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On the Time Preference for Information...
LL asks: "Altering the price of digital content is a common tactic to capture the time-preference characteristics of consumers (e.g. movie tickets for immediate first releases down to free-to-air a couple of years later). We would all like to get the latest and greatest, but are people willing to tolerate restrictions such as paying more for music that they can share with friends? The polarization of views from the share everything (FSF) to everyone is a selfish individual (digital distribution industry) is being contested through new business models on the Internet with players such as (AOL+InterTrust)|Sony willing to experiment with novel and more subtle forms of control. However, will prosumers protest over the increasing technological obsolescence if they purchase music/software and find out a few years later their hardware is not supported and their music/software collections become worthless? Are we buying a life-time's right to own or merely licensing access for a short time? If an individual/company releases/sells stuff, whether GPL or EULA, should they explicitly warn people of the downstream implications (e.g. if we discontinue hardware support you will be forced to pay for software upgrade fees)? Curious minds would like to know if there is a fairer system."
With any product if the company survives to continue to support the product you purchased is a bet. Of course in the past it has been a fairly safe bet. You don't expect Ford to go under. However, with the economy now and the businesses that do fold and the ones the currently are worth so much, but don't actually provide a service the bet is more risky. Buying something from a start-up with little to no business plan can be risky. What if rather than being bought out they just fold? I don't have a solution for the support, but with the way things have changed there is a need. When my computer broke six months into warrenty I was able to take it back and get a new one. If that support didn't exist I would have been out a mother board. Not a comfortable feeling.
Kate
_________________________ Visit me at http://pornforcomputers.com
The thing to remember here is that our physical characteristics don't change. We can only perceive 44Khz worth of audio, and no more than 45 frames per second of video, and as long as our rods are happy, resolution beyond that is wasted. So technological revolutions just change the way it's sold, or the usability of the technology (e.g. nobody ever invented a Walkman 12" vinyl disk player). The content doesn't lose quality (yeah, yeah, audiofiles can supposedly tell the difference between copper and gold connectors, just as they can supposedly tell the difference between transistor and tube amps, and between vinyl, cd's and mp3's. I ain't no audiofile, and yes, we're still in a parenthetical comment.)
-russ
p.s. It's supposed to be a pun, but if you don't think it's punny, don't laugh.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
In search of a fairer system, I think we have to start from the beginning - and that is, we do need to rethink what copyrights really mean.
The problems you have outlined are all very real, and they are all because someone is using the copyright issue to squeeze money out of the people.
I read somewhere (perhaps in
Think of it, if in the current use of copyright laws were used back in the era of Beethoven or Bach, those of us who enjoy the symphonies of those great master would have to fork out $$$ for our enjoyment ! One can't even play the ta-ta-ta-taaa (of the 5th symphony) without violating Beethoven's copyright !
And that's what the people in the future era would be facing, if we allow our copyright laws to be altered to suit the greedy lawyers.
Hopefully one day someone will get to their senses and stop all these madness.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You know, if an questioned item is not backwards compatible with perviously used media/algorythms/programs/whatever, then it is really not that much of an advance forward.
We are at a technologicl point where we can do this. It is a question of if a producer is willing to do it because of cost issues of adding that feature to the product or looing out on the consumers possibly having to buy titles on all new media.
Look at the Playstation 2. Backwards compatibility is a HUGE feature and everyone knows it.
Hhmmm.... this leads me to think. If I own a movie on VHS, do I not own the rights to watch this movie on DVD, or any other medium? I would love an answer to this.
i think the biggest problem is that many view the whole IP situation as an either/or one shot deal.
Unfortunately, it's not so simple. Courts have ruled that reselling CD's is ok - i can go down to my local Recycle Records and sell them a Metallica CD (not that i own any) for $5. At that point - they can sell it to whoever they want for however much they want. Metallica doesn't get to see one red cent. In this instance, it's easy to argue that you're paying for the CD - or you're paying for your right to own that music. 'nuff said.
On the other hand, you've got programs like Napster. I rip that very same Metallica CD and listen to it on mp3 - everyone's happy. But the minute I distribute any of those copies to friends, or anyone else for that matter...the RIAA throws a shit-fit. And we've already seen what Lars thinks of the good ole Nap.
