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Sen. Hatch Warns Labels: Don't Make Me Come Spank You
TonyPyGarthno writes "Facing a veritable who's who of the music-copyright wars, Chairman Hatch threatened -- in surprisingly direct terms -- to force the music labels and publishers, by legislation, to make their content digitally available for a standard fee if the record business continued to ensnarl e-music with lawsuits. As a capper, Hatch suggested that Congress might even go so far as to offer its own comprehensive definition of 'fair use' to hasten the arrival of paid digital music -- an action that would have implications far beyond music.
The full story."
Granted, even if everyone followed what he said to the letter, AIDS would still exist. On the societal level, there is no way to get rid of it short of some miracle cure. On a personal level, the greatest impact AIDS can have on any individual is if they contract the disease. Following his suggestion almost guarantees that won't happen unless a person got some tainted blood via transfusion, which is extremely rare. However, you are correct in saying that the impacts of AIDS are felt by everyone, because everyone doesn't live by the same rules. You paint such a fatalistic picture though that I wonder if anyone should even care if they live or die. If you sincerely believe that people can't "take care of themselves," then I'm sorry for you. My responsibility in life is to take care of myself first, my family second, and the rest of the world a very distant third. As long as I don't contract the disease, then I couldn't really care less about what AIDS is doing in Africa or anywhere else. Diseases like AIDS are simply a natural event in an overpopulated world. If people die, then that's the way it is. I'm not going to lose sleep over it. The simple fact of the matter is that there are too many cultures where people think you have to procreate like rabbits (the Catholic Church not the least of these). If people can't learn how to keep it in their pants (regardless of how fun it is, sex is primarily for reproduction, and hence is the way nature is choosing to transmit its corrective measures), then nature will make them pay the price. The effects of AIDS that your portray as being so negative have little bearing on my day-to-day life. It is people with your attitude who will suffer most, because you aren't focused on the true issue of survival, but rather on trivial issues such as economy and government. I'm not saying I don't enjoy the luxuries I have from living in this country, but I wouldn't cry much if the government or the economy went to hell. My priority is survival, all the rest is just icing on the cake. And until more people share this attitude, nature will do what it has always done...introduce a chaotic event in order to maintain the balance of life. And people who live for the luxuries will have the most to lose.
I called you a troll because you're claiming your misconceptions are fact.
When a person listens to the radio, the music is occasionally broken up by... COMMERCIALS! And THAT is how you are "paying" to listen to it. The radio station pays to be able to broadcast it, and you pay by listening to the commercials that they have been paid to broadcast. If they didn't have commercials, they sure as hell wouldn't be broadcasting music, as they couldn't afford to pay for the rights to do so.
Just because you don't pay money directly to listen to broadcasts of music doesn't mean it isn't being paid for in some way. And once again, it doesn't matter whether I feel what the RIAA does is wrong. That doesn't make stealing right.
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
What gave you that idea? Copyright law imposes limits and obligations on all parties, including the copyright holder. Fair use being the most obvious one.
We have to worry about meeting bills under the current system anyway.
Only a VERY, VERY small minority of musicians (and to a lesser extend writers) can live off of royalties.
If I could get paid for my work so that I didn't have to worry about royalties (which you can't really predict in advance), that'd be great.
DNA just wants to be free...
I'm not sure if I made it up or heard it somewhere. I don't care. People make up words all the time. Old tradition. There are words in Shakespear's plays that are not found in any prior documents. Most tech words are of very recent origin. As far as I can tell, the only non-made-up word is "Ma", which appears to be hard-wired.
Gerentocracy isn't exactly the right word, though, because age isn't what counts, seniority is. By the time a Senator is a senior Senator, he (yeah, senior Senators are all men, at this point) tends to be an old man, but it isn't the age, it's the layers of legislative and organizational sediment.
Our secret is gamma-irradiated cow manure
Mitsubishi ad
We apologize for the inconvenience.
here it is http://www.riaa.com/Copyright-Laws-4.cfm
Information wants to be free like speech wants to be free, not like we want beer to be free.
The CD does not need to be in the drive if you're playing online. Also, two systems masq'ed behind a firewall can join at the same time. I don't know if it works if those two mathines have different public IP addresses.
The legislative and executive branches of the federal government.  Since they are the branches of the government that enacts legislation.
who enforces and judges compliance with the 14 year monopoly? who creates the monopoly in the first place?
The judicial system would be the enforcers of copyright law as they are now.  And like now, they will act after a copyright holder files a complaint.  This makes copyright a much more reasonable law for citizens to comply with and more importantly gets works into the public domain in a reasonable timeframe.
Therefore, by the law of deduction, it follows that a corporation is not a constituent, and you are, of course, wrong by saying Hatch did the 'M$' for political reasons. Maybe he's just a stand up guy, how about that?
don't play the logic game with me, chief. your "logic" and resulting QED would work great if america were a direct democracy, but it aint. it's a representative democracy. individual voters matter much less than large sums of cash. large groups of voters, as pointed out by the article, do matter, but only when really pissed off. even outside of any strict definition of america's political process, money talks. grow up.
if the RIAA were based out of salt lake and paid $1,000,000 per year in taxes to the great state of utah, do you think captain hatch would be so eager to issue them a spanking?
i would look up the excellent article i read a year or so ago about cappy and the M$ trial, but i'm lazy and your education isn't really my problem.
thanks, and have a nice day,
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
I submitted this article to the /. crew, but it seems the team of trained mammals haven't found it as interesting...Oh, well
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
First, artists or labels might want to do a limited edition for any one of a number of good reasons (fan club, marketing, single of the month club, whatever.)
Artists might want to have an item deleted from their catalog. Once again, there are reasons why an artist would want to do this like they have changed their stance or aesthetics.
In certain cases an artist wants to control the format of a release. MP3's sound crappy - especially with certain kinds of music. An artist might not want to compromise the audio quality of their music. Or maybe they want to limit their releases to vinyl because they believe vinyl sounds better, or because they have an anti-technology political stance and don't wish tobe labeled a hypocrite.
Some songs cannot be taken out of the context of a packaged collection without changing their meaning. Albums can be meaningful collections of recorded songs, artwork and written text. A benefit compilation, without a statement of purpose are fairly worthless in terms of raising awareness for their beneficiary.
Compulsory licensing kills all this and takes away control from the artist. Now major label artists are used to this, but in indy land artistic integrity is still important.
Finally, a compulsory license most likely will make sure major label artists get paid, but won't offer as much protection for smaller independant artists. Of any of the objections this is the easiest to remedy, but I somehow doubt a good outcome.
Note that there is already compulsory licensing on published songs (compositions) - but this is different from a compulsory license on a recording of a song.
K-Tel would go nuts with this one, and you'd quickly see the death of the record album. The hit single would once again be *everything* as it was in the 50's and early 60's.
I'll admit that I was rather surprised and pleased by this. Even though I'm not an American citizen, I'm very concerned about these issues, because Canada has a tendency to roll over whenever America barks. Sen. Hatch's efforts, from what I understand, seem to be oriented towards getting record labels to do some of their classic price-gouging over the Internet instead of just through stores, as opposed to getting them to stop going after all these online music distribution services and instead go after the people abusing them. But its a step in the right direction, and one that might open some eyes.
Oh, and for those of you who are interested, I'm leading an ice skating expidition in hell at 7:00 PM Eastern time this evening. Be sure to dress warmly. ;)
-RickHunter
Many of you seem to be supprised by Hatch's position on this issue. I suppose it's because most of the folks on slashdot tend to be more leftwing/democrat (correct me if you disagree). I realize that many republicans have taken the "we must save the children even if it means infringing on basic rights" attitude because its a popular stance to take.
But you must realize that at the heart of most rightwing/republican views is about the government having less control and people having more personal rights (such as being able to copy music you own). Many republicans are actually on our side when it comes to issues like this one and censorship and the like.
my other penis is a vagina
My point wasn't that Slashdot would necessarily get hit with this, now. My point was that it's quite unprofessional for Slashdot to do something like this. Added to all the misspellings, incorrect stories, and everything, this may seem insignificant, but hey, I'm just trying to improve Slashdot.
Obviously, Senator Hatch has been seriously exposed to all the GNU rays coming from Caldera!
I want to go back and see if the version of DMCA that Senator Hatch supported was the same as the version that passed. Sometimes they slip a fast one in, and maybe that's why he's so pissed.
Battle On, Hatch!
www.eFax.com are spammers
I (and many others, of course) have thought a lot about how it's going to shake out. I think music will end up classified as a service rather than a product, but I could be wrong, and I'm sure I don't know the details.
The one thing we can be sure digital music will not do is kill music. It might kill the music industry, but when there are no more commercial labels or professional artists anymore, whence Napster? In the very worst case, no one can make a living off of performance. But people will continue making music. Probably, they will distribute their music online. I expect they will find others with like interests and form bands and the like. And if they develop a following, they'll find some way to make money on it -- there's always money in an audience.
phil
I have to argue that copying a CD falls more squarely under fair use than does copying a movie from television. In the former case, you have paid The Evil Bastards (TM) for a copy of the CD. In the latter, you are copying a 'free broadcast'.
:) Now if I sold that copy I think were in a gray area, did I sell the tape or did I sell the X-Files?
Are you telling me I can't record the X-Files anymore! Shit! The commercials are still in there.
Besides since when was cable free. Just today I "downgraded" to digital basic. There's nothing "basic" about $50.00 a month. It's usually not worth copying a movie coming from the lightning rod on top of your house. (If were talking about broadcasts)
-- Phenym
But a lot of smart lawyers and historians have looked at the current situation, and I have yet to hear a proposal that can guarantee artists are compensated.
Did you mean "still compensated hugely for minimal effort?" Life is not fair. There is no guarantee that what made you rich last year will make you rich next year. Consider the poor wheat farmer. Twenty acres can produce enough wheat to feed a whole town for a year; that's a HUGE amount of wealth...in a subsistence economy. But the economy has changed, and now it's barely worth it to farm a single field. The music industry, whether it realizes it or not, has changed. Mass production of music has arrived (near-infinite perfect copies at zero marginal cost) and NOTHING can change that (cue Jon Katz - "Look what we geeks have done to the recording industry!") The question now is who will cling to the old business model until it dies (taking them with it), and who will work to develop new models.
But a lot of smart lawyers and historians have looked at the current situation, and I have yet to hear a proposal that can guarantee artists are compensated.
That's funny...I can. "Don't perform or record unless you're paid!" BTW, Phish seems to do fairly well, in spite of their policy of permitting ANYONE to record them, make copies of the recordings, and distribute them. I suspect that the advent of MP3s has affected them not at all.
The really interesting thing to consider is what will happen when we all have 1GB/s connections and 50TB hard drives at home, and we start trading DVDs? Will Tom Cruise and his crowd start suing us?
Congress critters tend to jump up and notice numbers this big for different reasons, and it was even mentioned in the article. Piss off several million Napster users, you may not get re-elected.
First rule of government is self-survival. Doing the "right thing" ranks around n-1 on their list.
So, let your voice be heard, fire up your copy of Napster today and be counted. Never before has it been so easy to become part of a political movement! :-)
As always, simple statements can't handle this discussion. Sometimes it is fair use to make a copy of material to which someone else holds a valid copyright, and to give that copy away. Sometimes it isnt.
It depends.
I have another post in here along the same lines, but again the canonical example of making a copy and giving it away would be of a teacher who makes copies of material and hands it out to the students in the class. That's fair use.
In fact ONLY when a copy is distributed to someone is there even the possibility of it not being fair use. Your own personal copies are always fair use. Additionally, fair use isn't around b/c of being written into law; it has been around for a very long time in the courts before being written down. It's entirely possible for Congress's definition of what isn't fair use to be overturned in the courts. It's nigh-impossible for it to go the other way, however.
-- 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 guess my point is that there is definitely lots of issues that need to be resolved, and digital music just might be one of them, but where exactly does the government need to be in all of this? Nowhere, it should be a consumer->business or business->consumer process. All the government does is cater to the most influential force and crash under it's weight.
piffy
www.piffy.org -- me.
Although my politics very frequently disagrees with Chairman Hatch's (Me being chaosian and all) he has proved to be astoundingly clueful on several issues in the past and has proven to be quite willing to piss large corporations off if he thinks they're in the wrong. Therefore I have to admit a grudging respect for the man. Ok, you can moderate me down now.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I fully agree. Its nice to know that someone on capitol hill is actually trying to get those recording companies in line. Oh, and it would be nice if Senator Hatch would just flat out tell Lars to screw off.
Quid rides ignare?
You know its funny....
"She argued that musicians' willingness to''tolerate'' people making copies..."
Given that an act of congress was passed that SPECIFICALLY stated that individuals may make personal copies of music....it must take real balls (or lack of brains) to stand up before congress and say that - to congress!
As if the record labels were allowing it from the goodness of their hearts. They argued 20 years ago that copying itself was wrong...and congress replied with a law saying "Its ok" on no ncertain terms. Seems someone either has delusions of grandure or needs a history lesson.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The behavior of the RIAA is probably not making them a lot of friends in Congress--but I think they are having trouble getting people with a less-than-complete grasp of the technology to understand how bad this is for the recording industry. I suspect many legislators do not fully understand what it means to have an environment where any individual can make perfect copies of something for almost zero cost. Hatch and Leahy seem to think that this will be like any previous advance in publishing technology--first the industry fights change and consumers push for it, and eventually it becomes a profitable system for the publishers.
But a lot of smart lawyers and historians have looked at the current situation, and I have yet to hear a proposal that can guarantee artists are compensated. My intuition is that you have to reduce the cost of purchasing music by at least a factor of 10 before retail becomes competitive with the convenience of tools like Napster.
Maybe in ten years I will remember what I thought about these problems and see myself as naive. Maybe the solutions will be obvious in hindsight. But no one seems to have a clear vision of the future from here--Napster still doesn't know how they are going to generate any revenue! (Well, no one except those who claim the concept of intellectual property is defunct.)
Java: the COBOL of the new millenium.
Why is MP3 the most popular format? Because you can get copyrighted songs for free. The other formats have copyright protection, so they aren't as popular because people will have to actually pay for the music. If I started scanning books and putting them online for free, my format would easily beat any other format where you had to pay for the book. Does that make it okay that people are getting books from me instead of paying for them? Stealing doesn't become right when it becomes popular.
That the RIAA and its members have chosen not to participate in this market, which is satisfying millions of users daily, is their own damn fault. Now that the market has passed them by, they're trying to get in the way.
And how are they supposed to participate in this market? By selling MP3s which one person buys and then distributes to everyone else? How do you make money doing that? Everyone says they want digital music, but they only want it in MP3 format. Why? Because what they really want is FREE digital music. As everyone's mother used to say, "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?"
Everyone talks about how if music was available for download for "reasonable" prices they would pay for it. Yet it IS available at places like emusic.com, and they don't seem to be making the money they should. If everyone was willing to pay for all the new, smaller, non-major label musicians they find and "sample" over Napster, then I could buy into this theory, but as it is, people just want free music, and they have deluded themselves into thinking they have a right to take other people's hard work at no charge.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Yes, it sounds like it was a hell of a day on the Hill... a lot more interesting than the last hearings I watched. From my interpretation of the article, it sounds like it several things could happen from here...
1) The RIAA stays where they are, keeps on suing, and those anti-trust threats become reality... which in turn has its own set of possibilities, and so forth.
2) Congress starts a push (with the funding and the personpower) to redefine, clarify, and maybe even educate about copyright, fair use, and intellectual property. Depending on who's involved with it, this could be something I'd actually *like* to see my tax dollars going toward.
3) The RIAA gets the hint and goes more "digital" and record companies start offering those for-money downloads of songs (I'd guess more like singles than by the full album) and deals with it. Maybe they add a few extra things that you can only get by paying -- like you put in your name and credit card number and you get entered into a drawing for CDs or concert tickets or Britney Spears autographs or something.
4) Other heads prevail, nothing really changes, and all those Napster-using freebooters wind up getting nailed.
5) Something I haven't thought of yet.
I agree, I would **REALLY** like to know the answer to this myself. In light of all these "fair use" interpretations from both sides of the fence, wouldn't making music available off the internet be analogous with broadcasting the music over the airwaves? What laws protect and allow broadcast radio to exist, but not music sharing on the internet?
Is there a lawyer in the audience?
