And if you refuse to pay, will they be allowed to erase it? And do you really trust anyone other than yourself to determine what you can legitimately remember and what you can't?
I for one don't.
-Tommy
"I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
nitpickin'...just this part....
Of course people do not have to buy your song--but society may give you the exclusive right to profit: that is, society may give you the right to force other people not to sell your song,
up to here, I'm all for your statement, but this part...
or otherwise distribute that song in a manner which prevents you from profiting from it.
..is where I think you are off. (if I am interpreting your tone correctly) I don't think sharing or trading prevents the ability to profit. If you are granted exclusive permission to profit from something, how does a larger exposure and use of that something prevent your ability to profit from it? Especially if that something is a thing of beauty made to be appreciated.
--
+&x
In a letter to Isaac McPherson, on August 13th, 1813, Thomas Jefferson writes:
...
It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until wecopied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
...
In other words, if I write a song, and it is recorded, I no longer have control over the spread of said song, and my song must stand on it's own value. If people like my song, and they like it a lot, then those people have the choice to make payment to me, not necessarily for the song itself, but as an encouragement to produce more songs.
However, it would be arrogant of me to assume that anything is owed me. How can I charge a price for something that no longer costs me anything? And how do I determine a price to charge another man for something that holds no value to him until it is given to him, especially when it may be of no value?
This stands as well in the concept of Patents on Ideas vs. Inventions (The implementation of Ideas), which was the original subject of this letter.
That we are revisiting problems that existed 200 years ago, is proof that the man who holds no value in history is doomed to repeat it.
-Tommy
"I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
Hmmm. So movies and music will be free in the future, countering recent history. Great.
But why just music? Doesn't the net simplify the distribution of all (artistic) media?
I've been holding out paying twenty-odd dollars for Gibson's latest novel, "All Tomorrow's Parties." (I'm a poor grad student, you see.) Perhaps I'll see if ol' Bill's latest and greatest is available out there gratis. Perhaps that'll wipe the smirk off his face.
With all this debate on whether weakening of IP is a Good Thing(TM), whether recordable music becoming free is a Good Thing(TM), whether musicans should perform their works for a living is a Good Thing(TM), I wonder why there isn't more discussion of what this means to software development. After all, most of us on slashdot work with software on one level or another
IMHO, the end of recordable music is as an extreme future as the end of commerical, mass-marketed software. I just don't see piracy killing off CDs; just as I don't see piracy killing off commerical software. But it seems that a good number of people (include Mr. Gibson) thinks that recordable music is becoming non-profitable. What keeps software from going that route? The software industry accounts for lost sales from piracy in prices it sets, and (more importantly), it actively goes after large piracy rings whenever possible. Seems okay to me; seems okay to a lot of people on slashdot; why isn't it okay for the music industry to do the same?
That point aside, what would happen if it became no longer profitable to sell commerical software? It seems to me few people (outside of the FSF) would argue that *all* software companies should start giving away software for free and start building custom software on a customer by customer basis. (I don't know what the FSF's stance on custom software systems are. I assume they're more concerned with mass-marketed software.) However, it seems a good number of people would like to see musicans stop selling mass-marketed recordings and stick to live preformances to eek out a living. I don't think neither the computer software industry nor the music industry would last long under these conditions; the cost vs. profit ratio is too high for custom products to support these mammount industries.
As a programmer, would I care if I worked on a commerical product or a custom one? No. As a musican, would I care if I made money through selling recordings of my music or playing live? No. (I would die of shock that someone would pay me to play for them and not to stop playing.) As someone would wants a career in computer programming, would I care that the number of jobs in the industry shrank because commerical software become unprofitable to make? Absolutely. And I bet musicans feel the same way about their industry. There's only so much code one can write and so many people able to pay for whole systems, and there's only so music one can play and venues that will pay to hear them.
George Lee
Myself and people I know are actually discovering different music and media online instead of what the mainstream spoonfeeds us. And we're willing to get our free sample and then go out and order the CD or movie. Their concerns seem to be primarily is that they can't figure out how to put us back in their marketing scheme.
What we are seeing right now could just be a global tape trading community. Surely there is a way to treat it as such without treading on too many legal toes. Either that or we're all just going to hell with everyone who has ever videotaped B5.:)
The article's title is misleading, what the author is really trying to discuss is the 'death' of the music and movie industries.
