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Information Doesn't Want To Be Free; People Want It
Captain Pooh writes "Nicholas Petreley expresses his opinion about how "Information Doesn't Want To Be Free--People Want It To Be". " Pretty provocative piece - although his reasoning is sound.
There is, of course, an intrinsic rate of decay in any physical representation of information - this is obvious to any high school student and isn't what we're talking about here. In these discussions, I am not refering to the degradation of the specific instances of information, but the temporal-spatial distribution of information, which is also subject to the second law (entropy increases).
If you still don't understand this, let me make it simple for you. Consider a collection of marbles on the floor during an earthquake. Each marble may be subject to chips and degradation - a more disordered state. But the collection of marbles as a whole is also subject to the statistical mechanics of entropy the promote their spread throughout the room.
As another already responded, information wants to be free like water wants to run downhill. I think everyone (but the author) knew this.
B.S.!! Napster makes it easier to do what people already do - share their music with each other. The threat that Napster someday may make a dime off this, combined with the DMCA is the only reson the RIAA has a leg to stand on. If the Bad Guys prevail against Napster, it will be the most hollow victory because they will have succeeded in only shutting down a company. People will go on sharing their CD's with each other and making downloadable MP3's.
(The real bitch is that the record industry obviously benefits from this sharing in having more people knowing about (thus buying) more music. Go figure.)
Ha! Who'd waste their bandwidth and time??
Strictly speaking, he's making an apples to oranges analogy. The primary consumers of Windows are not individuals (as are with music), but OEM's and corp's. Are these entities the author's target??
To note, I know of nobody who's ever gone out and actually purchased a boxed retail Windows. This has been true in my experience going as far back as the 80's. People pirate Windows like crazy!
So why do you hate the record companies? You buy cds at small independent stores. The music you like obviously still gets made. What have the record companies done to you exactly? Created an "environment"? Whatever. They promote their stars to make millions. But you can choose to spend you money on smaller artists instead. Where 's the problem? Where's the conspiracy?
Remember, these folks aren't downloading to feed themselves. They're doing it for entertainment. They're taking, not what they need, but what they want. Why should they stop at this particular line? This is stretching a point, but if there existed a means surreptitiously to broadcast your show to a nearby frat house and keg, are you sure they wouldn't do that and save themselves the cover? Remember, they're taking something weightless and they're not doing it for the money, and those seem to be the chief criteria. Your local tavern owner could be "the Man" just as easily as a record company. ("Oh, I'd gladly pay the band directly, you know, but these bars are making obscene profits off these cover charges and inflated drink prices. I'm doing this for the music, man! Power to the people!")
And of course nobody is forced to make a living by recording. I just don't see why anybody should be forced away from it. Michael Jackson isn't hoarding food, he's providing entertainment, and if people don't choose to pay for it they can certainly soldier on without it (God knows that in his case I'd pay some not to hear it). There's no compelling need here, just desire, and I can't fathom how Napster's desire to suck at the trough overrides the desire of some musicians to charge for their recordings.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Geez- even the real Napster zealots dont trot out this old argument. It isn't fair use to pass around music on a mass distribution system. IT's fair use to make copies FOR YOURSELF on different media. You can't have rights over property you don't own!
the very phrase "information wants to be free" makes the distinction. That's isn't a rallying cry to abolish Intellectual Property, it's a statement about something Else. The distinction needs to be made. And it needs to be made legally, else we will lose our rights. If the legal world thinks we mean "Content" when we really mean "Information" then judges like Marilyn Hall Patel will trample all over us and we lose. if you think all content is equal to information in the sense of "Information wants to be free" then you are wrong. And thats why judges rule against Napster. think outside the box
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
You are forgetting that by copying music and distributing it is breaking your agreement with the Cd vendor. Take the DNA cloning example. Let's say you go willingly into the machine, but you do so under the agreement that they'll only take certain chromosomes. And THEN they take samples of all of your chromosomes. Is that really any different than forcing you into the machine in the first place? They got you in their under false pretenses. THAT's a better analougy.
This is potentially incorrect, depending on WHICH Mill we're talking about. The younger one very much DID believe in natural rights- in fact he really founded the modern version of that school of thought. Kant did to, in a different sense- it's quibbling over opinion and slander to write him off as a mystic.
At a superficial level, it sounds like it may be a good thing to let musicians control their recorded works, but when you think through the ramifications involved, the complexity of licensing and enforcement, the slow unequivocal degradation of our fundamental freedoms that are needed to enforce IP laws - the ugliness of it all - I no longer think "intellectual property" is a good idea. I think our society and business environment would be much healthier without it. And I don't think a wholesale abandonment of IP, as I have advocated, is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
But obviously, a lot of people disagree with me either because they don't want to open their mind (my opinion) or because I'm not thinking clearly (their opinion).
Well, you are right and wrong on the argument. Hell, I even enjoy listening to Brittany on the radio every now and then, altho I'd never buy one of 'her' (havent researched her music enough to know wether or not she or some mass production writers do it) albums. But one point, I think, is that you could easily find 10 or 20 generic Brittany Spears clones (or music 'designers'). Add marketing effort and you create the selling phenomena. This is a careful and coordinated act, but it involves little creativity (altho some research and lots of marketing) and it could probably be done even without copyright since the turnover rate is virtually faster than anyone can set up a real pirating act (pick it, engineer it, _flood the market_, drop it). The trick is knowing (or marketing engineering) the audience, picking the correct 'artist', and then using appropriate channels (radio stations, MTV, etc). The point is; the artist and creativity involved is generic (most sound probably barely deviates from what a keyboard/drum machine delivers from the store). There are hundreds of interchangable performers who barely get compensated in this game, unless they through a miscalculation by the companies actually manage to obtain a power of their own.
The point isnt that everything is crap; the point is that the original artist wont be compensated, there are a hundred other artists with virtually the exact same music who dont even get to sell one cd, the artist is discarded in the end and the next sucker get picked up by the design/engineering/marketing departments.
Im not saying there is no worth in this kind of expression. But the RIAA companies manage to drown out the efforts of thousands or hundreds of thousands of artists who will never have a chance, while at the same time charging a high premium for selecting and engineering an artist that could probably make as much (and evolve! on their own) through direct sales if they werent automatically losers if they get crowded out in the media by the RIAA engineered groups.
Of course, wether this situation requires the IP laws, copyright in particular, to be revoked, or merely changed, is a matter of opinion. In my opinion the very foundation for intellectual property has been degraded enough to require the actual removal of the concept, analysis of what material still gets produced in sufficient amounts to fulfill the requirement of society, and then reinstated for such material as would be difficult or impossible to produce without the incentive of copyright (movies or other high-budget (marketing disregarded) productions come into mind (altho this will change as technology evolves to the point that a script writer will be able to populate his/her movies with artifically generated entities for no more than a household budget).
as for the DNA entropy stuff I guess we are leading a not so important discussion :-)
Regarding the music I want to make a point that is generally overseen in the discussion: all are talking about the big 4 when talking about labels. I am working in the "evil music industry". I am dealing with independent labels who generally have a very high standard when it comes to quality of music. These guys (who are often musicians and label owners in one person) don't earn heaps of money. They won't earn any money at all if music is regarded free.
And I repeat it: you can't compare software and music. Software is a result of engineering, (good) music the result of a purely creative process.
Well, go to mp3.com and download a couple of tracks. Most of the stuff there is so bad you can't stand it. That's the quality of music you get if nobody pays the musicians and the technical infrastructure they need to produce their music.
The first to die from "making music free" are the small, good labels.
Declaring music "free" is declaring one's freedom on someone else's cost.
You are correct of course, the RIAA contains many labels that dont quite fall under that category, or even under the 'do-research-pickup-band-engineer-market-sell' concept. Altho a lot of it does, even with my own non-mainstream music taste I think about half my music is RIAA member produced (altho I would suggest to a lot of those bands that they ask their labels to disengage from the RIAA for ethical reasons).
How do you know that software would not get written without the copyright model? A lot of the software enabling the Internet is written under licenses that (although through the method of copyright) directly destroy the very model of copyright. Software, more than many other forms of creative expression, gets written to solve a problem. Every solution is applicable an infinite number of times within a free software (or copyright-less) world. While you wouldnt get 10 or 100's of reimplementations of the same code (how many spellcheckers have been written?), you dont _need_ more than one if it can be used by anyone.
Remember, a huge amount of software good enough for most use has been produced without the financial incentive of copyright; an even more huge amount is the result of illegal copying by employees moving from one company to another who bring along the code they used in the last place they worked.
I dont really want everything free. I want society to get as far as possible as fast as possible (and as fun as possible), and I truly doubt that the current incarnation of intellectual property (software/math/buisness method/basic research patents primarily, copyright secondarily) does no longer serve that purpose, and in some cases begins to hinder progress.
Well, I favour the latter hypothesis, of course, but you sound like a man who feels this thread has run on long enough, and I can't say I blame you. Perhaps we should agree to disagree until the next good /. article brings us all back into the lists. :)
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
I never said information was *immortal*. My point is that it cannot be effectively *restrained*. If it lacks value, it will be lost. If it has value, you will not stop people from getting it.
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
I see your arguments as being similar to some of the supporting arguments for Hawking Radiation: If we take a hard disk full of Stephen Hawking's favorite MP3s, and throw them into a black hole, it represents a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics for those MP3s to disappear forever behind the event horizon. This is because 'information = order' in the context of entropy and the Second Law. For this black hole to so jealously constrain Stephen's MP3s represents an increase in order (decrease in entropy) for the black hole. This seems to represent a violation of the Second Law because the localized concentration of information decreases the probability of a system.
So, even though the information is only being concentrated locally in the black hole while the entropy of the Universe increases, it contradicts the Second Law because the Second Law is all about the probability of things becoming more and more likely. The Second Law is not satisfied merely with the entropy of the Universe increasing. The Second Law implies that the probability of a system will tend towards a maximum.
Stephen's solution was that the 'order' represented by his MP3s must come back out as Hawking Radiation due to quantum fluctuations at the event horizon (actually, in 1973, Stephen was more interested in whether or not black holes had a temperature).
So, in this context, the "Information wants to be Free" from the black Hole.
But I have a problem with using this analogy in the context of the spread of information across the Internet. The Second Law not only wants the information to be liberated from the Black Hole, the Second Law wants that information to be forgotten (which, according to Hawking, it effectively does by spewing it out as Hawking Radiation). The Second Law is all about the decrease of information (increase in disorder).
To me, if the information is not lost or mangled in the process of releasing it from it's constraints, such as the spread of information through the Internet, then it represents a local increase in information, and therefore a decrease in probability. This is similar to a biological system, which inherently represents a local increase in order
In my opinion, the Second Law not only states that "Information wants to be Free" from a locally constrained system, the Second Law wants the information to be mangled and forgotten.
Actually, yes, that is exactly what I believe. I see it every day. 'm not saying that _all_ young girls have been brainwashed in this way, but if the record companies and MTV had their way, they all would be. I think that to some extent, yes, this does apply to books, because it's difficult for the little guy to get noticed, but we're talking about the record industry here. However, I never once said that I think the copyright system should be scrapped! I totally agree that people using Napster to download copyrighted works are at least legally, if not ethically, wrong. But something needs to change, because the current system is just not working (in my opinion, I admit).
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
Well, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Harsh words, but it's a harsh reality.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
Why should this be true? Why should you be entitled to control the information once it reaches someone else's mind. You aren't entitled to mind control.
Information does exist in nature. It certainly can't exist independent of nature. And we are not independent from nature.
Would you say 'created' or 'recognized' ?
Some things are indeed created, others are discovered. Or is the power of creativity the force that is driving the discovery?
This leads onwards to the thorny issue of IP protection etc. Has someone created the IP or merely discovered it?
How are all the people that preceeded this discovery rewarded for their work ... the Amazon one click patent is a particular case ... where is Tim Berners-Lee reward from Amazon for creating the Web in the first place?
Bogus Genome patents are another absurd example. I (or more likely, some multinational) can get a patent on a naturally occuring gene ...
Also, it is illegal for me to rip and distribute as MP3 a Led Zeppelin CD, but seemingly legal for them to rip off a folk artist note for note and record it on their album and not reward him for his original effort...
Sorry, don't understand. Do you mean the web as the IP transmission protocol or the http protocol. Any information that is going to be sent anywhere is going to be going over the web is it not?
While it is good for many things I do not think it is a very reliable source for distributing binaries.
Again, slightly confused. If you mean reliable as in trusting that the binary that you think you are downloading is really what you wanted then I agree.
A file-sharing approach allows you to mirror on a scale impossible to acheive with the web.
Yes you can mirror the information in many places, but this gives you no guarantee over the bandwidth that the end user will get when they download the file. For all you know, the mirror that you happen to choose to download the file is going to be sitting on someone's box with a single ISDN connection and 10 other people already downloading and its going to crawl. However, if your central legal service is working, ie enough people are choosing to buy the music that the digital distributor is making money (and therefore by definition the record company and the artist are also making money) then they can invest in a controlled distributed network of servers that are all offering the same services located at the right places in the net to maximise bandwidth to the subnets that are currently choking (a la yahoo).
The trick is to make digitally signed music that can be verified by the end-user as the original before downloading the music.
only necessary if you don't trust the site. place the site on an https connection with a signed certificate and the overhead of having to sign all the files individually disappears and your operating costs go down (more money ultimately to the artist (hopefully)).
Also I'm a geek and therefore it is in my nature to explore new possibilities. :)
New possibilities are always good. The trick is to find the new possibility that enables people to fight against the major labels while giving people what they want (ie access to music). The only way to build a sustainable system against the creatures of chaos with their law suits is to make something that is so legally airtight and not open to abuse that it can grow to its logical conclusion without having to factor in $120,000,000 dollar fines (or whatever the figure was). If the model works, then there will be plenty of opportunities to geek out on distributed download systems within the umbrella of the parent company. I'm quite sure that if someone started an open source project to run the site which was secure then the distributors would welcome it with open arms (less in house costs, probably better product etc etc).
Remember, when you write code, it is your choice as to what licence you release the code under. Same for musicians. All the artists at atrecordings must have given their permission to let their music be downloaded for free because they think that it is good for them and i totally respect that opinion. But, if an artist chooses to release their work under a 'closed' model then that is their right and your distribution system for 'open' works must be able to protect itself from license abuse.
Personally I would like to see a situation where it makes economic sense for all concerned to go for the open model. Only time will tell if this is the case and the only way you are going to buy time is by keeping it legal long enough for the momentum to build up.
The only Good System is a Sound System
Why is it morally wrong to try and sell something "intelectual" that you spent hours and hours creating ??
Why should it be any different if I spend 1000 hours creating a program and selling it to 1000 people for a dollar, and taking 1000 hours to create a wooden desk and sell it to one person for $1000 ??
Different people have different ideas of what the system should be... So if I create something, I should be able to use which ever system I want to distribute it..
Sure the paper may be lacking... but this is the web.. its all about hits.....