This reminds me of when Real stopped some guys from making a RealVideo/Audio VCR. Surely what Real did was illegal, but since no politician quite understands the technology and no real defense was made we lost our chance to record
Real broadcasts.
Yep, this is probably a little off-topic.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Yeah, but he also put out that idiotic anti-drug pamphlet that suggested that if your teen wears baggy jeans, black t-shirts, is moody, and is interested in social issues, then he/she may be a drug user. That describes me perfectly today, and I couldn't be cleaner, except for that Sudafed this morning.
Generally Hatch is a respectable upstanding guy with real not-bought principles. I just don't happen to agree with him too often.
This is the same fucker who wants to regulate the computer industry?
I've yet to see anyone sue Honda for the cars they produce. After all criminals can use cars to make a getaway, so Honda must be at fault!
I thought someone said there was going to be free beer!
Don't just shut down Napster. While you're at it. Shut down the internet. Destroy all CD burners and dubbing equipment and anything that can convey 1's and 0's! Bring down all computers! That way, nobody's copyrights are violated, right?
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
Sure its refreshing but I think that this is just revenge for a major record label not signing his band and promoting him like they do Britney Spears. (aagghh, bad picture of Orrin Hatch in school girl uniform get out of my head, bad bad bad)
That and the fact that he doesn't want to be ostricized by his fellow congressmen when 200,000 (~1% of the 20 million) Napster users complain to their congressmen when (if, now) it gets shutdown.
[For those of you with a different sense of humor, or none at all, this is a joke]
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
And here's the REAL idiocy:
(dead horse: "hey! quit it man! that hurts!)
What the music industry doesn't seem to grok, is that at the current prices, CD's are selling to a limited market. This is one of the reasons why piracy is rampant. But if, instead of charging $20/CD, and selling 100,000 CD's you sell the music at a nickel a track, you probably cut the piracy in half (you can't eliminate it completely, you can try, but you will not be successful - why waste the effort=expense of trying, while at the same time pissing off your consumers with unweildy solutions?), you probably sell 20 million copies, when this thing gets going, you lose say half the CD gross on distribution and production, and you come out with the same amount of profit. Add to this, the fact that, if your product is good (and that's a pretty big IF these days), you'll still probably sell at least 20,000 CD's on top of that, because even though customers can download all the tracks for a nickel a piece, (or free if they want to go through the trouble to pirate it), there will still be a healthy demand for the final CD product - then you get an extra $400,000 out of the deal, plus happy customers, no costly legal hemming and hawing over piracy, and the most valuable gem of all: human culture is enriched, because everyone CAN have access to the music, and because the artificial scarcity is gone, the natural scarcity, of quality music, kicks in as the main incentive to buy - so the market forces the product to be better and better.
Look at it this way. Is it more, or less likely to happen, if an advanced civilization happens upon this gem of a planet, observes our culture to decide whether to blow us away and strip-mine the planet, or preserve us - based on our cultural value. If they listen to n*synch or brittney's spheres, we're dead meat.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
''does not justify that a commercial operation can enrich themselves exploiting that,''
Isn't a major whole point behind the concepts of a FREE MARKET SYSTEM? Finding new ways to do business with what you have.
-=chiphead
-=-=-=-
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
OK, I'm biting at this troll, though I shouldn't.
The reason that radio stations, VH1, MTV, etc can play songs for us to listen that "we don't own" is that the stations pay royalties to the record companies. These royalties are paid for the right to broadcast the songs. When you download a song you don't own from the net, nobody has paid royalties. You are getting the music, and the record companies aren't getting paid for what is theirs.
Of course, I'm assuming you know this, and are just trying to start an argument for no reason.
And I personally find the RIAA to be scum. However, that doesn't make it right to rip them off. If I decide I don't like the business practices of BMW, that doesn't make it right to go start stealing cars from their dealers. The same is true for this. Two wrongs don't make a right.
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
It most certainly can. That's what the nice men in the black uniforms with the nightsticks are for.
To provide a better parabole than your wife-pictures one, let's try this one: suppose my company makes cookbooks. And, being a large and powerful enterprise, we have our own printer companies, an army of trained cooks to produce new recipes (and who must, by law, forsake all rights to these recipes... they are works for hire!), and a massive propaganda apparatus that ensures us a certain degree of commercial success for each cookbook we put out.
But lo! what treachery is here? People are typing our recipes in their computers and trading them amongst themselves! They are bypassing my carefuly constructed distribution monopoly... they are getting -my- recipes from a source other than -me-. Hell and damnation!
Were I a smart and capable businessman, I would look for ways to make money off these transactions. But no.... it's easier to sue the computer makers, the ISPs, the software makers, the backbone providers, the people sharing the recipes... it's easier to buy laws and misrepresent existing ones... rouse some of my cooks to beat their breasts and bemoan their starving children...
Were I this nearsighted as a businessman (not to mention a lying, conniving, scheming pirate), I should warrant more than a senatorial slap on the hand. The record companies -are- publicly traded, after all, and have a fiduciary obligation to maximize their profits. And the demand for electronic delivery is there... why are they spending their shareholders money on lawyers and lawsuits instead of tapping into this demand?
THS
---
THS
---
"Poor girl looks as confused as a blind lesbian in a fish market." - Simon R. Green
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not according to the RIAA. I had a link to the page on their website where they explicitly stated this, but they have apparently moved the page and I don't feel like looking for the new location right now. They explicitly stated that ripping a CD that you have paid for is illegal, even if you only use the resulting mp3s for your own personal use. The page was at http://www.riaa.com/tech/tech_ht.htm . Perhaps they took it down because they realized how absolutely psycho this made them look, or maybe they just moved the page and haven't realized that they are pure evil yet.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
sigh - ad hominem attacks aside, my point was that you can't make every human behave. Diseases will spread, my friend, no matter how moral you and your "normal" friends are. Has nothing to do with whether I'm a pervert. Ignore me. I don't exist. But viruses do - and viruses do not concern themselves with the morality of their hosts. Or haven't you ever had a cold? And hundreds of millions of other perverst DO exist. What are you going to do - kill them all? Wait for nature to take care of it for you? Neither is going to work. Sorry to bust your bubble.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Hatch, is known for two things - being extremely self-righteous and for self dealing. 60 minutes cover a case in which he authored a law that had all drugs lost in shipment (and then found) sent to a company he owned where they would be registered and then sold at a profit. I would expect his stand means he owns a share of an e-music company.
Hatch has released many original compositions of his own. He's got over 500 songs available on many many CDs. As a musician, certainly, he's got a strong opinion...
There's no such word as paleocracy (I looked it up even). I think you mean gerontocracy (government by old people).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes. The suggestion is that the RIAA is guilty of anti-competitive practices from behind the aegis of a monopoly. The monopoly itself is just fine (although there's a suggestion that it may have been acquired illegaly). However, once you've got it, you have to play by different rules, and part of that is that you can't withhold a product and try to prevent others from providing it. So, if the RIAA wants to have any sort of control over how music is distributed electronically, they had damn well better be doing it themselves before they start pitching fits.
Otherwise they just sound like schoolyard bullies who see a toy they don't have, so they break it. The only reason US businesses are supposed to manage monopolies of any kind is for the ultimate benifit of consumers. But whenever someone else can say "I could do that cheaper, but he's keeping me down" or "I could do it better for the same cost, but the Monopoly is in my way" you ought to be in trouble.
Practically, though, monopolies get that way by doing something essential, (cf Railroads around the turn of the century in the US and Europe) and no one wants them to fail. It gets to be like a world full of herion addicts not wanting the poppy fields to burn.
Ushers will eat latecomers.
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
Actually, it is not illegal for you to install two copies of Quake. It works fine also. You and your "wife" could play online quake together.
IANAL. I am also not a professional broadcaster.
>What laws protect and allow broadcast radio to
>exist, but not music sharing on the internet?
Radio stations pay a license fee (to ASCAP?) for the music they broadcast.
AFAIK, ASCAP is not interested in licensing broadcast rights to internet "stations" (I seem to recall someone approaching them about this at one point, but I could be wrong, and I'm sure someone'll smack me for it).
-LjM
... dammnit - got me! eek.
If they feel that the risk is too much, they don't do it.
Which is just another way of saying "if they can get away with it without getting nailed they will do it"
There's a lot of morally reprehensible shit going on, that just hasn't been legislated against yet.
I'd also like to point out that if businesses had tempered their profit motive with a little ethics there would be no need for anti trust laws.
It's kinda like an intersection with no stop signs, once enough people get hurt/killed the pressure is on to put up stop signs. It's not going to stop accidents at the intersection, because _somebody_ will be feeling like they can't be touched and blow through the intersection without looking.
My question is, why the fuck were we stuck with GW Bush as the republican candidate. Orrin Hatch at least sounds like he has a clue.
Here's another one; he was one of the primary architects of the Government action against Microsoft - considering two major employers of his state, (Word Perfect and Novell) are what anyone would agree, two of Microsoft's most notable murder victems.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Collusion, what Mr. Hatch suggests is going on, is not operating within US law. Here your argument ends.
-josh
So legislation is not necessary, because the market works. But lawsuits are necessary, because the market doesn't work. This is getting fun!
Here's the deal though;
Yes, we all "know" it's wrong. It's part of being a human, I guess, right? Knowing right from wrong? So if a person feels it is wrong, then they should go out and buy the CD, or otherwise compensate the artist. There's no need for this destructive and wasteful pinching down on our rights to make fair use copies, and that includes sharing with friends. If a person feels bad about getting a free copy of something that's truly worthy of compensation, then that person will compensate. Duh!
But nobody is being hurt by the copies of every Metallica MP3 I have sitting on my HD. I wasn't going to buy their shit before, and I'm still not going to buy their shit.
But as for the Stevie Ray Vaughn MP3's I do feel that, even though he's dead, his music should be paid for. So I bought two of his CD's.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I'm just not sure that the public is served by the hoarding of works and extracting of royalties forever and ever, amen
The public isn't served, they are raped. Unless you really think that you shouldn't be able to listen to Elvis's music without paying his owners. I mean, if he doesn't have those copyright protections, he'll never make another record. And then the public would be deprived of a great artist. "Promote the arts and sciences" that's why they got protections, it wasn't "see how much you can make off of human love of art."
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+&x
Transcript of Senate Hearing:
Record Industry Exec I'm sorry, Senator Hatch, I'll get right on that electronic distribution thing. Just don't spank me!
Senator Hatch Bend over, baby, it's judgement day!
Senator Lott Give it to 'im good, Orinn. They've been REALLY bad!
Record Industry Exec Ouch! I'll never do that again.
Senator Hatch Bring me Bill Gates. He needs a serious ass whupping.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Funny, so's mine; that's what brought the example to mind. I spent some time with him last week. He was harvesting wheat. 3% of the wheat kernels were sprouting in the ears, and it was therefore good only for animal feed. So there we are, looking at two semi trailers full of wheat kernels(as well as some grasshoppers and lady bugs). I ate a handful; it was kinda tasty. He's saying he might break even on it - fully edible, more food than 80% of the world has ever seen in one place, and he can't make a living.
Sure, but what is Senator Hatch doing about the mutant threat? - Dang wrong article.
This is obviously a case where 'free trade' isn't, and a 'competitive system' is just really a monopoly, or partnered monopoly.
You don't "get it". There is only a monopoly in music if you are trying to be as unresourceful and blind as a farm animal. Yahoo lists 1463 record companies. This is not a monopoly, by any definition. The recording industry is one of the most diverse industries in the world. Which part of this don't you understand.
If you listened to Gene Kan's testimony, it was a incoherent rambling of catchphrases... If you can hear it, you can copy it!!! Information wants to be free!!! They cannot stop us!!! We must appeal to their profit motive!!! Turn pirates into profiteers!!! Blah Blah!!! Blah Blah!!! _etc._
I think a more accurate statement would be that music will GO BACK TO being classified as a service. Recorded music for profit is a very recent development. For centuries musicians managed to live off of performances. The great composers lived off actually conducting a performance of their piece(a little more complicated than that, help from nobility, blah blah blah). The musicians got paid for performing. It could be that the concept of record once reap forever is a minor blip on the musical radar. We may see popular musicians actually have to go back to playing music for a living, imagine that. Most musicians, those without recording contracts, already have to do this, and many of them manage to eek out a decent living.
Apparently he didn't catch on to the fact that the song is a rendition of a biblical tale. It's just told from the point of view of the plague that swept across the land killing firstborn everywhere, passing over the houses with lamb's blood painted on their doors. Which is of course how we all celebrate passover to this day, right? =)
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
folks,
you seem to have forgotten that Sen. Hatch is also a songwriter (mostly Christian contemporary) and has first hand knowledge of the ass-ramming RIAA members give their artists. And he's not a man to be messed with, he's spent almost his entire political career _collecting_ favors. Good thing sometimes that members of congress don't have to recuse themselves when self-interest enters the picture like judges do.
It's also a good thing that there was someone in Congress capable of picking up after some of Sonny Bono's pro-artist crusades.
But would a court (the Consitutionally-mandated interpreters of the law, according to my high school government class) agree with this? If a public school, a government entity, taught people how to download MP3s, would that be fair use? I don't think so. The owner of a a copyright has ABSOLUTE CONTROL over their work. For a member of Congress to make a copy of that work is to deprive them of their intellectual property rights. Note that phrase - "property rights." As in the government may not deprive you of your property without due process of law. As in eminent domain - the government can not take your property without compensating you. The congress-critters in question were not merely violating the law; they were violating the Constitution.
So what does that tell you about the screwed-up state of copyright law?
(1) The RIAA does not control the record industry. There are over 1463 record labels in business in the world, and a small fraction belong to the RIAA.
(2) The RIAA is a non-profit organization. It is inherently better than the government, and different from the government, because it cannot use physhical force.
Copyright and Patents protecting the process of innovation, and not the actual innovation itself.
Not to nick-pick, but protecting the process of innovation includes, *not* protecting the innovation, but protecting the *innovator* should that the innovator can reap the benefits of his/her innovation (i.e. $$$). Without this protection, there's no incentive to innovate (that involves making a reasonable profit from one's work), and, thus, protecting the process is a moot point.
George Lee
However, forcing the licensing of music on the Net might be a good thing. In the strictest economic sense, a prolonged court battle between Napster and the RIAA would tie up the courts, and cost the American taxpayers millions. If the RIAA would win, they'd probably end up in court again on antitrust violations. If the RIAA lost, the industry they represent would fall apart at the seams.
So, Senator Hatch has put the situation in the clear. The DMCA was supposed to be a good way for the music industry to go online. However, the RIAA did nothing. They wasted the protection that the government had given them by doing nothing.
Now Hatch is basically saying that the government paved the road for them. Starting walking down it before we have to push you down it.
The only thing left is that the RIAA has to "get the hint". Fortunately for them, Hatch is spelling out the potential consequences for the RIAA before taking action if they do not open up some form of digital music distribution online.
the canonical example of making a copy and giving it away would be of a teacher who makes copies of material and hands it out to the students in the class. That's fair use. :)
Wish I'd known that five years ago when I was teaching; I could have cut several hundred dollars of textbook fees out of my budget by simply making copies
In fact ONLY when a copy is distributed to someone is there even the possibility of it not being fair use. Your own personal copies are always fair use.
Not...entirely correct. I make a copy of a CD, keep it, give you the original...not fair use.
Ooh, I like this. A fucking lot. IANAL, but someone needs to file an amicus brief in this case, arguing precisely this!
sulli
"If I'm a friend of the court, why does the judge hate me?" - Snoopy
sulli
RTFJ.
It is important to understand that the original intent of "Fair Use" was completely pragmatic. In a very real sense, if it is "good for society", it is reasonable to be "Fair Use". That's why teachers can Xerox books for their students (because it promotes education) and that's why you can tape TV shows (because it makes everyone's life easier and promotes the electronics (VCR) industry.) In theory, societal good is supposed to outweigh property rights as long as the authors are fairly compensated.
The danger in Napster is that it does not provide a way to fairly compensate the original authors. What Hatch is pissed off about (from what I understand) is that the recording industry, rather than providing a method for getting authors compensated, want congress to preserve their little fiefdom so that they don't have to change. That is not society's duty.
The cake is a pie
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
Novell, Word Perfect, many, many others. Provo/Salt Lake was on the verge of becoming a real center of technological development.
