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Napster Aftermath: Fan Vs. Corporate Rights
The Napster court fight has become an unprecedently significant focal point for many competing interests -- corporations, fans, some artists -- grappling with intellectual property and copyright issues in the Net. It's also underscored the vulnerability and alienation of the tech culture, which may scorn Washington-style politicians, lawmakers and corporate lobbyists, but still is very much at their mercy.
The only real winners, of course, are the lawyers, as usual, and the handful of companies rich enough to pay and benefit them. The idea that individual artists are now safer and better protected by their good friends at RIAA, Sony, Bertelsmann (BMG), and AOL/Time-Warner may be the saddest and most wondrously naive legacy of the Napster flap. Maybe Little Red Riding Hood should have gotten into bed with the wolf, after all.
Everybody reading this knows who the real losers are -- the Net, music-lovers and sharers, artists not under contract to large conglomerates, individual consumers, and the notion of the Internet as a free and unrestricted space that connects individuals to information in culture in new and powerful ways. Rolled over by this ruling are the fans who've experienced years of extraordinary access to a shared culture, and have experienced access to music as an ingrained part of their lives and culture.
One legal expert after another has warned that the implications of RIAA's suit against Napster go far beyond music and will directly affect the sharing of other media as well. The ruling will definitely set the tone for how intellectual property is defined on the Internet, as it now stands, and pending further appeals, intellectual property will belong to a handful of super-corporations who can afford to acquire and defend copyrights. It also has implications for the open source and Free software movement, which have sparked a new and growing movement towards open media and new models of revenue for the information industry as well as for software. If the Napster judge's notions of copyright hold up, walls and fences will spring up all over the Net and the Web.
For more than a decade, music and other media fans have experienced an unprecedented period of free access to culture, particularly music -- a tradition many are now calling piracy. An entire generation has grown up learning, collecting and loving music, and entertainment companies have seen their profits continue to soar -- the much aggrieved recording industry posted a record $15 billion in profits last year. The recording industry has spent tens of millions of dollars in legal and public relations fees to turn this social evolution into a crime.
Lost in the mega-bucks brawling over copyright and intellectual property is the individual fan -- Napster says 20 milion people have downloaded its software -- who is not represented in court. But these people have some legitimate claims in this issue, although their concerns have been almost totally ignored. Conglomerates have also spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbyists who influence Congress, and now own most of the media outlets who cover Net issues like copyright. Fans and music lovers, like citizens, have no lobbyists in Congress.
Constitutional scholars will be brawling about this for years, but a convincing case can be made that new laws like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the basis for many recent legal actions against so-called copyright violators -- are a corporatist perversion of the whole idea behind copyright and intellectual property.
The framers of the Constitution were seeking to protect artists and authors when they enacted copyright laws. Their notion was that without some protection against copying and theft, writers would have no incentive to create new works. Copying books was difficult, and it was simple to enforce and prosecution laws against it. The Net is another story -- it's the biggest Xerox machine in the world, and it's almost impossible to completely shut down the copyrighting of intellectual property. Common sense would dictate that new ways of protecting artists and corporations be found that recognized the new reality of the Net.
Even then, people like Thomas Jefferson preached radical notions of open media. He feared the ownership of ideas: "that ideas should freely spread from one to another all over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man .."
What Jefferson was describing was the reality of the modern-day Internet, especially the rapidly-proliferating open source and open media idea: an environment using point-to-point, distributed architecture to move ideas freely and all over the world. Clearly, artists need to be paid for their work, and authors protected from theft. But there's no evidence that the entities copyright laws were meant to protect were billion dollar media corporatations with a distinctly unfair unadvantage over individuals when it comes to defining and enforcing copyright conventions.
In the last few years, spurred mostly by the proliferation of culture-sharing sites on the Web, media companies have launched a brilliantly successful blitzkrieg on behalf of corporate and "artistic" rights to control intellectual property, culminating in the DMCA and the spate of recent legal actions against Napster and individual music downloaders. No such campaign has been launched on behalf of music fans, who were literally bled dry for decades not just for artistic compensation but for fat corporate profits.
According to MIT's Henry Jenkins, writing in MIT's Technology Review, [http://www.techreview.com/articles/ma00/viewpoint.htm] no case involving fan rights has ever reached the courts. No civil-liberties organization has offered money or other support to fans who are denied access to their culture by corporate lawyers. Copyright and trademarks are now deemed legal "rights" granted to property owners, while fair use is a "defense" which can only be asserted in response to copyright infringement accusations. Most people caught in copyright battles, or on the receiving end of hundreds of thousands of warning letters being issues in response to the DMCA lack the financial resources or the political acumen to take on vast entertainment conglomerates in court.
And one of the most insidious consequences of the DMCA and the entertaining industry's war against sites like Napster is the elimination of the notion of "fair use" which gave fans and users some limited protection against absolute copyright enforcement. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material, regardless of the wishes of the creator or owner of the material. A copyright gives the owner certain rights; fair use limits them. Under the right of fair use, you can quote from this column to criticize it, quote sections from it, and reproduce them to attack, support me, or disseminate my views. In these and other ways, you have the right to use this column independently of how I say it ought to be used,and that doesn't make you a "thief" or a "pirate." Copyright was never meant to be "absolute," or even long-standing, especially when it comes to intellectual, rather than physical property.
But the DMCA and recent court rulings against music-sharing eliminate any idea that the downloading of music constituted "fair use" of artistic work. Some fans and legal scholars have argued that sites like Napster, Gnutella, Free.net and Scour.net promote the sale of music, especially for personal use. A marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania commissioned one study that fond that over 91% of Napster users buy as much or more music than before they used Napster, with 28% purchasing more. Lawyers for Time Warner, Inc., Sony and Bertelsmann, represented by the RIAA, cited studies that found that 22% of Napster users said that because of Napster, they didn't buy CDs any more or bought fewer CD's. In the United States, it's possible to get studies supporting any conceivable point-of-view.
It seems logical that there is a significant amount of "fair use" involved in the downloading of music. It also seems logical that people who can download new CD's for free won't pay $16 for them, and perhaps shouldn't have to. At the same time, even music industry lobbyists concede that free music sites, from MP3.com to Napster to Gnutella, have provided new artists with new forums for their work, permitted music lovers to experiment with new forms of music, and generated tremendous interest in music that is contributing, directly or indirectly, to record music industry sales.
Rather than seek some new legal middle-ground -- sites that offer some free as well as paid music, for example, or experiment with new ways to provide artists with revenue -- the music industry has sought and won the most extreme legal remedies, ones that will continue to be undermined by new technologies and the evolution of new music-sharing sites, some legal and above-ground, some not. What seems inconceivable is that tens of millions of young music fans are going to return to a system where they can only listen to music they pay exorbitant prices for. That isn't going to happen.
But what does seem to be happening is that media companies are hijacking culture, and using artistic compensation as a smokescreen.
As Jenkins points out in his article, if Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll and the authors of the Bible were covered by the DMCA, none of their works would have received a fraction of the attention or influence they've generated.
Fans are more than consumers. They are entitled to have some rights, just as artists and corporations are. They pay the freight, especially in cyberspace, which has seen a mind-boggling flowering of fan zines, sites, mailing lists and Web pages. Fans are critics, journalists, and story-tellers. They are constituents in their own folklore and have rights of access to their own culture. Virtually all discussions of intellectual property in cyberspace are about responding to corporate and political anxieties about controlling text, images, sounds and information.
This leaves the fan out in the cold. Most of them can't afford to take on the lawyers for Viacom or Fox.
We've sold our souls by buying this drivel for so long. Now we are paying the price.
t
MP3s have often been touted as "CD-quality". Why trade a lower-quality medium based on lossy compression when you can trade the real thing. I think a real kick in the pants would be to start trading actual Audio CD images in response to the napster shut down.
This is a battle happening in the courtrooms and pressrooms.. not one happening in my livingroom, where I will happily continue to download whatever I want, whenever I want. Attached are some links you'll want to follow after the shutdown. I've been handing them out via e-mail and on IRC. Cheers!