Superficially, it may seem anthropomorphic. But it is essetially the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Nitrogen molecules do not want to gather in the corner of my room - they want to spread out. In the same way, information wants to be free. And it will be.
It's a law of nature. And if a government or corporation wishes to oppose a fundamental law of nature, then they must spend a proportionate amount of energy to maintain the highly ordered state of control or secrecy.
And the higher the temperature in thermodynamics, the more effort is required to maintain that ordered state.
The internet has raised the temperature in the information mileu by an order of magnitude. I don't think any company or government will have the resources to maintain the highly ordered and unlikely state of control.
Information wants to be free. Regardless of your moral position, it's a law of nature. This is what the author of the article fails to see or acknowledge.
Egad, the smell of glue is thick in here.
Movies will not be free, as will not many other things. The whole concept of "you can't stop us" is ridiculous. No, it can't be stopped totally. But let's just give a lot of lawyers with a lot of money time. The DCMA is a good start. In a few years, no, MP3 traffic will not be stopped. But everyone will suffer. Laws will just be passed that infringe upon our rights. Lawyers, like a lot of people consider the IT field to be hot. And because of a bunch of greedy bastards who don't want to pay for works from other, our rights will slowly be strangled. On another note, let's see how that attitude holds up when the FBI comes to your house with a warrant, and you spend a couple of years in the crossbar hotel, follwed by a leisurely life where MCDonalds won't even hire you because of your record. They won't get everyone, but they will get some. Any idealistic volunteers? It will happen. My brother, an IT lawyer just told me a few days ago about new and wonderful ways prosecuters will start using RICO to imprison and impoverish offenders. The attitude of "you can't stop us" will cause many people a painful lesson in the error of their logic.
Not to mention something else. Movies cost a tremendous amount of mony to make, as does a lot of music and some software. I will stick to movies here. They cost a lot to make. Cast, crew, props, all cost money. Producers invest because they think that, like all other investments, that this will make them even more than they spent. Do you think they will just say "Hmm, let's spend 100 million bucks so that I can give my movie to people for free. I am sure they will respond by feeding my family for me, maybe even deliver it to the door of my cardboard box.
On another note - the RIAA. Musicians have to sign those contracts too. I like this reasoning - A band starves for years, trying to enter the big time. Their dream is that one day, a record company will sign them. Most don't make it. Some do. They finally get their dream, and get a contract. The RIAA makes lots of money, but so do the musicians. Riding around in limos, tearing up hotels, indulging in everything their little hearts desire. And with plenty of cash left over. This of course is unacceptable, so we must steal their music to help fight the RIAA for giving them exactly what they worked for and wanted. No one made the musician sign that contract. No one made them cash their checks either, or the residual checks they will recive for life. How noble.
Amen... I don't see many people arguing that doctors' advice should be free (well, there is that whole welfare state thing in Europe, but people do pay for it) or lawyers' counsel, or --much closer to home-- software consulting.
Information *doesn't* want to be free. Information is knowledge, and knowledge costs money; either through the experience of trial and error or through the time in education. The fact that some (a lot of) people offer information for free (on the web or as OSS) is great, but they *volunteer* to do so. On Napster, the artists (starving or mega-millionaires) *don't*. That makes it theft. If you're cool with theft, so be it, but making it sound like a revolutionary call or something, that's hypocricy.
The marginal cost of information is zero. Therefore, in a rational marketplace, by economic theory, the marginal price of information should be just above zero.
That's what the statement means to me. No moral judgement, but it means that any market where the marginal cost of information is not basically zero is not a rational marketplace.
Copyrights are not rational or efficient in economic terms, and require government intervention to protect. Whether they are morally right or not is a different debate.
Bryan
You forget. You are generally making music available off of your machine too so you are offering something in return. Unless you have it set where others can't get at it then you're a bad member of the black and white market.
When you copy music illegally you are breaking copyright laws. You can call it "theft of intellectual property" if you want, but you should call it that explicitly. Otherwise you're just like the media, overloading words with varied meanings and not being specific when you say things like "And taking that property makes you a thief."
If I make a copy of a metallica song outside of fair-use laws (or other situations allowed by the band in question), I may be depriving them of money (assuming that I would have otherwised bought the piece of music), and I'm definitely breaking copyright laws, but I'm definitely not stealing or committing theft in the classic sense of the word.
Trying to link a physical or tangible act to something like copying/trading music does nothing but obscure the situation and play on emotions. No one likes to be robbed or have their stuff stolen, and bringing up the word theft is a sure way to immediatly stigmatize whomever you're talking about in the minds of anyone who hasn't yet thought the issue through.
Of course beer wants to be free. This was one of the motivations for humans settling down and becoming agrarians instead of hunters and gatherers. There was a time when every farmer worth his hops knew how to brew beer with the stuff he grew himself. What do you think the "Whiskey Rebellion" was all about? Whiskey wants to be free, too :)
Really!?!?! Then submit that to the Annals or Physics. Information does exist and it does not violate any physical laws.
It's easy for me to relate entropy and the spread of information. I don't see how entropy or any laws of physics impact the "usefulness" of the information though unless you are talking about degradation though lossy transmission. How do you quantify or measure "usefulness"?
The association of information=money cannot be valid. Money cannot be copied.
Information is simply a pattern that is subject to interpretation. Nothing more, nothing less.
I disagree. Just because somebody is unwilling to sell you something does not give you the *right* to steal it -- or, for those who object to the word "steal" in this context (and I understand their objections), the *right* to copy it with niether permission nor payment.
If I have written a book, but refuse to sell it to you or anyone else, that does not give you the right to steal it? If I was good enough to loan it to you, that does not give you the right to photocopy the entire thing without my permission?
Do you honestly believe that the amount of theft or unauthorized, uncompensated copying would decrease if the record companies sold "ISO9660 CDROM with professionally encoded MP3's?" Absolutely not. The amount of theft or unauthorized, uncompensated copying would skyrocket because technically less sophisticated people would no longer have to learn how to either rip cds or "master" Napster, Gnuetella, etc.
The record companies are not obligated to provide music in an inherently insecure format just because you want them to. And their failure to satisfy your desire does not give you the right to steal or copy their work.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Ah-ha,
at last, intent is hard to prove and even harder to define.
In my theoretical example, I was merely posting my CDs so that I could, and any other legeally entitled person, listen to them in the new format.
My understanding of the original article, and the ruling in the case, is that the belief is that Napster is being solely used to commit crime.
My question being, and I bet your glad I eventually got round to it, is merely provding a service that might be used for illegal means, an illegal act in itself?
However, if you do believe that those intellectual property claims are reasonable, then they are reasonable even if the RIAA is the evilest, vilest pack of scoundrels to roam the planet. Any other stance is mere rationalization of a behavior that you still think is wrong in general.
Bad example, but you already knew that.
Yeah... I knew that... but its Thursday... its late.. what more do you want...
The inital reasoning is still bullshit....
> PEOPLE want information to be free, and seem to have a tremendous lack of respect (or perhaps just a tremendous amount of ignorance) about our current economic system,
There is the catch 22... They are ignornent becouse they lack the information to realise why information isn't free...
Information is expensive, vital and in very short supply..
I don't actually exist.
Next time, turn on your brain before you make an argument. Thanks.
Well,
at first: the thing about the monopoly is wrong.
at second: the invention of copyright was just in the oposite way around. Certain natural/moral rights where removed not granted! Under natural/moral rights copyright would never expire!
Think of it: If you go into the forrest and find an apple tree, you take three apples. Who owns them? Why? Is that legal? Do you have a monopoly on those apples? Why? Why not?
You got an Idea, you perform it, you use natural material to perform it, now it is visible. Who did it? Its you natural right to gain and retain what you got and did. This right was first regranted in europe by german/roman emerors. It is a known right all over the antic world. Even in 4000 year old chineese paintings on tea pots you see the signs of the copy right holders.
Copyright law LOWERS the natural law of the Intelectual Property holder. The natural law is: no one may copy! Without his granted permission. The modern laws however make this property vanishing over time. By only granting it for a certain period.
Instead of whining about liers or rich people think better about your own rights regarding copyright.
The copy right holders are the people! And they spoke! All the time over it was easy for rich people to infringe copyright, they had the paper, they had the book makers. Now everybody is strong and rich in the sence that he has paper and can craft books, and with the internet the position of the copyright holder is even better because he can distribute for low costs. You should even more enforce his rights! Insterad of infringing him! Just thinking about Albrecht Dürrer who traveled from Germany to Italy because italian artists copied his work. He forced them around 1630 in court at Rome to honor his copyright and to pay compensation. How lucky he was that he even noticed the copyright infringment! How expensive it was, one year of traveling!
I simply can not understand why so many people here are not realizing that we are shifting from a good oriented economy to an information oriented economy. Copyright and other Intellectual Properties will never fall. They will even be enforced more and more. If you like to make it better, participate in making it better and not in making it void.
Regards,
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
But AFAIK, Africa isn't subject to the USA's patent laws.... (mostly because Africa isn't part of the US).
*Cough, cough* I have *five* different Hendrix CDs with Purple Haze on it, include *two* greatests hits and the orignal album.
Jesus, Hendrix's family puts out *another* greatest hits release *every year*. Right in your local record store. In the record bin labeled Hendrix. Obvivously, there's *no way* to buy a copy of this song through "RIAA approved" ways. No sireey.
Here's a question, Sparky: how many tracks on Napster are still in print and how many are out of print. And why do people insist on storing music that they wouldn't buy in a record store?
George Lee
The very large integer that makes up a representation of the sounds of a song in an AIFF or MP3 format triggers experiences in the brains of those who interpret that number with a suitable device (cd player or mp3 decoder). If I come across and enjoy this number, then it joins the fold of my experiences and I might want to share this interesting number with a friend.
If someone invents a memory/sensory scanner, then you have right to reproduce a perfect copy of your experience/memory of your exposure to the event (including any attendant tinninitus, frequency limitation in your hearing, memory problems, etc which you have).
This is similar to what an mp3 file does. It throws away most of the info and keeps only those sounds that have solid mental triggers. The scanner you refer to will be possible in our lifetime, IHMO.
What is the fundamental difference between recording my experiences with my brain only and using brain augmenting devices such as tape recorders, web browsers, video cameras, etc.? I don't think there is a moral difference.
Simply, you don't have ANY rights to my Intellectual (experiencial and expressional) Property which I do not grant to you.
Simply put, I do not believe that you can own a pattern or idea. I think such claims of ownership are are invalid prima facie.
I'm sorry, but I cannot make any sense of "theft of experience" since I fail to see how you could remove someone's experiences from them. If you just mean to say "theft of intellectual property", then we're back to square 1. You believe ideas and patterns can be owned and I do not.
Your rights stop where mine start.
Your rights stop where my body begins. Once a pattern leaves you, through whatever means of transmission you care to name, it is no longer part of your corpus. You have no right to tell me what I can and cannot do with my experiences. My right to self determination of thought and communication outweighs any right you believe you have to strictly control all the ripples of information spreading from your direction or elsewhere.
You completely missed the whole point of Nick's article. If you don't like proprietary information, stop whining and go create your own non-proprietary stuff.
Stop and think what the world would be like if a young Richard Stallman really behaved as if information really should be free. GNU would not have been created, and he would have instead created an organization devoted to liberating the existing software by urging the distribution of unauthorized multics, SV4 and other software.
Sure, it would have been against the law, but so what? Go read your Thoreau...
Don't whine, just do.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Okay, I'll accept your arguments, totally. The big question is, will you? Do you believe that you have the right to take GPLd software, combine it with incompatibly licensed code, and redistribute it? Do you advocate to RMS that he should put emacs and gcc into the public domain? Is all the code you write in the public domain?
If any of your answers were no, then you are being inconsistant. If information should not be owned, then it should not be owned by anyone. Any software/information that has a copyright notice is owned software. Anyone that sues, complains, or even demands begging for forgiveness, over copyright violations is actively affirming their ownership of the information.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The question of whether I or RMS should put things into the public domain is not my concern. The issue is can we put things into the public domain. There are many details about my life that I hope to never put into the public domain. Trying to keep a personal or trade secret is fine by me. Telling me what I can and cannot share with friends is not OK. I do not think that this is an inconsistent viewpoint.
I have written some software to do neurophysiological simulations, complete with a little parser and language made possible by C++/YACC. I will release that into the public domain. Before that I made a pre-web era non-networked hyperlinking program that stored text and pictures. I doubt anyone would want it, but I'll look for it and put it up. I have been working on some mod perl stuff for database backed object persistence and editing. I'll put that up too when I get it working. I haven't decided which license to use yet. All I care about is that it is not plagiarised.
And I will put my songs up on mp3.com when they are done.
I would much rather have my software and songs spread around as a testiment that I once lived than to hoard them away and allow only 216 paid copies (or likely less) to exist and then eventually become lost.
Your, mine, anyone elses right to live, thrive and survive is not mutually exclusive OR inclusive of your right to own whats in your head.
You play a song to me it becomes mine as much as yours. If i don't hear it then to me it never exists.. except possibly in terms of its effect on others.
My point is that ownership of ideas is immensely more complicated (and philosophical) than ownership of lawnmowers.
And if treated the same way becomes intolerably tyrannical.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
You are seriously blind if you think that Information wants to be free. For instance: A little kid comes up to you and says "I just pooped my pants". Did you care? Does anyone REALLY care? No. Something that doesn't have life CAN'T think. Saying information wants to be free is like saying a rock wants to move.
What if we do that the people want???. Simple. Make a special format of music, with 4 or 8 sound channels (Recorded in a DVD or something), and merchandise it well. And leave the Napster and the "Ugly" mp3 and CD's 2 stereo channels alone. We have the technology, of course. But the industry of music is defending political, industrial and cultural monopoly. Leaded by the americans. If we follow them, we are always hear B. Spears, and emulated girls and stupid groups forever. Where are the rest of the world?
"Sine ira et studio" Tacitus. With neither anger nor partiality.
Creating information has a cost (in time at least), but duplicating it does not. You pay the doctor, or lawyer, or consultant to create information that you need. Do you think your doctor should be able to sue you if you tell your Wife what what the doctor told you? Should a laywer be able to sue the government for keeping cort records? If you pay a programmer to write a program for you, shouldn't you be able to distribute it however you see fit?
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
As for setting up a peer-to-peer network to share it, isnt that what FTP when everyone has both clients and servers built in (ala IIS), or are the people who actually buy it just ignorant enough not to know about FTP.
As for legal action with windows, the only people I know of who actually own windows (appart from commercial business) had it come with a system and they were forced to pay for it. No-one is affraid of MS lawyers, just like no-one is afraid of smoking a bit of pot in the backyard.
Does it go on forever?
Hrm, the dewy decimal system dosn't apply to fiction. I loved the line about "My plan to make millions in poetry is ruined!"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
And before anybody screams that genetic information is a bad analogy as well, consider that ironically enough, some corporations want to lock up that kind of information too.