So it pretty much boils down to two questions. 1)Are you paying for the music, or the right to listen to the music. and 2)If you're actually paying for the media....do you have the right to do whatever the hell you want with that media.
What does this have to do with legacy media? Vampire Hunter D perhaps? - Simple....the later cost shouldn't be a factor. 10 years after a movie comes out, everyone should have rights to view that movie for free. 10 years after a song comes out, everyone should have rights to listen to that song for free. Fuck royalties. If you're Don MacClean and you haven't written a good song in 20 years - you should either A)Get your fatass up and write another one or B)Get a new profession. Should i still get royalties off a shell script or a program i coded for a company 10 years ago? Hell NO!
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
As it is now, we have free reign. the internet is a virtual playground. no one has any idea how to control it. great. this proposed change to music distribution won't make a difference until the internet is policed/stifled/censored/etc. after all, what difference does it make it to release a new way to buy music if we can still get it for free? as for concerns about technological snafus (backward compatibility, costly software/hardware upgrades, etc), I don't know how they should handle it. in the past, it was your tough luck. if you bought a vinyl, you had a vinyl. you don't get a free upgrade to a CD just because technology jumped ahead. the argument here is, how should they handle the fact that a digital medium in this day and age can become obsolete within a matter of months?
They would be better off if they looked for ways to add value to the bits. Offer the customer something they will be willing to pay for, such as quality, convenience and selection.
I get the impression that these companies are "drinking the kool-aid" of Digital Rights Management because they yearn for a world where they can extract a fee for every use of their bits.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
You know I can't tell the difference between copper and gold connectors. I also can't tell the difference between CX and DX options on a Honda Civic. But the fact remains that I need the DX because my neighbor has a CX and I need the gold because my friend has copper.
If they make it better, well we all know that somebody will pay for it. If for nothing else but to out do someone.
Kate
_________________________ Visit me at http://pornforcomputers.com
It isn't that simple. If you want society, in the form of the government, to spend time and money on creating and maintaining a system of property rights, along with the enforcement mechanisms, there are going to be strings attached. The system is going to have to be in the public interest, providing tangible benefits to society, not just to the "owners" of property. All of the "natural rights" in the world are worthless if there is no remedy for their violation.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
If the media giants hope to stay alive, they will have to adapt. Currently, they are trying to take control by offering downloadable music in proprietary formats with strict 'copy protection'. Ideally, they would like to charge a person $0.25 every time they listen to a song, but this sort of pricing scheme turns off consumers. Per use charges limit the freedom of the consumer, if only psychologically. This is one of the reasons that all-you-can eat style entertainment is the most popular. People spend $60 a month on cable movie channels, and the majority of internet accounts sold today are unlimited access.
So, perhaps a subscription based model to all the media you could ever want is the answer. Rather than having to download amateurly ripped MP3s from the bogged down cable modems of Napster users, the consumer could pay $80/month and have access to all the media they could ever want, with a guaranteed level of signal quality, and from fast dedicated servers. The average person probably doesn't spend more than this on their monthly entertainment anyways, so the media giants might make even more money than they do today.
This sort of revolutionary change is similiar to the outcry the movie studios had when VCRs first came out. They claimed that the technology would put them out of business, when in fact VCRs spawned a whole new distribution method in the form of video rentals and the retail sales of videos. Perhaps these media giants should stop being scared of 'new technology', and instead use it to offer new services to the consumer.
Download a fast DirectX Tetris Clone [276 k]
As the proud ownder of 3000 vinyl, 33.3 rpm, Long-Playing records I gotta say:
1. Yes, people will put up with it. There were a few holdouts against the CD revolution (yrs truly included... digital is for data, art is inherently analog). But the "upgrade" went smoothly.
2. Dramatic switches in media are rare because they are truly qualitative switches. Sure, the introduction of the caseette tape in the 60's looked threatening to the vinyl record, but ultimately they were both analog formats. A $5 cable from Radio shack allowed for conversion to the new medium. Currently, it's all digital so media switches are even less dramatic. We won't need a $5 cable... just a free piece of software.
3. Hardware for old media will always be an non issue. Try finding a turntable today. Now try finding one that plays 78's. Not easy, but far from impossible... as long as a reasonable amount of old media exists, the hardware to use it will be available. Period. Sure that hardware may be "obsolete" but if you're using "obsolete" media and are willing to put up with the limitations of said media, the hardware won't be an issue at all. Player piano rolls suck. So do player pianos. But they're no worse than they were a hundred years ago. If you want better sound, get a better system (media and hardware), but if you like player pianos, you're getting the same quality as you would have 100 years ago.