This friday (07/28) Napster will be shut down by a federal judge. Additional information can be found at the end of this e-mail. You all know what Napster is, and alot of you probably use it. The RIAA (the people shutting Napster down) believes this will put an end to people sharing music online.
Therefore, in light of this, I am presenting a dozen alternatives to Napster which you may utilize with the same functionality as Napster. I would also urge you to boycott the RIAA by not buying any of their music from your local retail outlets or online until they drop their suit. Either way remember that any fool can make a law (or a ruling) and any fool will mind it. Consider this my way of telling the RIAA where to stick their injunction. Cheers!
~ Signal 11
Napster clones
--------------
http://www.napigator.com/ Convert the Napster client to run on the OpenNAP servers, or search both networks simultaniously. Windows only.
http://opennap.sourceforge.net/
OpenNap: the open source napster server.
Napster alternatives
--------------------
http://gnutella.wego.com/
From their website: "Gnutella is a fully- distributed information-sharing technology. Loosely translated, it is what puts the power of information-sharing back into your hands."
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
FreeNet. From their website: "Freenet is a peer- to-peer network designed to allow the distribution of information over the Internet in an efficient manner, without fear of censorship. Freenet is completely decentralized, meaning that there is no person, computer, or organisation in control of Freenet or essential to its operation. This means that Freenet cannot be attacked like centralized peer-to-peer systems such as Napster.
http://sx.scour.net/
Scour Exchange. From the website: "With Scour Exchange you can share your favorite music, videos..." Windows only.
http://music.lycos.com/mp3/
Lycos' MP3 search engine.
http://www.cutemx.com/
CuteMX - From the website: "CuteMX is your own personal file server and a powerful search engine rolled into one. CuteMX eliminates the hassle of setting up FTP and web servers and its real-time search provides successful results." Website also features a free music download section.
http://www.shoutcast.com/
Not exactly downloadable music, but hey, I like it. Tune into hundreds, if not thousands, of online radio stations featuring every genre you could think of.
audiofind.com - no information
Information on the shutdown7 407,2608120,00.html
---------------------------
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/newsbursts/0,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20 000726/aponline200558_000. htm
http://www.msnbc.com/news/437532.asp?cp1=1
What some artists think of the RIAAv e/index.html 5 7235&cid=191
-----------------------------------
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/lo
Courtney Love does the math
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/07/26/23
Chris Johnson on slashdot.org
Distribution of this e-mail is encouraged. Feel free to add more links to this if you decide to forward this on, I'm sure I missed a few. :)
As Jenkins points out in his article, if Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll and the authors of the Bible were covered by the DMCA, none of their works would have received a fraction of the attention or influence they've generated.
That's because during those times, you couldn't copy their entire work to your Zip Disk, take it to the office, and transfer it to Taiwan over your 100 Mbit/s LAN connection to the company T-3.
Why do you think DMCA and similar protective coverage originated? Why is Napster all of the sudden there when we've been taping songs off the radio for years? Because MP3 and CD burners are the printing press of digital music.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
I'm considering designing a simple one-page flyer that can inform people about the issue. Something along the lines of, "This isn't a solicitation for you to vote for anyone. Just a reminder that democracy is a responsibility, and you have to watch what's going on in Washington." It can address various related issues, such as facts about the Napster lawsuit and about the Copyright Law being amended, extending the length of copyrights.
Does anyone think that such a thing is worthwhile? If I released a PDF of it, would anyone print it out and hand it out to people? Am I crazy?
--
We believe this is one answer to the MP3 situation and have started a website at www.fairtunes.com that allows you to do exactly that. It is the Stephen King model implemented for music. We allow you to securely send any amount of money using your credit to ANY artist.
But do we live in a society that can adjust to a voluntary system when we've lived so long in a system that has always set the price for us? Can we handle the freedom that Napster gives us? Can we be trusted to use Napster responsibly? Young kids will always pirate music, and we accept that, but is voluntary payment an option for everyone else?
Matt.
It's a political year. If 10 million Napster users got seriously active and organized, there's actually a real possibility of pressuring congress into 'clarifying' the current Copyright rules to make it clear that things like napster are OK.
Push for an amendment to the copyright rules. Keep track of which reps are for it and which ones try and sabotage it. Make it real public. Be blunt.
Take back congress.
If properly managed, this could be a watershed moment for geekdom.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
If you've taken a course in economics, it's not hard to see that a popularly created culture is not the only thing at stake. Entities like Napster create VAST quantities of previously untappable consumer surplus WITHOUT seriously damaging (and even possibly enhancing) producer surplus. Therefore, even IF the record labels are a little worse off due to Napster, society as a whole is FAR better off.
The cat's out of the bag and the floodgates to Pandora's box have been opened. Humans will never stop using cliches, and they will never stop freely sharing music. It doesn't matter whether Napster or any other single entity is put out of business. (But it DOES suck to watch the lawyers suck up more money over this).
No fan has "lost" anything they have a legitimate right to. They can still go out and buy music, or trade with all their friends they made on napster, or grab one of the other services.
The RIAA / artists obviously haven't lost anything.
The indie musicians were getting questionable value from Napster from anyone's viewpoint, so they really haven't lost anything.
Signed artists who want their MP3s distributed... well, they can get a website!
The only people who are "real losers" are Napster stockholders and employees. They're losing their gravy train, becasue they haven't fixed the problem (no way to stop piracy yet) or expanded into a more legitimate market (general file-swapping?)
They can throw hundreds of lawyers. Millions of dollars, tons of resources against napster, etc. We can throw hundereds, of thousands of people at the problem. Start you own servers. If everybody started a server they would have to shut down everybody. Look at it like speeding. Yes its illegal, however it generally accepted because it would be absolutely impossible to enforce it 100%. So some speeding is tollerated. You are allowed to go by a cop at maybe 5mph over, do 10mph over though and you're pushing it.
If there we so many servers out there that it became absolutely impossible for the RIAA to stop every single one then they might just give up. Kinda the reverse of what they're doing. "We'll spend millions of $$$ because they can't compete with us and afford all the legal fees." Fine you want to play that way... We will set up millions of servers and see if you can keep up with it.
-cpd
One thing that I found about Naptser is it really REALLY sucked if you were looking for anything Indie or on a minor label. Unfortunally after checking out GNUtella & Freenet I don't see things getting any better for indies.
Maybe if someone policed napster and kept the major label copyright crap off it would still be open. But who am I to say? I put up free MP3's of my (C) artists. If I didn't people wouldn't buy.
www.cdtoad.com
when they ban enctryption only criminals wi$21*J *#JF$%!@#$':
I can't wait until they ban any file transfering because it could be used for pirating software. I can't stand administering ftpd! :)
_______
2B1ASK1
Go ahead and flame me, but I think Napster is a bad idea! Yes it's great to be able to find and listen to music over the Internet. But what is the next step?
Would everyone think it's OK to pull a football game off the TV, rebroadcast is over the Internet, and substitute your own commercials? It's hard to do that now, but in a few years broadband will become easier to get. The Napster ruling isn't about "fan's rights" (whatever that means), it's about who decides how data (in whatever form) is distributed.
Now, the DMCA does not address this issue well at all. But I think there should be some limit to what and how data can be distributed by whom.
Just my $0.02 USD
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you!
Number of CDs I've purchased in three years prior to downloading Napster: 12
Number of CDs I've purchased since downloading Napster 6 months ago: 23
Number of CDs I'll purchase in the next three years: 0
This says *nothing* of the individuals right to "home copy" or bootleg for pleasure (not profit).
Thad
Thad
This injunction is not permanent until after the Napster trial has concluded. A TRO (reporary restraining order) is very short term. A restraining order could last the length of the trial, but if Napster wins, then the restraining order would be disolved.
I would hope that Napster would win, and then the judge would be required to award large damages from the effect of the restraining order.
I have not bought any Music CDs or DVDs in quite a while. When in the stores, I have advised others that they should not buy them because of these lawsuits.
Fight Spammers!
..is the one that will destroy our rights in the "digital millenium."