From what I read, they are saying that since many pirated CD's and movies are now available on the internet that this ease of transference will drop all moral barriers to the collection of 'stolen' property. This is the same argument that the movie industry made when the VCR came out.
I personally don't feel this is true, pirated software has *always* been readily available to well-informed computer users, but somehow, software manufacturers still manage to make healthy profits. This new medium will change the way 'recordable media' is distributed, paid for, and the end profiter. But it will not eliminate 'intellectual property' rights. Pirates have always existed in the music industry since tape decks came out, and the music industry is still there.
Why? Because if you can't make money at it, few people will do it.
It does - how did you know that? :)
Aim for the center of mass. Keep shooting until all movement ceases.
As someone who has fired more than just a few rounds through an AK, I prefer aiming a little lower - somewhere around the knees. Then you can rely on the recoil to take the next few rounds up and into the body.
Sheesh, in Africa we have these discussions all the time :)
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
Sometimes this can work. If you are curious about a profession that demonstrates exactly what happens when technology passes you up, look at the history of typesetting. Try here for some detail on this.
I don't think this is a concern for most artists. After all, they sell singles on CD...
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
I'm assuming the 90 years Gibson is referring to is the time between the beginning widespread use of the phonograph and the current day. (There were things like player pianos and music boxes for at many years before the phonograph, but they were expensive and/or limited.) So, really his 90 year window begins with the start of recorded music, and he's only saying that it's not going to be possible to make money off music soon.
.MP3 out on the web (_I_ can't seem to find anything!), people will just use the easy way and pay the cost (1$ a song sounds good). After all, the distribution costs will still be very small compared to shipping out CDs that in many cases will never sell.
I still find this dubious. It's quite easy to duplicate a book these days, but hardly anyone does it. It's easier to buy the book, because you get a nicer copy of the book than a photocopy provides you, and it's not prohibitively expensive.
What I'm hoping will happen is that the various companies will realise that if they provide a legal outlet that's cheap and easier to use than finding the
Of course, I still want the files in an open format I can keep and use on multiple devies, instead of some nasty limited proprietary format.
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
On the other hand, works created by those in it for the money is typically inferior to those created by people in it because of a love of the art.
No, the explosion of the Bee Gees and Britany Spears has been because of strong IP law. It has also been a hinderance to certain types of artistic progress.
Classical composers used to write variations on each others work all the time. It was considered a very valuable learning tool. Beethoven and Dvorak both stole the "Ode to Joy" melody note-for-note from the public domain. Yet if I were to quote a Beatles refrain in a pop song of my own, I would face a lawsuit.
IP law is not all that good for artists or for art. It is very good for people and companies who re-sell artistic works, because it creates an artificial shortage of creative beauty.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The article talks a lot about actors, musicians, cultural icons becoming rich as a 20th century phenomenon, and it is completely right. This century, there has been this great boom of expectations to become rich by being an icon. Never before in history have people associated fast cars or the easy life with such people. In fact, I think we're foolish to make these people rich. Look at the salaries of movie stars, baseball players, rock musicians. They are all very high. You pay $11 to go see a mvie (at least where I live) which will gross in the hundreds of millions, but only cost in the tens of millions to make... if you think about it, they could spread the weath, and reduce the cost of your ticket.
Now what's been the point of that little rant? Not much, other than to say that most industries are lagging behind the times, especially cultural ones. In these times of the net, we expect things to be very cheap, if not free. These cultural icons have got to figure out how to get on the 'net to stay alive. Now, they might take a bit of a pay hit, but if that bothers them, well they can relax with the thought that I'm a starving student, while they make millions.
Now if industries don't figure out how to get online, they're going to go the way of the dodo. Darwinism is still applicable to modern society, just on a smaller time span. If you don't evolve, you're extinct.
Another problem we have in our society is the laws. Governements just can't seem to keep up with the 'net either. This is a problem because now we need to do a rewrite of entire sections of our lawbooks. Why? It's the same problem that we've had for years with software piracy: the laws aren't equipped to deal with the 'net.
Take the Sherman Act for example. It was barely able to deal with M$, and that's not even over yet. At least they had a tangible product. Can it deal with the next monopoly that's totally online? Can our other laws deal well with net problems such as hacking, fraud, etc? No. They can't. And this is going to be a serious problem in the next ten years as more and more of our world becomes hi-tech, and the rest doesn't.
This is the one and only train leaving for the high-tech world. You had better get on.