But you can't argue against that he seems to actually really have a clue.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
OUCH! You've got pigs in your OWWWW!! office? Kwitcher whinin' boy OW!OW!OW! That's nothing compared to OUCH! ARGH! OUCH! monkeys flying out of your ass. (SOMEBODY GET ME A PROCTOLOGIST, DAMMIT!)
From the New York Times, Dec 00:
ORRIN HATCH FINDS CURE FOR AIDS
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) shocked the entire medical community today after announcing he and Congress had found a cure for the AIDS virus. This shocking revelation comes only weeks after Hatch raided several major Chinese prisons, freeing political dissidents from torture. In addition, on the way back Hatch discovered El Dorado, the legendary City of Gold. After narrowly escaping from a rival German archaeologist, he returned with enough funds to ensure Social Security will run for decades. "This is a great victory for America," Hatch was quoted as saying. "With this out of the way, we can finally get down to solving this whole digital music problem." Hatch is expected to stop whale hunting by the end of the year.
If Sen. Hatch really wants something to be fair use, it will be. The Senate is a paleocracy, and he's been there since about the time the reptiles learned the "lay eggs on land" trick. He's on pretty much every comittee there is. Unless the President (doesn't matter who) is absolutely opposed, he'll sign whatever Sen. Hatch asks him to. You just don't mess with the guy.
I don't like him. But this makes me smile:
So (and I didn't know this about him) he's a recording artist, as well as a Senator, and he's on the digital side.Our secret is gamma-irradiated cow manure
Mitsubishi ad
We apologize for the inconvenience.
As you pointed out, the government is already involved. They've been involved since the beginning. If they were to uninvolve themselves now, we'd all get screwed over by the RIAA in the courts because Congress passed some bad legislation. It's much too late for them to get uninvolved now.
If you want less government, the first thing that would have to be done is repeal mountains of innappropriate and/or generally crappy legislation and prevent the government from passing anymore like it. I would say this should include taking away most of the protections that the government offers corporations just as it would take away many protections from consumers. In the end, I doubt we'd be any better off though.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Let's see, four guys, musicians, call themselves artists, claim that what they do is art, spend lots of time together, travel together, sleep in close proximity, make sure that EVERYONE knows that they are wildly and promiscuously hetero...yup, they're definitely pansies :)
They force people to obey the law all the time. They also create or change laws when they aren't working properly, in their opinion. The only reason that the RIAA is in the position it's in now is due to government legislation. If the government didn't grant copyright protections, then they wouldn't have a leg to stand on. However, the government did grant these protections (although IMO, they've been seriously abused through extensions and such), but with strings attached. The biggie for consumers is the "fair use" clause and the interpretations of it by the courts. The RIAA is trying to take away the protections that the government included for consumers and expand the control that corporations have over the copyrighted works they own.
It is well within the government's rights to pass legislation expanding fair use rights for consumers if they feel that the current law isn't clear or is no longer workable. When you consider that they are responsible for copyright in this country in the first place, it seems like they should be the ones to make sure that it keeps working in a way that it accomplishes its goals. The goal of copyright was not to give corporations absolute control over what we do with copyrighted works that we purchase. I think it makes perfect sense for him to remind them that the government giveth and the government can taketh away if they don't knock off their power trip.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
What say we shift this from a music CD to something just as tangible... a book? Does it fly in the face of copyright and 'fair use' to loan that book to a friend to read? What's the difference?
You know, I didn't come away with this impression at all. My impression was that Senator Hatch was warning captains of an industry becoming dependent on legislative fiat (copyright laws) as opposed to the principles of scarcity that support within the government for the protection racket the RIAA enjoys is not absolute. Further, that an artificially created market (as any market not dependent on scarcity must be) may have rules which preclude the RIAA from leveraging their current near-monopoly in physical distribution into a total monopoly on distribution over digital networks (by refusing all licensing agreements except among RIAA members).
That Orrin Hatch, small-time songwriter, understands the value in preventing the RIAA from further limiting the availabilty of music produced outside the RIAA, is not especially surprising to me. I think his comments are pretty reasonable; hopefully the rest of congress won't completely sell the listening public up the river in exchange for campaign contributions.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Look, Lars says "Napster hijacked our music without asking" which is utter bollocks. Napster users have done so, arguably, but Napster Inc. hasn't pirated a damn thing themselves.
This doesn't mean I like Napster - I think a non-commercial Gnutella is ultimately more interesting. Napster hopes someday to turn their enormous userbase into cash, in all likelihood by becoming a music promoter... like the record labels who are suing them.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Sift through a few of the older Slashdot articles on SDMI. There are some real gems in there that point to the SDMI format providing a technical "fix" to fair use that the courts refuse to change. One specific example is the dislike the RIAA has for the public's right to make a tape copy of a CD to play in their car stereo.
At one point, RIAA's home page had a FAQ that stated any form of music copying with a home computer was illeagal. That would make MP3 recordings of copyrighted music illeagal whether you distributed them or made them for personal use. Interestingly, I wasn't able to find the link after a quick scan through the RIAA's site - either I didn't look hard enough or the RIAA is taking on a different tone.
What's even more interesting is Hatch asking specific questions of fair use that the RIAA has used as examples of illegal activity or specifically faught against in the past.
For a more recent example of the RIAA's tactics in action, see this page of Salon.com's presentation of the Courtney Love speech.
I'm thrilled that someone with Hatch's legislative acumen and personal stake in the music distribution system is picking up the ball. But there are 533 other members of Congress, many of them with RIAA- and MPAA-controlled noserings, to contend with before new legislation is passed-- which someone in the White House will have to sign.
And there's no assurance that the legislation that is enacted will be any less flawed than the DMCA. This is very slippery ground.
--
syrynx
syrynx
Just because they don't call it a beta doesn't mean it isn't one.
Person=People
People=Sheep
Corporation=$$$
$$$=TV ads
TV ads="Hey sheep, do this!" (they do)
Don't get all prissy and individualistic about this, BTW. A person is smart. People are dumb. A person cannot be manipulated through the media. People can be. Odd paradox that, rather like the tragedy of the commons.
The reason that radio stations, VH1, MTV, etc can play songs for us to listen that "we don't own" is that the stations pay royalties to the record companies. These royalties are paid for the right to broadcast the songs. When you download a song you don't own from the net, nobody has paid royalties. You are getting the music, and the record companies aren't getting paid for what is theirs.
... I know how to get onto AOL, and I will say that I have used AOL a couple of times to check some hockey scores.
When you download a song off Napster, no one is getting advertising money for bringing it to you (yet, an important point). Some other kind soul has donating his cycles and bandwidth to share something with you. There is also no cost to the artist. There is, however, a benefit. Free advertising. You think that is insignificant, but THAT's why people sell out to the RIAA, for the promotion. The only artists whining are those like Metallica, who have made it, sold 40+ million records, got paid for every one, and don't have a clue what is really goin' on with the Net. Spake Lars "I mean, I can just barely
I don't like the business practices of BMW, that doesn't make it right to go start stealing cars from their dealers.
That is a poor analogy. Here's a better one. (linking vs. cut'n pasting, always a toughie)
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+&x
The problem here is that they record companies are using the government to enforce an artificial monopoly. This would simply take some of that away.
That the RIAA and its members have chosen not to participate in this market, which is satisfying millions of users daily, is their own damn fault. Now that the market has passed them by, they're trying to get in the way.
I know it's more complex than this, but choosing to prohibit others from participating sounds severely anticompetitive to me. Where's Joel Klein when you need him?
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
Ok, napster wrote some software. It doesn't rip, it doesn't take mp3s from napsters database, all it does is allow people to connect to each other and share their music. Thats fair use. YES it is fscker. Don't try it. Fair use is what we, the citizens say it is, and i say its fair use. Artists can make money regardless of whats on the net for free. Record sales INCREASED last year. I-N-C-R-E-A-S-E-D for christs sake. INCREASED INCREASED INCREASED. No more industry lakeys. RIAA is using Metallica wether they like it or not. Why? My taste of music is different. Who do I buy? Dave Matthews Band mostly(shutup, I liked him long b4 he was top40). DMB, a band that supports taping at shows and has a huge mp3 live concert following. Hell, I have trouble getting a normal Dave song online now. All live. And great. Thus I buy every dmb cd.
-=chiphead
-=-=-=-
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
dead corporation = thousands of unemployed voters.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Copies for the wife (but not your friend, unless he's a "special" one) falls under the umbrella of community property law.
:-)
You might have purchased the CD, but you both own it. You both have equal rights to it. Nobody can come in and force you to buy a second copy of the disk. Do I really have to point out the utter silliness of claiming that houses are community property, cars are community property, but a $20 CD isn't?!
Obviously, this argument doesn't extend to friends. And I don't burn and share tapes or discs with friends, with the sole exception of _Daria_ tapes I pass to a friend without cable TV. But I make him watch the commercials.
However, I'm getting *very* tired of people claiming that if I like an album I need to buy three copies of it - one for enjoyment at home, one for enjoyment at work, and a third copy to enjoy in the car while commuting between home and work. And if the wife also likes the album we need *five* copies. Yeah, right.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Dear Senator Hatch,
Thank you very much for your excellently conducted hearing about mp3 and fair use. I read a detailed article about it on-line. The evening news is pitifully lacking in actual content and quotes.
I firmly agree personal copies should be allowed or for sharing a file over a network. Mp3.com's "Beam-It" software ought to be legal for those who own the CD they want to remotely listen to.
The technology and alternative formats to mp3 exist for music companies to take advantage of. Instead they are trying to put so many restrictions on copying and use that I fear no one will ever pay for it or tolerate the inconvinences. RIAA may well try to use this as justification when their attempts fail.
I encourage you to sponsor legislation which helps define fair use, and helps music artists receive the revenue they deserve through rationally protected file formats.
Sincerely,
Are you not thinking straight?
This is obviously a case where 'free trade' isn't, and a 'competitive system' is just really a monopoly, or partnered monopoly.
The big five should be blasted all to hell just for the havoc they create with the devilish contracts they make with artists, not to mention the horrid way they force-feed overpriced slop down the consumer's throat.
But then, I'm just an arrogant American, I probably don't spend nearly as much time helping the needy as you do.
semantics are everything!
1) Repeal the DMCA.
2) Reduce the length of a copyright back to 14 years (plus a 14 year extension if the artist is still alive.)
If the record industry dies as a result of this, bummer.  But at least it will be because consumers killed it by not purchasing products (or record companies did not offer compelling enough content for consumers to buy at a reasonable price.)
More government is not the answer no matter what the question is...
The article linked to was written very close to "newspaper-style", a common journalistic technique where the article starts with a summary and continues from there, adding further details along the way.
"Newspaper-style" was originally created so that "dead-tree edition" editors could cut off any given story at the end of almost any paragraph and still have a complete, coherent article that fit in the available column space. It's very difficult to write in this style at first, but becomes much easier with practice.
Look carefully at any sports story in your local newspaper (especially coverage of a game or event, not commentary) and you're sure to find an excellent example of this type of writing.
This article doesn't strictly conform to that style, but it's close. And in that regard, I would say it's not only fair, but completely appropriate for the submitter to simply include the first paragraph of the article linked. Anything else would be extra work that might completely distort the original author's work.
No need to be so quick to complain. Submitting first paragraphs can be a very good practice.
Well said
Finkployd
antitrust investigation and that the entities
in the industry haven't found a way to give
consumers digital music suggests exactly the
opposite conclusion: that we have had too
little government involvement!
It's called corrective action. The same thing
that the gov't does when it raises interest rates or
litigates against a company like Microsoft.
Amazing magic tricks
You did single out Willie Nelson on purpose, right? Otherwise, your comment was amazingly ironic.
For those who don't know: for many years, (late 80's - 90's) Willie Nelson was just about the most financially troubled singers making the charts on a regular basis.
Such fundraising events were discussed by his fans and I believe some may actually have taken place.
The truth about trolls: They're just spammers, wasting our time/bandwidth and calling it 'free speech'
I don't like the government set rate idea very much either.
Seeing that copyright is dead, can you think of a solution to your problem? It is dead you know, no matter how much you want it not to be. It's gone the way of the dodo, and it's never coming back.
I would love for you to be able to operate somehow, and I wish I had an answer. Maybe people would buy your stuff anyway. I suspect that if I were into vinyl, I would.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I'm surprised Hatch didn't, in the interest of full disclosure, provide a little background to his diatribe...
... erm ... unique brand of music with the world. Hooray!
You see, once upon a time, Orrin Hatch recorded a CD full of music. Not just music, but folk music. Not just folk music, but Christian folk music. And it was bad - reeeaal bad. Bad enough to make William Shatner sound like Luciano Pavarotti. Really. Don't believe me?
Now, legend has it that old "Orrie" got spurned completely on his ass when he tried to sell his 74-minute croonfest to the major record labels. So it's obvious why he wants to screw them over now - as an independent artist, he has no way of circumventing the system! Digital distribution allows him to share his
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Did you mean "still compensated hugely for minimal effort?" Life is not fair. There is no guarantee that what made you rich last year will make you rich next year. Consider the poor wheat farmer. Twenty acres can produce enough wheat to feed a whole town for a year; that's a HUGE amount of wealth...in a subsistence economy. But the economy has changed, and now it's barely worth it to farm a single field. The music industry, whether it realizes it or not, has changed. Mass production of music has arrived (near-infinite perfect copies at zero marginal cost) and NOTHING can change that (cue Jon Katz - "Look what we geeks have done to the recording industry!") The question now is who will cling to the old business model until it dies (taking them with it), and who will work to develop new models.
So does this mean that family farmers will have to throw benefits for Willie Nelson?
Not so fast there sonny jim..
'According to this article there were some significant changes made in 1998. Notably, "Restaurants and bars under 3,750 square feet or retail establishments under 2,000 square feet who play the radio or television in their establishments won't have to pay [royalty] fees."'
I believe this has since been overturned by the WTO, since it unilaterally discriminates against foreign artists.
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
Dude! You had a Pearl Jam CD stolen from you in grade 10? Me too! Wha are the chances...? Also got my Stone Temple Pilots CD stolen. Stupid me, left them in the Drama hallway at school. Were gone when I got back. Never thought about replacing them w/ MP3s, though. That's a good idea.
" The No Electronic Theft law (the NET Act) is significant because now sound recording infringements (including by digital means) can be criminally prosecuted even where no monetary profit or commercial gain is derived from the infringing activity. Punishment in such instances includes up to 3 years in prison and/or $250,000 fines. The NET Act also extends the criminal statute of limitations for copyright infringement from 3 to 5 years. Additionally, the NET Act amended the definition of "commercial advantage or private financial gain" to include the receipt (or expectation of receipt) of anything of value, including receipt of other copyrighted works (as in MP3 trading). Punishment in such instances includes up to 5 years in prison and/or $250,000 fines. Individuals may also be civilly liable, regardless of whether the activity is for profit, for actual damages or lost profits, or for statutory damages up to $150,000 per work infringed"
Yippe!! I can send that guy down the hall a IRIX source cd and get him carted off to jail.
{insert maniacal laugh}
Information wants to be free like speech wants to be free, not like we want beer to be free.
Boy that must have been exciting. Did Orin Hatch have that little vein on his forehead throbing as he said it?!
guess the music industry should be paying more money to the republican party!
kick some CAD
The following:
* (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole...
puts limits on how much of the original work can be reproduced, and it would probably be decided on a case-by-case basis as to how much is too much. But it's a good bet that handing out a complete copy of, say, "The Satanic Verses" to each student would be infringement, while handing out copies of a few pages or perhaps even a single chapter would fall under fair use.
Imagine being in a CD store with no security at the door and every CD you want available right at the entrance. The only register is WAY in the back, and when you get there, they tell you that they only take credit cards. If you're a kid and can't get a credit card, don't you get tempted to use the old five-finger discount? That's roughly the state of emusic today for under-18s.
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
Isn't it entertaining that the RIAA will scream at the top of their lungs to try to get something to happen only to contradict themselves later.
For instance, in their own brief they stated that making recordings of live concerts didn't constitute infringement, but when asked if an MP3 of that same live concert distributed over the internet was infringement they just kinda ho-humed the whole thing.
It just seems to me that the RIAA wants to outlaw anything that could possibly eat a buck from their coffer versus funding a way for the public (who supports the artists and thus RIAA) to be compensated fairly.