You see, no one cared. "We'll go to Usenet." "This is crap." "They can't stop it everywhere."
Why not?
The very beginnings of censorship have started in countries that *I* personally would never have thought they would have started in. The U. S. especially is becoming more and more frightening every day, with myself shaking my head in amazement at the court rulings! If only the Supreme Court heard every case, we *might* stand a chance. But judges like the judge over the DeCSS case ruin any chance that freedom to innovate will continue. (Pun for those who caught it, intended.)
When we move from Napster to Usenet, will not the RIAA turn their guns to the news servers? Even though they are "service providers" these service providers might be found guilt of collusion for providing access to the newsgroups (alt.binaries.warez.whatever you love) because they have the *easy* ability to discontinue access to them - stop carrying the group.
Indeed, in the case of alt.young.* and alt.binaries.warez.* newsgroups, my ISP does not carry them. I do not care about alt.young.* - rather, the point is that it's not available. Because the ISP says so.
We cannot control the web, true. But ISPs can be forced to control where their users go, in some regards. And national and international efforts can lead to another "committee" whose sole goal is to produce web sites, newsgroups, and other areas of the web that we might create, that destroy these "poor corporations multi billion dollar industries." All it takes is some money and some political power.
Yet, we don't care.
Carnivore is accepted. The new law in the U. K. is accepted. Oh, we bitch, we whine, but we have given our rights up on a continuous basis. Maybe it would have been better if the Internet stayed non commercial - the information would still be free.
I'm in charge of a network of roughly 500 people and systems. I'm in charge of ensuring they do not access questionable content while they are working. That is my job. (No, I do *not* use filters. I use hand assembled URLs, and generally add them AFTER they've been visited. Not as effective, but I am not the Gestapo, and I will not be accused of mistaken filtering.) If the order came, from my government, to block access to nntp, or to port XXXX, I would do it.
I would have to, because I have a home, a wife, and a son that I must take care of.
I'd like to never see that day come.
--Talonius
My reality check bounced.
The facts are simple: many of the people who used Napster were either doing so with the intent to break the law, or believed that fair use would protect their use of the software. The courts seem to have ruled that this is not the case.
Now, I don't like large music companies. I don't like RIAA asking people to spend $20 or more for music that isn't particularly good. But no one is putting a gun to anyone's head. No one is forcing anyone to buy RIAA-sponsored music. We have lost no fundamental rights here, and it is ridiculous to suppose that we have.
Granted, Napster was a potential channel for independent artists everywhere, a distribution means that was not controlled by RIAA, was not horrifically expensive, and ensured that your music would get out to a wider audience. Guess what? So is a common web page. So is IRC. So are plenty of other distribution channels (not all of them Internet-based) that were completely untouched by this ruling.
I don't like RIAA. I think that they're a powerful force working for the cheapening of society for a few extra dollars. Spawn of hell that it is, though, they did have a point: many of the people who used this software were doing so to break the law. And while it pains me that it is that much harder for an independent to have a widely-heard voice, consider this: most of the music traded on Napster was from RIAA-sponsored bands.
Let's not be hypocritical, ladies and gentlemen. Let's realize that RIAA may be pandering to the lowest common denominator, but many people who cry out against RIAA were listening to music that they'd not have heard without it.
If you really want things to change, then you'll have to start with yourself. Eschew all RIAA products, whether you bought them or stole them or borrowed them. The more you give your minds over to them, the harder they will be to beat in the long run.
Fight the Power.
www.alarmist.org
I agree that corporations have perverted copyright in legal cases to their own end, and bolstered their claims with DMCA.
However, that has nothing to do with Napster. Napster, in my mind, is not about copyright protection. It's about the independence of transport method. Let's say that 90% of all pirate videos were shipped fedex, and accounted for 90% of fedex's business (haha). Would fedex be a pirate courier service? No.
The same goes for Napster. It may be USED for a lot of piracy, but that doesn't make it responsible. It has the same policy as any ISP: they don't patrol their users, but they'll take action when it is reported to them. As shown with the Metallica/Dre lawsuit.
For me, nothing was more telling that this slashdot comment. The artist complains, "So- the judge is taking away a _major_ distribution channel from me, at the request of... my competition." Marilyn Hall Patel should have heard HIM in court.
Frankly, I'm getting tired of all the anime and Star Wars bullshit. I don't give a damn about that crap.
Frankly, i'm tired of whiny trolls like you. If you don't want to see it, get an account, go into your settings, and check the topics you DON'T WANT TO SEE. That's why Rob created the StarWars and Anime topics, so fools like you would have no reason to bitch about him adding them. If you don't like Jon Katz, he's there too. Go check him, and you'll never see his articles again. So stop whining, get an account, and SHUT UP.
Anonymous Cowards have no right to complain about the subjects, and people with accounts have no reason to.
So, Jon, does this mean you wouldn't mind if I bought a copy of one of your books, scanned it, and published it on my web site? I mean, DAMN, amazon is charging $16 for your recent book. Nobody should have to pay that much for a book, right?
I mean, are you really just out to make a buck or are you doing it for your fans?
First, we should immediately set up a link where users can send messages directly to congress. Last month Congress threatened to write formal legislation defining "Fair Use". Lets get them working on this. If even 10% of Napsters 20 million users send email to their Congressmen there is little doubt that somthing will happen. Get rid of the ambiguity in "Fair Use". Corporte America shouldn't be allowed to limit what information is exchanged between Americans. At best the onus should be on Corporate America to clearly identify specific Copyright infringments. Not wholesale trampling on peoples free-speech and assiciation rights. Just because a medium makes violating the law easier doesn't give them the right to abuse the legal system and harm the medium providers. Cars aren't governed to stay below 75mph.
Second, maybe the time is right to make more information free. With the economy of scale available to corporate america there is a strong argument that they don't need as much protection from IP theft and monopoly control over their IP product. Things have been swinging in corporate america's favor for far too long. There is an imbalance in the power structure. Let's not forget, companies exist as entities because we, the people allow them to. Corporations achieve an artificial status as citizens because we allow them to. For far too long corporations, as citizens have benefitted from the rights citizens inherit, withour taking of the full responsibilities that citizens inherit. They have too much voice, too much power and take very little responsibility. Its time to take corporate america to task and make them take responsibility. If they want to continue to profit from our work they will have to start giving back. "Special rights" given to corporations providing monopolistic power need to be reigned in.
Sounds perverse, but I'm inclined to believe that the Napster decision is a Good Thing (TM), and a classic case of the RIAA shooting themselves in the foot (and in the head).
:-).
If the injunction stays then it will force everyone looking for music onto systems which are much more in keeping with Open Source/ GNU philosophy, such as GnuTella. In addition such distributed systems are going to be almost impossible to shutdown - it looks like its going to be DeCSS 'whack a mole' all over again
Let the good times roll!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
The fan does have one recourse. Don't buy crap. Unfortunately, the majority of us here have been doing that for years. We don't listen to the RIAA or the Top 40 chart or the MegaSuperUltraHitsHour on the radio. We're not the ones the RIAA cares about. Its the teens, the ones who have grown up brainwashed by the constant churning of the crap engine that has produced such talentless, brainless stars as Britney Spears and NSync. They have the money, they buy the albums, because they want to be cool. This trial has sent waves through the general public though. People who have never heard of Napster are now downloading and experimenting with alternatives, such as Scour and Gnutella. The issue is out in the open, and because of the fall of Napster people will begin to see the light, and reject the monopolistic practices of the RIAA.
:p I bet they weren't prepared for the massive flood after the injunction was announced!
By the way, Scour was down last night. I couldn't even register
"I live in a world of make-believe, with faeries and leprechauns and tiny little frogs with funny hats."
The point is, Free Beer is NOT the same as Free Speech, no matter HOW often Jon Katz chooses to rant. Napster offers the same freedoms as a pair of concrete shoes. Swimming in such freedom is not advisable.
Napster uses proprietary technology, trades (without authorisation) proprietary data, in a proprietary (and lossy) format, for the benefit of who, exactly?
For the benefit of the artists? But the artists are the ones most upset!