"Free beer tends to lead to free speech"
Sorry, I was not trying to belittle the time and effort that many creative musicians put into making there music, I was just trying to keep the discussion simple. However, my views are still the same.
As a studio musician, I know something of the costs it takes to produce an album, with or without any kind of backing. Cost of renting studio time (which for an album runs anywhere from $1000 to over a $1 million for a decent studio and enough time to record and work), instruments (which are damn pricey), audio equipment (musicians have their favorite mics, cables, adapters, effects pedals) and not to mention the media such as ADAT which is used at the studio to capture the music.
Do I have an explicit right to make money off of my investment and effort? No.
Do I have a right to prevent others from stealing my creation and profiting off of my investment and effort? Yes.
Yes, you do, unfortunately the simple fact is that the only reliable method that you have to do this, is to not release it at all. It may not seem right, it may not even be right (altough I think that further down the line, we as a society will see that the free sharing of information is best for society as a whole), but it is a fact.
The government has nothing to do with this issue - bringing it up is nothing but a red herring.
A little extreme? Maybe, but not quite a red herring. I was just trying to point out that government involvement on a VERY detailed level, is the only way to enforce your copyrights. And it is the level of this involvement that is detrimental to us all.
IP copyright issues are disturbingly similar to patents - if anyone can simply use and enjoy my work without any form of mandatory reinbursement that I can set, then my incentive for creating work is destroyed.
There was a time, long ago, when there were no copyright laws. Strangely though, we have some incredibly beutiful music, and famous musicians from those time periods. Bards like Shakespere, Classical Composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Rachmoninav, and because they were good they were hired by the rich to perfom and occasionally commisioned to compose new music for a living. Strangely enough, I do not believe that their motives were of a monetarial nature, and although their works were used and even "stolen" by other performers, they were not driven to living on the streets, because they were able to demand a higher price for their performances, being the original artists.
Musicians are caught between a rock and greed with internet distribution - on mp3.com, for instance, how many thousands of bands exist that haven't made more than $5 for every band that makes a decent living?
How many of them are good is more the question. How many of the bands on mp3.com deserve $5? And who decides whether they do or not?
The alternative to that is to become popular (which in 99% of cases takes a recording label's marketing power) and then watch as millions of people simply make a "loaned" copy from a friend and "forget" to pay for the music. And if you're popular without a nice, fat contract for recording and touring, then God help you, because until you do there really isn't any other source of income when free copies of your material is all over Napster and Gnutella except for local gigs (which pay for meals, and that's about it).
This is the part that you will probably disagree with, regardless of what I say, but I hope you will at least consider my words, harsh as they may be. Although it may not agree with you, popular music is popular for a reason. Yes, the Major Labels do play a part in that popularity, but for the most part, their popularity is based on the fact that they are good. Take the Major Labels out of the picture, and you will lose what Bias is left.
The voluntary "pay for download and support" system is completely bunk. Two reasons:
Think about how many times a day you listen to music and think, "Wow, this really touched me, I think I'll go look up the artist and give them financial support!" Heh. Just thinking about basic human nature makes me laugh at that thought.
The other reason? Why pay for something when you can get it for free? Let's take the example of mIRC, a program that's used by millions and has the same voluntary pay-for-support deal. For all the people that have downloaded it, the number of people that have actually paid is a tiny percentage. It's not like mIRC isn't a useful program - it's just basic human nature again. And unlike programmers, who could use mIRC to land a nice cushy corporate job, musicians are pretty much SOL in the "other jobs" department. They write and play music, and, well, uh, they write and play music. And do a lot of waiting tables on the side.
As far as people paying for the music because they like the artist, maybe the problem is more that there is no decent accepted method to pay those artist. $20 is too much, and of that very little is getting to the artist. If the cost is reasonable, people will pay it. Let's take WinAMP as an example (I realize it's not music, but that there are no good musical examples is part of the point I am making). WinAMP was distibuted as Freeware origianlly. Eventually, they began distributing it as Shareware, but fully functional. People had absolutely nothing to gain frm registering WinAMP. Nothing. I know this because I registered my copy, back when it was around version 2.04, and I got nothing for doing so, nor did I expect too, I just didn't want to see development of a product I liked cease to exist. A lot of other people did the same. Did the gang from Nullsoft go out of business or get driven to the streets? No. They're still pushing out software, and still distributing it freely, and still getting paid. BTW, if Mirc is doing so bad, why are there new releases of that still coming out as well?