Saying that information wants to be free is not necessarily anthropomorphising information. Unlike a bowl of popcorn, or perhaps a glass of water, information is not made of discrete entities that can trapped and contained. The nature of information is such that it is capable of self-reproduction without loss or expense. This is what is meant by "information wants to be free." It is only by controlling other people's actions that we contain information.
While there are indeed people who just run with the crowd on issues surrounding intellectual property rights (a term I feel is a misnomer), I believe Mr. Petreley presented an extremely shallow view of the matter.
Are you saying that there is a natural right to control the thoughts and words of other humans?
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
In many cases, looking at the rock would be far more entertaining that their putrid offerings.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Maybe one day people will learn to respect each others property...
Either that, or "property" as we understand and define it won't exist, a la the Martian setup in Stranger in a Strange Land.
Of course, that assumes humanity will become civilized at some point and move beyond our greedy, xenophobic, i'll-take-yours-but-you-can't-have-mine wild-animal-with-intelligence-but-no-sense selves.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Beer wants to be drunk. Whiskey wants to be drunker. Neither cares about its cost.
The Whiskey rebellion was about taxation. (Shay lost).
So is it a good idea to have a bunch of cigar-smoking, gun-toting beaurocratic drunks wandering about?
What, that's not the image BATF seeks? Why the name?
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
The phrase information wants to be free. is not just an evocotive figurative statement, it is simple truth about information. It takes effort to prevent information from being freely exchanged. One can also argue that it takes effort to vigorously communicate it, however the fact remains that it is hard to keep a secret.
This is true not just figuratively but physically. A source of light can be seen unless blocked, and sound is heard unless absorbed. If you say something, you have to whisper if you want no one to hear it (and yell if you want everyone to hear it).
There is a strong ethical dilemna to be considered in keeping any secret (for instance a given secret might diminish the community while benefiting an individual and thus ethically good for the indivdual and bad for the community).
A priori, there is no moral reason why copying and sharing pure patterns, regardless of their origin, is immoral. I don't care if somebody spent a whole lifetime to create a pattern. I have considered several kinds of moral thinking - Kant's categorical imperative, Mill's utilitarianism, Chritianity, and my own intuitive ideas on what is moral. I simply fail to see how, in light of these moral theories, copying patterns could be immoral.
I believe it is immoral to unnecessarily limit the freedom of a human being. Copyright and patent laws seek to limit our freedoms in profound ways, and increasingly so. Does the benefit the we, as a society, gain from these laws outweigh the sacrifice of our freedoms? I say that the benefits are to very few while the freedoms of everyone are sacrified. I don't think it's good social policy.
I believe people have a basic human right to record and remember their life experiences as accurately as they see fit - using their brains or brain aumenting devices such as computers, tape recorders, or some day neural implants. I also believe they have the right to share their experiences with arbitrary fidelity. If you seek to limit these self-evident (to me, at least) rights, you had better have a damned good reason that benefits everyone more than it harms everyone. I can't think of such a reason.
If you don't want your information to be spread, the keep it in your head. If you send sound waves, text, or code in someone's direction, then that becomes part of their life experience which they then have the right to remember and share as they see fit.
I certainly don't agree that it makes sense to protect all information. Rather, it makes sense to allow those who recognize or create information (and I'd imagine which was actually done depends on the sort of information we're talking about) to have a means by which to protect that information in a reasonable, limited fashion. How we protect that information is really the issue, then, and not whether it ought to be protected at all.
Certainly, I'm not pleased with the current state of many laws regarding IP. They're often downright stupid. However, that doesn't mean that all laws regarding IP ought to be revoked. There's a happy medium between complete control over information and no control over information at all which needs to be achieved... lets hope we get there.
However, don't place all existing record companies in the same categories. Smaller independant labels quite frequently do try their best to offer the best deal to the artists that they can, but they are currently fighting a losing battle against the majors because the record industry is geared to fast massive turnover of disposable music where people buy the currently hip tune each week and then move onto the next one. And who decides what is hip? The same people that control the advertising in the high street record chains and who dictate the playlists to the national radio stations and who also have interests in the distribution channels for the music: the major record labels.
In order to beat the RIAA at their own game it is necessary to change the rules because the economic reality of running a small record label is that it is quite often impossible to give a good deal to the artists, no matter how much you want to. Recording albums and pressing albums costs money and without the distribution and exposure, you are not going to cover your costs. A politically sound label is absolutely no good if it is a bankrupt politically sound label.
If atrecordings' business model works and the small and unheard of labels that they support sell more records than they would if they played the conventional game then you are in a position of power and you can afford to move some money back to the artists. Yes, a lot of people will download the mp3's and give nothing back, but if a large enough percentage of these people do purchase the music (if they like it), then everybody wins. Napster is never going to gain legal acceptance because people will always use it for distributing music that the labels (or artists) haven't given permission to be distributed, but if all the music is available directly from the labels themselves at no cost, then what is the advantage in Napster? And what can the major's do about it? Absolutely nothing. Who are they going to sue? And for what?
The only Good System is a Sound System
if so, i'm calling my mom ...
... people want things to be free. or better put, people want the things that they want to be free.
anyway, he's got a good point. inanimate objects cannot want anything
Mindy: "Well...desserts aren't always right." Homer: "But they're so sweet!"
Content is not content
What the hell are you talking about? What is it then?
There's a world of difference between buying a professionally encoded MP3 blah blah blah...
Professionally encoded mp3's? Come on... Making an MP3 aint exactly rocket science is it? The quality of an MP3 is primarily related to the codec and bitrate used in the encoding. You can pay someone as much as you like to encode it for you, but I doubt you could prove that the resultant file is significantly better than one produced by the average person at home.
Napster is primarily used for downloading copyrighted music.
This is not legal.
If that concerns you, then don't use it, if not.. then fine... download away, but for gods sake quit it with the Sanctimonious excuses for stealing other peoples copyrighted material.
hummer
This doesn't make them right. It just makes them scared.
This still doesn't make theft right in any way, shape, or form. Because I want it! is a great whine, and a wonderful excuse to say why one would steal what is not available without theft, but it still does not make the theft right.
I'd really like to be free of more of this discussion. If you want to know where that definition of free comes from, read 1984.
Saying "information wants to be free" is like saying "water wants to run downhill". Sure there's a force behind it (people want information). But IMO the saying just means that stored data will tend to become free.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
If photoshop cost a dollar I would buy it, certanly. I don't have the money for photoshop, and adobe wouldn't get money out of me wether I use the software or not?
To anyone I may have offended, tough. Grow up. Breaking the law is still breaking the law, no matter how you try to justify it.
so?
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Another thing that pisses me off is that Metallica claims they're doing it for the smaller bands that are trying to get rich but Napster users pirate their music. As I recall, smaller bands like Napster - it helps spread word of them. I know ChrisJ likes Napster (I have bought 2 of his CD's). Metallica should sue on their own behalf and let other bands join them in the suit or something.
Also, Napster isn't the one to sue, shouldn't it be the users who are doing the trading of copyrighted music? The actual trading is what's wrong, not the service.
Fair use is 'sharing with immediate family and friends.'
No, fair use is defined under 17 U.S.C. s. 107, and applicable case law. As between what you think it is, and what the Congress and Supreme Court think it is, well, let us let our colleagues decide.
In Sony, it was held that time-shifting was fair use, and precluded liability of the vendor of the VCR. In Diamond, it was held that space-shifting of MP3's is fair use, and precluded liability of the Rio. The Supreme Court has said that all that needs to be the case for Napster to prevail is that Napster be capable of some substantial noninfringing use. If so, it is irrelevant how much infringement is going on . . .
Ironically, in the Sony case, the Eleventh Circuit initially adopted a test very much like the one adopted here in Napster by the District Court -- the very test that the Supes rejected. While it is certainly an open question, and only time will tell, any learned student of the applicable law reading the briefs and the case law has to like Napster's chances.
2) It is only the injunction which has been stayed. It has not been remanded.
True. Time will tell how the Courts will treat the appeal. However, for an appellate court to stay a preliminary injunction, it must determine that the order below had serious questions both as to form and to the merits. And so the 11th Circuit found.
I said to look it up, and subset to. You've basicaly made an arbitrary distinction, that dosn't really have anything in particular to do with reality. 'content' and 'information' can never have anything inherent or intrinsic they don't really even exist. They are only ideas (meta-ideas, actualy).
Anything that could ever be considered content, is always going to be 'information'
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
The concept of "owner" doesn't apply particularly well to ideas (even including music). How can you own an idea? Can you keep someone else from thinking thoughts that you've had?
Trading digital music or other information may be illegal, but it's not necessarily immoral -- it depends strongly on your moral views regarding imaginary property.
Laws don't make morality. They're a framework for structuring a society -- hopefully one rooted in some decent morals. There's certainly such things as bad laws.
--
Even better, show me a place where I can pay a monthly fee for unlimited music. After all, my fervor for new songs can only last so long before my payments will catch up and exceed the royalties I incur on the company.
I personally think that a site like this is needed... before everyone uses Napster! Some sites already exist that have many MP3s, but you cant find most of the latest songs there, probably because the record companies wont license their songs to an mp3 distributor (I cant see any other reason, Im not looking for rare songs or anything).
There is no clause about "If you don't feel like paying for it, or think it's too expensive (even though you agreed to the price up front) then you don't have to pay".
If you call the plumber to do work for you, you are making an agreement with him -- you agree to pay him if he does the work. If you did not agree to that, he would not come.
I never asked Brittany Spears to record any music. Now that she has, I feel no particular obligation to reimburse her for her time -- not unless I find some value in what she has done. If a plumber comes into your house while you're at work, fixes your sink, then leaves a bill -- do you pay him? You never agreed to the work, you are not obligated to pay him. However, you may choose to do so, if he has done a good job. (Of course on the other hand you may choose to throw him in jail for breaking and entering -- the analogy is imperfect.)
Similarly, when an employer hires a worker, there is an agreement, a contract -- the worker agrees to do whatever work the the employer asks of him in return for monetary compensation. If the worker does not do a good job -- he gets fired. If the employer does not pay -- he gets sued.
You "believe that's called capitalism? For people to decide after they have taken or copied something whether, and how much, they are going to pay for it?
Perhaps "free market" is more what I mean. You are free to choose what supermarket to buy your eggs from. If one supermarket is giving eggs away free, why wouldn't you go there?
Similarly, when there are multiple sources from which to get your music -- regardless of who created the music first -- why would you buy a CD? For very good reasons: to support the artist, or to encourage him to produce more good music.
If Stephen King didn't think that people cared enough about his work to pay for it, would he offer it online, potentially for free?
Free software is different from freely availably music because it serves the purpose of enhancing the development of more (free) software. This is not about money and not wanting to pay for something. If it's commercial you can buy it and use it for a certain, limited, purpose, if it is free it can be used in any way, it is more than just functional - and that is what people normally pay for. Free code inspires learning and evolution of abilities and insight.
Again you are confusing "must be shared" with "can be shared". Different things entirely.
By saying "must be shared", I am talking from the perspective of the information producer (and not information "horder", more below). That is, from the perspective of the information producer, once I've (as a producer) created information (in the form of a song, an essay, a computer program, whatever), in your world view I face the problem that the moment I release the information to someone, unless I hunt down everyone and deal with them on a one-on-one transaction (which is impractical for something which I may want to mass produce and sell), I must eventually deal with the fact that my information will be shared freely without my control or even consent.
That is because it is inevitable that, while not everyone may wish to share my information freely, some will--and in your world view, there is not a damned thing I can do about it.
Thus, from a practical perspective, it's "must be shared," not "can be shared."
And again, you're assuming that you have a right to make money on that information. Sorry, but in my book you don't have a right to make money by hoarding information.
Again, I am talking from the perspective of the information producer, not the information agrigator (or "horder.") In fact, I do have the right to "hoard" information that I may produce--I just don't publish. For example, I may have in my posession nude pictures of my wife which we took one evening when we had too much wine and nothing else to do. Am I a "hoarder" because I choose not to publish the information (electronic images) even though those pictures have already been produced?
So the question is, do I have the right to make money producing information? Do I have the right to sell naked pictures of my wife (say) in compensation for the embarasment she may feel about having naked pictures of her floating around? Or, do I have the right to make money selling computer programs I wrote?
The question here is not one of "hoarding"--I can do that by not publishing. The question is do I have the right to control who gets the information I produced when I publish it, and can I do so in a way which permits me to be compensated for the time and effort it cost me to produce that information?
Again, I say that if I do not have the right to get paid for my time in producing information that I may have otherwised wished to sell, my incentive to produce information (naked pictures, music, essays, computer programs, whatever) is singificantly less--if only because I need to do something else which does make money so I can continue to put food in my table. And that something else is time which I cannot devote to taking nude pictures, programming, or writing essays.
And again, the fact that lies are immoral has no bearing on this topic. Whether or not IP is allowed to exist, lies will still be immoral.
But lies are information, and it is clear that you do see limits on what sort of information may be propagated, and how they may be propogated.
So then the question is not one of if the free flow of information should be restricted (you just admited that "lies" are immoral, and perhaps should be restricted), but how and why information flow should be restricted.
Sucker bet anyways, as it's pretty obvious that only a damned fool would deny the stupidity of shouting "Fire!" in a crowded room. (The penultimate example of "free flow of information" which perhaps shouldn't be permitted.)
You have a right to make money by providing a good or service that I cannot or do not have time to provide for myself. If you aren't motivated to provide a good or service that is in demand, then you lose.
But this is completely at odds with your earlier assertion that information should be freely exchanged in a sort of "high fidelity" meme transfer. That's because as an information producer, if I am unable to control in any way when (not "if") information I produce will be shared, then I am unable to control any sort of income which may be generated by controlling how that information gets spread.
I want to see art created by people doing it because they are compelled to by something in their soul.
But we're not just talking about art, aren't we? We're talking about software, pictures, essays--a whole range of "information" that goes beyond some painting or little ditty about Jack and Dianne.
Besides, why should attempting to make some money off the art you produce be a bad thing, or even degrade the quality of the art produced? Michelangelo was commissioned (read: paid) to paint the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel, yet I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who would disagree with the notion that Michelangelo's work isn't a masterpiece of high art.
I'm sorry for you if you've bought into the corporate notion that sharing experiences in high fidelity is immoral.
As someone who actually produces information I have no problem with your desire for "high fidelity" memory sharing, except when you "share" work produced by me in a manner which prohibits or eliminates my ability to be compensated for my hard work and effort.
And that's what this whole argument boils down to: to what extent should my rights to make money off work I produced be taken away from me in order to better society. It's pretty damned clear that things like the DMCA is a really fscked up idea in that it stifles our Founding Father's notion of the ineffiable search for Truth by restricting the ability for people to build off each other's works.
On the other hand, it's pretty clear that this notion of "high fidelity" meme sharing, while in and of itself not inherently bad, does not justify posting Metallica songs on Napster. That's because you're not sharing your experiences that you may had when listening to Metallica (be it revulsion or just annoyance)--you're just publishing Metallica songs without authorization.