I frankly don't like paying $20 for a CD that I _KNOW_ costs about $1 to actually create. So that means about $19 is going into someone's pocket, and it isn't the artist's. I don't want to support the record label, I want to support the artist.
I would be MUCH more likely to spend about $5 for a digital distribution of an album than I would be to buy a $20 piece of plastic. This is even more true if I knew the artist was getting most of the money.
The artist is entertaining me... the record label isn't doing squat except being greedy.
-C
--
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
It depends on the particular circumstances, but generally no, you would not be able to use the entire work. However it's not exclusively for purposes of study or education. It would be somewhat more accurate to say that it has to be for non-commercial purposes.
Re: the Hatch family, there is still the commercial vs. non-commercial issue to be taken into account. Is a corporation using multiple copies of software in some way that is not a commercially significant activity? I suspect that the sharing of music in the Hatch household would not be considered to be commercially significant unless something extreme were done (e.g. the Hatch family consisting of several thousand people who pay admission in their own home or some such)
I don't think that the courts would decide that family members are committing infringement when making CDs for each other. How would it be contrary to the promotion of the arts and sciences for them to do so? That's the ultimate test for copyrights.
-- 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.
Do remember that just because the RIAA web site says that ripping a CD that you own for personal use is not fair use doesn't make it so. At least some of the information on their web site about the legality of making copies for personal use was not simply a misinterpretation of the relevant statute but was actually 180 degrees wrong. They're apparently perfectly happy to lie through their teeth on their web site if it helps to convince people not to do things that might cost them money.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Man, the world must really be coming to an end. I never thought I'd see the day that *Orrin Hatch* was on the side of good! Confusing though, he helped build and pass DMCA, one of the worst offenders in copyright use and abuse, but now champions the fair use clause? Was there a large letting writing campaign about this that I didn't hear about? Has his office released any press releases about this? I'm really, really stumped here...
You are more than the sum of what you consume.
Desire is not an occupation.
SDMI or any other format wasn't here. Even now, players for those other formats aren't available on very many operating systems. I don't even know if I can play those on my Windoze box. But I know I can play MP3s on any of my computers.
Its a case of too little too late. They slept until MP3 was too big. And then they tried to sue it away because it wasn't going to be replaced.
Bleh!
Feinstien, of course being a California senator, stands up in FAVOR of the RIAA, doesn't she?
It ain't about republican or democrat no more.
(or maybe Hatch is just a bit pissed that EMI won't give him a juicy contract and make him into a leather-pants-wearing rock star)
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
This is almost unbelievable... Government is
threatening business to do something that half
makes sense...
.technomancer
If I really liked song I would definitly goto a trusted music store site to buy it, then wait a half hour for half a song with a bunch of pops.
Visit http://www.techcomedy.com/for a few good laughs
Here is a good guide to "fair use" for the uninformed.
Also, what if I make a copy to listen to in my car, and one of my roommates listens to the original while I'm gone? Is that fair use?
:b
Copyright sucks
Do you feel it's clearly wrong to obtain a copy of a novel without paying for it? I guess we should get to work shutting down/burning all these warez-mongering public libraries if so.
*walks around remains of staw man*. Nice work. Try this on for size.
Libraries have bought/have been given books with they loan to people to read. These books are legally theirs, and they can loan them out because that's covered under fair use.
If libraries made copies of books and gave them to people to read and keep, that would be a different story, wouldn't it?
(This doesn't say a library can't give someone a book; just that that book has to be an orginal copy the library owned)
George Lee
Is it just me or does Senator Hatch tend to get things moving in congress alot? I admire his ability to cut through the crap and get things accomplished. It would seem as if the obvious solution for the music industry would be to adapt to changing times more quickly by offerring digital downloads for a small fee, I don't know why they just don't go ahead and do it. Mp3.com is a prime example of how easily it could work, just imagine mp3.com with a shopping cart.
--
|-_-| . o O ( bEef!)
...and Free.net.org, fling..org, and guerrilla.net to provide the cover from Congress and Omnivore/FBI and ECHELON/NSA...
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
I work at a very large company here in Utah and it just iced over in our tech support area. As someone who lives in Hatch's home state I am shocked and amazed that he took the right stand on this. I hate him a little bit less now. Oh by the way the streets of SLC are also ice covered.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
If you were the ONLY source of nude pictures of your wife, that would be the case.
But since I have nude pictures of your wife, and I freely distribute them over the internet, then there is no need to force you to satisfy the demand for perverted goat sex.
(sorry, you set yourself up for that one. I couldn't resist. I am a bad boy. Come spank me now, Orrin.)
I do agree with your point, and I do think that the free market OUGHT to be able to fix this one. Artists stuck with bad contracts with evil corporations SHOULD be free to stop playing with the bullies, and start distributing their music freely over the internet, getting their promotion and kicks elsewhere.
We have to ask ourselves why this hasn't happened. Why haven't the artist flocked away from the nasty RIAA companies? They SEEM like the only game in town, but aren't really, are they?
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Posted by jamie on 03:45 PM July 12th, 2000
from the captain-of-industry-meets-corporal-punishment dept.
TonyPyGarthno writes "Facing a veritable who's who of the music-copyright wars, Chairman Hatch threatened -- in surprisingly direct terms -- to force the music labels and publishers, by legislation, to make their content digitally available for a standard fee if the record business continued to ensnarl e-music with lawsuits. As a capper, Hatch suggested that Congress might even go so far as to offer its own comprehensive definition of 'fair use' to hasten the arrival of paid digital music -- an action that would have implications far beyond music. The full story."
The way that's worded makes it sound like those are TonyPyGarthno's own words. Watch for plaguarism, Slashdot...
It is their choice to make to persue electronic distribution or not. That is something so fundamental that I can't believe that I had to say it. It is my choice to publish pictures of myself on the Internet and it is my choice to not provide any pictures at all. The record companies have no obligation to provide mp3s of their songs or to allow massive mp3 distribution. It does not matter if I will make a ton of money, no money or lose money on this venture. People can be near-sighted, stupid, crazy etc.. if they want. Plus, the record companies shareholders probably want controlled electronic distribution - it's not in their interest to allow free copies of their music. It is still my choice! Now if I started a recording company that distributes online, I can publish all I want online with no government interference; mp3.com was originally all about a new distribution method. People can buy instruments, recording time, recording equipment, etc.. for far less than before. Nothing is stopping artists from distributing on mp3.com.
Fine. His constituents' home state... former home of WordPerfect...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
He must be up to something...
Browser? I barely know her!
Hey everybody, Orrin Hatch said that he wouldn't mind trying his CD's to be put up on Napster. Well I'm going to buy the "Freedoms Light" CD and put it up as soon as it is mailed to me. (I'm also going to mail the senator and give him fair warning.)
It's ignorance itself to think you know all the answers. -Miles Comer
um - perhaps Gore is better at managing his emails than you think. The deletions were ve-ry convenient for him. . .
IMHO, he should have used a kewl nick like "jafac" or something.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Aerospace engineers do it with the thrust of a saturn V
In comparision, Lars Ulrich seems meek when tells Hatch...
:)
I've always felt that Metallica's "kill em all" attitude, shouting, and metal thrashing was just a cover. These guys are all probably a bunch of pansies in real life
Finkployd
Form your own opinion! Watch it.
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
I watched the broadcast from the senate hearing... they played a Creed song. Was that illegal that it was distributed to anyone that wanted to watch the hearing?
Because you can't, you won't, and you don't stop...
Ever used Napster? It's breathtaking. It's the largest musical library ever assembled, and it's entirely user driven.
Only if you like top 40 pop music. Napster only lists top 40 pop music, and if you search for anything aside from the MOST mainstream, biggest selling stars, you will get NOTHING. You can search for Moby, or AniDifranco, and you will get tons of hits, because they are trendy, fashionable, top 40 pop acts. But if you search for more interesting and creative music, such as music by Rebecca Pearcy or Jenny Choi, you will get no hits. This is because Napster is a haven on top 40 pop music, but nothing else.
My CD collection has more variety than Napster has. To call Napster a haven for music lovers is just plan offensive and degrading to music lovers. It's only a haven if you like top 40 pop music.
It should be refreshing to the slashdot audience to see that people in government are taking a a sound and sane look at these laws. It is a rather interesting way to put it, but finally someone who makes a difference in all of this has said, "Look RIAA, you're using extremely bad business practices and abusing positions that you pretty much illegally set up for yourselves in the first place, this just isn't practical or right or even really sane."
Don't make me come and spank you!
Eh...
So, does Hatch's wife have the right to a copy of a CD that she owns as part of community property with her husband the senator? If not, why not? I daresay that it doesn't infringe on the commercial market for the CD -- if she couldn't copy it, she probably would not buy another copy just to cover the (presumably rare) times they both want to listen to it in different places. She can listen to it at the same time as her husband in other circumstances, such as when the CD is playing in their house and both are present.
So, what does the ownership of a compact disc recording signify? How many copies can be made, if two people have joint ownership? I dunno, either.
TSG
Before records came out, professional musicians made money by playing gigs. We need to get back to that.
That fact is, most musicians today make money like this, by playing clubs and concerts. It's a pretty small percentage of people that make the majority of their bread by selling albums, and the people that do make money by doing this tend to not need it; they play stadiums anyway.
I have no problem with screwing those jerks. It's not like they're better musicians, they are primarily made famous by the music industry which is probably the least innovative one around (listen to the radio lately? Backsteet boyz clones and alt-rock both suck.)
Recorded music should be something traded by fans and used by bands to hype their live performances. End of (&^%ing story.
-gaffney
"Violence never settled anything." -Ghengis Khan
If it would result in more works being freely enjoyable and distributable by more people than the present system, then I think your sarcasm has backfired.
If there must be a few arbiters of taste, the general public may as well take the path which grants more freedom (and I don't just mean free beer, but freedom to distribute/modify works you acquire to your hearts content b/c the artist has already been recognized and paid).
Just MHO,
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
shit. People. . . musicians will still make music, even if there is no way to make money off of it. True musicians make music, because it's part of being human. Dig?
A lot of what we currently call musicians will probably end up flipping burgers, or maybe doing the 2:00 Little Mermaid show at Disney Land, there will probably be a lot less music around. But my guess is that a much higher proportion of it will be of decent "quality".
Hell, the art might even advance some - instead of the gross regression we've been seeing for the past 5 years. (some will argue 100 years - not me. Hail hail rock-n-roll)
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
It's Hillary in the article not Heidi. You're probably confusing this with Heidi Roizen who was a VP at Apple and moderately famous Silicon Valley entrepeneur (and generally nice person). Only the name is similar.
The percentage of the marketshare represented (note: NOT controlled - the RIAA is a non-profit organization and does not get compensation for CD sales, nor does it dictate policies of the music industry) is irrelevant. Saying the RIAA has a monopoly on music is about as moronic as saying that the Candlemaker's Guild (which represents every maker of candles) has a monopoly on candles. The RIAA is not in the business of making music, does not make music, and has never made music, so it doesn't make sense that they would have a monopoly on music.
Anybody with any clue at all knows that a small group of companies which control an industry (which is _arguably_ true about the Big Five records companies -- which have nothing to do with the RIAA), is called an "oligopoly". Nobody goes around calling Ford/GM/Chrysler a monopoly; because it would be evidence of being a moron. You may remember from kindergarden that "mono" means one, so how can 5 companies constitute a monopoly? If you are going to insist on being an ignorant moron by stating that the Big Five control the music industry (which they don't - there are over 1463 record labels in business), at least call it by the proper term. By calling a group of 5 companies a "monopoly" you are just being offensively ignorant.
The difference between Microsoft, and the alleged monopoly the Big Five has (whatever sense that allegation makes) is that with Microsoft there is some limit to choice; with the music business there is no limit. There is absolutely no financial structure in place which forces me to buy a Sony CD when what I really want is a Rounder CD (of course, I have a clue: I know where to get the best music. Some music consumers do not so they are effectively locked into the Big Five labels - that's their own fault though). But Microsoft "forces" you to get the browser with the OS. That's the point.
This seems more than a bit illogical to me.
Granted, but: it ain't got nuttin to do with logic. RIAA doesn't give a fuck about anything but preserving the life of the golden goose.
What's rocked me on my heels is finding that Hatch, that old homo-hater and paragon of most of what sucks about politics, actually seems to give a shit.
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Now that I've said that, what Sen. Hatch was saying was that if there is no digital content distrobution by any major record label, there might be antitrust proceedings (he said in a thinly veiled threat). This is a good thing - the industry should not be allowed to conspire to keep major artists off of digital content distrobution.
Give DLR's lyrics a good listen. They're FUNNY! He had a great sence of self-depricating humor that went LIGHTYEARS beyond anything the other 'metal' bands were doing. What his voice supposedly lacked in range was made up in triplicate in CHARACTER, which I think is more important and entertaining.
It was the VanHagar era that brought about the utter death of creativity in that band. DLR may well have been an asshole to work with, but sometimes it takes a REAL ASSHOLE to DO THE JOB RIGHT!
KnowwhaddImean?
: )
**>>BELCH
Thank you ugbar. After 30 minutes of reading comments by people who do not understand how music is made, it was a serious fresh a breath air to read your comment.
K-Tel would go nuts with this one, and you'd quickly see the death of the record album. The hit single would once again be *everything* as it was in the 50's and early 60's.
This is indeed one of the two or three most important issues. Downloading quick byte sized snippets of music does indeed spell "top 40 pop music", and longer, more creative works will not survive in online delivery, nor will the current mechanism support it (which depends on revenue from top 40 music to support the infrastructure).
Music is going to die HARD as soon as online delivery becomes the norm (whether forced by Orrin Hatch, or forced by clueless pirates). The ONLY music which is viable to produce in this media is top 40 pop music. I predict that by 2010, there will be only three musical acts: Britney Spears, N Sync, and Backstreet Boys, all of which will only sing corporate sponsored jingles, and put out two songs each per year.
Looks like the entertainment industry should have shifted their campaign contributions a little more to the Republicans than the Democrats. Seriously, I'm not generally in favor of more government intervention, but it's not necessarily bad to threaten to get involved to blast some recalcitrant group off of dead center. Hatch must be getting tired of hearing the RIAA, Metallica, and everyone else bitch and clog up the courts.
How are they alike? They are a 3rd party in the middle of the artist and the fans, like the HMOs in the middle of a doctor and a patient, telling them what to do because they know oh-so-much about how to manage you, little man.
Somebody wrote yesterday that recording costs money, equipment costs money, promotion etc... With the money the upcoming bands save by NOT BUYING CDs at $15 a pop, I sure they can save enough to get a good start without Sony, Geffen, Atlantic, et al. signing their lives away.
Another analogy, when the new-fangled automobile came out and replaced the horse-and-buggy, don't you think the breeders and the carriage houses got upset? "Hey stop driving on our roads, we built them and you're supposed to use OUR HORSES to ride on them!"
I admit, I got a C in economics, but I remember one lesson that said in the absence of new technology, a company or industry can be mathematically doomed to failure. That technology has arrived, most visibly in the form of MP3. It is a market force as valid as any other. The record industry (investors, managers, and goddamn CEOs) should pull their money out of entertainment and put it into, oh I don't know, chemicals or agriculture... or maybe they should try working for shit pay like the rest of us (get a real job).
Boy, I feel like a broken record. (pun intended)
----
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
orrin hatch for president.
he is a republican, i am not.
he is christian, i am not.
he gets it, so do it.
funny, how little it takes to make a politician look good these days.
don't forget that he's also the man who more-or-less led the charge against M$. he did it, of course, for political reasons - Novell, a constituent of his, got hammered into oblivion by M$, but, whatever. right thing, wrong reasons, yadda yadda.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
My 2nd cousin is a farmer. He sez, you can't even buy a loaf of bread for what you can sell a bushel of wheat for.
That's the fact, jack.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The reductio ad absurdum to diminish goverment in these times would be to slide back into a kind of lassez-faire social Darwinism, meaning the repeal of the historical recent idea of intellectual property, copyrights, and the US Patent Office.
This would be ideal, and solve the "Napster Problem" by just putting everything out there for everyone to have. The RIAA parasites would have to go find another job, music would be truly democratic as one could find the music he enjoys, and not be limited the taste, constraints, pricing, and the distribution channels of the RIAA.
A social-psychological result would ensue as people would no longer know what music was cool as the top 50 lists and RIAA offerings to radio/TV would no longer exist, and people would have to decide for themselves what music they really liked.