Online distribution is not the end of the music industry as we know it - it is the end of the music profession as we know it. We're going to end up with 10-20 superpopular, hypermarketed acts that really have nothing to do with creative talent, and then there's going to be a sharp dropoff to the thousands of garage bands with the talent who don't have the capital to produce a great album, don't ever make the scene, and don't make a dime. The price of commercialization.
The price of commercialization is what we're paying now, and the 10-20 superpop bands you describe are the ones in heavy rotation on your radio now. With the dawn of free music, what you're more likely going to see, is an increase in the quality of music, and bands or individuals that rival the quality of classical music long gone, with modern sounds. No doubt bands like this exist now, and have conflicting morals with the likes of the Major Labels, and as such the Labels have no use for them. Instead, with the Labels out of the way, music will be come more spread by use of the internet, more popular by word of mouth, and musicians well paid for performances by the origianl artist, and commisioned to write music for what ever purposes. It will return to the way it was, but better.
But that's just my opinion.
-Tommy
"I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
I would, in fact, have to pay the sheet music publisher. And I am happy to pay for artistic effort. What sticks in everyone's craw is paying for the PR, the marketing, the coke up the A&R girl's nose, the law suits, etc etc. My point was that if we were paying .$ instead of $$$ then there would be a lot less incentive to pirate. It is not a conceptual argument anymore - it is happening, just as the printing press made the circulation of writing much cheaper and broader.
Put the blame on meme
I think this is the article you asked my opinion on? If not, here is my opinion anyhow. Take it with a grain of salt, and let me apologize for the length of this post in advance.
I agree, except on the software part. Books, magazines, music, movie etc help people learn (besides entertain), and apply the ideas they learn as they like, without charges. I think of most software as a tool. I don't expect to be able to borrow it out of the library and keep a copy forever, the same way I don't expect to borrow a bulldozer and keep it forever.
The perception of Software as a tool is one that the Software Industry has been pushing for a very long time now. The truth is Knowledge in general is a tool. Software is just a different method of recording a set of instructions. The computer interpretting those instructions is the tool.
An odd example: If I wrote a flowchart to show the way that _I_ made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (I did this once as a kid!), and attempted to sue all the kids in the world who told their parents they wanted theirs made the same way(with potato chips in them!), everyone would agree that I was nuts. What if I had actually thought of this first (I admit I pirated the idea from the little girl next to me), and had actually patented it? You'd still think I was nuts, and anyone who wanted to put potato chips on their PB&J would continue to do so anyway.
Ok, fine, I lost that lawsuit. I'm gonna go sue the Producers of the movie that popularized my idea without giving me my royalties, and the authors of the 1000 or so cookbooks, that rudely took my flowchart and made recipes out of it.
Still think it's absurd? Yeah, because it is.
Even if I legitimately thought of the idea first.
Even if I was legitimately the first to do it.
Even if I had spent 100 hours of my own time, and bought 500 loaves of bread and 50 jars of PB&J, most people would think I was nuts to demand payment of them, just because they built their sandwiches the same way.
You could use similar logic to argue against letting people borrow books, magazines, etc, but I think there's a difference. Software, like MS Word doesn't help you learn. You don't really need MS Word. There's nothing you can do with MS Word that you can basically do without it.
But there is still a way to profit off of it, without directly selling it. If you (as a company) spend time to develop a product, then nobody is going to know that product better than you, and generally they are going to come to you for training and support for that product. Additionally, when that product doesn't do exactly what they want, but damn close, they're going to pay you money to figure out how to make that product do what they want. They may even pay you money to teach them how to make that product do what they want. Example: OpenNMS.
Another possibility is that you develop software that absolutely kick ass, everybody loves it, and you give it away for free, under a fully functional, but request (not demand) payment, "If you want to see it get better, send me money so I can keep making it". See WinAMP.
Or best of all, do it because it's what you love to do, and because you believe it should be done, and because you want to contribute to the world you live in. Package it with cool and unique but cheap stuff (Stickers), sell T-Shirts, and give recognition to the individuals or companies that support your efforts. I bought a copy of OpenBSD just to have a CD with a Pufferfish on it.
Books contain ideas that you can't expect to get on your own. I'm at a loss to explain it better. One way to look at is that books impart knowledge, and software and equipment are facilitators.
As I said computers are the tool, software just the instructions to make them work. If anybody should be funding software development, it's the computer manufacturers who are selling you a tool, and making you buy the manual from someone else.