For the benefit of the music industry? Don't make me laugh. This may be the beginning of the end of an organised music industry.
For the benefit of diversity? Napster is doing a Microsoft, and killing all competitors with no regard to ethics, the law, or anything else.
For the benefit of the consumers? HOW??? If the only music you can get is music you've got, and the only way to play it is via a sound card, then consumers are quite capable of making their own music available over the Internet, to download at their leisure. Sure, it takes disk space, but HD's are cheap, so there's no longer any benefit in having a central store.
For the benefit of Napster? Being a de-facto monopoly, with absolute power and control over all large-scale music transfers (and potentially ALL music transfers, in total) is certainly a sizable benefit.
Herr Frankenstein, you have created a monster! And it's eating my CD collection!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
With the Napster ruling, maybe Metallica can not start paying for their bills. (article clipped from Chicag Tribune).
... that's no excuse for walking out on a $300 bar tab here.
Freeloaders
Could the rock band Metallica be that hard up for cash?
We know the band is embroiled in a lawsuit with Napster over copyright infringement but
Ed Suqi, a VIP host at Chicago's Glow nightclub, tells Inc. that the band left without paying the bill. And they stiffed Suqi on the tip too.
Suqi, 24, said the band ranked among the worst celebrities he has waited on. "They don't want people downloading their music for free," but they never even asked for the bill before they vamoosed, he said.
Nonetheless, at last report, the Metallica CD was still playing in Glow's jukebox.
Mouths for Metallica could not be reached for comment.
One of the reasons Napster was so successful was that there was a large user base, hence a larger selection of files. By having so many alternatives to Napster, aren't you diluting the music pool? I'm not saying this is your fault, but I think fewer (hence larger) communites should be engouraged to have a larger collection of resources. I'm not going to have 5-6 different clients open, and I'm sure others won't as well.
Being with you, it's just one epiphany after another
Ok, so the RIAAssholes got to napster. Somwhere further down this article, Signal 11 posted about 50 links to MP3 related software/sites.
Now let us look at the alternatives:
1. Other MP3 software (for arguments sake, let us say there are only 5 other programs, though any idiot can figure out that's a crock)
2. FTP
3. HTTP
4. IRC
5. (gasp, so sad) AOL
6. Email
7. Snail Mail (burn a cd and send it.. oh well)
So, RIAA attacks #1, gets a few shut down. Then people move to #2. Tag and move and tag and move, even if RIAA somehow limits all of the above (which any idiot knows is next to impossible) then people go down the list. Once you get to #7, more programs are coming out, move back to #1. Endless cycle.
This will be an endless cycle until RIAA stops fighting us, forcing us to "extend and make them embrace" our middle finger. There are more resources out there than ever before, and in case they didn't realize, we can always go back to ole tape and radio (although we won't).
Perhaps the only thing that can stop us is if JonKatz starts posting his entire text to his articles on each of these methods. If that happens, well, there are a lot more things that we have to worry about.
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
Fry [talking to Beastie Boys as heads-in-jars]: Wow! Back in the 90s, I had all 5 of your albums. ... Can I borrow the new ones? ... And a couple of blank tapes?
band Member: That was over a thousand years ago! We've got seven now!
Fry: Cool!
Ya see, even the industry itself expects stuff like this to happen.
Lets see..
..DING!
"Media corporations"...DING!
"Popular Culture"...DING!
"Copyright issue:...DING!
"Betrayl"..DING!
"Political Vulnerability"...DING!
"Tech Culture"...DING!
"Alienation"...DING!
"Information in culture"..DING!
"Shared culture"..DING!
"Lives and culture"...DING!
"Open media" DING**DING!!!
"Corporatist perversion" DING!
"New Reality" DING!
"Hijacking Culture"
"Media Companies" (twice!) DING!
As Katz points out, the media corporations control popular culture with political vulnerable Columbine issues, and copyright betrayls. Then again, the political corporations control popular media culture with vulnerable Columbine issues. Some might argue that Columbine political controls make corporate media culture issue betrayls as well.
I could write better drivel with a Perl script that randomly assembled blocks of text from Katz's buzzword-bingo writing style. Spare me.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
The RIAA doesn't give a hoot about controlling the culture of our society, unless it promotes fattening their wallets. The real reason they are so active in controlling intellectual property in music is because they are afraid of losing their huge profits that they currently enjoy!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
In most record stores in the US, you cannot listen to music before buying it, that I know of. Or if you can, they do a good job of making it unclear that it is allowed. Some stores do offer 'listening stations' where you can hear music off of certain selected CD's that the store is choosing to promote. Sales policies are also usually set to discourage returning music if you don't like it. The policy at most stores is that once the package is opened, you can only return it for the same thing (to allow you to get rid of defective media).
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
I want to know how exactly it is that it's 'fair use' to make a copy in whole of any work.
As far as Napster goes the RIAA is barking up the wrong tree. It's like taking Ford to court because someone used a Ford vehicle in a bank robbery. What they should do is find out who the people are that are downloading and making available the protected works and sending them all invoices, or take them all to court, but it's easier to sue one entity rather than thousands.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
I have setup a page in protest of the RIAA at www.riaaboycott.org please visit the site and if you agree with what's there, sign the petiton! Oh, and I'm not making any money off this or anything (actually I'm spending $15 a month), I'm just trying to get something done instead of bitching for a change. Thanks :)
-colin
-Colin
it's just not widespread. Look for .shn files. I use them all the time to trade recordings of live concerts. (hey, as long as I'm trading something that's legally questionable, might as well do it on the Internet)
----------------------------
An MP3 has a playback quality that rivals radio.
Radio stations play music for free.
People have listened to radio for the duration of the recorded music sales market.
People will continue to buy what they can get for free.
The real issue that I see in the Napster case is that the big record companies have lost control over what listeners hear for free. It used to be that these record companies could control the content of free music outlets(Radio, MTV, VH1, etc.) that's why crappy songs are hyped so much. Since people are cattle/lemming like in nature they buy what the media tells them is cool regardless of the artistic work's actual merit. Listeners are told music is good and are so insecure on their own tastes that they decide to conform to the corporate image of coolness/sophistication.
Napster came along and essentially allowed the individual to make his/her own programming decisions. They can listen to inferior to CD quality music and make a decision as to whether they want to buy it. Napster is essentially a listener programmed radio station without the adds.
What the record corporations are losing is the power to promote specific songs. This is why people buy CDs with only one good song for $16.95. That's also the reason why singles cost $7.95 or so. With Napster people are able to preview entire albums before they buy and that's going to ruin that nice little scam that record companies have been playing.
Don't think that this is about piracy. If that were the case they would have gone after radio stations a long time ago. If these guys win I could see them creating their own Napster with inferior MP3s of only the songs that they want to promote, geared solely to get you to buy those one-hit-wonder CDs.
--Purple lightning. That's always a good sign.
I noticed something earlier, according to Harry Bank (ceo of napster) the judges ruling will encompass the following:
The Judge's ruling is essentially this: that one-to-one non-commercial file sharing violates the law.
However, source code has already been deemed free speech - and is thus covered under the first amendment. In this case Mp3's are binary, however both are files. Does this mean that free software repositories such as amug, freesoftware.com, and kernel.org are breaking the law? Or can this case be appealed just on the basis of an extremely clueless ruling? Or is this simply hype by Harry Bank. -- If the judge does rule this way then private ftp, http, the GPL, and networks in general can be challenged in the US.
Any ideas on this?
That should be a good battle cry....
Unfortunately, it doesn't look good - it's guilt by association, and if the blunt tool of the law has to bludgeon a few innocents in the name of protecting the property of the wealthy they'll do it. Since copyright protection is mostly by the honor system, and if people have the freedom to 'do the right thing' and some don't and it's impossible to enforce, then we ALL lose a freedom - which is what CSS is about, taking away some control over content (like on what we can play it) - all it takes is ONE person to abuse a freedom and the authorities use that as an excuse to lock us all down.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
tilts the copyright issue dramatically in favor of media corporations, who now virtually own popular culture
Wait just a second here. Corporations *created* popular culture. You can't go back now and claim that we want corporate-created popular culture but without the corporations.