2 1337 4 u!
First of all, I'll agree with those who say that this question makes very little sense. From what I can gather, there are two main thrusts to this question. The first involves "intellectual property" and the second involves devaluation. Both questions can be answered simply: the market decides.
/. ...
First of all, you can theoretically charge whatever you want for music/movies/etc. I say theoretically because nobody in their right mind will pay $80 for a Metallica CD. The market has pretty much decided that people will pay around $12-$18 bucks for a CD on the average. Now, with Napster, the market is undergoing a sea change. Digital distribution means that the consumer doesn't have to pay $12-$18 for the same music. Now, there has to be a balance between free (Napster) and ripoff (RIAA). It's all a matter of time. Somehow, people will figure out how to make money of MP3 and Napster. Those that charge too much will get axed out by consumers, those who charge too little will starve to death. In the end, the market will tend towards equilibrium until the next Napster comes along to change the system. So basically, any commerical enterprise in a free market system is driven by the consumer. People will pay what they want, be it a micropayment for a single song, or $80 for one of those Diablo II collector's edition sets. (One wonders if Blizzard knew that everyone in their dog would buy this game, so the jacked up the price $10-$20 above normal knowing that the consumers would still take it.)
Now, the second part of the question. Obviously, you're not going to pay as much for an old Abba CD as you would for Britney Spears or whatever moron is on the top 25 this week. Everything devaluates unless it's wine or Renoirs. Once again, the market is going to decide what price they're willing to pay. That's why they have bargain bins.
Now, in the case of hardware and other equipment, that's also a real no-brainer. If you're buying from Bob's House of Komputers, yeah, you're probably not goning to get any support after the three second lifespan of the business. Once again, caveat emptor. That's why name brands are always arond. Sure, you may pay up the wazoo for a Sony, but you know that they're going to be around for a while.
Finally, here's the gratuitous Open Source plug. Because older hardware has probably already been hacked, you can usually find OSS drivers for it. Yeah, they won't be shiny and new, but they'll work, and they might even have some developers still working on them. In the end, even an old 486 has value. My POS 486 built by companies that no longer exist still serves as my OpenBSD firewall. Once again, the market (me) places value in a commodity (that POS 486) based on what they perceive it to be worth (not much, but I'll still pay a few bucks for it).
So, now I've managed to praise both market-driven laissez-faire capitalism and Open Source in one diatribe. All I need to do is put in a plug for gun rights (NRA4EVER) and mention how in the post-Columbine world geeks are perceived as social outcasts and I'll have managed to impersonate ESR *and* Jon Katz. If I only had a Beowulf cluster of petrified young actresses pouring hot grits down my pants I could be a one-man
The main question that has never been answered is what security system out there can actually work. All these dumb startups can proclaim to have some system that does x, y, and z, but really once the encryption is broken it doesn't matter.
A DIVX type system, even without circumvention, won't succeed because consumers have rejected it, and will reject any other pay per play system that is released.
Therefore I beleive that in the end, any business model will have to rely on some level of trust with the consumer, for these additional reasons:
* You can't throw everyone in jail for copyright infringement. We already have the highest incarceration rate in the world, which is under increasing scrutiny as it is. Seeing a 13 year old that was running napster being hauled off to jail on the 5 o'clock news will turn into a PR nightmare for all parties involved.
* The government is inefficient, and increasingly under corporate control, but I think they still understand (I beleive this more so after Hatch's comments a few days ago) that if the US is to maintain technological leadership, it can't allow "old world" copyright laws to continue to dominate. The longer they do, the more any new technologies will get sucked directly into the legal system from where they will not return, while China, Japan, Europe, etc goes along with the new technology and finds a way to make it profitable.
* Capitalism in general. American consumers have been trained to have very little morality when it comes to how they spend their money, and simply buy the lowest price product if possible (of course advertising/marketing can change that, but this basically holds true here). They don't care about what affect those purchases might have on the world and others (fuel inefficiet SUV's for example). Now the corporations get to reap what they sow. Mp3's cost nothing more than the bandwidth you need to get them, and the risk of being punished is near zero.