I've been accused of GIGO!
That's because when you did your "philosophical search", it appears to me you started with a bunch of assumptions: that (a) "high fidelity" meme sharing is a good thing, and (b) existing IP laws interfere with "high fidelity" meme sharing (like you can't invite your friend over and play your Metallica disk for him in person--that you can only engage in this transaction by publishing, without comment, Metallica).
Further, you assume (c) that "high fidelity" meme sharing is achieved through publishing Metallica without their permission (regardless if you need their permission to publish), or equivalently, (d) that publishing is a form of "high fidelity" meme sharing--dispite the fact that you are not sharing your experience, only the song itself.
These (and other) apriori assumptions are the garbage in--it appears you do not prove these assertions, only make them. What do you expect, but garbage out?
This problem is expanding fast, fueled in part by the technology that the more naively ethical among us thought would be used for the common good. Every significant corporation on earth is now trading in "customer profiles", information about you and me that they can use against us. That's not just spam -- that's employers being able to fire you over Usenet (or Slashdot postings), overzealous politicians using your purchases at Amazon.com to ferret out your private beliefs, and insurance companies discriminating against people on the basis of behavior and genetics. It's fair to say most people don't want that information getting out, much less distributed to the highest bidder, but they won't come to you for licensing fees -- they'll just take it and then get Congress to expand copyright law to protect their "right" to your most intimate details.
Intellectual property would be a good idea, except that more than in almost any other area, virtually any IP system favors the rich and powerful over the common man. Increasingly, it institutionalizes the plundering of common knowledge by corporations while depriving the public of the right to actually own anything they pay for. Opposing IP rights isn't communism or airy-headed idealism -- it's cold, hard common sense aimed at protecting the rights of private individuals and preventing the arbitrary abuse of corporate and governmental power.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Your analogy is obviously flawed, it should go something like this:
Lets say a company A prints a book, company A thinks the book should be sold in bookshops at a certain price (so the bookshops have a profit). You decide to copy large amounts of the book and sell them in a store B, call it Walmart, at a lower price.
Notice the difference?
Oh, and a big hi to everyone reading at -1.
Thanks!
Now consider poorer countries. Compare the standard of living in Cuba (not starving), and the standard of living in a poor African capitalist country, say ethiopia (starving). Even though Ethiopia receives foriegn aid from the west and Cuba receives foriegn hostility.
I wouldn't really call ethiopia "capitalist" more "war-torn"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I couldn't find it at all; I did eventually find Capitol's website, and they have a Pink Floyd section with some entire songs in low-quality realaudio, and various different bitrates (up to 96kbps) for windows media.
However, for Dark Side of the Moon (and another 10 discs), they just link to Amazon.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
What it's saying is that the quiescent state of information is free (as in speech). Information locked up has to be kept locked tight; once it gets out in the open it can never be locked back up again. Ie, having information out in the open is the only stable state for information.
Information wants to be free in exactly the same way as a rock at a top of a hill wants to be at the bottom of a hill.
So property is... what? A rule/wall/convention/memething designed and implemented to preserve desirable resource flow patterns? A theory glued to a desire? An ought? One might say: "I uphold the convention of property because I think that the alternative would be to suffer deprivation at the hands of chaos". The theory of property binds resource-hunger to morality. Those guys who grabbed what I wanted aren't just competitors, they're thieves, so if I go retaliate on their asses I'm not just a dog versus other dogs, I'm a holy warrior. Justice is a stronger rationale than mere hunger. Property justifies. So what precisely is inherently negative about thievery?
Communism (aka sharing) doesn't work with a rotten (greedy) core, as capitalism do. However, when people themselves change. They want to have more enlightened leaders and free flow of information, not dark rooms with old men patting their pipes behind closed doors. But non-corrupt leaders who don't screw them around for personal benefit. Then socialism is more appropriate.
However, it's very hard to accomplish pure socialism in a large and complex system with scarcity. The less scarcity, the more easier such a transition would be.
Btw, USSR was hardly communistic. It was a dictatorship. Look up the difference between communism and Communism in Webster's.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Napster was a cute idea, not very original but they did a good job of promoting the service better than any previous file/music sharing service and making it easy enough for even a novice to use. File-sharing is here to stay and nobody will be able to stop it. Some of the files will be legal, others will be illegal. If a label that owned the rights to the music (or other content) provided a Napster-like service while itself dumping a lot of quality content into the service they'd gain a large market hold without nearly the hassles Napster had. You could still allow peer-peer file sharing that was unmonitored but you could also mark certain files that you proved yourself as known legal and of high quality.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Oh I'm not saying that I've never downloaded a song I liked and never bought the album..
But I think the record companys should at Minimum put up free MP3s' of their "Top 40" songs in high quality... Most of the songs on the underground MP3 sites are MTV top10 / BillBoard Top40 Etc... These are the SAME songs that we have been able to tape off of the radio (If we had the patience) for something like (guessing) 30+ years..
No one I know has ever been harrased by a record company for Taping a Top 40 tune off of the Radio.. Granted the quality of a tune ripped from the radio lacks in the sound dept. It was good enough for alot of years....
And Yes the percentage of people who will trade in the other Non-Top40 songs will probably remain about the same, but at least let the people who want to try and be honest have a chance to download a high quality top 40 song that they hear like 30 times a day for free on the radio anyway..
SpaZ
Stupid can opener! You killed my father and now you've come back for me!
Do you honestly believe that the amount of theft or unauthorized, uncompensated copying would decrease if the record
companies sold "ISO9660 CDROM with professionally encoded MP3's?"
Yes, I do. Try, for example, to download a good (that is, one which mpg123 returns no errors on) copy of the entire Mark Twang album by John Hartford. How long does it take you? How much is your time worth? How much money did it save you? Oh, but I forgot -- you can't buy what you just downloaded. It's literally priceless!
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Good analogy, but the connotation is more negative than I think is necessary... :-)
I don't think that using the phrase generically has any moral implications although you can (as the previous poster pointed out) make that leap. It merely expresses a tendency, which, you're right, isn't inherently good or bad.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
A lot of people here write they have bought a lot more CD since MP3... Myself as well, but I understand why now and I think a lot of people on ./ have done the same...
4 years ago, I did not buy so many CDs because I was a poor student, today I am a happily employed IT engineer, and have a LOT of money to spend on CD... I never used Napster but have a couple of friend using it and they really did what is necessary to do in a music shop: sample...
They don't buy more or less CD since anyway singles are way too expensive compared with the retail price and that is what MP3 is competing against.
This is simply untrue. The law recognizes as property interests that, by definition, do not last forever. One example, a leasehold interest in land is property.
This is also untrue. Tenants in common of land both own a complete, undivided interest in the land. Same is true of joint tenants.
Your understanding of property law is simply wrong, and has been for centuries.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
what the napsters and others do is change the rules (but really, they are just the end result of various technological processes and progresses), so it will be interesting to watch what happens.
The napsters and the Free Software movement are interesting developments, and point the way forward to a more enlightened use and control of information.
I mean, this is interesting, you can argue that Michael Jordan is only so rich due to copyright law. If anyone could broadcast a basketball game, how much would he be worth?
The motto of the Rothschild family is (I'm told) "Knowledge is power, and prior knowledge is profit"
Control of information is really the basis of capitalism, and most of the inequalities and general economic nastinesses of this world can be traced back to this.
I hear your credit card screaming, sitting captive in your wallet. "Free me post my number on the web where all the world can know me!" it says.
Come on. As if people use Napster to download copies of songs they bought!
The author of the article totally "gets it"-- there's an inherent flaw in the idea that just because it's easy to steal means you should do it.
I think info wants to be free ultimately means that the information age makes it more and more tempting for info (songs, movies, etc.) to be transmitted, and at the same time, stolen. Eventually the capacity to steal information makes it all to easy to do so-- and maybe at that point the idea of proprietary information becomes outdated.
But I guess it's like water. You can get it for free pretty much anywhere (go find a public water fountain) but if you want the proprietary version (evian) you gotta pay. You can't just walk into a grocery store and take the bottled water cuz tap water is so easily obtained.
That's my analogy for the day. Enjoy
W
-------------------
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
What you're conveniently overlooking is that obviously the music *is* good enough and appealing to a lot of people. CDs are being sold right now. That does not automatically mean that people would pay for them if they didn't have to, i.e. if they could just get it for free.
Do you think that a "pay only what you think it's worth" supermarket would work? I think not. For the same reason, the music distribution system that you seem to favor will not work.
Then I suggest you create a few good albums before the week is over and give them away for free. Can't do it? Gee, I wonder why not...
how bout open source music...
Maybe musicians could follow the open source model. They could sell their music cd's directly to the consumer thru a new type of record company setup by musicians for musicians and allow the sharing of their music thru napster. I know I download quite a bit but I also still buy cd's. Sometimes I buy the cd's because I got to sample a song. I have a friend who is a die-hard fan of the Cocteau Twins and even though he downloads their mp3's, he insists on having the original albums.
This "proposed record company" by musicans for musicians could revolutionize the music industry and, of course, piss of the riaa. Whatever money artists lose through mp3 downloads would more than make up for itself if the artist is selling directly to the consumer and bypassing the record companies who reap almost all the profit. There is already an online virtual tip jar where you can leave tips for your favorite artists.
The original concept of copyright was so that I cound not take a work and pass it off as my own.. It was copyrighted and therefore put into the public domain so all could share their enthusiasm about the creators work. Both "The artist formerly known as Prince" and Courtney Love support this idea and the idea of a virtual tip jar... Many more artists are also joining the movement because of the stranglehold the recording industry has on artists.
Finally the riaa's real fear... Their real fear is one they won't tell you openly... They are not upset because John Doe is downloading and not buying a cd - they're losing pocket change here. Their fear is much more deeply rooted. They fear the new distribution channel and they are scared, and rightfully so, that artists are realizing the potential of this new channel -- a distribution medium that does not involve the big recording companies. If the artists abandon ship then captain RIAA will be left with a sinking ship. If they lose the artists, they lose their revenue stream and thus their greatest fear becomes reality!
The problem is that whether you like it or not, the music shared on Napster is someone else's property.
Um, who's property?
The artist's property?
The distributor's property?
The owner's property?
Question is, is it fair use to share? If so, then is anything wrong occuring? I think so-artist's aren't being compensated for generating 'value'. Distributors need not get anything because they aren't distributing. Owner's can share freely *because* they own it. However, they run against the rights of distributors to distribute; an artist never gave this 'right' to *us*, but technology does. The problem then is how to use this technology to compensate the artist.
So if you wrote the software, you should have control over it; it's distribution should follow your desires, legally, and not the law, not the desires of corporations, etc.
Taking something against another's desires does make someone something of a thief, I admit. But it's not wrong to take from RIAA; it's wrong to take it from the artist who wrote it.
I think it's important to separate the issues of ownership and rights, and distribution and rights. In this age, artists should be able to control their own distribution due to the capability of technology.
The nick is a joke! Really!
GPL Deconstructed
Intellectual property has no inherent value because there is no inherent scarcity.
However, there is an inherent value in creativity, and to compensate that there are the various government granted artificial scarcity generators like copyright, patents, etc.
But in my opinion, artifical scarcity for intellectual property does very little to stimulate this creativity anymore; it is more often used to suppress creativity through litigation and market manipulation. The sheer amount of intellectual property created every day is by now so huge that it needs no such artificial stimulation anymore.
The mere need for software to heighten productivity or solve problems will cause software to be created. The mere fun of artistic creation will cause enough to be created. Remember, apart from your 0.0001 percent of bands who make it to MTV, you have the rest who dont and for some reason create anyway. There are millions of books that remain unpublished but get written anyway. How many painters can survive on their IP rights? And how many create without the ability to live off it?
Do not delude yourself into believing that the the RIAA companies or the book publishers decide on 'quality'. They can basically take any sucker, wether Britney Spears or her lookalike Whitney Shears from the garage next door, market the hell out of them, take all the profits, dump them and go on with the next sucker.
No, I think it's time for a moratorium on intellectual property. Maybe five or ten years in which no new patent or copyright is granted, to remind the IP holders that there is a reason for why they are granted this artifical monopoly, and when that artificial scarcity is no longer needed to serve society and begins to hinder progress, it _will_ be revoked.
Why is it morally wrong to try and sell something "intelectual" that you spent hours and hours creating ??
There is nothing wrong with it, go ahead and try and sell it. If its any good, people will buy it. But that dosn't mean that I shouldn't be allowed to produce any technology that might possibly allow someone to make a copy of that information.....
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I don't think we've necessarily established that information ought to be "protected", if by "protected" you mean that a person should be able to control how others use the information in their lives. I don't see how society benefits any longer from thie kind of protection.
Imagine, if you will, that information isn't protected. Would our way of life change for the worse? I honestly don't think it would. Programmers would still have plenty of work. Musicians would still create music as they always have and make their money the way they always have - live shows (only the rare musician makes significant income from royalties). Competition among producers will become healthier and consumers will reap the rewards. Instead of somebody sitting on their monopoloy power that a patent provides, they will have to get off their ass and keep up with the competitors who are working on superior and cheaper implementations.
I need someone to try to give me a good solid argument that the abstraction we call "intellectual property" that so severely limits our freedoms ought to be allowed to continue as law.
This is my mail to Nicholas Petreley.
/ 000904oppetreley.xml
h noon.html,
a cknet.html).
In response to http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/00/09/04
"Information does not want to be free -
people want it to be"
In your article you describe a "Napster system for software"
called "Crookster" and basically deny that peer-to-peer
networking does not have a free speech dimension.
Unfortunately, it has, and a very fundamental one. For
background reading, I recommend starting at
http://semlab2.sbs.sunysb.edu/Users/pludlow/hig
specifically 3.8 "Blacknet"
(http://semlab2.sbs.sunysb.edu/Users/pludlow/bl
Basically, what we are experiencing now is the beginning
of mediator free communication first time in history of
mankind. If you look at the history of communication, in
the past it usually involved a number of people helping
the sender and the recipient to talk to each other and
exchange information as well as value. Think for example
publishing a book or a record. In the past you needed
the author, the editor, the lectorate, the printer,
a number of people to ship the work, a number of people
to sell it and make individual contracts manually, a
number of people to shuffle the money and prepare the
bills, and, if the recipient could not read, someone
reading it to him or her.
Each improvement in technology has not only put a number
of people out of work, the scribes at the monasteries busily
copying books being only the first. It has also shortened
the length of the pipeline between the sender and the
recipient and it has lowered the transaction cost of
communication.
With the internet this cost is near zero for a single individual
communication, and the length of the pipeline is at two
(sender and receiver) and it is still shrinking. The number
of people working in the communication industries is
increasing, but these people are no longer involved in
YOUR communication, publishing YOUR work, but they are busy
maintaining a communication network open for ANY communication,
and your specific communication is only a few packets in that
sea of information. This is a shift from personal craftsmanship
to industrial infrastructure maintenance: People produce
goods or services no longer for a specific individual or
individual project, but the are maintaining a general
infrastructure used by more or less anonymous clients. You
do not know the names of the people who fabricated your car,
or your hot dog, and you do not know the names of the people
working together in order to have this email reach your desk.