I don't like the government set rate. Anyone is free to remake anything with a compulsory license, and I think this is one of the things that makes the music industry work as well as it does. I would prefer industry standard percentages, but since the government is the one saying that ideas are property, it will probably be the government saying what the standard rate will be.
Logic ... merely enables one to be wrong with authority. -- Doctor Who
Did anyone know that mr orrin hatch distributes his own christian country rock through napster?
did ya?
I dont think so!
boy am I pointless.
but that is true..
No matter if VH1 and the radio station are paying for it, neither I nor our illustrious poster are paying anything for it, and he simply stated that receiving music without paying is wrong. And speaking of trolls, another person making the enormous logical fallacy of equivicating theft and intelectual property rights violations? Stealing a car is illegal because they no longer have the car, not because you have it. The purpose of the law is to protect people from harm, therefore you must show that the artists and recording companies are being materially harmed by your downloading mp3s. Since the way I decide if I'm going to buy a CD is by listening to some of the songs, via mp3, that haven't been released as singles. In this case I am not costing them money, my downloading of an mp3, in violation of their copyrights, is actually making them money.
dude, thats so weird. I used to go around stealing people's Pearl Jam cds in 10th grade
Why don't we have a /. Poll - just for kicks:
-I think downloading free MP3's is immoral, I don't do it. People who do it should be flogged.
-I think downloading is okay, as long as I have a paid-for CD copy.
-I think downloading is okay, as long as you listen once, and either delete it or buy the CD.
-I think downloading is okay, never buy CD's, screw the man!
I'm betting we'll see a distribution like 15-14-70-1. Maybe that would help straighten this thing out. Numbers is what the marketeers speak.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Anyone who's seem the userfriendly comic strip lately knows why pay-per-use is a stupid idea. I believe that musicians ought to get paid for doing actual work... sorry soundwaves are free in my mind...
-- Phenym
It might be nice, it might be advantageous, but it is not necessary. Most artists, true artists, create because they have no choice -- there is something inside them that must burst free and be shared. They are driven. Kudos to the copyright laws when they foster an environment wherein an artist can give birth to art without having to starve. Humbug to them when, as now, those copyright laws serve to hinder and impede artistic expression.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I find it a bit strange to be defending both Hatch and the DMCA, but it sounds as though Hatch has his heart in the right place and is upset because the DMCA isn't turning out the way that he intended. The goal of the DMCA was worthy enough; it was intended to encourage the distribution of information in digital format by providing some additional protections to counteract the easier copying of digital information. That it has failed to live up to its goals is an indication that it was poorly written, not poorly conceived.
In this case, Hatch is particularly upset because the RIAA seems to be trying to turn the purpose of the DMCA on its head. Rather than encouraging digital distribution, they're trying to use it to prevent digital distribution. At the same time they're trying to stamp on illicit distribution, they're absolutely refusing to initiate any sort of licit distribution. If I were in Hatch's position, I'd be pretty inclined to take the same stance.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Was it just me, or was the article hard to follow? I found it confusing to understand at first, I had to reread it to glean the important information.
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
The idea of releasing something in a form that cannot be altered is absurd: you can always make a crappier copy, and under this law reselling that crappy copy would be perfectly legal. Under compulsory licensing I'd have to let anyone resell my recordings and I'd only be paid a government regulated rate. Screw that. That's not just bad art, that bad for small vinyl labels like the one I own. And, yes, vinyl still sounds better than your lousy MP3s (heh heh)...
Not to mention the fact that one of the nice things I do in many of my record contracts is agree to package recordings exactly as the artist wants - this law could place small labels in ugly positions where the cannot protect the rights they contractually gave to their artists. Only lawyers can be happy about this one.
Of course you'd rather buy from the majors, with their 17.99/cd list prices instead of us indies who charge only 8.99/cd even though our margins are lots worse.
If I'm a small label and I want to release 100 7" 45's each month that only 100 subscribers get to have that's between me and my subscribers. My subscribers have no right to go out and then press 5000 inferior sounding CD copies of this record to sell to whomever they wish at inflated prices, while only paying a tiny royalty to my label (and thus the artists.) They paid for one vinyl copy and that's what they got. Period.
To have the government dictate my business model is b.s. I'm not the one committing antitrust/raketeering violations. To suggest that once you buy a record it is your right to sell zillions of repurposed copies is also complete b.s. This leaves indy labels wide open to being ripped off by majors, who won't need to negotiate with us to release our artists. If you don't believe me look at the case of DJ Rolando's recent hit "Jaguar." Sony and then BMG licenced an exact sound alike copy of this from an artist who wasn't DJ Rolando. As a result the bigger label with bigger distribution was able to charge consumers more money while paying Underground Resistance and DJ Roland the measily mechanical rate for the song (about $.07). This was Underground Resistance's first big hit in years, but Sony and BMG got to make all the money off of it - and consumers were duped into thinking that they were buying the real thing. The same scenario could be wide spread under Hatch's scheme because under it a major label wouldn't even need to make a sound a like version (which is much harder with vocal artists and guitar bands).
I'm not trying to be a jerk. You can take your CD, put cuts on your own mix tapes, scratch the record when you DJ, rip it to your P.C. so you can listen to it at work - whatever - that's all legal today under Fair Use doctrine (which I'm a fan of, BTW). But if you want to sell a mix tape or a DJ mix comp you have to negotiate a deal with the owner of the (p) copyright.
Why? Because as a label owner, when I put out a record, I also make a budget and I set the wholesale price per record based on my expenses. To have the government say that my record is worth .50/song or whatever rate they come up with means that I cannot charge what a record is worth.
What's a record worth? Well I try to break even, so it's the total cost of recording, pressing and promoting the record divided by the number that I expect I can sell. Usually I lose a little or a lot, but I'm doing it on my terms and on the artist's terms, not the government's, so no big deal if I make a bad judgement. I can still operate, almost breaking even and give you product cheaper than the majors. And release it exactly the way the artist wants it to be.
Under this new scenario, I have to assume that people are going to buy my recordings at a set rate, and I'm going to get less money than before. Ideally, I'd sell more with the internet, but with small acts you've got a pretty limited market and your fan base is pretty much the same size, since it is limited to people that have actually heard of the band (and having every damn band in the world promoting themselves on the internet does not make the pool of buyers that much bigger unless I have money for national ad campains, etc).
And really my costs are very similar to create one song or five, owing to the way studio time works. If I can only expect you to buy one song, my "cost" for that song is higher than my original calculation. But I don't get more money for a hit, even though its value to you as a consumer might be higher than the value of other songs. Anyhow expect singles to make a comeback. Right now they're sold by majors as loss leaders, but that is likely to change.
While technology has made recording cheaper, the cost for the physical space required for a recording studio is going up with the internet boom - ask any of the recording studios that once operated in Soma or the Mission (or closer to where I live, Wicker Park).
As a label owner I want a better model for electronic distribution. And I don't trust the government or the major labels to do this right for reasons that should be obvious. I want a format with fidelity that is acceptible, and I want to allow artists that don't want to go digital to have that right. Us indies have real problems with distribution and promotion. The the internet could solve many of them, but Orin Hatch's solution doesn't have a lot to do with us, and it could open us to hostile attacks from majors since we will lose control of our only asset - our recorded masters. Certainly, a new breed of indies will come in the wake of compulsory licensing, but it will also destroy the integrity of certain parts of the indy scene, like 7" labels and cool, well-packaged concept records. I want it both ways, because no single technology solution can suit all musical artists.
Ok, I've got one:
You buy a CD/get one for Christmas. You like it. You carry it around with you to some places. One day, said CD is stolen, you won't get it back because even if you reported it, no one would come forward seeing as this is a high school. Fast-forward several years, you realize you can download MP3s of the songs stolen from you years ago.
Now, keep in mind, the CD was taken from you without your permission. You never transferred rights to that music to the person who swiped it. You (or the person who bought the CD to give to you) already paid the full price to listen to the music. Was your downloading of the MP3s still illegal? Can the RIAA/CRIA still have the balls to tell you "too bad, you need to buy a new copy anyway, thanks for your previous purchase!"?
(to anyone who will say "nice hypothetical/straw man", don't bother; this is the situation I'm in with a Pearl Jam CD stolen from me back in gr. 10.)
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Napsters new lawyer has argued in his opposition to the RIAA's motion for preliminary injunction that noncommercial digital copying of a copyrighted work by a consumer is legal.
This argument is based on The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 which amended the Copyright Act of 1976 and added, among other things:
"No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings."
This seems like an answer to Sen. Hatch's questions about what is fair use. Just as long as it's noncommercial go ahead and copy to your hearts content.
http://www.cspan.org/
Hatch wants to legislate 'fair use' to include giving tapes of albums to spouses and friends?
Is this a sign from God?
Do Orin Hatch and Jello Biafra actually agree on something?
What are those pigs doing flying by my office?
The Second Amendment Sisters
Finding God in a Dog
That's because most people aren't willing to pay 50 dollars just to perform a minor task, such as unzipping a file, burning CDs, decoding MP3s, wiping files off your computer, creating a printable directory tree (all of these are windows related things.). That's quite a bit of money. The difference between shareware and music, is that if you buy a CD, you actually have something. You have a CD, which is playable in a lot of places, and you have the packaging for the CD. If you give a shareware author money, all you get is the right to use their product. All you have is a string of bits on harddisk. I definitly prefer packaged, solid goods, and would choose them over non-packaged things. (for example, i bought a prepacked linux distribution instead of downloading one)
I mean, just look at the wording and the decription of events. Doesn't sound too much like a comgressional comittee meeting to me. I just thought it was hillarious.
Exactly!
I was also interested to read:
"THE DMCA -- INTENDED TO CREATE what he called ''a stable, predictable legal environment'' that would boost the availability of intellectual property on the Internet -- had ''sadly'' failed for music, Hatch said."
To me this implies that Sen. Hatch has realized that ip owners have been abusing DMCA in ways that were not intended by the legislation. Could a follow up bill which will modify the DMCA and clearly define fair use be on the way?
Get out those pens, paper and stamps. Start writing (e-mail isn't very effective with politians yet) polite letters expressing your concerns on this issue. This could well be opportunity knocking at the door. If there was ever been a good chance to change the DMCA, this is it. If it slips by you have no one to blame but yourselves.
This may even be a chance to have a major influence on politics - young people don't vote enough, but the number of napster users (im sure most are under 30) is sufficient to scare the pols. Make them pay attention to issues that are important to you. It could help make a lot of them more aware of tech issues and better serve you. (even if they still listen to $, votes are very important to them)
end rant....
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
While I never suspected it might be Orrin Hatch saying this, more power to him! Regardless, the end of article gave me an interesting thought: The Labels and the RIAA do NOT want Legislation concerning digital media. Instead they want to "let the market work it out" Personally, while I am generally a laissez-faire kinda guy, I think that the only way we may get a fair price for those MP3s is if we let the congress legislate. We can influence them, but we can't influence the record stores and RIAA. Legislate for Cheap MP3s!
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
Metallica's latest efforts to eliminate Napster...
This whole MP3 deal has me shaking my head. Clearly, it's wrong to obtain a copy of a song without paying for it. We all know it's wrong!
No, I don't think it's wrong. If you do then maybe you need to stop listening to the radio and quit watching VH1.
Personally, I see nothing wrong with ripping my CD collection and playing it back for my own use. I'm not too sure if it's legal, but I'm still gonna do it. What is wrong is when I start sharing the songs with other people that don't own the original CD.
Ripping your own CD's is quite legal, it's called "fair use". Sharing with friends might not be legal, but that doesn't make it wrong. In some ass backwards town in new brunswick it's illegal to paint a wooden ladder, however, that is simply not wrong. We've been tought from childhood to share, and now all of a sudden it's wrong? I don't think so.
Now, we have Senator Hatch telling a private citizen, no, an entire industry how they must distribute their music! Hopefully the rest of congress will be able to moderate his views.
Screw moderation, that's how this problem got started in the FIRST place, we let it happen. No, now is a time of change, and the Music industry, because of its illegal practices, its price gouging, its raping of artists, and its stomping on peoples rights needs to be regulated.
-- iCEBaLM
Politicians do not run the government. They are merely caretakers for a set of largely absentee landlords known as the public. Congress normally runs things as they like (which is usually as they are bribed). However if the public appears to care, the rules change without warning.
Therefore the most important line in that to my reading is this:
Up until 2 years the average citizen was not going to directly run afoul of intellectual property laws. Today that has changed. Congress is painfully aware of several items:
That is why you have the two politicians who have arguably been the best friends that copyright has seen standing there and telling the record company that the rules have changed. In a big way.
Coincidentally over the last few days I have been doing some thinking on copyright and intellectual property. IANAL, I may be naive, etc. But I see this as a sign that the rules may be about to change in a big way.
We are living in interesting times, and I for one am fascinated with what may happen next.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
hmm, sounds like someone was reading Snow Crash (like I am right now) or someone was use ZOC(?)
meme virus indeed.
--
+&x
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Actually, about 100 years ago some people tried to do this; kind of a precedent to UCITA. They wanted to eliminate the sale of used books much as the software industry wants to eliminate the sale of used software. The lawsuit involved a major department store chain. I want to say Macys
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
I actually ran into this problem and it pissed me off. I installed my copy at home and at work and got denied access to online gaming at a time when blowing shit up that respawns automatically would have been a stimulating activity (leading to better work, etc.). Yea, I know that's probably against the EULA (like I read it), but there's only one wetware user at time, I just have multiple hardware avatars. Ah well, maybe q4 will have some type of DNA scanner built in and all my problems will be solved.
--
+&x
If you're interested in watching the hearing, you can see it in full (almost 3 hours long) in realvideo format from C-Span.com. The url is http://video.c-span.o rg:8080/ramgen/ldrive/e071100_digital.rm.
>
Copying radio broadcasts to tape is legal. I'd assume copying from tape to CD is legal, why not TV to tape?
So I think the RIAA could still screw you in this case, although they probably won't anyway...
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
Although it's sort of true that between the courts and Congress, the courts "win" (in that they have final say on legality), the purview of the courts is significantly bounded. They cannot simply rule the way they like, and one of their criteria is Congressional intent.
Yet another testament to the sheer genius of checks and balances...
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
This guy seems to be saying that if the music industry doesn't do something which is virtually guarenteed to be profitable (After all, how much does it cost them for you to download a song?), they're going to be forced into it.
Has there ever been a law to force companies to allow people to buy their products before?
I'm not a Metallica fan, but I've always appreciated Lars's directness on this matter. I think he's absolutely right that legislation is needed to protect consumer rights. The music industry is pretty cut-throat, and he knows as well as anyone in the business that hell will freeze over before they can come up with their own fair standard licenses. Thankfully he has the guts to admit it.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
It most certainly does not work with Quake 3! Q3 maintains a CD Key which is registered with a central server. If a second client tries to play on the internet with the same key as the first, it is declined.
There are ways around this, of course, the chief being playing behind a firewall that denies connectivity to the central servers, i.e. a LAN party. Carmack et al. couldn't give a damn about your version of fair use, he's too worried about the 2% of game players who want to pirate Quake.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
Here's a good quote -
-------
THE DMCA -- INTENDED TO CREATE what he called ''a stable, predictable legal environment'' that would boost the availability of intellectual property on the Internet -- had ''sadly'' failed for music, Hatch said. Instead of licensing their music to new e-businesses, the senator explained, the labels had kept it locked up in their vaults, cutting deals only to entities they control. Then, dropping the first of several warnings to the industry, Hatch argued that ''a policy of merely cross-licensing among major-label related entities might raise some competition concerns that this committee would have to consider'' -- in other words, an antitrust inquiry.
-------
basically, I think that Orrin thought he was helping an industry and giving them twhat they wanted and needed. Now they are clearly abusing his good will and making him look like a fool.
THe way that the recording industry is acting is extremely childish, amoral, and probably illegal. The tactics they are using could very well be considered "Racketeering", and Orrin probably doesnt want to contribute to that.
I also dont think that Orrin is a dumb man. He has some views and ideas that I strongly disagree with, but I think that he can see when an industry is acting a bunch of toddlers.
He can also see when they are abusing they're positions.
... hi bingo
Hello!!! McFeinstein! *knocks on Dianne's skull* Scour, Gnutella, Freenet...