* Bandwidth. This is a legitimate issue today when napster use might clog up an entire university's bandwidth, but the day will come when downloading mp3s doesn't bog down the network, and limit the number of mp3s that can be passed around day to day.
* The internet as a consumer/social force. This is highly debateable as to how much of an effect it has but the internet is obviously suited well for consumer empowerment. I think a lot of the reason DIVX failed was because of all the websites that proclaimed how pathetic it really was. These websites are all run by regular consumers, and therefore gave a fairly unbiased debate. Magazines and other corporate controlled sources tended to give DIVX a lot more credit than it deserved (although even they were fairly rough on it). Now I'm not claiming this will eventually lead to the end of capitalism and some sort of marxist revolution, but I think I see a consumer attitude forming of "we're not going to take this BS anymore."
Based on this I think at best record companies could get a monthly flat rate pricing model for unlimited unrestricted music access, similar to how ISP's charge for their service. With the unrestricted (no copyright) measures comes the trust. It might be able to work. All media have had to deal with piracy for some time now, granted today's issues make it tougher to deal with. In the past, oh 20 years maybe, piracy was kept low by making the barrier to piracy fairly high, keeping the number of people involved low. Today that barrier is near 0, making it very hard for this to work. Consumer "morals" might be the only hope.
Personally I don't care if it works or not. If it doesn't, I think we end up with copyright anarchy, after all the blood has been shed and the dust has settled. I'd love to see copyright go away and artists live on small donations from whoever likes them enough. That way you get artists who are in it for the music, not the money, something sorely lacking today.
Since technology is today's driving force for the economy, I think it wins be default. For once the headless monster might inadvertantly work in favor of the average guy.
It's new: Pay-Per-Thought; :)
Each time you think about it,
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the biggest argument audiophiles have is digital vs. analog.
as somewhat of an audiophile, i can argue that i do hear the difference between vinyl and say, a CD, or an mp3.
believe me - NOTHING sounds as good as a fresh record just pulled out of the sleeve. No hissing, no nothing. And you can hear everything...the only argument is that most shit is being recorded digitally anyway so the digital to analog conversion makes the argument moot. However, originally recorded works, especially jazz and blues, are best when heard on a turntable. Anyone who says different either A)Is a technophile (the slashdot choice) - or B)Doesn't know good music anyway.
As for copper or gold connectors...i really don't care enough - that's a VERY discreet difference.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Because the whole point of copyright law was to encourage innovation. Authors and innovators were granted a *limited* monopoly for a short period of time, to encourage them them to create more. It would essentially give them a few years to stay one jump ahead of the competition. After that those ideas were supposed to enter the public domain so others could *freely* use those ideas and build upon them. The notion that the author of something would enjoy lifelong control over it is utterly anathema to the concepts behind of copyright. They way it was supposed to work is that something like, say Windows 3.1, should have entered the public domain by now, and anyone would be free to improve upon it or incorporate it into their own works. By the time this happened, M$ would have had an opportunity to build upon the original work themselves, or come up with something totally new, without having to worry about competition.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
It doesn't make sense after all isn't the original intent to protect the creator? I think now we are just trying to protect the rights of those companies that often for example give musicians crappy music contracts. Why?
I hope to god people aren't listening to today's music in 125 years so much that it needs a copyright.
Kate
_________________________ Visit me at http://pornforcomputers.com
When I think foward, trying to understand why big corporations want legislature such as the DMCA, UCITA other recently passed legislation, I do not think that obsolete technology is what they have in mind. Quite the opposite.
Big corporations are already accustomed to paying annual licensing fees. I think the manufactures that are supportive of the current movement in copyright law is trying to tone that model down to the end user.
Rather than selling office suites or software, they now maintain ownership even if you happen to get the media. I think in the long run, the plan on the table is that there will be no media. I think it will start with distribution across the wire, and eventually be replaced with no distibution whatsoever. What better way to control their 'rights' to their copyright than to control the access altogether.
I think we will see big corporation supportive of next generation Internet access to bring large bandwidth to the masses. I think that is all part of the big picture for the future.
Instead of going to your local store to 'rent' software, of course, by dropping your $50-$1,000to buy the pretty box with the CD's inside, you would access this through one of the readily available ASP's that are available in the new corporate world. Instead of installing the software, you will run it on their servers. You will pay a annual or monthly fee to 'rent' time to use the software.