There is no longer an editor and a publisher to thank in the
foreword.
This leads to a number of paradigm shifts in communication,
because a lot of concepts like protection of minors, copyright,
taxes and others depended on the presence of mediators involved
in any communication. For example, when you enter a video rental
in germany, there is a section that is blocked for minors, and
protection of minors relies on the shop owner to act as a mediator
and block access to certain stuff. For example, when you try to
import certain prohibited Nazi propaganda into Germany, customs
as a mediator will take care of that and conficate the stuff at
the border.
With the advent of the Internet, there is no longer any mediator
between the sender and the recipient AND the Internet provides
the technology to make sure of that. Cryptographically hard
technology, that is.
For example, using the SSL protocol, sender and receiver can
establish an encrypted communication channel between each other,
which cannot be intercepted. There is no way for any outside
party to tell what S and R are talking about and what kind of
information they exchange. SSL is designed to make this impossible.
Protection of minors currently relies on being able to tell what
is going on between S and R, though. Filters are listening in,
and change communication if they deem it unsuitable for R. This is
called a man-in-the-middle attack, and SSL certificates are specifically
designed to protect against these. You do not want an attacker to
listen in into your ecommerce transactions and change the account
number and amount in a banking transaction - SSL protects you. You
do want your filter to listen in into your childs communication
and change the content of the pages you think it should not see.
SSL protects against that, too. The MPAA and the RIAA want filters
to listen in into your communication and change the content of the
MP3s you did not buy. SSL protects against that, too.
Cryptographically enhanced communication protocols do even more,
though, and this is what Blacknet is really about. Using MIX technlogy
as applied to the remailer network or as discussed in Onion routing,
a cloud of encrypted communication is created in a peer to peer network.
Nodes inject encrypted packets of a standardized size into the network
and packets bounce through arbitrary number of random nodes, with
each node decrypting the packet and revealing an enclosed encrypted
packet with the next hop destination in it. This creates a cloud
of untraceable, anonymous communication, so that an outside watcher
cannot even identify (S, R) pairs. You could not even tell who
talked to who in such a network.
Such networks already exist in research implementations, and some
companies such as Zer0 Knowledge in Canada are testing commercial
variants of it. The net result is total privacy in communication:
Outside watchers cannot tell who talked to whom, and they cannot
tell what is being talked about. Note that this does not apply
to S and R: Inside their eastablished anonymous communication
channel they may or may not exchange certificates and thus can
establish a cryptographically hard and undenyable, hard to fake
proof of identity.
Both of this is already built, and available on a large scale (SSL)
or will be available on a large scale (ZKS Freenet).
For complete mediator free communication there is only one piece
missing in the puzzle, and that is anonymous cash payment, digital
coins. David Chaum invented that technology in the seventies, and
tried to market his product under the name Digicash. I don't know
about the current status of it, but I know what will happen once
this becomes available on a large scale, too:
People can search and find each other anonymously, thorugh services
just like Napster. In Napster I am not really interested into your
identity, I just want some goods. I can then establish a MIXed anyonymous
connection to you and exchange some files and a bit of digital cash.
From the outside, no party will be able to even observe that such
an exchange has taken place, or that you and I even know each other.
Nonetheless, in the end I will have one more file on my disk, and
you will have a bit more money in the wallet.
That is the concept of Blacknet.
It challenges fundamentally the rules our society is build upon, down
the the financing of our states. The crux with Blacknet ist: To protect
against blacknet, you must abandon the concept of mediator free
communication. To each and all communication there always must be
a big brother listening in and decide whether this is lawful and
licensed exchange of IP and money, deduce the tax from the money,
and grant permission to communicate. No more free and secret sped.
This too is no longer the world we are currently living in.
So one way or the other, Blacknet will destroy or society.
And that is the free speech dimension of things like Napster.
Kristian
Permission granted to do with the mail as you see fit.
Kristian
© Copyright 2000 Kristian Köhntopp
"Nicholas Petreley expresses his opinion about how "Information Doesn't Want To Be Free--People Want It To Be". " Pretty provocative piece - although his reasoning is sound."
I think we can come to this conclusion ourself, if need be, thanks.
Petrely writes:
"The fact is our current system entitles us to some free information, and it requires us to purchase or license other information. You may not like the fact that some information must be licensed, but that's how it is. Those who want information to be free as a matter of principle should create some information and make it free. But what they shouldn't do is license or buy existing information that is not free and then cut it loose without permission. That's just plain wrong,..."
There are two types of objects - tangible and intangible. Tangible objects (food, your car, a minidisc player) can only have one owner at any given moment. Intangible objects (music, inventions, words) can have any number of owners. Physical objects have a single owner out of nessesity - it cannot exist in two places at the same time. But what about an idea? Clearly I can make a copy of your poem without depriving you of that poem.
So what is the point of giving exclusive ownership of an idea when it can be shared by all without depriving the creator of that idea? It is power, clearly enough. I have, you don't, let's negotiate. It is easy to use Napster as a sort of strawman to attack, but it's another issue entirely when you look at intellectual property in the light of the AIDS epedemic where millions have died and continue to die because pharmecuticals own the right to the knowledge. "Give us a half billion for the rights to create our vaccine. OH, you don't have that kind of cash? Oh, your entire country's GDP isn't even half that? Sorry." How about irrigation technologies? I could go on but I think my point is made.
I'll grant that there needs to be an impetus for the company to create the vaccine in the first place, but once it's created that knowledge should be in the public domain.
"...and it demonstrates that what they are interested in is not free speech at all but getting stuff without paying for it."
This is akin to saying electronic hobbyists are only interested in descrambling their cable feed. Can it be a side result? Yes. Is it the point? No.
Are you not aware of what a 21st century, western idea ownership of knowledge is? Is it beyond your ability to comprehend - not even nessesarily to understand but to just acknowledge - that ownship of an idea is repugnent, almost humorous?
As an aside, I enjoy the fact that I can get a song and erase it if I don't like it. No blood no foul. I appreciate the fact that I haven't heard a single radio ad in 2 years. I can't name a single radio station and I live in metro Boston. I haven't seen a single TV ad that I haven't gone out of my way to see.
Free speech, Nick, isn't only about the right to speak myself but the right of others to speak so I might hear them. You've got this idea that free speech means "me me me" but what it really does (and should) stand for is "them them them". And what does a company that control information fear more than anything? Loss of market share, loss of mindshare, loss of control.
And what is intellectual property about if not control?
.02
My
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
At least, that's the way I understand him.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
You are so wrong there.
Let me use your own logic and apply it to some other example to show what I mean.
Your logic says that "People want x to y" is the same as "x wants to y".
Therefore, you are saying thast "People want Bill Gates to die" is the same as saying "Bill Gates wants to die" which is not true (well, I assume he doesn't!).
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
The fact that with napster you can download any song you want, whenever you want.
It's just like standing in a huge CD store, pocketing what you want...and walking straight out the door.
just without a 300lb security guard crash tackling you on the way out...hehe...
Advanced users are users too!
Another driving force is this: if you have an initial shitty deal with your record company for a few albums, and your first album is a hit, you may be able to re-negotiate for a better deal, in exchange for a comittment of more albums. On the surface that doesn't seem wise on the part of bands -- but given that most bands don't stay successful all that long, it may be a good idea for them; you wouldn't want the record company to eat all the income from your 3 hit albums and leave you with just the income from the next two that tank. Or maybe you just need money to eat while you wait!
Of course, many bands, after becoming successful, *do* leave the commercial labels in spite of their economic interests. Nine Inch Nails and Courtney Love come to mind (incidentally, both have chimed in re the Napster issue, on opposite sides).
What you are neglecting here is that you have a right to your body and everything you can protect. If you need to make a deal with the people -- that you'll eventually make your content available for free in return for them not copying your content -- then you have to live up to your end. Tell me, please, what copyrights have expired in the last fifty years?
Copyright's dead, but not because of anything we did.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
If we can look at them as merely products perhaps we can see a little more clearly. If you take a product that is for sale without paying for it and without having permission to do so, it is stealing by definition. This is where all the debate comes from: the clash between self-interest/capitalism, law, and morality.
And if we can look at them purely as bit patterns, what then? They are information. it dosn't matter how you want to look at it.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
So basically you're asking artists to live from charity.
You can call it charity or you can call it an alternative market structure. I don't suppose it matters what you call it.
Isn't that how capitalism is supposed to work? Those products which are good prosper, those that aren't fail? (I'm no economist, but honestly...)
What you're conveniently overlooking is that obviously the music *is* good enough and appealing to a lot of people. ... That does not automatically mean that people would pay for them if they didn't have to, i.e. if they could just get it for free.
And what you're conveniently overlooking is that people can get it for free online. And yet they pay.
I suppose it could be argued that some people just don't know about MP3's, or don't want to bother with them. But if Napster users are trading in the millions of songs per day, I imagine that Napster is quite widely known and used. Most people I know have downloaded MP3's, and most of them buy CD's anyway. As for myself, I buy CD's, and I believe that artists deserve reimbursement; I also believe I should be able to decide from whom I withhold reimbursement.
Do you think that a "pay only what you think it's worth" supermarket would work?
Information and physical goods are fundamentally dissimilar, so this analogy isn't that useful. I can go into more detail on this, but it's been said before by others.
Copyright was originally put into place to benefit the people, as most laws are. It was created so that companies had a limited monopoly as an incentive to create works for the people. At the end of a few years, the copyrighted works became public domain.
However, copyrights have gradually become virtually unlimited (95 years is, IMHO unlimited if you take the length of a human life into account) thanks to endless lobbying by the corporations and ignorance of the people. Most people don't even realize that they are limited.
--
If you are offering the music for free download, then why do you need to offer file sharing? All the music is available directly from the source so there is no need to let users upload files. If you are going to maintain quality control and free yourself from any legal hassles then you need to just supply the music that you know is legal and that you know has been encoded cleanly and so forth. The target then is to make it so that you have a wide enough range of music that you hold the attention of the public. How much music do you download a week? From a quick scan, they appear to have CDs from around over 70 labels with around 4 or 5 hundred artists. With this amount of music available (and it appears to be growing all the time), the sharing argument is relatively irrelevant.
The only Good System is a Sound System
Reading all of this crap about Napster/Gnutella this and copyright that I been playing a game to determine if I'm a crook or not [it depends on who you ask]. Play and see how you score!
You just downloaded the latest Metallica song from Napster [or where ever]. Are you a thief?
1. You already own that very song on CD.
2. You have a similar song [same basic words/music but difference performance].
3. The song was recorded from a live performance which you attended.
4. Same as #3 but you didn't attend the live performance.
5. The song is a cover of a KISS song which you own [you own KISS's performance of that song on one of KISS's CDs].
(5 1/2. You don't own the KISS CD. Who did you just rip off?)
6. The song consists of Mozart's music redone with electric guitars and Lars on drums. [ie 1/2 copyright, 1/2 public domain]
7. The song on Napster was captured by someone who recorded it off the radio via analog audio tape. [time shift]
8. Same as #7 but this time they captured the song from Pay-Per-View playing Mission Impossible 4 via HDTV [ie. digitally perfect recording from a paid cable channel] [can you time shift a rental? Can you shift it outside the rental period?]
9. Same as #8 but they waited until it 2009 and MI4 was on broadcast TV [digitally perfect again].
10. The song was part of charity event to raise money for homeless RIAA exec's. The song was played on the radio but it included a 10 second preamble that was essentially a shrink-wrap license agreement about listening to the rest of the song. You accidently agreed to the contract by hearing it.
So how did you score? If you'd figured this game out already you'd know that you lost and that you are a criminal. Bastard. Next time you will realize that it isn't a good idea to make the consumer the one who has to figure out if it's legal.
Dark Side of the Moon? In MP3 format? URL??
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
If you're in Stalinist Russia, and you don't like bread lines, you should boycott bread and starve to death -- that'd show them. Yea, right.
There is no remote connection between doing what is necessary to prevent one's own starvation and worshipping at the altar of consumer culture. As far as I know, no one has ever died from lack of television.
In other words, while your anarchist sentiment might be sincere, your analogy sucked.
I hate corporations. I hate them because they constantly steal from me, lie to me, buy politicians that are supposed to represent me, buy laws that line their pockets and punish me, and just all around make the world a shittier place to live.
They steal from you? Give me a dozen examples. It should be simple for you to do, as corporations are "constantly" stealing from you. They lie to you? Bullshit. Corporations exist to make money. That is the truth, and all of the advertising jingles are just tools to help them achieve that end. If you don't like their products, or are repulsed by their advertisements, HURT them. Stop buying their products, and they will become the company that you want them to be, because that is the only way for them to continue making money. And, again, as the adjective "constantly" applies to all of the other accusations in your diatribe, providing a few dozen examples of each offense ought to be easy.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
The problem here is that copyrights are NOT property. Property as defined in the traditional capitalist economic theory is forever
Wrong. All forms of capitalist theory except the most simplictic and caricatured have accepted the concept of property rights for limited times in numerous forms.
And it exists for one reason...It exists because one object cannot be owned by two persons at the same time. They cannot use it both.
Wrong. Labor creates property in the theories of Locke, Smith, and the Chicago and Austrian schools. It exists because you have a right to the products of your labor.
Please learn capitalist theory before you lecture about it.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Yours is the most well reasoned post I've seen on this issue in a long time. I'm quite impressed.
I use Napster, and here's how I rationalize it...
I've been made to feel like a criminal every time I walk into a CD store, even though before Napster, I hadn't done any of the things the people who make me feel that way considered wrong. My technological choices (no audio DAT players, why?) have been artificiaclly restricted. The people who's work I appreciate have been stomped on and badly treated. The people who want me to pay are busily trying to take away even more of my technological choices, and ever restricting whole classes of technology from ever being researched. Stupid media that I don't want are shoved down my throat with all the art of a vetrinarian trying to make a horse swallow a pill.
Needless to say, I'm pretty angry. Perhaps that's a bit of an understatement. Anything I can do to poke these people in the eye, and remove them from my life, I'll do.
If the artists had PayPal accounts that were completely ungarnished by the music _industry_, I would gladly send some money their way.
If I'm stomping on some current artists rights, tough patooties. They chose to align themselves with a band of thugs in the hopes of financial reward. Let them suffer. When they break ranks with them, I'll be happy to help.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I somehow doubt that 90% of all musicians have any kind of contract whatsoever, they're local bands doing their music because they want to.
If these kind of bands want their music distributed on the Internet in MP3 format then good for them, I'll listen to it happily. If big bands want their music distributed this way then even better, but give them the option.
Many musicians may want their music to be their livlihood. You can't OpenSource music and make a profit on the 'support', and you can't make as good a living on the touring circuit as people tend to see bands they've heard and that entails a lot of expensive recording time. You may be different, but most people don't work that way.