In any town, you'll find many great bands, for example, that make you wonder why you don't hear them on the radio. And nobody's ever heard of those bands, except locals, and the locals often put them down for being, well, local. They play for half empty coffeehouses and provide background noise in clubs. But if one of these bands was promoted and hyped as being underground and pushed into rotation on MTV, then it would enter pop culture and people would be clamoring to hear them. And those same people want to be able to nab MP3s of that band's music. So now, after Moby, for example, has hit is big, you can't act like "screw the record company, screw the ticket agents, screw the suits," because they provided Moby to the masses.
If you want to be anti-corporate, then you need to walk the talk. Go local. Don't watch TV. Stop drinking Coke. Don't waste time armchair second-guessing what Apple or RedHat or Microsoft do.
It's not the consumer that is paying the piper for the garbage that the music industry foists upon us. It's the music industry that is paying for their mistakes.
Collectively, the music industry is breathing a sigh of relief that mp3's are not CD quality. They are also relieved that so few people have computers with good enough speakers (relatively) to bother listening to music purely on their computer. But they know what is around the corner. Sire/Reprise, Time Warner, BMG, you better start saving your pennies now, because the consumer is no longer going to tolerate your abuse.
Theft and Stealing are based on the premise that you take someone elses property and in doing so, deny them the ability to use their property. There is NO denying of property use in napster. Therefore, it is NOT stealing. Saying someone commited murder, even though their victim is alive and well in the courtroom is like equating Napster to "stealing". It doesnt fit the definition.
Economically, the music industry is trying to create a scarcity of a good (music) in an environment where there is really no scarcity, and making incredibly high, abusive profits from it. If you want another example of an industry creating a false Scarcity, look at DeBeers and the whole diamond industry.
I dont understand how people can rationalize this with statements like "its the law, and the law must be followed" and "if you dont like their product, dont buy it - thats your right". It is also my right to hear and enjoy music of MY choice, not one of a companies.
Do not underestimate the impact of this case and fight on free speech and free press. This is banning mass distribution of media (communication) because some of it, even if a large portion of it has questionable legality. Its a horrible precedent, and far reaching.
Imagine if you could only print newspapers or flyers at corporate owned presses? Well, consider music distribution the same thing, and you quickly realize that we are talking about serious violations of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
tagline
... hi bingo
> The artists who create music have the right
> to distribute that music however they want.
Your missing the point. Copyright is not the same as property.
Copyright is a concession. It is the legal embodiment of the people realizing that authorship is important and that printers/distributers have been taking advantage of authors.
Copyright is THE PEOPLE giving up their rights to copy and distribute a work for a LIMITED TIME. Note that deeds to property to not automatically expire with no way to renew after so many years. If you die, your fammily doesn't have to move out from your house 70 years later because the deed expires 70 years after your death.
In short, copyright was invented for the specific purpose of encouraging authors to produce works by stopping publishers from being able to take authors works and sell them without compensation to the author.
It was NOT invented because of authors "right to property". Property doesn't have a concept of "Fair Use" or "Compulsory Licence" (yes its true, you can legally distribute music for profit, as long as you pay royalties, and theres nothing that can be done to stop it)
> People need to grow up and realized they don't
> have the right to have everything handed to them
Then there are others who need to realize that just because they have a profitable buisness model here, today, doesn't mean that they have a 'right' to have it always be profittable.
People are free to try to make money. They do not have any sort of 'right to profit' any more than to fail.
I think its time to overhaul and redefine copyright. It is getting to be too much lik eproperty and used too often more as weapon for publishers than protection for authors. This makes it horribly broken and in need of fixing.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Oh, but it did accomplish something. Why wasn't piracy as rampant before Napster? Because IRC and usenet aren't as user-friendly. If my idiot roommate can't get a song by openning a program and typing in the name, he's not going to bother trying to figure out IRC. So this won't stop piracy, but if the RIAA can make piracy more difficult, they can stop a large part of the problem.
--
I was looking through napster's MOTD file, when I tried to log in this morning, and I noticed that it had some information on how to do something about what's going on. http://www.napster.com/labels.html All the email addresses of all the record labels, I personally wrote to the RIAA telling them my views. They also have a "buycott" day going on, the link is on the page above. Support supporting artists! :)
I was in my local Blockbuster Video last night and was appauled at the lack of selection. Even though most of their revenue is still from video tape rentals, they've converted half their store to DVD. Not just that, but there was no foreign section, and a very limited "Special Interests Section".
What does this have to do with Napster? Well, like the MPAA, the RIAA does not care what we, the public want, they only want to control what we're exposed to. When new distribution models and technology spring up, these two organizations either wish to make them proprietary (DVD) and take away the consumers' rights, or destroy them (Napster, VCR). This is why the RIAA doesn't care about the money-making potential of Napster (a centralized, controlable exchange medium, as opposed to client-to-client piracy), and why the MPAA thought DVD was so hot, but blew their top when De-CSS hit the scene.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
...my weaselometer needle has jammed in the little red wedge on the right hand side of the dial.
The point about copyright is that it, and the other intellectual property rights, made modern life possible.
Copyright started as a response to the printing press, that made large-scale copying (hundreds of accurate copies per worker in the time it took a monastic scribe to do one innacurate one) possible.
Suddenly, there was a reason why ideas had value over and above their intrinsic value, and a mechanism to make the authors and the printers rich sort of evolved from there. Suddenly it was possible to get rich by having and developing ideas; it was no coincidence that copyright and patents were developed at or around the start of the industrial revolution (which begat the technological infrastructure that you're reading this on, via a number of intermediary steps). The one makes the other possible - simple as that, and the whole thing is powered by the inexhaustibel resource of human greed. Would Watt have bothered if he and Boulton couldn't have got as rich as Croesus?
Katz tells us that "artists themselves have important rights", but it's a weasel qualifier. I suspect he's uncomfortable with the argument he's deploying, because he hasn't thought it through. The important right of the artist - of any creative individual - is to sell his or her work for a price he or she deems appropriate (zero in a lot of cases, but that's not mandatory).
That price, plus cost of sales and middleman's fees, gets paid by the people who get the benefit of the artist's work. And it should be paid: commercial work is not a gift, nor should it be.
The only justifiable objection to be raised to the RIAA/Metallica action is that the middlemen involved - RIAA's members, who Metallica chose to use in the ordinary course of their business - appear to overcharge mightily. There are two options here: cut out the middleman (for which Stephen King is to be applauded in showing a very plausible way forward) or use a cheaper middleman. Is that possible? It may be that the promotion and marketing that RIAA members supply justifies the high cost to the end-user, and their massive profits arise from a small take on each of billions of units. Maybe not, in which case there's room to undercut them. If there is, eventually the market will produce such an undercutter, but don't hold your breath. It's more profitable to join 'em than beat 'em, mostly.
Be all that as it may, no-one can, without hypocrisy, complain about the ordinary operation of capitalism unless and until they're prepared to stick up for the other possibilities. I ain't, simply because I enjoy the idea of living off the back of sweated third-world labour (we all are, or at least everyone with the technical and fiscal wherewithal to read slashdot is).
If Katz is sincere - and he may be - his argument is, roughly, equivalent to suggesting that you should have a right to go steal ripe crops from fields in protest at the mark-up applied by the commodities exchanges, wholesalers, distributors, bakeries and supermarkets on the price of bread.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
I smell a digital Boston tea party on it's way.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Monday I heard of this great band because I accidentally downloaded a tune from napster: Nickleback. So I downloaded a couple of tunes and man, this is good shit!
I seriously considered getting the CD. As a teacher, my pockets are lined with cash to spend on CD's that have only 1 or 2 good songs on it. I believe in encouraging good artists, and from what I heard, Nickleback have more than two good songs on the CD.
If it weren't for Napster, I would have never heard of Nickleback, so they would have never gotten my money. Unfortunately it is a canadian band, and I am going to buy the CD just to encourage canadian kick-ass bands, but knowing that a lot of money goes to the RIAA makes me sick. So here's my money, RIAA, enjoy it while it lasts, cuz now that napster won't exist anymore, you won't see me buy any new CD's!