It did actually used to be this way, I might add, before M$. Apple computers came with Apple's OSs on them(and still do). Mainframes with Unix. IBMs with IBM-DOS. However, once people started buying M$ to replace the installed OSs, the computer manufacturers eventually began selling computers without OSs. Do you think they removed the cost associated with the development of the software?
With those books, you can obtain the knowledge to build the software and equipment you think you need.
We as a society should be supporting the growth of that society, not reinventing the wheel, if it has already been done, the knowledge that you need to do it again should be freely available, I think that software falls into the category of this Knowledge. Building equipment, a physical undertaking is different.
Also, I think software in libraries is a good idea if the idea is for trial use, use the software until you return it. Pay for it afterwards.
Why pay for it afterwards? You haven't cost anybody any money by not paying for it. Instead, pay a company to better it, something they may not be able to do without the necessary funding.
Open Source is nice, but there's a lot of other nice software we wouldn't have because it takes too much time and skill to produce for free.
Free is relative. If computer manufacturers or corporations were paying to have it developed to begin with (for the purposes of their own profits), then it would already be paid for.
Copy machines in libraries is a good point though, and has significance to the software industry. Even though you can copy an entire book in the library, people still buy books. Though, sometimes it is just as expensive to photocopy a book, not to mention it's time consuming.
Indeed, I would buy a copy of an Operating System from the company that created it, if that cost was fair, and they were only profitting minorly from the cost of distribution.
Lasty, I should mention I'm a bit of a hypocrite because I use some pirated software. Almost all the software I use often (once a month or more), I buy, if it's not free that is. I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but, for instance, I don't want to pay $100+ bucks for MS Word, when I use it rarely to view and lightly edit a Word file someone sent me in an email. Also, I have no stolen software that I would buy to use if I wasn't able to steal it.
Excactly the point of this whole diatribe. Software is not priced fairly. Value is a relative thing, and one thing may have many different values to many different people. Perhaps if the software industry were to open it's eyes and see this, and build a more morally correct business model, then we wouldn't have the problems that we face now.
-Tommy
"I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
I absolutely agree with you about limiting the terms of copyright. I good starting number would be 50 years or 25 years after the death of the author, whichever comes first.
Copyright law (at least pre-DMCA) already allows you to reverse engineer. Most of these anti-RE licenses you find are not based on copyright law, but on contract law.
As for your utilitarian view, I can't agree with it because although it sounds very objective, it isn't. It still boils down to a very subjective opinion of what the public good is.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Given that, if we got the economics fairy to wave a magic wand and make intellectual property and the associated income go *poof*, we'd find ourselves crippled economically.
Do we really want to go back to the old assumption that you have to own a factory to have any money?
And, before anyone starts complaining that "those rock stars don't need all that money," (or film stars, or Bill Gates, etc.), write down your salary on a piece of paper. Now imagine someone working at McDonald's finding out that you make that much (and some of you do!). I'm willing to bet that they think that you don't need all that money.
Don't get comfortable thinking that you have the right to decide who gets to make money, because the same thing can happen to you.
The Consitution says that is the purpose, but it doesn't say that is the means with which to implement them.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Nobody has said it yet, but this article comes close.
The Music industry has made billions because we have allowed them to. We were willing to pay $15 for a CD, not even knowing if we liked the music therein, because there was no other option.
The RIAA can't put this cat back in the bag. More and more people know that there is an alternative. I suggest that even if they could control the all of the potential current and future electronic pirating technologies (which they won't), an educated populace who *knows* that there's another way will no longer pay $15 for that CD.
The music is ours, and the Music Industry control has been at our approval all along, in the absense of any other acceptable media.
'Course, it might take a few years.
:-)
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
For an example of this, look at the site that certain members of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers' Association are putting together, the Storytellers' Bowl. The idea is that pre-completed works will be published serially, each new installment coming out free for all to read, download, copy, pass around on Gnutella, etc. as soon as would-be readers have kicked in enough money. They'll be using the PayPal person-to-person payment system for contributions. It's being discussed now on an SFFnet newsgroup.