Music may not be 'property', and it may not have built in scarcity, but I don't see how this takes away from the basic fact that the performer has put effort into it, and the other people (Cover designers, sound engineers, even the management) have put their skills and time in this and as such should have control over who and how this is used.
How would many GPL authors feel if the basic premise of their license was ignored by the US Government 'because they can' and used to help run Carnivore or today's latest (and highly proprietry!) demon?
If you have the skills and time to do the music yourself, and the idealism to want to, then go for it and make a difference that way. Don't break someone else's methods 'just because you can' though.
Molt
404 Not Found: No such file or resource as '.sig'
The reason I said communism doesn't work is because the USSR fell after 70 years of western economic pressure. Or rather, perhaps I should have said "communism is even more broken than capitalism". Capitalism out-competed communism.
Take a look at some Asian country that recently (20 -40 years ago) went capitalist, and you'll probably see a booming economy (current recession notwithstanding). Ethopia is screwed up because it's been screwed up for a very long time, and that takes a while to fix. Also, calling yourself "capitalist" does not automatically give you a McDonald's on every corner and a booming economy. It takes time and effort. Look how long it took the US to get where it's at.
I'd like to point out the reason the USSR made the biggest effort is because they fought on both sides of the war. If they'd chosen the right side in the first place (or if the French hadn't been so fucking stupid with the Maginot Line, or....) Germany would never have gotten as far as they did.
By the way, when was the last time you listened to music produced in a communist country? Right... Capitalism usually means that some people get the gold, some get the shit. Communism has everyone getting equal amounts of shit... Capitalism still sucks, but it sucks less...
We're getting off-topic here, so please email me if you want to continue this.
I've got a ten year bond in my account. It's my property. After ten years, it doesn't exist anymore. Case closed.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Please learn what you're talking about yourself before you patronise others.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
The central problem here, which this article makes perfectly clear, is that someone who owns and creates something has every right to sell it under any terms they want. If those terms suck, no one will buy it.
Exactly. They will download it on MP3.
Just because people want something does not mean they deserve to have it- especially not on terms THEY choose.
Paying money doesn't mean I "deserve" to hear a song. I am entitled to use my ears whether the record execs want me to or not. If someone is playing a CD on their speakers and I walk by, I suppose you could say I don't "deserve" to be able to hear it, but it seems rather silly. Similarly, if I download a song and play it on my computer, you could say I don't "deserve" to be able to hear it. But it misses the point, really.
The point is that artists and record companies need to be reimbursed or else they won't be able to continue producing music. We shouldn't reimburse them simply because to do otherwise would be "wrong." We should reimburse them because we appreciate their efforts, we enjoy their songs, and we want them to produce more. If we do not enjoy the songs, if we wish they'd stop putting out such crap, then to reimburse them would be counter-productive. (Some might even say harmful.)
But you don't have the right to change the terms of their sale just because you don't like it, or because you think they're behind the times.
The way you're wording this is a bit odd. I suppose you could think of MP3 trading as "changing the terms of sale" but it only serves to obscure the issue. You could say "it is illegal to distribute copies of their copyrighted work" and I would say, "you know your Title XVII." When you say "you don't have the right" do you mean that we don't have the legal right, moral right, or what? Your own personal idea of what "rights" we have?
Speaking for myself, I believe we have the right (and sometimes obligation) to reimburse those who provide a valuable commodity, such as music or software; and we have the right to withhold reimbursement from those we choose. You may have your own idea, and the law certainly provides a different viewpoint.
While Information can and should be free, content is intrinsically the property of the creator.
Do you know what 'intrinsic' means? My guess is that you don't. you might want to look up 'subset' as well.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
*grin* I've noticed this too. Luckily, I can largely claim clean hands as I avoid almost all forms of pop culture like that plague.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
This is not a moral view; what you want has no moral relevance when we're talking about someone else's rights.
rather than on the basis of bland, vulgar, corporate propaganda.
Oh fuck off. There is no huge corporate conspiracy to keep whatever shit home-town folk band you like off the airwaves. The reason that the music you like is not popular is that it is shit. The record companies have no secret mind control formula which is not accessible to anyone else; what they do have is a skill in producing a product (the "marketing" is part of the product; people like to have "stars" rather than bearded recorder playing granolas). Your music is shit. Deal with it.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
No his reasoning isn't sound, because he has unstated assumptions.
"But what they shouldn't do is license or buy existing information that is not free and then cut it loose without permission. That's just plain wrong, and it demonstrates that what they are interested in is not free speech at all but getting stuff without paying for it."
The unstated assumption here is that the laws protecting intellectual property are morally correct, and that it is therefore immoral to break them.
I beg you please, do not ever go into a courtroom under this dangerous delusion. A court will not try to read your mind, fail and then shrug its shoulders and say "well, we can't prove intent". The standard of proof is "reasonable doubt", and there is no reasonable doubt that someone posting copyrighted music on the Web intends to aid and abet copyright violation. A reasonable person would not carry out the action unless they had this intent, and you are assumed to be reasonable unless there is powerful reason to suppose you are not.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
FWIW, I honestly believe that *you* would pay for it, and not copy it for all of your friends, or put it on a network so that 1,000 other people could copy it for free. I also believe that you are falling into the trap of assuming that others are as good and self-disciplined as you are. While not all people would act in the way I fear, a substantial number, I believe a majority, certainly would. Certainly more than are doing so now, because it would be so much easier. People would buy a Brittany Spears album and "share" it with their 100 friends on the net, and each one of those would share it with their closest 100 friends, etc.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
The author suggests that the Napster case is not about free speech, but rather "free stuff." Perhaps for many users of Napster -- the ones taking proprietary content without consent -- this may be the case, but that is not the point of the Napster lawsuit.
Napster is about two things -- whether or not a person may enter into the business of providing a communication and file-sharing forum without undertaking a duty to enforce the universe of third-party proprietary rights. This question was settled decades ago in the Sony Betamax case, but the IP world (ironically including Sony) now wants a second bite at the apple. Napster distributes software that is Napster's own intellectual property, and does not itself distribute any third-party content. How far are we to permit the reach of Copyright to impinge upon non-infringers? How is any sensible person ever going to get into the information distribution business should the Napster ruling stand?
The question is not whether underlying use of Napster by particular persons is unlawful, it is about whether underlying use by particular persons makes Napster itself unlawful. Be careful, with that we make hall monitors -- and with that private free speech censors -- out of every Internet ISP -- which is why the ISP's have filed an amicus brief on behalf of Napster.
Anything good in pop-culture exists because it was created by talented people -- talented people that get ripped off by those same corporations. And I know I'm not alon.
So the scriptwriter for The Matrix didn't get a cent for his contribution? I bet Matt Groening is close to flat broke, too. And all those bands with million selling CDs, they shouldn't quit their day jobs.
I've been studying the issues of digital music for about a month now, and I originally went into it with the idea that I could apply software analogies to digital music, and I was totally wrong.
Legally software and music are covered under the same laws, but economically and culturally they're very very different.
The fundament argument behind copyrights is someone puts an enormous amount of effort into a piece of work and that they should be compensated for this work. Philosophically, one could argue in how best to apply this due to the following facts:
Software = application
Music = culture
I don't believe the banner call behind the Napster ordeal is that "Information should be free." Rather, I think it's the motto, "Culture should not be controlled."
Music copyrights originally started out with 2 parties in mind: the artist and the public. The law was set up so that the creator would have due incentive to make works in an environment in which they would be sufficiently compensated. After they had received sufficient pay over time, their work would pass into the public domain for the public good. Copyright has since mutated to extend copyright terms from 30yrs to 70rs to owner lifetime to 30yrs after creators death. There are a number of other factors that have also taken away from the "public good" such as monopolization of "culture" via the big 5 record labels and the homogenization resulting thereof.
So basically the Napster craze is the liberation of the public via technology and the backlash of the past legislation to take away from the public good. Sure people, you could say people are in it for the free music, but I would argue that people generally understand that the creators need to be compensated. There just isn't sufficient facilities to do this in the way the music fan wants to.
You mentioned that you'd rather every artist had a Paypal account and you be able donate a certain amount to that artist. I too have found out that a lot of people would rather have it this way which is partly the reason why I've bought into it.
Remember the Slashdot article a while ago about the virtual tip jar? Basically it was a way to send any artist a donation even if they didn't have an "account" per se. Well, I've joined ranks with these guys and I've been helping them develop the concept along. We've since added PayPal support and a bunch of other stuff that I wont' go into.
I'm not saying that artists should only work for tips. That's a common misconception we get. I'm just saying that the public wants to pay in different ways rather than buying an $18 CD, and that this is one possible source of alternative revenue.
Note: I've found out that this "model" is not very useful to your average "Superstar", especially when they're legally bound to a Record Label and they don't publically acknowledge tips as an option. ;)
Basically, in summation I'm trying to say you shouldn't morally have the same type of "control" over music that you would expect from a commercial piece of software. Music is an expression of culture, and it enters into the cultural consciousness. No one person should have complete legal control over how its used-- at least not for 100 years under current legislation!!!
Jacob Everist
jeverist@fairtunes.com
------
wildmage
Memoirs of a Mad Scientist
Since the friends of RIAA can change the playing field at will, why shouldn't the consumers do that too?
Fairness works both ways, you know. Artificially keeping records prices high isn't IMO very fair.
I agree with just about everything you said, I just want to put out a caution over the success of King's business model. I don't think that any conclusions can be drawn from the example.
Again, I liked what you wrote, just wanted to point out that it's pretty hard to judge anything about the market from King's sales. I remember everyone in the eBook biz going ga-ga over how many people downloaded his short story a while back, but I didn't see what the big deal was. Show me an author doing respectable eBook sales (and revenue) who isn't Stephen King or Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton, and then we'll talk.
P.S. Full disclosure: I bought that short story he sold on the internet a while back, the first installment of The Plant, and I plan on buying the second installment (I just downloaded it today, and I'll be paying later whether I like it or not — i was actually surprised at how much I liked the first installment).
P.P.S. If you go read the first installment of The Plant from the link I mentioned above, please do the right thing and go pay for it at www.stephenking.com.
Cheers,
i assert that the licensing model is NOT appropriate, i suppose i should have been more clear on that in my original post. it makes no sense in general that if something, say an album that takes a few days for a recording group to create (and really, they can bust em out that fast), has work put into it one time, it seems logical that the producers/artists should receive appropriate payment one time. if you're paying for cds, which cost something to produce each one, then every single one that is purchased should be paid for. the problem is, things that are produced once and distributed without an individual cost to the creator are being sold as thought they do. that's wrong. so where will this lump sum that the artists/record labels should receive come from, you ask? that's obviously up for debate. but we cannot ignore that this technology is present, the laws and workings of this system must adapt to fit the developments in technology that so deeply affect it.
Which still does not refute the fact that property is still the most efficient way of resolving the problem of scarce resources. Who decides who gets to use what? Isn't a person using a resource stealing from everyone with an alternate use for that resource?
Now, of course, there is no scarcity in "intellectual property", which is why one can claim a right to copy information freely, despite what governments and corporations would rather them believe. I think the optimal solution to this problem is to index all people who dismiss intellectual property. They would be able to mooch all they want, but they can't expect any of their own output to be protected from copying.
Similar indexes could be created for patents, trade secrets, various types of contracts such as NDAs and shrink-wrap licenses.
For example, I support copyright and a limited use of patents, but I think the concept of trade secrets and any contract that negates first sale rights is bogus. I must respect copyright, or otherwise I risk having everyone else treat my own copyrighted works as public domain. By the same token, I can't expect people keep any secrets I tell them because I myself don't respect NDAs and trade secrets. I would have very little credibility with the "contracts are absolute" crowd, but I'd still respect their copyrights, and they'd respect mine, lest I and the people who think like I do start mooching their stuff when they become hypocrites.
The world would become very complex place, with everyone tracking the consistency of everyone else's behavior with the rights they claim, but with adequate computing technology, say 10-20 years from now, I think it is feasible. I think the end result would be something very much like what we have now, where people respect laws and contracts that are reasonable, and break those that aren't. Only in the future you won't be fined or jailed for having different opinions than the government on what is reasonable.
I hate to get nitpicky here, but the statement I made, "No other property can be given away without loss by the owner," refers only to other (non-information) property. I did not explicitly say that information could always be given away without any cost to the owner. Rather, I said that if you give away information, you always still have it, which is a different thing. You're reading something in to my argument that I didn't actually say or intend to say.
That being said, it's worth clarifying the difference between information that is valuable only for reselling to others (i.e., music, movies, art, etc.), and information which has intrinsic value to the creator (i.e. credit card numbers, bomb-building secrets, business plans, etc.) The former is generally protected by IP laws, while the latter is usually just kept really, really secret. I was talking about the former type of information. I should have clarified that in my argument.
Really. Just ask it.
Honestly, do we really need to re-hash this trite piece of obvious anthropomorphism just because some bozo writes a (probably corp-sponsored) article?
Structured information - like a program, or music, or a book, or whatever - is structured because somebody (or a group of sombodies) MADE IT THAT WAY. It wasn't random chance or a million caffine-slurping chimps. The order that gives meaning was imposed by a human being, who should get something for his contribution to the universe of structured information - if he wants it. He can, after all give it away if he chooses, but that's not your decision to make. It's his.
Ok, enough. Time for some goat pr0n...
"...they may harpoon us, but they ain't gonna pick us up on no radar screen!"
Unfortunately you are totally wrong.
To have some fun, I am quoting Schneir, Applied Cryptography, Second edition, p. 157.
"One of the consequences of the second law of thermodynamics is that a certain amount of energy is necessary to represent information. To record a single bit by changing the state of a system requires an amount of energy no less that kT, where T is the absolute temperature of the system and k is the boltzman constant"
Can't beat money as a motivation, mate...
What about sex? Many people gladly trade money for sex =^). Or a threat to your health / life? That's probably a superior motivation.
Money is not the supreme motivator. A cow orker of mine just gave up a much higher paying job so he could have more time with his daughter. I would do the same for my son. Unfortunately there are too many people who live for money and that's just sad, not an argument for draconian laws.
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
I'm not a poet enough to put it into the perfect words, but in a fundamental sense the universe is divided into two classes of things, persons that can own things, and objects that can be owned. Of course, this isn't the only difference between them, but it's an important one.
What makes slavery wrong is its fundamental denial of this difference, making a person something that can be owned.
Of course, this distinction is too simplistic to cover all the bases. Part of the reason for this debate is the controversial issue of whether "information" should be treated as a third class or not. That is, something that isn't a person but nevertheless cannot be owned. ;-)
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
>The Africans are free to develop their own chemical compounds, and to do with them as they please.
and if they dont want to pay, or cant pay it is their choice, they have themselves chosen to die. Because our revenue-stream is more important than human lives.
yup.. makes perfect sense...