But...
I want to write a program called "Katzster", wherein, I take every work by Jon Katz, scan it in via OCR, and "share" it with everyone on the 'net. Who's with me?
I'm tired of paying the big buisness, coporatist, publishing companies that publish books, Besides, this is the digital age where all media should be free.
Of course, Jon Katz should have no objection.. he's fine with Musicians losing the right to enforce their copyrights.
-------- "All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away" --Spiritualized
Have you ever been involved in the making of a CD? Doesn't seem like it. Lets assume there is an unsigned band called Kepano Green. They have 12 songs they want to record, so they head over to a recording studio. Guess what? They have to pay the studio *before* they sell any CDs. So all those "other workers" have already been paid. Janitors, security guards? What are you talking about?? They are paid already, too (and what kind of place has "security" unless it's some big shot label?) And they pay up front for the 5000 CDs they have made. They go to local record stores/bookstores and try to work out a distribution deal. The record label comes in and says "Ohh, let us take care of all those expenses for you". But in the end, it's a deal with the devil because they milk you dry for all youre worth. No, I would rather my money go directly to the artist and let THEM decide how to use it, than have the RIAA leech and suck the musician dry.
--------
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
That's Katz's motto apparently. Corporations don't own popular culture. Anybody can easily make their music available for free on the Internet. Lots of people do it already. But Katz doesn't want that -- he needs his free Brittney Spears MP3s.
Just like CmdrTaco and others bitching about Open Source and then firing up DiabloII on their Windoze machines.
This history also points out that what are now known as copyrights were used long ago to limit who could and could not print almost anything. Once again the privilege (and money) generally went to the rich and well-connected.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Far from the RIAA hobbling consumers' use of such services, citizens may end up rewriting copyright law, said Jennifer Granick, a high-tech criminal defense attorney based in San Francisco who has represented Kevin Poulsen and other hackers in court.
/. crowd is how many of you have written your Senators and Congressmen about this? If this is the groundswell everyone makes it to be, lawmakers will learn real quick that they can either amend copyright laws in the public--not corporate--interest or they can expect to find other employment at re-election time.
"The popularity of Napster shows that copyright law has to evolve," she said. "This ruling may be technically right, but there will be a time when you look back on this as The Early Days."
--From ZDNews
So, the real question for the
Liberty or Death -- Don't Tread on Me
Slashdot is a free information and discussion resource, except for the banner ads. When you start paying for content then you have the right to complain. But for now, it is their site and you are visiting.
John S. Rhodes
WebWord.com -- Usability Vortal
How to Download YouTube Videos
Napster shuts down (Venture Cap's lose investment)
Napster employees shrug, get jobs elsewhere
Users shrug, DL Napigator/Gnutella/Freenet etc... MP3 sharing continues.
Winners: Lawyers
Neutral: Users, Employees
Losers: RIAA, VCs
---
You're right. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
I've never heard of Copyright described in terms of a contract, but the definition actually fits quite nicely.
The first party to the contract is the artists.
The second party to the contract is the public.
The artists agree to make their work available, and commit it to the public domain. This is embodied in the "limited times" language of the constitution. The work is consideration.
The public, as represented by the government, agrees to, in exchange, grant a limited commercial monopoly over the work. The monopoly is limited both in the sense that the copyright must expire, and also by various doctrines, such as first sale, and fair use.
Both sides benefit from this arrangement. The artists gain a commercial monopoly over their work, and the public receives the work into the public domain, creating the national heritage.
The RIAA and MPAA are attempting, through a combination of technical measures and new laws, to eliminate both the first sale and fair use provisions. They have already effectively eliminated the concept of copyright expiration by the simple expedience of bribing Congress to extend the copyright terms 20 years at a time. They also bought the DMCA, and are fighting tooth and nail to secure their purchase -- they have purchased the elimination of fair use.
Quite simply, the RIAA and MPAA want to change the copyright system from an exchange of consideration -- a contract -- between artists and the public, into a public subsidy, where copyright owners acrue all the benefits perpetually, and the public acrues only the "benefit" of being subject to the complete control of the media industry.
That is the "free lunch" that the MPAA and RIAA want. Napster is the public saying, "NO."
Corporations created popular culture? Wrong. Corporations took advantage of artists and manipulated popular culture to their advantage.
Not so. Pick most any band, and you'll find they were slingshotted into fame by distribution and marketing. For example, right *now* you'll find bands in Seattle that are better than the well-known Seattle bands of the 1990s. They may be amazing. They may have local fans. But are they pop culture? Not in the least. You don't see them on MTV. You don't have hundreds of wannabe bands trying to imitate them. You won't find their CDs on the desks of engineers and stockbrokers. But if Big Record Company X pushed money behind them and put them on MTV and promoted them in a way to make people think they were hip and underground, then they'd move into pop culture. This doesn't happen in today's world without corporate muscle.
That is utterly untrue.
The CD's that the MP3's were ripped from were lawfully purchased, they were neither shoplifted nor stolen off some loading dock.
"You mean set the tone that artists actually have some right not to have their work ripped off for free?"
You utterly ignore the issue that most music artists will strongly state that it is they who are being ripped-off by the RIAA.
Read Roger McGuinn's Senate Testimony
"In most cases a modest advance against royalties was all the money I received for my participation in these recording projects."
"The only money I've received for these albums was the modest advance paid prior to each recording."
"Even though the song "Don't You Write Her Off" was a top 40 hit, the only money I received from Capitol Records was in the form of a modest advance."
"My performing work is how I make my living. Even though I've recorded over twenty-five records, I cannot support my family on record royalties alone."
This is from someone who knows what he's talking about.
The RIAA has been ripping-off musicians for decades and decades.
Napster users are not!
t_t_b
--
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
More importantly, however, you still have a choice in the media you consume. Nobody is forcing you to become a consumer to the products of a large, commercialized media conglomerate. Don't buy commercial music, don't read big commercial newspapers, don't watch TV, etc. Most of those media are increasingly laden with advertising, harmful social messages, violence, and psychological trickery. We can help build an alternative media culture, both by contributing and by consuming outside the corporate media wasteland.
I don't want to sound like a hard-ass, but where is it written that a record store has any right to turn a profit? It seems to me, the only thing they have a right to do is run a business and hope it is successful. If they are losing money, then perhaps it's time they changed their line of business? It just might be that we are nearing a time when there is no longer a need for the corner record store. This might be a sad occurence, but it is neither good nor bad. It's simply the current state of the market. The same goes for big record labels. If the market squeezes them out, then they have two choices; either adapt and enter a new line of work, or simply go away. This whole affair of trying to legislate your profitiability and using the courts to support your business model is sickening.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
So he asked me what I thought of his company, to which I replied "I think you are ripping the artist off". He said smugly "We just don't have copyrighted work, we are a way for independent artists to distribute thier work". Ever try to search napster for a band or song whose name you haven't heard of? What a crock! Then he tried to tell me "what the artist wants". I informed him that many artists signed with a label...many well known new artists in fact are currently in debt to their contracts (not that this is fair) and it's not just the record company that gets screwed if they don't have as many of thier records sold as possible and can't get out of that debt. Look at a band like TLC. They declared bankruptcy after their biggest hit album.
It's a hard life for these bands (outside of the glory of being on stage and the screaming fans). Many working musicians under contract have to spend thier lives on tour working much harder than any programmer. It must be nice hustle a stupid greedy VC, get advertisers for your site and be able to buy all that stuff and still claim you are doing the artist a favor.
It became very apparent that he really had no clue as to the life of the typical working musician. So then I wanted to hear him play that guitar that he just bought. He can barely play!
Now I'm no big fan of the RIAA, and philosophically I believe there is a need change the paradigm of music distribution. Frankly I think that OpenNap and Freenet are a good thing...because they are free and open...and only the fans gain. But I have a hard time when some 19 punk profits as much as a record company exec and then tries to sell me and the rest of the world on his virtuous arguments that he had to scramble to come up with because he's all of a sudden feeling the heat.