To big business, this model will be ideal. No longer will they need armies of IT professionals to maintain their software. The cost of their software AND their overhead in their IT department can be reduced to one annual contract with one or two ASP's, and every computer on their network will be covered. Big business will gladly trade people on payroll for a larger annual contract with outside sources. Why? It costs a *lot* of money to employ people, a lot more than their salaries. When approached with this model, big business will be inclined to pay larger fees for outsourcing their products to ASP's than they are currently willing to spend of software alone. Their cutbacks in their IT departments will more than make up for the additional overhead of software, the bottom lines will be better, shareholders make more money and everyone is happy. Especially the software manufacurers that are now recieving more money than they ever have per year, and that income will come year after year, forever.
The average consumer does not understand terms like 'cost of ownership' as intimately as the majority of the readers here do. They will not understand that paying $30 a month forever is more expensive than putting out $300 for software they can take home and 'own' (in their own minds, at least, they have a tangible product, so they own it).
The manufacturer's, however, understand this problem all to well. They realize that instead of offering a $300 package, they would prefer the residual long term payout. Kinda like a loan, but the consumer is not buying anything. They will have the best of both worlds. No one uses their product or infringes on their copyright without their knowledge, and they have a promised income.
Once this distribution method becomes a reality, and I firmly believe it is growing to that point as we speak, we will see more and more software moving to this business model.
The PR departments for these companies will love the entire process. They will be all to eager to explain to the average consumer that their software will never be obsolete. They will always have the most recent copy of the software. They will never have to suffer through an upgrade again. And they can access their software from every PC, PDA and toaster oven on the planet. As explained above, I think that selling this model to big business will be a no brainer. Once a couple of large corps are hooked, the rest will fall in line in order to remain competitive.
And, if all this pans out as I think some manufacture's hope it will, do not fool yourself into believing for a second that it will not propogate to other industries. Movies and music industries would be thrilled to have a method to turn a $100 per year customer into a $19.95 per month customer that owns nothing.
Your favorite movie or song track will always be available regardless of what changes technology take in the future. Your collection will never be threatened by fire, the elements, or theft. That will all be promised by the manufacturer.
And it will simply be an added bonus to these manufactures to cut out every distribution step between them and the end consumer. Will prices fall? Sure, but not nearly enough to cover the change in price between insert your favorite movie production house and the video store on your street where you bought your last movie. The average consumer will see they can save $5 on this movie buying into this system over paying the guy down the street for 'yesterdays' technology that degrades in time and may be lost forever if their house burns to the ground...
Assume static demand, perfect information, and atomic transactions; if 1024 people are willing to pay $1 for the new Britney Spears single, then the first 512 are willing to pay $2 (because on average, they'll each sell one copy and wind up paying $1 net), the first 256 are willing to pay $4 (because they'll sell a copy at $2 to one of the second 256, and another one at $1)... until the first guy to buy it ponies up $1024 to Britney. If Britney's smart, she sells at $768 and lets the surplus cash go to the first people to buy -- a fan's not going to pay $768 for a single no matter what the math says, but a record executive would if he knew there was a buck in it. In this case, there's room for everyone to make a 33% return on whatever their investment is (minus the $1), essentially instantly. My faith in human greed compels me to believe that VCs would be banging down the figurative doors to invest at the high levels, bridging the gap between the $768 Britney got and the $8 that a fan might be willing to pay, if he knew he'd get most of it back.
So if everyone does their homework, the artist gets the lion's share of the profits, the VCs do the VC thing (getting paid for risking money), the consumer gets data dirt-cheap, and we don't need any of this copyright bullshit.
Of course, some smirking anarchist can buy the single at $512 and instantly start offering it at $1, in which case the price plummets and the VCs take a bath. Wait, what was the problem again?
Obviously, it's not this simple... but in the thirty seconds I've been thinking about it, I haven't been able to think of a really bad way it's not that simple. You'd need some tricky work with MD5/signatures to prevent cheaters, maybe restrict selling prices to powers of 2 to keep people from selling at $1023.99... huh. Your negative feedback is appreciated as always.