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
The only reason people hack on this phrase is that they either don't understand what it really means, or they're just envious they didn't think of such a catchy phrase. Disclaimer: I'm JUST as tired of hearing people advocate using this phrase as everyone else. Especially when it's their ONLY argument...
;), in which "God" wants to be a system free of barricades blocking the free flow of energy (life). What is a blockade? (Answer: Depression)
;-)
But what's wrong with it? Is it because it implies that information has a will of its own? Surely, you cannot prove either way. To say something has a "will", is like saying it is conscious, something that is not provable or deprovable. It's just two different views on the universe. Neither you or me can or should force our views down on other people's throats.
However, "will" is totally besides the point of this phrase. It refers more to a PROPERTY of information. Think of the entire universe as a system. Now, is it possible to deprive one part (subsystem) of the system of information from another part entirely for all eternity?
No, the natural state of information is such that it will merge with other information to create new patterns (thermodynamics). THAT is creativity. In essence, the universe is information always in transformation, or can be looked upon as such. Therefore the phrase "Information wants to be free" really means "The universe wants to be free". It's a statement of the "will of God" or "nature of God" (no this is not a troll
"What's all this got to do with us?", you may ask. Everything! When we deprive each other for information we create a block in the structure of the universe. We deprive understanding and learning of the human race, and ultimately we deprive ourselves, since every action has a reaction (or rather we psychologically seek situations that are the opposite, e.g in bed etc).
Now, you want to limit this to "Information CAN be free". That's like saying WE decide the rules of our universe. Or, "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" (different context I know, but it's still hypocritical). When people starts believing things like this in their "rational" ways, it usually gets out of hand fairly quickly.
Ultimately we're witnessing "free flow of information" here on Slashdot, or a near counterpart that we can bear (moderation). Where will YOU BE when huge corporations want to shut it down for the sake of protecting their "Intellectual Property" (created by their employees)? Isn't this all like giving up all your freedom (not rights, they don't exist) as a human being?
And no, I don't believe in any revolution to fix all this. I think things are going quite well as it is, as long as people don't give up to learn their lessons.
You may disagree with my interpretation of this, but that's perfectly okay. Maybe we're both right
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Where the costs of making something are effectively zero, price tends to zero - because it is always possible to undercut competitors. (The point where the costs are not zero, and the point where the artist can get paid without needing a coercive monopoly, is the point at which they originally release the information.)
So information wants to be both libre and gratuit, once it is accessible.
I think the law of information freedom could be rephrased as "information is a superfluid" - it naturally flows outward to the limits of its bounds, passing through any chinks in the constraints placed on it. Note the implications for information monopolies - information flow can only be blocked by totally controlling all factors that perturb its constraints. In practise this means: only luddites or police states can keep I.P.
There is so much good stuff out there, that I often don't find out about it until (e.g. in the case of good authors) a few years after it comes out.
What would have happened if, say, Neal Stephenson had published Zodiac under Stephen King's model? How many of us were actually aware of him in 1995? How about in 1993? (Snow Crash)? I bought both of those books in '99 after reading The Diamond Age ... If he'd used Stephen King's method (pay $x or I can't write the rest of the story) how long should he have waited before reaching $x? Surely not 4 years?
People with no real resources to persue their goals have to compromise somewhere, and publishers do offer that opportunity ...
Ob. /. - I haven't linked the author/book references. I would have linked to Amazon URLs, except I don't believe /. is too keen on Amazon, and the other e-bookshops that I know are either UK only, down, or really, really slow.
Quick wafting zephyrs vex bold Jim
obviously information doesn't want anything, it's inanimate. and obviously people want information and other products and such. and people would almost always rather pay nothing than waste their money. we live in a capitalist state, and people prefer themselves over everyone else. they should. i do. the problem lies in the fact that our notion of intellectual property is invalid because of the evolution of technology. i'm not the first to say this, but paying for something that isn't a specific service or tangible product is difficult to wrestle with. why -should- you pay for something (or why should lots of people pay for something) when the producer only produces it once? the reason you pay for a tangible product is because -you- get that product (and you want to have it/use it). if a specific item required nothing to create, isn't its inherent value zero? based on the idea that something is worth how much labor was put into it, marx would agree with me on this one...
Interesting choice of words... I'm assuming then, that we could take the argument one logical step further and say that since you yourself are essentially a pattern of DNA and moluecular mass you would have no problem with stepping into a machine and allowing someone to make a copy of you. How does that fit with your morality?
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
You think for yourself, and thats a good thing. However, you obviously fail to acknowledge other people as thinking concious beings equal to yourself.
The phrase "Information wants to be free" was taken out of context, and given a broader meaning out of that context you phrase. Now, this means that wherever the phrase came from is of no importance anymore. Its origin DOES NOT LIMIT its expressiveness now.
Personally, I hate people saying "Information wants to be free", and not backing it up with concrete arguments. It's too loose, and I bet it has many different meanings to people. However, that has nothing to do with the phrase itself, or the old context it was snatched from.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Because, the Internet, especially in that sense - would be client/server, not peer-to-peer. ;>
Other than that, a pretty good article and I can kinda agree with his reasoning. BUT... With the way the music industry has been acting lately, I say to hell with 'em. Bring Napster on, baby!
capitalism is based and built on exploitation of poor and weaker. intelectual property is weak part of capitalism. it is under exploatation now. 100 years from now we will forget unfair exploitation of the subject and will try to keep the old (from there) or new (from now) paradigm of intelectual property.
You claim, in your September 4 Infoworld column, that Napster is all
about greed. The jury is still out on that. And it will stay out
until you can go buy the MP3 for an artist you hear on the radio, or
even an artist you heard when you were a teen (e.g. 10CC, or Seals and
Crofts, or Styx). Whenever you interfere with a market -- whenever
you tell people that they can't buy something -- you get a black
market.
Napster functions exactly like a black market, except that the price
is solely your time spent finding a good copy of what you want. Black
markets aren't about greed -- they're about buying what you want to
buy, not necessarily what's for sale. The RIAA wants to sell music
one way, and consumers want to buy it another way. They happen to be
paying a low price to get it that way, but there's no reason that has
to last.
If the RIAA *really* wants to find out if Napster is about greed or a
new business model, it'll go into competition with Napster. Surely
the RIAA knows how to set up a web server big enough to sell the same
content available via Napster. And they have very little to lose by
doing so, since most people are aware of the existance of Napster, and
frankly, Napster works, at least if you want a popular piece of music.
Only then will we be able to say whether Napster is about stealing or
sharing. One thing this economist can tell you for certain: the RIAA
will be as successful at suppressing music file copying as the US
government has been at suppressing some drugs. And the US government
has been throwing many people in jail for decades -- something the
RIAA has only fantasized about doing.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Two questions. Are there any limitations on this? And does this reasoning apply to books? Assume I purchase a 300 page novel. Is it morally and ehtically ok for me to make 50 copies of it and hand it out to friends? Is it morally and ethically ok for me to scan it, load it onto my web page, and allow anyone to download it? After all, after I've bought it, it is mine to do whatever I want to do with it.
Does this apply to software? Say you write a program, and sell it, or even GPL it. Is it morally and ethically ok for me to strip off the license agreement, load it onto my web page, and allow anyone to download it?
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Or is it because Windows 2000 has several hundreds of megabytes of files ? Remembers that nobody downloads Linux from the net (though it is legal and possible). Everyone buys a CD from a distributor. Or copy one CD from a friend.
In my country the home users or students have never bought a legal copy of Microsoft products. They got it from a fiend o from a "pirate" (or should I say "free"?) copy. And I think this is good for Microsoft, because a lot of people became users of Windows, Office, or Visual Basic. And so the industries and software companies (that uses legal copies) can take advantage of this expertise.
If the Microsoft lawyers were so good that no one use an ilegal copy, Linux would be the dominant S.O. for home users and students. And then It would get the Enterprise users
MOD THE CHILD UP!
The author claims that we should deal with copyright infringement and the obscene profits separately.
How do you fight obscene profits, and the financial disadvantage of artists? We don't have a stick behind the door, we're not in a position of negotiation! Napster and clones give us that position of negotiation... Napster and clones are the stick behind the door.
I've read the story on linuxworld about a week ago, in my opinion, there are too many assumptions. 'The law is the law, deal with it', where as a matter of fact, the author does not recognize the possibility of laws changing.
Bizar technology?
What people want, people get. Reality reciprocates mythology. We are going to have cars running on electricity, rather than another more efficient fuel, because it is what the majority expects to happen. If US copyright was to be preserved, the government would have put strict controls on internet traffic. I dont see anyone barring me from www.ethernalquest.com and I wont see anyone barring access to a new lyrics.ch (or what have you)...more and more sites will ignore copyright and US liscencing and the masses will rejoice in the wealth of information. I see no difference between the letters of the alphabet and any given arrangement (ie books, articles, etc) of those letters. You think you can control or claim a right to them when they are available to an anonymous public? That's denial talking - and good luck. Copyright law will have to be completely rewritten within my lifetime. The new money is to be made collecting and organizing the information that is supposedly "controlled" today.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
This was never proven. Not that I'd endorse it, it's just it annoys me to see this written again and again on slashdot. I know it's what they tell you in American schools, but it's probably not true. Here's my case:
Sure the USSR fell, but it took 70 years of western economic pressure to do it. And during that time, their resources were enormously strained by WWII, then by the debt they incurred winning it (the USSR made by far the biggest war effort of the Allied forces). And check out how far they came between 1917-1939! They turned a backwards peasant nation into a superpower. Not bad for a system that "doesn't work".
Now consider poorer countries. Compare the standard of living in Cuba (not starving), and the standard of living in a poor African capitalist country, say ethiopia (starving). Even though Ethiopia receives foriegn aid from the west and Cuba receives foriegn hostility.
The reason I bothered with that, was this: Music sharing would work fine in a socialist system, where the profit motive doesn't exist in the same way. Food for thought anyway.
Oh, and a big hi to everyone reading at -1.
Daan
I can see the Blockbuster now! Little kid has social problems, is sent away to an engineering school, finds lovable and adorable information, and sets it free. Look for this in a theatre near you!
"Free Information". Directed by Brian Tobin
Apparently you *can* compare apples to oranges.
He's correct as far as he goes. Namely, that information cannot want anything.
However, what is missing is that 90%+ of all musicians are in contracts that do not allow them to leave to create music for other companies, or even to own the music they create. Take that and add in the profit-gluttony (illegal anti-trust stuff too) of the RIAA, and we have a problem that is not correctable through legal means.
So, we as a sub-society have taken to an extra-legal means of sharing with the purpose of destroying the RIAA. While most people don't recognize that as the purpose, it is clearly the intent when hundreds of songs are shared and never payed for.
If there was a means of "tipping" the artist directly for music, i can see napster falling to the wayside.
Now, what about IP, where are the reserve units (physical substance) for that.....? Oh - there are none. Sorry. Bye.
Everything is but a number spoken by itself.
This isn't about artist's rights anymore. This is a war the music industry started against its consumers long ago. The chickens have come home to roost. When the industry is utterly razed to the ground, we can start thinking about what to do instead to ensure artists rights.
I think that copyright is largely dead and gone. It can't be enforced without imposing a police state. The media industries have abused its protections so badly that nobody takes it seriously anymore. They are the ones who broke the social contract first.
Copyright and patent law are not about any 'natural' right. They're about trying to make sure tht people who create things can continue to spend time doing it. That's all they're for. Not some silly notion that something that can be given away without costing the giver anything has any intrinsic value.
Stop trying to keep a stupid and pathetically inadequate system alive, and think of something better. Your insistence on keeping something that no longer works around smacks of dogma, not reason.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
You don't need to but you are assuming the web is the best possible method for distributing files. While it is good for many things I do not think it is a very reliable source for distributing binaries. A file-sharing approach allows you to mirror on a scale impossible to acheive with the web. The trick is to make digitally signed music that can be verified by the end-user as the original before downloading the music. Also I'm a geek and therefore it is in my nature to explore new possibilities. :)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
So if I understand this correctly... it is legal to download an MP3 from Napster, but it is not legal to play it... that means Napster IS innocent!
Bizar technology?
In terms of physics and thermodynamics, information by it's existence violates the 2nd law. Well, if it existed in some sort of natural form. It actually takes more energy to create information than for information to dissipate and disappear.
Using your example, information *is* all the Nitrogen molecules being gathered in a corner of the room. It takes work and effort to collect all the N2 gas into a location, much like it takes work and effort to collect information into some useable form. If it takes effort to maintain N2 gas into an ordered state, it likewise takes effort to keep information in a useful form.
It may be argued that with the 'new' infrastructure that the energy of ordering is low enough to be 'almost' free, but it can never truly be free. Networks, sharing, storing, disseminating, does not come to zero cost. The best one can reach is *self* sustaining and self propogating, in which each individual assumes the cost unto Erself to maintain the information.
IE, people who want to run their own websites, scratch their own itches, etc, in the name of self interest. For them the cost is less than the value of the information...
So I disagree that information wants to be free; Information is a state of the universe that happens to be particularly strange; it's a very low cost replication, high cost production item, like CDs or money; once the design, presses, layout, groundwork has been set, the cost of making another is *extremely* low, where the cost of making 1 is extremely high. In a way, if you make the association of information==money, then the statement that information wants to be free translates correctly; it's something that wants *rapid* dissemination and sharing, in order to achieve something like a velocity effect, in which the more information moves around, the more effect it has in society.
Short version:
Information does not follow 2nd law of thermodynamics any differently than anything else. 2nd law does not justify it being 'free' in beer or 'free' in mobility.
A better analogy is that information has intrinsic value due to existence; the lack of information is nothingness. This value can be equated to money, and treated as such, perhaps
The nick is a joke! Really!
GPL Deconstructed
I think that's 'horsepucky'. Did the rogue spell-checker bite you, Nick?
Also, some information *does* want to be freely available, like the whois database, or the song lyrics servers, and these are freely contributed, and unlawfully (in my opinion) restrained.
...so instead of trying to cash into the Napster phenomenon, do some *real* research, and find out something new.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
People would buy a Brittany Spears album and "share" it with their 100 friends on the net, and each one of those would share it with their closest 100 friends, etc.
If people care so little about Brittany that they won't pay to support her, well, I guess that means she won't be able to pay her bills. I believe that's called capitalism. Whether or not they get to listen to her music is incidental to the matter. If the only way you can get people to pay you is to hold a figurative gun to their head, what a sad state of affairs it is for you.
No other property can be given away without loss by the owner.
/very/ beneficial for the owner, both in terms of monetary value and in terms of control. At the same time, giving away information can be /very/ detrimental to the owner.
As well reasoned as your post is, this one sentence completely destroys your argument.
Information is the most powerful piece of property someone can own, share, give away, sell, or keep a hold of. Entire courses in human history were charted by men and women maintaining a grasp on information (Manhattan Project comes to mind). Furthermore, entire other courses were charted by the dissemination of information (the Bible comes to mind). The point is, information being held on to can be
People talk about how the next war will be the Information War. Media groups, from Slashdot to NBC base their entire livelihoods on information gathering and choice dissemination. Whether information gets given out or protected is the most crucial decision anyone can make.