Go ahead, those kids in China need their $1/day pay.
Why don't you buy some DVDs? Send some donations to the MPAA and RIAA legal funds too?
Fight Spammers!
The framers of the Constitution were seeking to protect artists and authors when they enacted copyright laws. Their notion was that without some protection against copying and theft, writers would have no incentive to create new works. Copying books was difficult, and it was simple to enforce and prosecution laws against it. The Net is another story -- it's the biggest Xerox machine in the world, and it's almost impossible to completely shut down the copyrighting of intellectual property. Common sense would dictate that new ways of protecting artists and corporations be found that recognized the new reality of the Net.
So the copyright protections were created to protect content back when it was expensive and difficult to copy the works. Now it's cheap and easy to copy IP, and it's somehow less necessary for protections. Typically when an unwanted behavior becomes less difficult to do, the protections against it would deserve strengthening not weakening.
No such campaign has been launched on behalf of music fans, who were literally bled dry for decades not just for artistic compensation but for fat corporate profits.
They were willingly bled dry. I think it would be very difficult to prove that anyone was in a position where not spending money on music would have injured them in any significant way.
Fans are more than consumers. They are entitled to have some rights, just as artists and corporations are. They pay the freight, especially in cyberspace...
None of which flows to the people creating the art that is being freely distributed. Just like paying a fence for something does not suddenly make the purchase legitimate "but officer I paid someone for the car, and it was a hell of a deal too!"
They are constituents in their own folklore and have rights of access to their own culture.
And all they have to do is pay what the person that has a legal right of ownership to that work wants, and they are free to use a copy for their own personal use.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
There are recording engineers that need to be paid. And everyone at the studio, including the janitors, managers, and security guards, need to be paid.
These people are paid, by the record company, with a flat fee for services rendered. The janitor doesn't get per-CD royalties, bugg...
That includes the company who delivers the CDs, the company that presses the CDs, the record store
But with music downloaded over the internet, none of those companies provide any service at all, and should be paid accordingly.
It's not as if the head of the RIAA pockets $11 with every purchase, you know.
Right; the janitor gets per-CD royalties, but the record company doesn't?
The Federal Government has been pandering to the interests of massive corporations for years. Here's in example of what the most recent extension to the Copyright laws have done: The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which adds 20 years to both terms of protection, giving individual authors protection for life plus 70 years and corporate authors protection for 95 years. As an attempt to illustrate how ridiculous this actually is, here is a simple example: The song "Happy Birthday" was composed is 1893 by sisters Mildred J. Hill and Patty Smith Hill. The exact time of their deaths is unknown, but it IS known that in 1935 they performed the song for Rockline WNEW NY 3-88. Had they been tragically killed leaving the station, Happy Birthday would still not be in the public domain until 2005. I did some research, and I included this information in letters I sent to my congressman and senators. I urge you all to do the same.
If Napster is found guilty, which seems to be the way it is heading, then everyone who has had a car stolen should use this case as a precedent to sue their state Department of Transportation!
Napster provides no copyrighted material themselves (as apposed to MP3.com). All they supply is a connection... the transportation medium.
In a similar way, the DOT doesn't steal cars, but they do provide the roads upon which car theives transport a stolen car.
The actual lawbreaker in this Napster case is not Napster itself, but every single user who downloads a copyrighted song from an album they do not own. Just like when your car is stolen - the car theif is the lawbreaker... not the DOT.
People who say "money does not buy happiness" are just people without money trying to make themselves feel better.
Yes, I'm anti-corporate.
If you want to call me another name probably Socialist comes closest- but you'll be misunderstanding some of what I believe, probably, and thinking I'm focused entirely on The Poor. 'The Poor' is of course a worthy concern, but faced with the mockery of this 'free market' economy, I would have to say the middle class deserve better help. If the middle class were well supported and secure (as in the postwar '50s) then there would be the foundation for a 'free market' economic engine that wasn't all smoke and mirrors. What we have now is a magic trick- it's not sustainable until the middle class can get fat and lazy again. Having the middle class madly speculating on stocks is NOT a replacement. It is a setup for another Great Depression- and where will your strongest economy be then? Read some history, look at the _signs_.
Scroll down a bit to 'Authors'
Check 'JonKatz' from the list.
Click 'savehome'.
He was interesting the first couple of times I read his stories. Now I just think he's an alarmist troll.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
You've got to be kidding 'Corporations *created* popular culture'? Coporations hype and exploit popular culture. And they do so with one purpose in mind. To make a buck. (which is not wrong in and of itself IMHO). The problem with Crops is that many times they don't care how they make that buck. Bottom line baby.
Yes, corporations push pop culture and people want the result. If you took corporations out of the loop, what is popular and what is now would be much different than it is now.
What happens today is that one band or musician is singled out to receive a big promotional budget, then they sell copies like crazy. If you go over to Amazon.com, you're not seeing the little guy rising to the top, as many people expected on the web. You're seeing big name bands selling like crazy. It's not that they're always better than the lesser known bands, it's that their names and music have been made familiar to you via marketing. Lots of people don't want to admit this. They want to think they discover Chemical Brothers--or whoever--in a smoky, underground club.
That's not in the original spirit of copyright. The point of copyright was to grant a *LIMITED* monopoly for a short period of time to allow the creator to benefit and encourage the production of new ideas. Ultimately, the goal was to have the work enter into the public domain so others could build upon and improve the original ideas. This whole business of copyright extending for 70 years past the death of the author is farcical. How much right does a rotting corpse need to benefit from its prior work?
"Yes, one day there might not be a need for the corner record store anymore, but that will be the choice of the industry: distributors, retailers, and most importantly the artist."
And you are absolutely incorrect on this point. The free market does not work by industry deciding what happens. It is driven by what consumers want and what they are willing to pay. If the American public decides that music should be free, then it will be free, regardless of what the artists or industry would like. The market accomodates the consumer, not the other way around.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
Don't think that this is about piracy. If that were the case they would have gone after radio stations a long time ago.
If the radio stations weren't paying royalties, the record companies would go after them, too. Don't think that radio is "free" music by any means -- every time your local station plays "The Real Slim Shady," Eminem and his record company get a nice juicy cut of it.
Furthermore, MP3s let you hear music on demand -- which is a big difference from radio, where you might have to listen for hours to hear your favorite song. Record companies are willing to go along with this because it gives them a chance to get you hooked on new music while you're listening for your favorites. And radio stations like it, because they get to play ads. Take these aspects away, plus the royalties, and you've got something that no sane record company would support. And since they own the copyright, like it or not, that should be the final word.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Let's take the most extreme example short of patents- let's postulate somebody who goes and takes every one of my songs and claims them for his own, putting up his own page and taking money for them. Now, if he gets to use intellectual property, there's some chance he can stop _me_ from having the songs I wrote- or I could stop him, in theory. If there's no intellectual property I may not be able to stop him from doing this- but where is he going to make _new_ songs? He's not the one who created those things- that puts him at a disadvantage, he rapidly becomes one of a horde of people claiming they did my songs.
As the noise and argument of this spreads, it eventually becomes known to most people that I'm the one who did those songs that are being sold by unrelated people. If someone wants to get an existing song- there will be a lot of places they can go, very few of which compensate me in any way. If someone wants a _new_ song? They're going to have a tough time getting _that_ from dumb copiers- they will need to talk to me. If someone wants to do an interview or write a book or something about the songs? Very likely some 'distributors' will muscle in and want to tell the story their way (see the early history of reggae) but that is still another reason to talk to the original person.
I would happily abandon intellectual property, because my interaction with it is almost entirely defensive. It's not you DLing my song and then giving it to your friends that concerns me- it's Britney Spears (yah right ;) ) DLing it, releasing it, and then enjoining me from using or reproducing it. It's not my inventing a thing and then not getting paid for every little use of it- it's my inventing a thing and then 3M inventing it, patenting it, and forbidding me from ever using it again. My interaction with IP is almost entirely defensive and I am a _creator_ of IP: that seems not right to me.