I personally think this is a keen idea, and I'm all afire to support it, especially since it's likely to result in more stuff from the Deed of Paksenarrion universe by Elizabeth Moon.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Whatever the law says it is, that's what. Concepts of intellectual property, based in patent and copyright law have been applied to music (and film) since it became recordable. Because of recordable music, a musician could be heard by millions, not thousands, and hence make more money, even though each listener may be paying less. This seems all good... People pay less for music, and musicians make more. HOWEVER, what happened was that each musician had to get his recorded music to the listeners; record companies were established to fill the void, and exerted control over the distribution channel. The "way" to make money for a musician now is to convince a record company to distribute you... This record company, incendentally, has an agenda which may not include you, no matter how good you are. The entire system, however, rests on the concept that it takes large capital to distribute the music; the internet removes the capital expenditure from music distribution AND... The Record Company is irrelevant. Unfortunately, they may be irrelevant, but they're still funded. And they have help. Musicians who are successful in the current system, (That's You Lars), have interest in maintaining it, don't think that they represent musicians at large. Most musicians are just trying to pay the bills, knowing they have almost no chance of being picked up by a big label. BTW, they do it anyway.
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
You would have a good point if making music, or any other creatively inspired work, were as easy as you make it sound. To quote:
When I write a song, and give it to another person, I stand to lose absolutely nothing. The song is still with me, except that now that person has the song also.
As a studio musician, I know something of the costs it takes to produce an album, with or without any kind of backing. Cost of renting studio time (which for an album runs anywhere from $1000 to over a $1 million for a decent studio and enough time to record and work), instruments (which are damn pricey), audio equipment (musicians have their favorite mics, cables, adapters, effects pedals) and not to mention the media such as ADAT which is used at the studio to capture the music.
Do I have an explicit right to make money off of my investment and effort? No.
Do I have a right to prevent others from stealing my creation and profiting off of my investment and effort? Yes.
The government has nothing to do with this issue - bringing it up is nothing but a red herring. IP copyright issues are disturbingly similar to patents - if anyone can simply use and enjoy my work without any form of mandatory reinbursement that I can set, then my incentive for creating work is destroyed. Musicians are caught between a rock and greed with internet distribution - on mp3.com, for instance, how many thousands of bands exist that haven't made more than $5 for every band that makes a decent living? The alternative to that is to become popular (which in 99% of cases takes a recording label's marketing power) and then watch as millions of people simply make a "loaned" copy from a friend and "forget" to pay for the music. And if you're popular without a nice, fat contract for recording and touring, then God help you, because until you do there really isn't any other source of income when free copies of your material is all over Napster and Gnutella except for local gigs (which pay for meals, and that's about it).
The voluntary "pay for download and support" system is completely bunk. Two reasons:
Think about how many times a day you listen to music and think, "Wow, this really touched me, I think I'll go look up the artist and give them financial support!" Heh. Just thinking about basic human nature makes me laugh at that thought.
The other reason? Why pay for something when you can get it for free? Let's take the example of mIRC, a program that's used by millions and has the same voluntary pay-for-support deal. For all the people that have downloaded it, the number of people that have actually paid is a tiny percentage. It's not like mIRC isn't a useful program - it's just basic human nature again. And unlike programmers, who could use mIRC to land a nice cushy corporate job, musicians are pretty much SOL in the "other jobs" department. They write and play music, and, well, uh, they write and play music. And do a lot of waiting tables on the side.
And then there's the "added functionality" variation, where you download the radio hits for free and the rest of the album for a price. Nice concept, if certain things like Napster didn't exist, where people can simply get a perfect copy of the rest of the album for free as well. And if someone suggests that Napster and other "freeware" programs like it will disappear once online distribution begins, well, don't make me laugh.
Online distribution is not the end of the music industry as we know it - it is the end of the music profession as we know it. We're going to end up with 10-20 superpopular, hypermarketed acts that really have nothing to do with creative talent, and then there's going to be a sharp dropoff to the thousands of garage bands with the talent who don't have the capital to produce a great album, don't ever make the scene, and don't make a dime. The price of commercialization.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I also, have appreciated your thoughts on this matter. It has given me much to think about as well. However, I am growing a bit fatigued with this subject, as it often feels like a lost cause, and as such this will be my final post on the matter under this aticle. Rest assured I will read any responses.
I will finish with this though. I am not saying it is wrong to profit from software, just that it needs to be done in a different way than Software Mon^H^H^HCorporations are doing today.
Since M$ is the worst case of this, and has been our example this far, let me ask you a question. Is a word processing package really worth more to you than the Operating System itself? M$ seems to think so. In many stores, It costs more to buy M$ Office 2000 (~$527.36) than it does to buy M$ Windows 2000 (~$276.97).