Copyright is becoming null and void as we speak. There is consistently 8+ Terrabytes of data on Gnutella and Scour *each*.
This is wonderful news!
The government is not trying to "legislate Digital Music". It's warning the traditional record industry that there will be penalties (ironic ones, yes) for them if they continue to use their corporate lawyers to beat down the "e-music" industry!
This is brilliant for the online music people, as it might give them some hope that the old-school music fraternity will stop suing them every time they try to do something new.
It's also brilliant for the artists that rely on the distribution power of online music. As soon as they're free to use the net to get their music out there, without the fear of some contrived lawsuit the better for all of us!
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
Ok OPEC is not a cartel, it's just a loose (non-profit) federation of oil producing nations right?
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
That is for purposes of study or education, which has been categorically protected in court and law. There are limits on that, too; the teacher could not get away with handing out complete copies of the entire text.
The "Hatch family" argument rings bogus to me. Why not use the same argument to claim that a corporation only has to buy one license/copy of a piece of software to let all their employees use it on the job? I'm not trying to endorse commercial software licenses, just saying that analogous situations are treated in a clear fashion; if two people use the software at the same time, the publisher typically must be payed twice. Are you claiming that music is different, or that a family is different, and thus it is legal to buy one copy of Quake and install it on both my computer and my wife's computer and deathmatch with her? (Ignoring for the sake of argument how difficult it is to find anyone that would be my wife or appreciates classic Quake, nevermind both at once :)
You could argue that it would be different if Hatch made a copy for his wife with the mutual intent that she evaluate it. I'm not sure of the exact legal status of that maneuver, but a lot of warez sites do try to hide behind it.
Java: the COBOL of the new millenium.
no, but the inventor of the internet is.
I have a similar problem, with an ex-girlfriend scampering off with all my Fugazi and Ned's Atomic Dustbin CDs. I had to bite the bullet, and buy new ones, because my productivity dropped 50% without them. =)
Weapons of Mass Analysis
Re: the 2nd paragraph allow me to clarify: the lawful owner of a copy created with the authorization of the copyright holder. If you give me the original authorized copy, you're no longer able to retain other copies. But now I can make copies.
-- 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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Foreigners (like me, i'm Canadian) don't have access to CSPAN. Hence if they do have online streaming , i'd like to know where to get it.
Post links if you have them, to cspan.com or the proceedings (audio or video) themselves.
thanks.
I'm in a very similar situation. I lent several CDs to a close friend for his use. (All originals) and unfortunatley his CD case was stolen. I lost the originals of all of my Metallica CDs (Kinda ironic isn't it?). So now my mp3s that I ripped off of those CDs are illegal, right? I have made a digital copy of every CD that I own, however the original CD isn't nessicarily still intact. Another example is a Cake CD. Again, digital copy on my computer for use with my portable MP3 player. Original CD got a serious scratch on it and is now un-playable. Am I violating copyright using my mp3 files?
This guy is great. If there were more like him sitting in Congress, I think we'd all have a lot more faith in our government.
He has a mixture of intelligence and common sense that I wasn't aware is allowed in Washington DC. Nothing quite like watching the record industry get slapped around by the only body in existance that can do it.
We must respect evil, and we must make evil respect us.
Did anyone catch Mr. Kan's remarks near the end of the broadcast discussing his involvement with pirate groups? For someone to discuss his pirating behavior with the same committee that recently covered pirating in the software industry surely takes some huge, mutant-like balls.
who exactly enacts those bits of legislation? who enforces and judges compliance with the 14 year monopoly? who creates the monopoly in the first place?
gee, that's a lot of government...
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
Alex
Well... copyrights derive from the copyright clause of the constitution. The principle of Fair Use (among others) is of judicial origin. Later Congress adopted it as well, but the courts upheld it for over a hundred years as a boundary on copyrights as required by the copyright clause.
Congress has the power to expand Fair Use. They don't even have to enact a copyright law at all, unless they want to. But they can't contract it to less than the judicial version or the courts will overturn them.
-- 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.
> Certainly the method by which property is
:-)
> assessed and divvied up during divorces would
> seem to imply this.
Yeah, but each party only get's half. Maybe Mr. Hatch and his wife each get a 64kbps mp3 (half quality). Or maybe Mr. Hatch gets the 64kbps mp3 and his wife gets the difference (the other half).
Ryan
Napster is just representative of the people using it. It isn't inherantly a "top 40" library. I think that it's just a reflection of our current times where the major labels still have all of the power and exposure. Perhaps when people start realizing that there's more music on the net than what's on Napster, they will listen to this, put it on Napster and the scene will change?
I buy mostly Classical music these days. I've taken to buying used Classical LPs for very low prices and copying them to CD media so I don't have to spin up the turntable. I always keep the original vinyl, which means I'm legal via the Home Recording act.
Why the hell should I pay a tax so you can download the pop musick dreck you happen to like?
Most artists make very little money out of their recordings. The majority of their serious income comes from fan memorabilia - tee-shirts, calendars, posters etc.
One particularly amusing example of this is Danni Minogue who made an absolute fortune out of her topless calendars.
Oasis were in the same position.
The bottom line as everybody knows is the only losers in this game will be the record labels. But if they're smart (fat chance) they'll be taking a percentage of memorabilia sales - after all they probably bankroll the graphic artists and find the production plants.
The key thing here is, the music is an addictive drug which persuades people to buy tat with the bands logo on it. So why not give the music away anyway.
Us linux men have to stick together. Its bad enough that people like hatch are tolerant of all kinds of freaks out there. Now he comes in and he decides he is going to regulate the way I get my music telling those business people what to do.
Sigh.... Its a gritty world out there.
Lets teach Hatch a lesson and make the situation too hot for him.
Take this personaility test.
Weeeeeeelll,
Hilary Rosens' a bitch, she's a big fat bitch
she's the biggest bitch in the whole wide world
she's a bitch, she's a bitch if there ever was a bitch
she's a bitch to all the boys and girls.
Hilary Rosens' a bitch, she's a big fat bitch,
she's the meanest bitch in the whole wide world,
she's a mean old bitch, if there ever was a bitch,
she's a bitch to all the boys and girls.
Bitch-bitch-bitch bitch-bitch-bitch,
yeah she's such a filthy biitch,
Hilary Rosens' a bitch, yeah she's such a dirty bitch,
Hilaryyyy Roseeeen, is a biiiiiiiitch-ah!
Thank you.
I'll leave aside the question of if fair use allows this or not.
Are you SURE this works for quake III? I'm pretty sure that every client who connects to a Quake III server is required, by the server, to have a unique CD key. Furthermore, the CD ROM must be in the drive for the game to work.
So, I think you are wrong. But I'm not 100% sure and would welcome a more authoritative answer.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Not hardly. If the record companies had cornered the market on microphones, locked away all the pianos in vaults, and men with bull-whips traversed the public parks on sunny Saturday afternoons flogging anybody whistling, then the record companes would have a monopoly.
As things stand, they're just fairly successful at banding together a lot of pop musicians and convincing the buying public that 'music' comes out of little boxes that require electricity.
There are quite a few occupations where people are paid on the basis of past work for an indefinite period. Commissions on insurance sales for example, where the annual commission drops over time.
In the case of writers and musicians royalty income gives succesful ones the financial freedom to relax enough to be able to maintain their creativity. I know that worrying about meeting bills does lead to creative blocks.
Your statement is nonsense, and reveals the standard sick western idolisation of the concept of work, an ethic originally invented int he 18th century to keep the poor in their place.
dude that is sick! use ketchup
sorry
Take this personaility test.
Thad
Thad
Despite being beloved in San Francisco, Feinstein seems to find herself on the wrong side of every Silicon Valley issue (Clipper Chip, anyone?).
No shock that the GOP (normally run out of Orange County, but apparently can still smell money) has found a nice clean cut pro-tech industry Valley moderate to take her on come fall. She could be in trouble.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
...I watched it on C-SPAN
One of the things that really raised my bile is when Hilary Rosen replied to Orrin Hatch's questions on whether several fair use actions like ripping a CD and using it in a care was indeed fair use.
In comparision, Lars Ulrich seems meek when tells Hatch that ''Legislation is going to have to straighten this out.'' At least he is more respectful towards the lawmakers.
When Elvis passed away, I am pretty sure he intended for his descendants, or whomever he willed the IP rights, to continue to gain compensation from the people who are made more happy in their daily lives by listening to his music.
If you can't deal with the idea that Elvis's creative output was his to contract with distributors to distribute, and to will ownership of to whomever he chose when he passed away, then that's your problem.
Please, if you must rant and rave about music, make some yourself, and share it with us however it pleases you to do so.
I liked this sentence:
A small-faced, courtly man with a neat cap of gray hair, Hatch is a prolific composer whose Haven Hamilton-like songs have cracked the top 10 of the Christian charts.
Haven Hamilton is a sanctimonius country singer in Robert Altman's "Nashville", played by Henry Gibson. His opening song in the film is the bicentennial-themed "We Must Be Doing Something Right to Last Two Hundred Years", for instance. The film is finally getting a widescreen DVD release next month, the first good (or maybe even any) video release in any format.
Little nerd appeal here, but I liked the offhand Dennis-Miller-type reference, with its understated dig at Hatch.
This Orin character's got some shit to say. I wish I could have seen the looks on some of those RIAA faces.
"''Can I make a copy of a CD that I buy and put it into a car?'' asked Hatch.
When Rosen hemmed and hawed, Hatch muttered, ''The answer is yes."
That Rosen chick is a tightwad nerd, and she's not even well spoken. I hope someone else besides me was listening to her and Gene Kan on NPR a couple weeks ago. Kan, soft spoken as his is, mopped the logical floor with her. I think the 'unbiased' interviewer gave a couple of tongue lashings as well.
"TO LEAHY, THOSE NUMBERS translated into political power. ''If 20 million Napster
users get cut off,'' he warned, ''even those senators who are not sure what that large
screen on the desks in their office is are going to start hearing from those people.''
This one's especially nice. Eventually it will become evident that the law is on the side of the rich and defensive minority of distributors when it comes to this mp3 bullshit. Then mayhap leahy's point will be put to some good use in good ol Washington DC.
After reading this book, the actions and attitudes of the RIAA won't surprise anyone.
Every time that cow has expressed an opinion on *any* issue related to the internet, she's been on the wrong side. She's an embarassment to California.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Rosen of the RIAA and Erlich of Sony rapidly responded that legislation was not needed, because the market would work out what was needed.
Bullshit! The unpreparedness of the recording and movie industries to deal with digital technology is a clear indication that the market has *not* "worked out what was needed." Instead of working with digital media pioneers like Napster and MP3.com to distribute works online, the old corporations have been blindsided by people more innovative and more nimble. Instead of changing with the times, RIAA and MPAA just whine to their attorneys and file lawsuits to cloud the issue and draw attention away from their outmoded business models.
I disagree with a lot of Hatch's politics, but he does surprise me not infrequently with displays of cluefulness.
I often get the sense that some of the things I disagree with are positions taken to satisfy his constituency.
I mean here we have a guy who's actually on the "artist" side of the coin, with some legislative power, and _he_ can see that the recording industry is dragging their feet because they don't want to cut into their profits by developing new distribution channel. There's nothing like the threat of legislation to put a bug in industries ear about something.
Okay..I'm off to write my senator and congressman.
And an idiot too...
Before you write this off as flamebait, consider: Sen. Hatch asked her, among other questions if fair use included ripping a CD for personal use, and making a copy for use in the car (essentially the same act... technically, one is making a perfect copy, the other a lossy copy). She answered that neither fell within fair use.
I guess no one has clued her in on the legal judgement from the early 80s that said both time and phase shifting were, in fact, covered by the fair use clause of the copyright acts.
How else do you think we are able to buy VCRs? There was a big push to have these outlawed, because we could make copies of copyrighted material for use at our convenience. The courts said: 'Big deal, it's fair use!'
I have to argue that copying a CD falls more squarely under fair use than does copying a movie from television. In the former case, you have paid The Evil Bastards (TM) for a copy of the CD. In the latter, you are copying a 'free broadcast'.
I seriously doubt that I share ANY demographic category with Sen. Hatch, but I am glad he has seen the evils perpetrated under the name of the DMCA and is actively trying to do something about it.
Eric
I don't iamgine that the RIAA etc will take to the idea of perfect copiable music transmitted to everyone.....
----
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
Yeah, humans won't behave, and those who don't will get diseases and stuff...what's the point here? "Morals" or not (btw, I find it funny how some people bristle whenever this word pops up), the fact of the matter is that certain behaviors cause certain things to happen...and the opposite of those behaviors cause certain things not to happen. Social Darwinism in action...some people do stupid shit and pay the price. It may sound all cute for you to try to defend humanity against the "evil fascist Right," but really, your post does nothing to invalidate what he said. So what if humans can't be controlled, all he was advocating was that humans who don't want diseases should control themselves. Just because he's suggesting traditionally "moral" solutions to a problem doesn't mean that he's trying to force his morals on you or anyone else. It just means that because you and people like you refuse to take advice from others, then you take your life in your own hands. "Morals" (in reality, just being intelligent, rather than letting animal instinct rule you) might not sound so bad after you spend a few months worrying about your t-cell count and what horrible thing you might catch that could kill you.
http://www.cspan.org/politics
Hatch vs. Rosen over "fair use" occurs right around 1 hour, 29 min (1:29)
Good stuff, if you have a few HOURS to kill
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
What, he's going to kick the habit ? (-;
Why trim those off ? They're the only ones whose music is worth buying anyway (-;
(plus a 14 year extension if the artist is still alive.)
I think it should only be extended if the artist is still alive and still owns and controls the copyrighted work.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Regarding your comparison of stealing cars to downloading mp3's: it is crap. and I mean that in a nice way ;)
Consider this situation:
What is wrong here? He took something from another without permission. The victim (BMW) has been harmed, because they cannot under any condition sell the car, as they no longer have it. Furthermore, they have invested money and capital in the car, thus they incurr a loss.
A wrong has occurred.
Now consider this one:
No harm has occurred. Why? Joe has in no way caused any damages to BigPig (or their label). They can still sell their CD's, and he has deprived them of no items. "But what about lost sale?" You ask? WHat lost sale? Remember, Joe couldn't afford their CD. What did they lose? What EXACTLY did they lose?
Until you answer that last question, with a reasonable and accurate answer that shows an actual _theft_ (look it up if you have to), your analogy is not only failed, it is misleading and absurd.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Just so everyone knows, The Onion found Sen. Hatch hanging nearly naked from a chandelier in a mistresses' house several months ago...
There are a lot of areas where this is the case.
he point is neither of those overly broad and stereotyped groups are minorities right here where I am.
Your piont is beside the point. Anglo-saxon whites remain the dominant group in the US ( and probably even where you live ).
At the national level, discrimination based on culture is IMO a political game.
That's a crock. Put yourself in the position of a non-white and try to break into a primarily white group. They ignore you, fob you off and then turn around and categorically deny that there's any bias anywhere. Hypocrites. Since you're not a minority, your comments on what minorities do and do not experience are not very well informed, and in this instance plain wrong. ( Yeah, neither am I. Suffice it to say that people close to me are. ) I don't think the situation would be significantly different if one of the other groups had most of the power -- it's more about networking and the fact that it's easier to network with your own group than it is about outright "racism".
This quote is taken from a soon-to-be-posted copy of an email I'll be posting elsewhere.
Thus, NO DVD movie will ever enter the public domain, nor will any CD. The last CD and the last DVD will have moldered away decades before they leave copyright. This is not encouraging the creation of knowledge in the public domain.
Mannnnnnnnn... took you guys long enough... See, Babelfish -can- be fun :)
-- Phenym
I'll go you one further, that Police CD I just crushed under my car seat (every breath you take, not cheap to replace), can I replace the songs by duping my friend's CD? How about ripping my friend's CD to play in my MP3car?
I think all of us would agree that that's logical fair use, however according to th big cheese at RIAA, that's not fair use...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
they seem to be missing the point: People get music "digitally" because they can get it for free.
Free.
It has little, if anything, to do with ease of access. Hell, my local cd store is only a couple blocks away but they want $20 a cd and napster doesnt have a pricetag. Life is a bitch isnt it?
The only people who will benefit from all this are the credit card companies. End users wont notice anything but less money in the bank and the labels will have more and the bands will still get paid jackshit.
But I could be a cynic.