I've asked that my music (see URL link above) be traded on Napster. Partly this is an effort to get exposure (I'd love to be espousing some of my views on CNN or whatever as a 'representative internet musician', because I have some very strong arguments that I feel should be included in any consensus opinion) but that must be understood in the right context. The first thing people would think of is 'Oh, so it drives more people to mp3.com- while also diminishing the market- huh?' but the bottom line is: if I ended up being big on Napster (which will now never happen), it ESTABLISHES me as a person capable of doing MUSICAL WORK. Stop focusing on the created things (the IP) for a second and consider the act of creation. It's a very individual thing- some people can invent mechanical devices, some people write code, some write songs, some trick synthesisers into making abstract ear candy or write books or paint pictures. The emphasis is always on the created objects, even when they are very abstract (like the 'epigrammatist' I heard about who makes up lots of little phrases like 'Things are always worst when they suck' and _copyrights_ them and sues people for using them- a canonical example of wrong focus in IP. Look at people's ability to create, instead- how much would you pay that guy for a five word remark, versus how much you might pay me for background music to your TV commercial, composed and recorded to your specifications?
Nothing in intellectual property gives me that opportunity- only ability to _perform_ will do it (and, importantly, ability to do professional sound engineering). Remove intellectual property and that opportunity will still be there- may even be enhanced, since 'used music' will become nearly valueless. When all the car advertisements use the greatest Sixties hits for background (hey, they already DO), the value of that music is eroded and washed away- eventually, somebody is going to need NEW music, something that is both arresting and hasn't been heard a million times. It's the same for all other forms of IP- the creators are the edge of the chisel. You can focus on the final product all you want but without that edge you aren't going to get any more of it. Compare the price of wood with the price of a professional wood chisel, or perhaps one of the Japanese super-wide chisels used to replace sandpaper and abrasive finishing. Think about that edge and how much you might need to pay for it if you need what it does.
Looting? Are you out of your mind?
Do you see any difference, the slightest difference at all between, for instance,
Walking into a museum, grabbing a painting and running out the door (looting)
and
Walking into a museum, snapping a picture of a painting, and walking out the door? (infringing)
That is the difference between looting and infringing. If you can't understand the difference, or if you think that there's no difference, then don't expect a lot of people to take your ethical arguments very seriously.
The last figure I heard was 78 per cent of people who downloaded the text paid for it. You say you wouldn't pay for something you'd already had: the fact that buskers can make at least eating money seems to me to suggest that there are enough people who don't think like you to make "singing for your supper", as King does, a viable proposition.
After all, you've already heard the tune before you flip the coin into that guitar case, haven't you?
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
Folks,
:-) ), think of what this might do to older recordings. The cost of converting old master tapes in the record company vaults to digital format is quite low, and it quickly opens up a new avenue for people to buy out of print music at extremely low cost. Take for example popular Hawaiian music of the 1930's to 1940's, a niche market if there ever was one. Instead of having to scrounge through used record bins like crazy or wait for the record company to release the music on CD, the record company can have these old Hawaiian music stored on computer servers and you can buy them at the rate I mentioned above.
I think this whole arguement boils down to the fact it is a classic case of how to control the means to delivery of music -without violating Federal copyright laws-.
I mean, some people say that FM radio is delivering music for "free," but people conveniently forget a music radio station pays many, many thousands of dollars per year in copyright clearance fees to the American Society of Composers And Producers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) so they could broadcast music over radio. In order for the radio station to continue existing in light of these hefty fees, they have to sell advertising time in order to cover the costs. For cable TV station like MTV, VH-1, CMT, GAC and BET, that could amount to -millions- of dollars per year in these fees to ASCAP and BMI. Besides, the music you hear on the air are often not perfect copies, since the radio station may use fader effects to overlap between songs and the radio announcers may be speaking at the beginning or end of song.
While Napster in theory is a great idea, the problem is that there is too much of a sizeable fraction of users that have effectively said "Why should pay for a CD when I can get the songs for free over Napster?" This group is most likely in the minority, but that still is a -big- minority of Napster users considering how popular Napster is.
By the way, I'm sure some people here would mention about the tape swapping of live recordings from Grateful Dead concerts. I have news for you: the people who engage in these activities have an unwritten rule that the tape swapping has to be done for at most the cost of shipment -and no additional costs-. This crowd knows very well to go beyond that is an instant violation of current copyright laws.
Anyway, what everyone is waiting for is a means to deliver music in CD-quality digital form over the Internet to a customer without violating copyright laws. That day may be coming soon: there are newer and better audio compression techniques now available, and the technology is just about in place to insert various forms of anti-piracy coding into the digital music file so only a very small number of "authorized" players can play back the file.
What I envision seeing is that by 2003-2004 the ability of people to buy individual songs from music company websites at a cost of five to six US cents per 30 second of music, which means a full album can be bought for the cost of US$6.00 to US$7.20 per hour. This pricing is more than enough to cover the cost of producing the song in the first place, since we skip on the often considerable expense in pressing an actual CD and the packaging for the CD, not to mention the shipping costs from CD manufacturing site to record store!
Now, before you flame me (and moderate me down to troll status
In short, we are now in a period of transition in the means of selling music to the public. I think 15 years from now buying new music is no longer going to be just going to the record store to buy it, it'll be more like going to an online music site, select the music you want to buy, and with a few menu commands you'll buy the songs and have it automatically downloaded to your local computer in a secure fashion.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Copyright, in england, started as a way for censorship. All books and literature had to be owned by the crown where it would license out the ability to publish to the printer cartel. One had to have a license to publish a particular literature, or one would get the axe.
.sig?
Later it was used by the printer cartel to preserve their monopoly against 'pirates', or printers who were not a member of the cartel but printed stuff anyways.
In the US constitution, copyright was given for a limited term to encourage the growth of useful arts and scences. Tell me, how does THAT requirement square with my
Have you read the text of the Audio Home Recording Act?
Back in 1992, the record companies went to Congress to try and obtain royalty payments on blank digital audio media.
Congress made them compromise. Both sides got something.
The record companies have, for the last 8 years, received a payment for each and every digital audio tape and blank audio CDR sold. This was to compensate the record industry for lost sales due to non-commercial, home copying.
However, Congress does not like to pass laws in which people are taxed on one hand, and the activity they are being taxed on is made illegal on the other hand, so they added this provision:
USC Title 17, Chapter 10, Paragraph 1008:
No action may be brought under this title [Title 17 == the copyright code] 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.
In short, Congress said that if the Recording industry wanted Congress to tax home recording media, then that home recording would have to be legalized.
They did just that. Paragraph 1008 defines all non-commercial copying of copyrighted music as non-infringing. It isn't illegal!
The Napster judge tried to ignore this law, but the Court of Appeals basically told the judge that her reasoning was completely wrong:
The court below ignored, however, that 17 U.S.C. 1008 permits non-commercial copying by consumers using either analog or digital audio recording devices or "such a device"; that the legislative history makes clear that Congress intended by that language to immunize all non-commercial copying of music by consumers;
When Congress passed the AHRA, the music industry was not up in arms. Instead, the industry was quite happy, because they were to begin to receive, and have received continuously for 8 years, a stream of "royalties" from the sale of blank digital audio recording media. At the time, I, and many others, thought that this law was extremely unfair, because it created a royalty on ALL media, not just those media used to copy other people's copyrighted works. In other words, if a garage band bought blank CDRs to press their album on, they paid royalties to the RIAA, which distributed the royalties based on their own sales figures.
In retrospect, if the courts can be bothered to uphold paragraph 1008, this law will show itself to be the biggest bargain ever struck between the people and the Recording industry, because it completely and unambiguously legalized all Napster-like activity!
If the recording industry no longer feel that the royalties they are receiving are adaquate, they have every right to go to Congress and ask that the royalty rate be increased. However, Napster is NOT stealing, because they record industry IS receiving payment, in the form of a tax on recording media.
The mere fact that this consumer right has been mostly dormant for 8 years (while record industry profits from blank digital audio media have HARDLY been dormant) is no reason to assert that it no longer exists now that the technology has matured that allows users to exercise that consumer right.