By reading this post, you have already agreed that this idea is originated, owned, and controlled by me. You are expressly forbidden from implementing, writing down, talking about, saving to disk, reverse-engineering, or criticizing this idea. You may not think about this idea for more than five minutes at a time. By accepting this license, you agree to be bound by all its terms, whether legal or illegal. This license may change at any time, in which case you are bound by both the old and new licenses. Where terms of this license conflict with reality, reality shall be deemed at fault. Please bend over and prepare for the installation of the Customer Service Module.
Taping the song is legal. Giving a copy to a friend is more questionable, but probably legal. Running off 100 copies and selling them on the street corner is definitely illegal.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Have you ever learned to play a musical instrument? For most people it takes alot of work to play something that can be considered a tune. Rock stars are a side effect to the fact that people enjoy the music they write and perform. People performing in small clubs don't make enough money to focus entirely on making their music.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
The whole idea of democracy is predicated on the notion that "the people" are capable of governing themselves. In order to ensure that "the people" can do this well, the freedom of speech was guaranteed (in the US Constitution), as a means of fostering an "intellectual commons".
Just to add a little extra incentive (to encourage "the people") to contribute to this commons, they also added a limited notion of copyright, so that people could reap a fair profit from innovative ideas -- for a limited time -- before those ideas pass into the public domain (to the benefit of all).
The key to all this, of course, is that time limit (14 years, originally, wasn't it?). Without that time limit, you essentially allow individuals to stake a claim on an idea. It's as if we've all become gold-rush prospectors, grabbing up choice real-estate in idea-space...
Think about it. You can't come anywhere close to mimicking a Disney cartoon character without risking a nasty lawyer-letter. The castle in the theme-park may be just a mock-up, but the one in idea-space is a very real barrier to the would-be trespasser on Disney's "intellectual" property.
Simply put: this has got to stop!
Allowing extra-long copyrights and patents smothers the free exchange of ideas, which turns that all-important "intellectual commons" into a no-trespassing zone.
-- TaiwanJohn
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
The difference between reselling that Metallica CD and sharing it with a few thousand of your closest net-friends is that in the former case there still is only the one CD, while in the latter case thousands of copies have been made and distributed. These are two very different situations from the perspective of those who assert rights to the recording (and profit from those rights). That's not to say that there is anything "natural" about a one-medium, one-copy rule. But that is pretty much the condition under which the current system of music distribution has evolved, for good or for ill.
The problem with a purely free-for-the-downloading approach to music is that there is no money in it for those who make the recordings. Recording music would be pretty much a hobby activity, or at best one subsidized by musical performances. And making good recordings isn't cheap, with $1500 microphones, $40,000 mixing consoles, and so on. True, digital technology is going to reduce some of these costs a bit, through hard-disk recording and the like, and some forms of music (computer- based electronica, for instance) are especially cheap to produce this way. But recording live performances is always going to be labor- and gear-intensive, with at least a certain amount of expensive equipment and personnel required to produce a quality result. All-free, all-the-time isn't good for music or musicians, or ultimately, music-listeners. (And those luddites who feel that such a situation will benefit live music enough so as to be a positive trade-off -- save your arguments for later.)
So the question boils down to this: how can music recording make enough money to be self-sustaining when anyone can make copies at will, for free? The fact is, it can't. And unlike free software, where services to, with, and about a free product provide ample economic opportunities, a recording musician can't make much money with a free recording.
The RIAA members may grossly overcharge for their services, but at least sometimes musicians get recorded and paid. The 'net provides an alternative to what the RIAA does in manufacturing and distributing recorded media, and at much less cost; they want to be able to continue to make fat profits on a system that is rapidly becoming antiquated until they find a way to fill their money pipeline via electronic distribution. You and I don't expect, or want, that to happen. But the fact remains that free distribution won't pay for artists and it won't pay for recordings to be made. What will replace the RIAA members, and how will it make its money? Answer the latter question, and the former will take care of itself.
I personally don't think that having individuals rent music is a particularly viable solution to financing recordings -- I just don't see any enabling technology on the horizon that the average music listener would accept. And that's what this discussion boils down to. But I could be wrong: this could be a very fruitful discussion. It's not going to go anywhere if we keep focused on RIAA vs. Napster, however -- I don't see either of them as representing viable solutions.