Copying a song from a friend's CD is not allowed by Fair Use Law. Fair Use Law (US Code: Title 17, Section 107) specifically covers for the most part excerpting for the purposes of criticism, and classroom use. To wit:
However, the Audio Home Recording Act (of, I believe, 1991) guarantees you the right to make audio copies of things you own for your own use. It does NOT grant you the right to make copies of music that your friends have purchased.
According to this article there were some significant changes made in 1998. Notably, "Rrestaurants and bars under 3,750 square feet or retail establishments under 2,000 square feet who play the radio or television in their establishments won't have to pay [royalty] fees." (Brackets and contents are mine.) That doesn't affect you as much as Title III of the DMCA which says that you can run code on someone else's computer, even if it is not in their posession at the time, with their permission, regardless of any licensing agreements. However, the article (URL above) doesn't say anything about the copying of audio at all.
Finally, see this excerpt from yet another article on www.nolo.com:
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This sort of crap from Activision, along with publishing non-functioning games (Heavy Gear2, Battlezone 2) and then abandoning them to the wolves because they don't sell well, has caused me to vote with my feet, and not buy their stuff.
Anyone remember the old Borland software licenses? They were worded along the lines of, 'So long as only the same person will use it, make as many copies as you like.' Now /that/ was an enlightened age.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
At what point in the history of America did we make the transition from lawyers and politicians being lawyers and politicians, to musicians and coorporate representatives being lawyers and politicians? Lars Ulrich is a musician, go back to being a musician. This whole damn thing is an abomination of the legal system. Someone needs to pop his head with a pin.
My wife has purchased probably 5-10 CD's of music from groups she's heard over Napster that she would have otherwise not bought had she not had a chance to hear them before hand. I love try-before-you-buy since I've been burned by terrible CD's (with one good song) many times in my life.
She reads about a particular group or person in one of her many magazines, hops on Napster, listens to a few tracks (or in some cases all of them (ah... DSL)), and decides whether or not to purchase the CD. Pretty nice.
When even CNN was unable to make the proceedings out to be a triumphant parade of copyright absolutists, I knew things had gone poorly for the RIAA.
I do wish I had a recording of the full proceedings from CSPAN to make my own judgement; the streams were useless to me, being a RealNetworks-hating linux user.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Maybe I'll just whistle a tune next time I want some music... oh wait, would I have to pay a performance fee?
I don't think it's a monopoly simply because it's FIVE companies. But just like Microsoft Windows isn't the only OS, Sony/Warner/EMI/etc. aren't the only record companies. Just the only ones people know about...
http://www.laural.com/
Here's an email I sent to Hatch. Here's a quote from near the end:
No DVD movie will ever enter the public domain, nor will any CD. The last CD and the last DVD will have moldered away decades before they leave copyright. This is not encouraging the creation of knowledge in the public domain.
--
Hi.. I'm a fresh college graduate; I am an artist, instead of movies or art or music, I write code and come up with ideas. I'm in computer science, so my whole life will be creating what's commonly called 'intellecual property'.
As you are one of the initial creators of the DMCA, I would like to state my opinions on the topic after giving a short quotation:
--
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit. That is all." -- Robert A. Heinlein ("Life-Line")
--
I feel that copyright is untenable in the long term. Computers are too fast and can move duplicate information too easily. The current mass of human creativity is only 10^18 bytes. Everything. Film. Satelite pictures. Music. Science. Knowledge.
Last year, 10^17 bytes of storage was sold, so, easily, in under 10 years we'll have enough storage to store all of humanity digitally. Right now, >10^12 bytes are moved per second within the US, and that's doubling every year. That means that the equivalent of the entire body of human creativity gets moved every 3 months. In ten years 10^18 bytes will move every day. That flood of data can be controlled, but only at extreme effort and require the censorship infrastructure of 1984.
Within the bill, there are two specific clauses which stick out. The first is the term extension. The second is the anticircumvention provisions.
Copyright was intended as a limited term. I enjoy the cartoon strip Dilbert. As it is, it won't leave copyright till my great grandkids are born. Did you enjoy Santa Clause as a child? Santa was created by Thomas Nast who died in 1902. With a 70 year copyright term, Santa Clause would not have left copyright until 1972. His great grandchildren would have had the power of controlling if or when you saw Santa. For example, the Salvation Army couldn't have used his likeness. Copyright terms were shorter then, Santa entered the public domain and our culture is far richer for it.
No modern icon of our culture has entered the public domain. No icon that's newer than the TV set, newer than Rock&Roll, or newer than I Love Lucy have entered the public domain. How might those icons have affected our childhood if they were freely usable. Many of these icons are held by immortal corporations, who have no desire to see copyrights ever end.
Licensed use does not mean that it is freely usable. Licenses are revokable and can have their terms changed.
Copyright was intended to increase the number of icons in the public domain. It has failed. That is why the term should have never have increased.
The other part are the anticircumvention provisions. If I purchase a device, why do I not have a legitimate right to open it up and see how it works? If that device is my DVD player, or an SDMI player, and I engage my desire to see how it works, I am infringing on the anticircumvention provision. Similarily, if I purchase a device, I may wish to put my DVD player in a car, but as they do not sell DVD players designed for that use, I might need to reverse-engineer the player to adapt my own. I've broken no copyright-related law except for the DMCA anticircumvention.
This is the endemic problem with the anticircumvention provision is that one can insert many technological provisions into a device to prevent one from doing things that are legal under fair use. Things like making a backup copy for archival purposes. Make a copy of a CD of children's music so they can't scratch the origional.
Such technological measures may make it difficult for the amateur to violate copyright, but they make it equally difficult for them to do legitimate actions like make archival backups, or to use extracts for the purposes of critiquing or intellectual discourse. Or to convert their thousand-dollar CD collection into DVD-audio.
Such technological measures are useless against any well-supported adversary.
Do you have any friends who have hundreds of LP's? Fair use dictates that they should be able to convert their collection into CD's before they molder. If a technological provision prevented that, they cannot. If they violate the technological provision, they're in violation of the DMCA! There's no way to win!
Iron bars all around a bank prevent customers from stealing the furniture, but they also make it impossible to make a withdraw on their money. Determined bank robbers will get in regardless of the bars.
CD's, DVD's, or MP3's aren't the end of progress. Unless our cultural icons are continously replenished onto modern media, they will molder with the media they're stored on. This is already happening. Master's recorded in the 60's, or film from a decade earlier are already in danger of being lost forever. Even people who care can do nothing without violating copyright law, pre-DMCA. By the time they enter the public domain in 30-50 and something can be done, they'll be unreadable!
Is this the heritage we want to leave for our children.
When the last DVD player dies, whether that be in 30 years or 50 years, there will be no way to see a DVD movie. As there is a technological protection measure on DVD's and violating that is illegal, those movies won't be saved and are lost forever. If the DMCA stands, soon, all media will have such measures and will also be lost forever.
Thus, NO DVD movie will ever enter the public domain, nor will any CD. The last CD and the last DVD will have moldered away decades before they leave copyright. This is not encouraging the creation of knowledge in the public domain.
My personal preference is either to do away with copyright altogether, or to restrict copyright to a reasonable term, 20 years, renewable for an extra 20 years. 20 years suited the country for it's first 150 years. It suited Thomas Nast, the creator of Santa Clause and Uncle Sam. In this modern hectic world, it is more than enough.
Thanks for your time..
Scott A. Crosby
crosby@qwes.math.cmu.edu
:: Duplicate unchanged all ya want, (please send email), but you must attribute it.
Because you ripped the MP3s, they are legal. Fair Use allows you to make a backup of *your CD* (and not anyone elses.) So downloading MP3s or copying a friends CD is technically illegal, even though you've paid for a copy.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
I've learned this, from when I moved to Southern California from Texas. In Texas, it means "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Frequently, this means that a lot of things that ARE broken AREN'T fixed, but you never fear in Texas that a right you currently have will be removed. I think the better term is "libertarian." In Southern California, it means, "We must actively work to keep things from changing!" Pat Buchanan is the symbol of this kind of conservativism. I think the better term is "reactionary." The thing that scares me are Senator Feinstein's comments -- she is a California Democrat, but what she says is VERY REACTIONARY.
Oh, gee, thanks Mr. Hatch. The same guy who got us into a huge software-copyright mess with the DMCA is now offering to save us by threatening compulsory licensing of music? You'll pardon me if I ask you kiss my pecker. (With apologies to Kevin Spacey aka Verbal Kint of "The Usual Suspects.")
Let's not forget that the DMCA is the very law that screwed over fair use, the very law that caused the recent DeCSS mess, the very law that Metallica used to bully Napster, the very law that makes you guilty until proven innocent of copyright violation, and the very law that Hatch himself admits was supposed to encourage online music distribution. Yes, Mr. Hatch has amply demonstrated his qualifications for crafting reasonable copyright legislation.
Go ahead, whoop it up over Hatch and his Congressional inquiry. You'll find that any law that comes out of it will further stifle innovative models for music distribution down the road. Pay attention to your history before you go crying to Congress to fix your problems for you.
You can find them here .
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
To all the AC's, follow my links, you'll see for yourselves. :-P
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Haven't read the details yet, but wouldn't that be funny; Orren Hatch and I on the same side. Who'd a thunk it?
It's the same chapter, but the audience has changed. Is it still fair use?
What if instead of distributing paper copies to the class, the chapter was put on a web site that only the class could access? Does fair use depend on the access restrictions alone?
I don't know the answer, but I think this is the central issue of this whole controversy. Of course, it's not Napster's fault any more than it's an ISP's fault if you make a fair-use excerpt of copyrighted material publicly available vs. privately available.
It's my understanding that 'fair use' applies when a work is reproduced & republished. Does it have any relevence to, say, copying a song from a friend's CD?
Browser? I barely know her!
That's correct. It would be ok to hand out a fair number of complete poems. Handing out something the length of the entire Faerie Queen would probably not be.
But it's something you have to decide on a case by case basis. That's my point. You can't say all copying and unauthorized redistribution is illegal. There are no small number of perfectly good reasons to do so that comply with the copyright clause, which is the ultimate master here.
-- 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.
Well, not exactly... Orin got caught listening to some illegal mp3's of Lard songs.
Woo...Jabber, my new Karma Pimp Daddy, that one's for you.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Hey, maybe your German is better than mine (I studied in Germany for a while and lived Switzerland), but wouldn't "Raumfahrtingenieure" get your point across better? ["Weltraumfahrtingenieure" would be more exact, but nobody would use that terminology.]
Luft = air, Raum = space [Weltraum = outer space]
"Luftfahrtingenieure" does mean "Aviation engineer".
The truth about trolls: They're just spammers, wasting our time/bandwidth and calling it 'free speech'
"You don't "get it". There is only a monopoly in music if you are trying to be as unresourceful and blind as a farm animal."
/. is all about, in my opinion.
That's the best quote I've seen in the whole music industry debate! Sadly, you're right, most music listeners will go out and buy whatever is lying in the trough. (My apologies to the few and the loud who do have music tastes beyond the top40.)
Since this is news for nerds, we have (mostly) a collection of people smarter than the herd here. Many rail against the system. Some use the system. The best try to change the system into something better.
This is what
E
Please
k
and what the AC said.
--
+&x
Fair use does not include the right to give other people copies of something in a way that competes with the market for the original. That is what copyright protects--the right to publish. (Whether this protection is a reasonable idea, or still enforceable, is a separate question.)
However, duplicating or ripping a CD is perfectly legal. Translating a work, or making archival copies, has never been a violation of copyright. What is disturbing about the entire "battle over digital music" is that most of the solutions proposed by recording industry aim to restrict those rights, as well as to inhibit republishing.
Java: the COBOL of the new millenium.
Whether it's wrong or not is largely moot. You can't actually stop people from doing it anymore. The copyright laws now have about as much force as laws against spitting in the street.
If you would like to live in a town that rigidly and strictly enforced laws against spitting in the streets, I guess you might like living in a nation that rigidly and strictly enforced copyright law.
Stop thinking about it in terms of what's right, and what's wrong, because it doesn't matter.
Besides, it's wrongness is questionable anyway. I don't think you can really treat things that would be covered under patent or copyright law as property in any strict sense.
Some system will arise, because, as someone else pointed out, all artists have to do is refuse to perform or record unless they're paid. People want music. People want stories, novels, pictures, and all manner of art. Some system will arise by which artists can create their art and not starve.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
In terms of unit sales, or even dollars if you prefer, what small fraction of the industry does the RIAA represent?
.
I'm guessing it's a marketshare similar in scope to Microsoft's. .
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Hello, and welcome! You must be new to life.
But honestly, do you actually live by this logic? How many times have you gone out to an expensive restaurant, when that money could have been used towards feeding starving kids in whatever god-forsaken nation needs it most right now? How can you pay for computer components and internet access when you could be using that money to help plant trees in your area? How many hours have you squandered on Slashdot when you could have been out building homes for those less fortunate?
"High priority" does not mean "only priority". There's an awful lot of stuff out there that needs to be addressed, and very little of it can wait for us to finish curing cancer, AIDS, and world hunger.
Remember, kids, it's only premarital if you plan on getting married.
This whole MP3 deal has me shaking my head. Clearly, it's wrong to obtain a copy of a song without paying for it. We all know it's wrong! Personally, I see nothing wrong with ripping my CD collection and playing it back for my own use. I'm not too sure if it's legal, but I'm still gonna do it. What is wrong is when I start sharing the songs with other people that don't own the original CD.
Again, I'm not too sure if it's legal if I share an MP3 with someone that does own the CD, but I don't really make a distinction between that and this second person making their own MP3. It may not be legal, but I'll still probably do it. And I'm pretty sure that Lars isn't gonna kick my ass in either of these two scenarios.
But I keep reading about people who say that it's OK to download songs from Napster because they already own the CD. I can't prove that this isn't always the case, but I'm convinced that it is. Or they justify blatant theft because the recording industry makes too much profit on CD's. Hmmm... This just doesn't make sense to me.
Now, we have Senator Hatch telling a private citizen, no, an entire industry how they must distribute their music! Hopefully the rest of congress will be able to moderate his views.
However, I'm still waiting for one single, sensible argument that justifies trading MP3's on the scale that Napster allows. I don't know if Napster is committing any crime, but I certainly believe that they make it much easier for two people to commit a crime.
humm.... i wonder if he likes metallica? g
That was a joke along the lines of "all of a sudden he's espousing our party line". I guess it was a little obtuse. Sorry.
I must say, judging from the content and subjects discussed in some of these comments it is quite obvious to me that few of you actually watched this for yourselves. I on the other hand stumbled upon the last half of this program(not the whole thing because I didn't stumble onto it until half way through) and got some information first hand. As for the many comments of "..cure AIDS, feed the starving...blah blah blah", Have you actually looked at the way our government works? In fact, it could not function if everyone focused on one problem because there are so many issues to deal with. There are a ton of committees that discuss hundreds of different topics, almost like multi-tasking but not really.
Now that I have gotten that off my chest lets talk about what was actually said and what went on in reality. In reality, I was surprised that the senators(yes most of them) admitted that they were not well versed in the ways of technology and that they were depending on people like the few that were in front of them to help them have a better understanding of what was going on and how things worked. Also, the senators asked some very good questions that appropriately addressed the issues. Some were to the affect of, how is this any different that recording to a tape off of the radio isn't it the same thing. I won't say this is a quote because I don't remember the exact questions but I do know that I was highly impressed to see these senators led by Sen. Hatch do there job and do it well and thoroughly. I for one support this move in partial licensing as well as the fair use policy. I may be just as bad about MP3's as any of the rest of you(even those saying how terrible stealing of music is, cause we all know they have MP3's on their systems as well) but I still think that it is stealing. But if a small fee was charged by say napster then I know I would pay it(this is not I think I would, I know).
Kudos to the copyright laws when they foster an environment wherein an artist can give birth to art without having to starve. Humbug to them when, as now, those copyright laws serve to hinder and impede artistic expression.
I half agree with you. Starving artists is a Bad Thing.
But how do copyright laws impede "artistic expression"? "Pede artistic expression" as in "prevent the artist from expressing his or her unique vision through their art" or "restricting the experiencing of such work" (like listening to music, looking at a painting, reading a book, etc.)? As far as I'm concerned, copyright laws do not prevent artists from creating their great works, and only restrict who can experience those works the way artists want them restricted.