This is not reasonable, and is IMHO the actual reason that M$ products are so widely pirated, not the other way around as they claim(M$ says that their prices are driven high to recoup the cost of piracy, they charge the good guys for the actions of the bad).
Now assume they charged a reasonable price for MS Word. I think $20 is reasonable, others may not, but given the choice between buying a copy of software from the source, for a reasonable price, or getting a free copy, which I have no gaurantee will be virus free, fully functional, etc., I'll fork over the $20, but M$ better be ready to hold themselves responsible for any viruses, missing features that are advertised to be in the product, etc.
I realize, of course, that this may not be a reasonable business model, but I can't help but wonder if they wouldn't sell 30 times more copies (the amount necessary to come in around the same profit range) at a reasonable price than they do now, especially with the Market Share that they posess.
My closing point is this, there is _NO_ way to fully prevent piracy. If I can hear it on my computer, I can record it and play it back. If I can make it run even once on my computer, I can make it run a second time. If I can get it in a digital format, I can duplicate it. Why waste so much money chasing a ghost? Not to mention the cost to taxpayers to pursue these cases. It doesn't matter where one stands on IP, trying to enforce it is a waste of time and money, as well as a bane on progress, so find a different way to profit from the same Ideas. Maybe you won't profit as much, but does M$ really deserve that much money? Is a word processor more important to you than food? I haven't seen any billionaire farmers in the news lately, and even the laziest farmers work as hard and as long hours as most programmers proclaim to, just to be able to feed and house their families.
-Tommy
"I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
I believe that the real issue here is not copyright, which is a fair and just concept, but the distribution of copyrighted material. At the moment, we pay far more for the distribution and packaging aspect of music, literature etc than we do for the actual content. Most artists get only a small percentage of the final selling price, and somehow we keep paying for books and music that are long out of copyright. Mozart, anyone? It's the publishers that make the money, not the artists.
So when the ability to charge for distribution goes away - what remains? An obvious way for copyrighted material to be distributed is over the web, where popular artists can sell adverts to make up for lost revenue. If the selling price is low enough, ie the current 10% that the artist gets instead of the $$ that we pay, then far less pirating will happen. And if the content is available globally instead of in controlled areas (DVD, anyone?) then there is also less incentive to pirate.
TV and radio have been making money from selling adverts for content for years, and it has so far been the way of the web. A little leakage from copying is probably inevitable, but if it serves to increase the popularity and recognition of the artist concerned, then that can only be an advantage. Remember the good ol' Grateful Dead - so much for home taping killing music.
IP is more about plagiarism than copying. If the artist retains copyright then ripping off tunes or copying words will still be actionable, but the distribution issue should just go away.
Put the blame on meme
pNot much depth to this article. What about the argument that its a cat and mouse game?
1->New technology for distributing IP property invented
2->new system to thwart IP theft invented
3->Goto 1
Mozart died broke.
I truly wonder if, after having broken down the current reward structure for IP with our shiny toys, we can't come up with anything better than returning to a centuries old model. Did patronage give listeners more choices? I don't know.
And about the whole "Let them play live!" thing, that throwback to ancient times really doesn't work for modern day artists that use the studio as their instrument. The more raves you have to play to make ends meet, the fewer time you have to make new creations. And lord help people whose main talent is not performing in any way, but composing, mixing, or producing. "William Orbit will now play 'Strange Cargo IV' for you. Please turn off all mobile phones." Right.
We've got to do better than making art disposable and hope some rich guy picks up the trash. I am thinking that a connection between PayPal and Napster ("You have listened to this mp3 10 times. Click here to voluntarily pay 50 cents to the artist. Click here to add the original song to your custom mix CD for $1,-. Cancel and keep listening") might go a long way to making us honest again and keeping music afloat.
And since they'll control the file formats and have everything wrapped up in patents and copyrights, anyone outside the industry trying to encode their own content will be pretty much out of luck. So don't think you could even take refuge in garage bands and other Amateur content. You'll listen to what the industry tells you you'll listen to, and you'll like it! You won't have any other choice.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I hope sooner or later artists like Metalicca and Dr. Dre will figure out that they can't prevent piracy. I searched Napster for "Dr. Dre" and got as many results as a few months ago. Those bans REALLY worked. Selling a custom mix on a CD-R is where the money is at these days. Then again the article states:
"People, including this techno-pirate who downloaded the film, will still go out to the theatre. People will still buy newspapers. They will still listen to commercial radio and television and still pay for CDs. "
Too bad, because I really wanted to see Lars on an episode of VH1's Where Are They Now digging in dumpster looking for something to eat.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.