Micropayments may be reasonable and fair some day. Pay a few pennies each time I listen to a song; don't pay more than a few pennies for a song I didn't like. However, I have two major problems with this kind of distribution mechanism:
1. continued access to old material
2. content integrity
[1] CDs have been available for almost 20 years and I still can't get reissues of a lot of my old LPs. As a consequence, a lot of excellent music has simply disappeared. The same is true of out-of-print books. Despite the technological ease of making digital material available for ever, I don't trust the publishing and recording industries to bother: they are much more concerned with pumping new releases and publications.
[2] The second issue, revisionism, is a little creapier: what if, say, Marianne Faithfull someday got embarrassed about the lyrics to "Why'd Ya Do It?" and decided to have them digitally redacted?
We are already being subjected to Orwellian news that gets revised between newscasts and altered according to the target "market".
While I agree that this is the case, let's concoct a scenario here...
I buy a bookshelf radio/tape/[CD] system and a bunch of blank tapes at BestBuy. I go home, read all of the associated papers, and get it all set up. I listen to the radio and find a station I like. After several weeks of listening to the radio station, I tape a bunch of songs onto my cassettes, and give them out to friends, neighbors, small children, etc.. Even though ignorance is no defence, I read all of the information that came with my radio and blank tapes, listened to the radio for 24 hours a day for a week, and not once did anything tell me that it was wrong to do this.
"You may not retransmit yadda yadda without the express written consent of Major League Baseball or ESPN", but that disclaimer never occurred with any of the music or talk shows on the station. If they claim that this would be bad for these five things, but none of their other broadcasts mention copyright, does that mean that I have implied consent to do all of these things? Hell, I can sue if I am stupid and lose a finger because (I have no common sense) somebody doesn't write "don't stick your hand under this lawnmower, dumbass" with a big warning sticker... so if they don't actively protect their broadcast rights, then they are telling me 'have at it!'.
OTOH, I hope we never hear after every song "This song is the Intellectual Property of Sony Music corporation, yackity shmackity..."
Oh well...
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
No, you're absolutely correct.
The important factoid that people constantly miss here (which has been oft-rehashed in the vinyl vs. CD, CD vs. mp3, and tube vs. transistor debats) is the whole "psychoacoustic" action. To wit: When multiple frequencies which are difficult to pick up with a mic and which will not make it into 44.1khz sampling combine, they form new pressures on the eardrum and actually give us sounds we can not hear on a recording. A record has more of this data than does a CD (and infinitely more than an mp3) and so they do in fact sound better when you have an all-analog system. Of course, if there's an A to D stage in there, you lose all that.
Arguably, for best reproduction of psychoacoustic wave information, you need a record player with a good needle, well-grounded, and a tube amplifier.
Recording at a higher sample rate is not as good as an analog recording, but at least there's no loss of quality when you make a digital copy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Okay, look. Either you want to live in a capitalist society, or you don't. Are you actually hoping for a truly socialist republic?
Right now, what we live in is a sort of mix between socialism and capitalism. Certain things are guaranteed you (supposedly) which does not include health care, so obviously it's incomplete. On the other hand, we have the right to do as we please (more or less) with at least sixty percent of our money even if we're in the uber tax bracket.
What's "fair" in a capitalist society is that we vote with our dollars. If you don't like the way a company does buisness, don't use their products. That's why we have laws against monopolies (which are not often enforced, I'll grant you) in this country; So that you do have that kind of freedom. Now if we could get DeBeers smacked down... ha ha. Never mind, that's my own little agenda.
The sad, true state of affairs is that people don't buy things unless they're aggressively marketed. One of the most talented blues musicians I know of (Who actually has several CDs out, they're not a total unknown) is virtually unknown compared to awful acts like the back door boys, and not carried in any local store. Marketing means more than content because people resemble sheep more than humans. It's your "fellow" humans who perpetuate the ridiculous anti-artist practices of the record companies. Try affecting them.
Oh, and as much as I approve of Orrin Hatch saying that the record companies are misusing and abusing the DMCA, I don't think he has a right to threaten to force them to make works available. However, I do think that a complete rework of copyright and patent law is necessary, but will not happen because of "special interest" (READ: Big Buisness) lobbying.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How is it that they form pressures on an eardrum but not a microphone?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Hi. Read this: http://www.kuro5h in.org/?op=displaystory&sid=2000/7/18/122257/231. Please don't b-slap me; this is important!
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He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.