BTW, please blockquote the whole quote and not the parts that suit you. The whole sentence indictated that there *are* other reasons to create art. And let's be frank. What benefits serve artists and society better? A swift pat on the artist's back for a job well done, while sending them back to their job at McDonald's to make ends meet? Or actually paying these artists in apprehication for their work, which just might encourage them to create more work?
George Lee
Lars Ulrich managed to make an ass of himself again, in front of the US Senate no less. Just when I thought he couldn't alienate himself from the American people and his fans anymore.
"Chatty Bitch should get on IRC if he wants to talk."
You seem to honestly believe that artists will stop producing as a result of the things you predict.
The artists who currently make a full-time living off of music will no longer be able to when they can't make money off of recordings. Although they will be able to work for free, they will have much less time because they will have to get a full-time job to support themselves. Making music will be limited to part time work. Since you are a moron, you are not familiar with the true cost of making music; it is much more than merely time, also.
Get out of the money-is-the-be-all-and-end-all-of-music mindset and read up on some history.
Yeah, like how the 20th century was before the most productive century for music ever, because people could make money off of it? Like how Tin Pan Alley was the golden age of songwriting, because the music sheets could be sold as products? Like how the diversity and quantity of music has exploded every year?
Only morons don't know about anything but the Big Five copmpanies. That's my point. You'd have to be blind, deaf, and stupid to not be familiar with Rounder Records. That's my point.
Like many others, I too find myself at a loss here agreeing with Orrin Hatch. But don't bother bringing up his criticism of Microsoft. There's a perfectly good republican-type (check that, I mean't 'politician-type') reason. He's from Utah. Home of a certain software company that is getting eaten alive by Microsoft. I'm probably not the first to point this out here (sorry can't browse that low with just about 500 messages already.....).
Having said that, he does seem genuine for such a wack job as he... I mean I trust him (trust him to be himself) more than a lot of Democrats. I sure liked him more Dianne Feinstein who doesn't get any of this and was basically a jerk about it (I saw the c-span).
Why not a "Napster card" you buy in the Quick-E-Mart that gives you $10,$20,whatever of download authorization? Type the card number in
just like a credit card, and it gets deducted, just like the phone cards you see on the rack.
The biggest mistake that can be made logically here, is the same one you just made. That is, to asssume that the rules are all going to be used in the same way. ie, Copyright and Patents protecting the process of innovation, and not the actual innovation itself. In this case the DMCA being used, not as an assistance to the creation an enviroment of new and undreamt of tehcnological advancement, but as a deterant. However, I feel that I can assume that just about everybody reading this already knows this.
With that said, props must be given to those who are looking beyond the abuse of the rules and are trying to make corrections. These hearing have pointed out that not everybody has had their head stuck in the sand pretending that nothing wrong is going on. And new rules for this game, if you will, are being created as we speak. While I cannot feel completely satified with an actual, written, legal document outlining what-is and what-is-not fair use (for obvious reasons) it is a step in the right direction. The idea that the market will determine what-is and what-is-not as per the RIAA and Sony reps put forth, is lost upon the factual friction that economics and all postulates there to is not the business (pun intended) of giving people rules to use ideas by.
What happens to the legal status of copyright once music is broadcast over the radio? What would prevent someone rigging a radio tuner onto their system as an audio input, and ripping CD's or mp3's from that???
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Valid clarification.
-- Phenym
One obvious solution to this mess is that a tax be levied on every computer, similar to the way a tax is levied on TVs in most european countries.
The funds collected will be redistributed to the IP owners proportionaly according to download stats.
This is truely amazing when Hatch and I agree on an issue. We are living in very exciting times.
0
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Your pigs are still airborne? The pigs over here all died from hypothermia when Hell flash-froze this afternoon.
Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with Orrin Hatch. Yes, he's sponsored some boneheaded legislation, the DMCA being the most recent major example, but he's also been a strong critic of Microsoft and now, holy of holies, the RIAA.
If nothing else, Hatch does appear to at least think about what he does, and he's plainly open to reason instead of blindly following the party line.
OTOH, he could have actually meant what he said about millions of voters running Napster, and maybe he's just making a cynical play for the Metallica fan vote. God knows Metallica hasn't been doing too much of that lately.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Well no. I really doubt that anyone, even Hatch, is claiming that it's fair use for music to be available w/o authorization on napster. The issue is, is it Napster's problem?
And in a tangental issue, if Hatch's constituents want to use Napster, does he want to use Congress' ability to define copyright law to make it more legal to share music over the net, or force the record companies to somehow make their music commercially available on the net? (e.g. 50 cents per MB downloaded on RIAAster...)
-- 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.
The real problem, demonstrated by these exchanges, and which I think Hatch was getting at, is the lack of clarity in this issue. When no one really understands what the law is, you get chaos like the internet music mess. Furthermore, when businesses can get nailed very hard for treading in a murky area, they tend to act very conservatively. Its in everyone's interest that the internet grow the music market, and they can't do that unless the law is *CLEAR*.
Congress has the power to make copyright mean whatever it wants; tomorrow, they could say musical works and performances will no longer be protected. Stock in record companies would crash, and businesses could crumble, so they won't do it, but the power is there. Hatch is just trying to figure out how to use that power.
It is their choice to make to persue electronic distribution or not. That is something so fundamental that I can't believe that I had to say it. It is my choice to publish pictures of myself on the Internet and it is my choice to not provide any pictures at all. The record companies have no obligation to provide mp3s of their songs or to allow massive mp3 distribution.
Which is part of the problem. Shouldn't it be the artists' choice? And actually, the officers of the RIAA companies do, in fact, have a legal obligation to pursue courses which will make their shareholders money.
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
And the labels get zip. Which is also nice.
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
No, that's not what he said at all. He was suggesting that AIDS is not a problem for society to solve, it's a problem for individuals to solve.
My point is, yes, an individual can solve it for himself, yay, you won't be exposed, but millions of others can not or will not behave the way you do, or want them to, and will catch this virus, and get sick, and tax our health-care system, and otherwise stress society as a whole. No man is an island. Sorry to break the news to you. Whether you feel you have an obligation to help these people or not, or even if you don't, you will be affected by this illness. Sorry.
Okay - now just to be painfully clear here, I am not saying that you or I have a responsibility to help other people who bumfuck eachother. Got it? I never said that. What I'm saying is that when a large segment of the population catches a disease, gets sick over a period of ten years, and dies, it's a drain on our culture, it's a drain on our economy, and even if you ignore them, round them up put them in camps, or just exterminate them, you are still not immune to the negative effects - shortages of skilled labor, economic deflation, in extreme cases, - etc. Just watch, ten years from now, the heathen in Africa are going to be suffering so much from AIDS, there will be even more political turmoil than today. Rwanda was a tempest in a teaspoon. Populations are dropping, 23 million orphans is the current figure. Do you think American soldiers won't be involved in cleaning up and policing that? You think the world economy will not be affected? If you can't keep people from bumfucking eachother, how can you keep politicians from doing what they will inevitably do when Africa becomes a ripe and easy target for invasion? This is not because of immoral behavior, it's because of a virus. A plauge. A mindless, soulless piece of DNA and protien. It behaves the way it does for the same reasons salt causes water to stay liquid at a lower temperature. Chemistry. Physics. You may cite Darwinism, that's fine, but this is not Africa's problem. Soon it will be yours, no matter how many condoms you wear, no matter how many women you don't screw, no matter how many needles you don't stick in your arm. This has nothing to do with morals, right and wrong, etc. It has to do with the mistaken attitude that you can "take care of yourself" in this world, and not worry about anyone else. Right or wrong, it will come to bite you in your ass. Ignore them, Nuke them, Feed them, whatever. AIDS is coming to get all of us, in one way or another. Unless you are a worm, living off of volcanic fumes at the bottom of the ocean, you will be impacted.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Out here in Utah, we like to say that "the Democrats are Republicans and god only knows what the Republicans are." This is a clear example of what a hypocrite Hatch is.
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automatictaxistopelectriccigarettelovebaby
>An ex of mine once put my CDs under the grill
Everyone knows that they're much more spectacular *on top* of the grill--you can see them better, they spend more time melting into cool shapes before burning, . . .
:)
hwk
Okay, to simplify things - the term Monopoly has been misused in this case. If the "Big Five" as you say, have been colluding, as has been alleged, and even proven in court by the FTC, then it stands to reason that the RIAA is the mouthpiece of this collusion. Doesn't make it so, but they represent the colluding parties. They are a convenient entity to refer to when discussing the "collusion". Their stated policies DO tend to support record label collusion - do they not?
The oligopoly they command, may not be the market for music you see in the record stores. (though it can easily be argued that the promotional networks and distribution channels are pretty much blockaded).
The place where choice is truly limited, is when an Artist decides to become a professional, and tries to find an outlet for their product - the RIAA companies are the only viable choices for them. For now.
I believe that Napster is pretty much a dead-end as far as that goes. I believe that Napster's business model is to ally itself with the "big five" and be part of their closed distribution network. I believe that is their goal. This won't offer artists a choice. However, there ARE internet music outlets out there who are signing bands and distributing their music, and there are more established artists who are experimenting with a DIY approach (which I think is doomed to failure in the long run, once a certain volume of internet promotion develops).
I wonder why the market can't or won't settle this, because the RIAA does NOT have control over internet distribution. They ARE working on it, but they don't have it by a long shot - so I'm wondering why competitors have not sprung up to give artists a choice. Maybe there's something we're all missing - or maybe there's an opportunity for some "sucka VC's" out there.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Remember when the printing press came about, and copyright laws followed? The reason was that any idiot with a press could go ahead and profit from others' work. The "barrier of entry" was the price of the press, and the time, supplies, and content to operate it.
Now, with the computer and a connection to the 'net -- the very implements required to merely read electronic materials, it's possible to publish (or reproduce) more.
In other words, every e-book has become an e-press.
Copy protection is ineffective, just an impediment to all users (or have you forgotten the cracking programs of the 80's and 90's that doomed CP?). It's even easier to circumvent on any OS that lets you replace parts, or wedge into others: audio CP has already been defeated in this fashion.
So here are some issues that need to be legislatively solved:
I, for one, have copies of albums on tape, vinyl, CD, and probably still 8-track. Some of it is the same music! Thus, I tend to get a bit offended [an understatement] when the RIAA talks piracy. They rip off artists; I'd rather contribute once and do with the music what I will, and skip the thieving record companies.
Given the fact that those companies have been using public airwaves as continual advertisements for their products, but refuse to view the internet the same way...well, what would you say?
I'll refrain from the stream of profanities that my response would have to contain... :)
No, actually, Kid Rock, Korn and lil Joe C filled in for James Hetfield, who aggravated a back injury in an accident.
Check out Metallica.com for details.
Incidentally, Metallica is giving a second, FREE concert to the cities that got the shaft last week. Atlanta, somewhere in KY and Texas... (I just know about Atlanta...sorry...)
BTW, I'm going to see them at the LA Coliseum this Saturday. Ahhh...maybe Ill make a live bootleg...and then distribute it as MP3s.
heh heh heh.
"Don't try to confuse the issue with half truths and gorilla dust."
Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman)
Careful with your wording, there; connotations can be tricky things.
I think you meant something more like:
"I believe that musicians ought to actually get paid for doing their work[, rather than being forced to live off of royalties]"
Is that the case? If so, yes, I'd agree.
DNA just wants to be free...
Some people may suggest that the record companies have significant barriers to entry for new record labels: limiting radio play time, shelf space at the local CD warehouse, etc... The government should lower barriers to entry and allow more independent record companies to experiment with mp3 download - free or not. That is real competition! If you want free music, start a record company and get artists with the same vision to join!
...'cause someday, when you become Speaker of the House o' Representatives, some CBS reporter is gonna dig that post up ;-)
-JD
"When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood."
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
Shouldn't we be able to do something, like write letters to Hatch telling him that we agree with him, among lots of other people?
Yes, I know he's trying to troll me
If you read the article, then you saw that what TonyPyGarthno submitted was essentially the first paragraph of the article. And plenty of times Slashdot has sufficed themselves with a blurb like "TonyPyGarthno pointed us towards an article..." without actually quoting the person that submitted the article.
will someone with any of Orrin G. Hatch's albums please put them on napster quick? then every /.er should go download. if his albums which usually receive "2000 sales" all of a sudden got 10000 downloads on napster... look out lars.
He gets the right channel, she gets the left . . .
:)
btw, while Hatch *is* from a community property state (Utah), 43 of the United States are *not*
The states that were once spanish (CA, UT, AZ, NM, CO) or french (LA) use CP, as does Wisconsin (for no apparent reason; they suddenly switched [Yes, CP makes more sense, but the gains don't begin to cover transition costs])
While I'm at it, how often to policians from that far right get this positive of responses around here?
I want the newest songs for cheaper, not 14 year old ones.
As long as the monopolies of music exist, and no antitrust suits are brought, little will change except by government intervention.
Hrm...you didn't go to Belle River High in Ontario, did you? I recall seeing a Disco_Stu on BBSes long ago, and I saw one once in a while on IRC in channels populated by people from back home.
Maybe several years after the fact, we can track down the fscker and get 'em back:)
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Well, Hatch has his own distribution system set up, he's got his stubby Mormon finger in the proverbial pie... http://www.hatchmusic.com/
Orrin Hatch is the man! (Pause. Tremble. Resume.) Let's make sure he knows that we like what he's doing:
Office of Senator Orrin Hatch
131 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-5251
senator_hatch@hatch.senate.gov
In the article, they mentioned that EMI will be releasing most of it's catalog on line soon.
Anyone have any idea what format? (protected or not?)
Anyone have any idea how much they're charging?
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Would you please take a few moments to explain what you mean and why you feel this way? If you're serious, I'm curious. Political statistics show that "minorities" tend to favor the Democratic party to the Republican party because of the former's stance on various social issues and programs.
I personally don't much go for the whole "minority" crap because I've been in enough different areas to realize that the exact definition of the term greatly depends on where you are.. Where I currently live, I would say more than half of the people in this particular area are Hispanic or Portugese at a guess (I've not seen data to back that up.) The point is neither of those overly broad and stereotyped groups are minorities right here where I am. Sure there are minority groups here - but those two certainly don't count. At the national level, discrimination based on culture is IMO a political game.
But then, my experience is limited. I'd welcome well-reasoned dissenting opinions.
Which is sad, because Hatch seems a lot more techno-savvy than Al Gore, who for the life of him can't seem to manage his emails... can you say tape backup? I can...
MPAA, etc should get with the times and sanction something like MP3.com. You click the button and it starts downloading, and bills your acct. Oh wait, that infringes on Amazon's patent, doesn't it?
Air travel engineers (aerospace engineers?) umm, do it with a Saturn V? No, that's not it either.
Sigh. Off to the library.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
Dramatic contrast was provided by California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, who lashed at Napster as ''defeating the purpose of copyright protection.'' The company's ''saving grace,'' she observed dryly, was its utter lack of business model -- a lack that Barry cheerfully confirmed. ''Why are you not liable'' for massive copyright infringement? she demanded. ''Why do you preserve the anonymity of your users?'' If Napster-like services sprung up across the content industry, she argued, copyright would become ''null and void.''
Why not start a rogue Project Gutenberg that exercised realistic copyright time limits. The original US limit of 14 years would work well. Currently they expire 50 years after the author is dead. These books could be distributed through the various anonymous file sharing programs until the laws were changed.
"What Rosen (Heidi Rosen, RIAA head bitch) indicates that one would have to buy two copies of a CD in order to fairly loan one to someone else. Okay. Why isn't that fair use?"
How can you make that conclusion from Hatch's original question:
"Is it fair use to give the copy to my wife for her car?"
Hatch's quetion is whether or not it's fair use to copy a CD and give the copy away--not whether you can loan your original CD to someone--and frankly, I can't see why one *should* be allowed to copy a CD and give it away, regardless of the relation of the recipient.
Why in the world should copyright law allow us to copy a piece of intellectual property and then give that copy to a relative? Do we justify this by saying that "its fair use because the recipient of the copy is related to the copier"?
Translate the problem domain to the printed text world: Is it--or has it ever been--"fair use" to copy a book and give that copy away? If two people want to read said book at the same time, then two copies of the book should be purchased! If however, you're done with the book, and you want to give the book away, or resell the book, or loan the book out, you're allowed.
Loaning isn't the problem--copying is.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?