How do we [Software Engineers] fight change like that? Do we have the ACM hire a bunch of lawyers to form the Software Engineer Association of America [SEAA] and sue the pants off of the creaters of this machine? Do we hire lobbyists to push laws that restrict it's use so the SEAA can go "cease and desist" crazy? You can, but not me. It would be like you're on the Titanic and throwing rocks at the iceberg because you're mad that it ruined your ship. No thanks, I'll be busy finding something that will keep me afloat until a new ship comes along, thank you very much.
It all depends on whether a song is the property of its creator or not. If the songwriter does have natural rights to his works, then copyright laws are not much different than laws against theft and trespass. But if the songwriter does not have natural rights to his works, then you have to follow this to its logical conclusion - that programmers have no rights to copyright their works. That means no GPL and no defense against encrypted binary-only derivations.
I don't know whether copyrights are legitimate or not. I *do* know that double standards never are. It's either all copyrights, or no copyrights at all. Anything in between is hypocrisy.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
let's take a historical perspective, they said the same thing about radio, cassette recorders, mini disc recorders, photo copiers, cd burners, vcrs and the internet in general. Guess what, people still publish books, people still by cds, people still go to the movies. Given that mp3s have lower sound quality that a cassette tape, I just can't see the begining of the end. If mp3s did not exist, the people who download them would not be running out and buyings cds, the would be recording the songs off the radio. Don't let the greed and paranoia of the publishing industry, (and that includes the software industry)destroy the freedom of information provided by the internet, IP is still, and will continue to be protected by Copyright. Though the publishing gravy train that was created by the cd revolution ($11.00 wholesale for a $.75 cd as opposed to a $4.00 wholesale for a $2.00 lp) may be finally reaching its end, the artist, (though some appear to be completely ignorant of this) will continue to profit from their work. In fact, the internet expands the viablity of self publishing, funneling a lot more of the profits to the artist, and a lot less to the money changers.
According to http://www.heise.de/newsticke r/data/ame-12.06.00-000/ (in German), the EU Commission apparently decided not to fully implement the Berne Convention. In order to protect private and educational fair use, copying for oneself will be legal and circumvention won't be forbidden, either.
So DeCSS will be legal in Europa and everyone can download it from there. The (US) DMCA doesn't forbid the possession or use of "infringing devices", only their sale or publication.
Next time, look at the senate you elect 8-).
Computers. You can't live with them, you can't live without them.
If I remember correctly, the Copyright on works published today will expire 96 years after publication, for corporate works and works published under a pseudonym. It's 120 years for works published by an individual.
Of course, I wouldn't rely on copyrights expiring so soon -- copyright terms have been consistently retroactively extended several times over the past 30 years, and there's no sign of the trend stopping.
The net effect of this has been that no copyrighted works have passed into the public domain since World War I (unless the copyright holder allowed the work into the public domain themselves). Compare this with the original copyright term of ... uh, what was it ... 14 years?
When the institution of Copyright was created, you could reasonably expect contemporary writing and art to pass into the public domain within your lifetime. This allowed artists to draw on more or less contemporary work unhindered (all art is necessarily derivative). No longer.
One could argue that this is one reason for the current stagnation of the arts...
DNA just wants to be free...
1: Yet if I were to quote a Beatles refrain in a pop song of my own, I would face a lawsuit
Go listen to DEVO's "4th Dimension" and you'll hear the Beatles' riff for "Daytripper" in the guitar solo. The liner notes do not credit the original writer(s). No big deal, since the riff was repeated twice in the context of a solo, and not used as the basis for an entire song. See point 2.
2: So how does Puff Daddy get away with it?
Crap Daddy pays for the use of samples, same as MC Hammer. Andy Summers was annoyed with that Crap Daddy song because it was his playing that made Sting's melody so memorable. Summers gets no royalties, but Sting does because he wrote the original song.
As for "stealing" something in the Public Domain, uh, how exactly does that happen? I can perform Public Domain songs if I want to, without royaty payment. However, IIRC, if I used a certain publisher's arrangement of said song, I would probably have to at least pay for the sheet music, if not also pay a performance royalty. I'm a little hazy on that end of things...
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.