And if you need an example that may hit closer to home, how come you haven't given me your credit card information? We get up in arms because people are giving away our information, and little do they realize that they already gave it away, much to their harm.
Do not underestimate how much of an effect giving away information can have. Not all information is harmless.
As recounted in this website, the phrase "information wants to be free" has a little-known counterpart: "information wants to be expensive." It was first uttered back in 1984 (now there's an ironic year for information wanting to be free!) by Stewart Brand:
(emphases mine)So, people, next time you use the phrase, please take a moment to reflect on what it really means?
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
That was always my favorite analogy. Both freeing information and rotting meat are events that are easy to instigate, hard to prevent, and harder to undo. But just because something seems like a "force of nature" in this fashion doesn't make it a good thing.
>Your understanding of property law is simply wrong, and has been for centuries.
Your understanding of human lifetimes is simply wrong, and has been for possibly years.
Oh, and I should point out that a leasehold interest isn't property. It is a "contractual interest". You don't own the lease, and you don't own the leased property, but you DO have an interest, which stems from a contract. A contractual interest is property in the same way that a corporation is a person.
Also, tenants don't own the property they are tenants of. Not even tenants in common nor joint tenants.
In both cases, the actual owner of the property in question has exclusive use of it forever. One possible use of the property is to lease it out...
Actual joing ownership is a little trickier, which is why here in the states, our various states have pretty much decided that they are going to own all the cars and real estate and rent you the color of title on it...
See that "Preview" button?
The idea that you cannot sell something someone else produced if they dont like the way you sell it is ridiculous. Lets say a company A prints a book, company A thinks the book should be sold in bookshops at a certain price (so the bookshops have a profit). You decide to buy large amounts of the book and sell them in a store B, call it Walmart, at a lower price, but you only sell one book, the best-seller. In this case, most people would think that store B was just more intelligent and found a way to make profits from the business of the publisher. He is NOT stealing the publisher's work. And that's what's happening to the RIAA, someone took their production and distributes it in a much more efficient way, they called it Napster. And now the RIAA and record stores, like independant bookshops are complaining that they are people treated injustly, but the truth is that the market is changing under them and that they shoudl adapt.
"someone who owns and creates something has every right to sell it under any terms they want. If those terms suck, no one will buy it. Just because people want something does not mean they deserve to have it- especially not on terms THEY choose."
Terms? What Terms? ShrinkWrap Licenses, and Copyright licenses are not 'Terms' they are more like decrees from a pseudo authority. My being a citizen (NOT A FUCKING CONSUMER ) of Canada who decides I will purchase a CD from the RIAA have no ability to agree on 'Terms'. The RIAA members have identical licenses. They maintain a MONOPOLY (arguably OLIGOPOLY (semantics really because of) their COLLUSION that A) Maintains a ONE choice rule for CD's purchase. ie: You want Music? You buy our CDs and THESE ARE THE TERMS. Period. B) Organize and Maintain an UNBELIEVEBLY HIGH BARRIER TO ENTRY to anyone who would choose to offer any other Terms. Ie: Your independent record company has great music and a more OpenStyle license? Who cares, you'll be blocked from tour sponsorship (exclusivity deals) you'll be blocked from Radio Stations (wrangling and shifty "PR" arrangements where Radio Stations are PAID to play music (not the other way around dammit - remember that). You'll be relegated to the margins, the backwaters.
There is no compitition within the RIAA
You think that business model sucks? Fine- drive them out of business with your own.
Are you kidding? The American Government is so absolutely undemocratic and polluted with SPAC/Lobbyist money from the likes of the RIAA (et al) that the IP industry has BOUGHT A FUCKING SYSTEM WHERE THEIR PERPETUAL -UNNECESSARY- EXISTANCE IS PROTECTED BY LAW. DMCA? DISNEY's LIFE+100YEARS? MP3.com ruling? Napster ruling? The net enables music distributors to be thrown out of the system. Their original 'business purpose' was physical reproduction and promotion - The Internet makes that absolutely unnecessary. To argue about this is pointless. Why would anyone maintain that we should keep them in business? To exploit and gouge? To strangle culture in exchange for Billion dollar profits?
I have stopped buying CDs. I download _ALL_ my music from Napster et al. I will not stop until the IP industry is has been fundamentally been altered or ENDS . I recommend to my friends (and you) that they(you) do the same. Refuse to support an unnecessary profit engine. What is more moral? Artifical monopoly and exploitation? Or enjoying the cultural fruit of the modern world? Start thinking about what it means to be a citizen of this planet, and that we have absolute rights. Start thinking about why we* choose to legislate a system where corporations are entitled to exploit us all.
*NOTE* Not Me? Not You(probably)? Who then? Maybe the same people who are making these rules are the ones who stand to benefit the most? Conflict of interest? Taxation(legislation) without representation? Why don't our democracies work anymore? Were _YOU_ given an opportunity to 'vote' on the DMCA? NO? Then who's interests does it serve?
followed by
"...us poor, sub $1 an hour wage earning people"
Get a new job man. If you are in the IT industry as a janitor you should be making more than $1/hour. Here's where the bad math is hurting you: 16 hours a day * 7 days a week * 52 weeks a year = $5824. Move on.
Oh yes, and by the way, hating your low paying job is no excuse for stealing. You probably can't afford a Lexus either, but you're not (I hope) stealing those too. Grow up. I think it's ridiculous for artists to spend as much time fighting Napster as some are, but it's equally silly to say that there's nothing wrong about taking what you can't afford simply because it won't be missed.
Cris E
St Paul, MN
There is no scarcity of *DATA*. Digital information after all, is just bits. But information is bits organized in a specific way that adds value. That's a good. And there's a scarcity of valuable information.
I really enjoy the tendency to jump on the "no scarcity" bandwagon without a basic Economics 101 understanding of what it means to be "scarce" as opposed to having "negligible duplication costs".
-Stu
The right to "property" and the right to "life" have to be enforced to mean anything. You seem to imply that the former is more important than the latter. Billions of people on this planet might probably want to differ.
My point was that you should consider intellectual property rights artificial, a man-made creation rather than a "moral" right. Intellectual property rights could be artificially created in narrow cases where they are needed if they are truly needed.
But are they needed? Your argument says that there would never be a free operating system, yet there are several of them. I'm friends with a number of cancer researchers: all of them, MDs and PhDs, work for peanuts, and gladly, they just need a lab... and, they don't have any property rights to what they produce, but they do want to tell the world about it when they're done. Geeks are not particularly motivated by money, and the information just wants to be free.
Yes, I understand your argument, but just because you say it doesn't make it true, and I don't think the case has been made: open source shows that there is another way, and the entire history of science agrees with that model. R&D for products? Sure, companies make more money if you give them patent monopolies, but you haven't made the case that they are necessary. There are plenty of competitive industries without patent protection and people work all the harder to produce products and make money. It's human nature to innovate, and it's human nature to copy innovations. The information wants to be free.
And that's leaving aside the whole world of copyrights. Artists keep telling us how they produce because they can do nothing else, it's just their calling. So, why give them monopolies? If we do give them temporary monopolies, why 100 years later do you need to pay a royalty to sing Happy Birthday? There's nothing "God given" about the term of the monopoly. How about 5 years?
Morally, if you don't want me to sing your songs, don't teach them to me. The information wants to be free.
Firstly, I do not find the articles reasoning sound, nor do I like the examples the author uses.
:-), I'm a firm believer in patents/copyright it's just their implementation that needs changing.
I have always thought that being able to commit a crime is not enough to secure a conviction. It's one of the reasons I find the Napster/DeCSS cases so deceitful.
If I choose to put my complete CD collection on the web, is it my fault that other people play the CDs. If I choose to publicise their location is that a crime?
For the record, pun intended
You "believe that's called capitalism? For people to decide after they have taken or copied something whether, and how much, they are going to pay for it?
Let me see if I understand you. I purchase a 300 page novel. Scan it. Upload it onto my web page for anyone to download. People do so. If people care so little about the author they they won't pay to support him, well, I guess that means he won't be able to pay his bills. That is called capitalism. If the author can only get people to pay by holding a figurative gun to their heads, well that really is a sad state of affairs.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
I think that the 'Information wants to be free' slogan is getting hold of the wrong stick.
Information tends to be a book, a song, a program, the product of somebodies labours. Because of this I'm quite happy to abide by the restrictions that the author puts on it. If I want to benifit from that work, I should respect thier wishes. If their wishes are unacceptable to me, I don't benefit.
The issue for me is that the Knowledge that allowed the author to create that work should be freely available. It's the knowledge of the subject and the ability of people to build on that that keeps everything moving forward.
Of course if Knowledge should be free then patents should not exist. The problem is that I think patents were concieved for the right reasons, but are now being abused. I think it's good that a small time inventor who comes up with something ingenious is given goverment protection to commercially exploit his work, but unfortunatley they are just being abused these days as just another weapon in the corporate wars.
My solution would run along the lines of not allowing corporations to hold patents, only individuals, but it's a nasty area at best.
There's a balance to be struck somewhere. Unfortunatley the US appears to be a long way off to one side at the moment.
I think we have again a case of the "beer vs speech" ambiguity with the word "free". Petreley apparently interprets the phrase with the "beer" sense of the word.
But I have never thought that "Information wants to be free" says anything about price. I think that the meaning is that since one can duplicate and distribute information utterly effortlessly nowadays, it only takes a single small leak for a piece of information to spread all over the world, if there is interest in it.
Of course, since this makes information common, it consequently often makes it pretty cheap. But that is just a side effect.
Information doesn't want to be costless, information wants to be unrestrained.
--
If people don't want to keep paying, they don't have to continue viewing the movie.
Got hup?
Because it allows the costs to be shared among the people who are interested in it. That's why lots of people can see a movie for under 10 bucks instead of having to individually pay the millions of dollars that it cost to create it.
Hmm. It isn't just the "costs" that are being shared. If it was just costs then movies wouldn't make any money, would they? And it's quite clear that movie studios are making lots of money.
However, once all of the costs have been paid back, why shouldn't the work enter the public domain? Well, the argument goes, because they deserve to earn a little money too. Okay. Hmm, so when DOES the work enter the public domain? Never, if they could possibly avoid it.
So essentially this is the point at which people feel they're being ripped off. They don't mind paying for the cost of a movie, and they don't mind giving the actors and director a fair share of profit, but when they have to keep paying and paying without any end in sight... your argument fails at that point.
Nick Petreley really hit the nail on the head here. PEOPLE want information to be free, and seem to have a tremendous lack of respect (or perhaps just a tremendous amount of ignorance) about our current economic system, so they just go about circumventing it without allowing the market to operate. The market *needs* at least a minimal notion of intellectual property in order to function.
Very often I see a lot of arguments that "information has no scarcity", and I reel back in horror at that inaccuracy. Raw, unfiltered data has no scarcity. It's just bits. Information, however, is a specific configuration of bits that adds value. The fact that there is a lack of "valuable information" (i.e. good music, good software, good books) implies that there is a form of scarcity involved -- a scarcity of skill and talent to create valuable information.
Information creation is a scarce service.
So this implies that we probably should have mechanisms to require payment for information if the market finds it valuable. What's at question is whether we should have to pay for it as a product, like we currently do, which is clearly inefficient from an economic perspective as it leads to excessive profits, or in english, "rich rock star" syndrome.
So the question really shouldn't be about how to destroy intellectual property. It should be about how to come up with new business models that are much more efficient than the "shrink wrap" business model... and this actually seems to be what the industry is doing. Subscription-based software, ASP's, etc. are all signs of the times.
-Stu
Just another trick to generate ad revenue. It also badly (possibly willfully) misconceived the meaning of "information wants to be free". Obviously it attributes intentionality to something that doesn't have it, but so do well accepted aphorisms about "water seeking its own level", etc. These are statements about phenomena that say how they behave. Its certainly not a moral statement. Although, for one reason or another, many people also believe it to be a good thing, the statement itself is not "information should be free", or "I want information to be free", but "information behaves as if it were free".
It wasn't originally a statement about *price*, but one about *control*. As making copies of information and transmitting it (which are the same thing, in the final analysis) becomes easier and quicker, it becomes harder and harder to control access to information. This was initially thought to be a good thing because it could be used to circumvent *censorship*, not copyright.
Of course, the reasons for loss of control are economic: the cost of copying has fallen to almost zero, and thus the primary barrier which copyright holders and publishers used to control copying is fast disappearing.
And, of course, since censorship and copyright are both about controlling information, an increase in its "leakiness" will undermine both. This whole area is interesting and deserved a much better article than this weak troll full of stupid ranting about things being "just the way it is".
Is Open Source for the masses? You might say yes, but then I might say no. We both have our reasons for supporting either cause. Just because something isn't physically tangible doesn't mean that I can't say it's mine. And if I say it's mine, then I should be able to choose who I let play with it.
If I make a painting or a sculpture, I might let my friends look at it, but maybe not my younger cousin with the greesy fingers. I may not also want a person who I might believe will steal it and call it their own -- or worse yet, copy it and call it mine (it will never look the same).
Value judgements on what's right and what's wrong are best left for the masses to deside, we were given the ability to choose since we came upon this earth.
Just my few cents...or maybe more.
~KONala >^..^
>the AIDS epedemic where millions have died and continue to die because pharmecuticals own the right to the knowledge.
m
Since you mention it:
http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/whistleblowers.ht
If you really like one songs, buy it as a single. But just because you don't want the whole CD doesn't make it right for you to steal even part of it.
Oh, of course, let me see... Now... where IS that purple haze single... Hrmmm. That's right, there isn't one! Well... I'll just buy the original album that had it on CD, what? No cd for that album! All they have is Band of Gypsies and Greatest Hits?! But all I want is Purple Haze.... Well, I guess since they aren't selling Purple Haze they can't possibly lose money if I download it. So there.
Not all songs are offered as singles, and not all albums are available in CD format, or even Tape format. What if I want music that the RIAA has decided there is no market for and so stopped selling? What am I supposed to do if there is no way for me to BUY the music I want? Buying it at a used CD shop or used Record shop doesn't give the RIAA a dime... So why should they care if I download it instead? If you aren't selling a product anymore, and someone can get that product for free without taking it away from you then no one is stealing from you.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Ironicly I actually made more money when I was in highschool than I do now since at that point I could get away with charging $50/hr to work on computers. Add that I have a lot more bills now and I would be lucky to be anywhere close to what I made then. I buy more CD's because MP3's restored my interest in music which had been burnt out by years of radio and MTV that didn't serve my tastes in music. I also buy more books and movies now largely due to my growing interest in media.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Before you impugn the critical thinking skills of others, you might want to break out a logic textbook and look up the term "begging the question". In this case your thesis is that ideas are property per se, and therefore using those ideas without their owners' permission is theft. You then go on to prove your thesis by assuming as a premise that ideas are property per se, and therefore using those ideas without their owners' permission is theft. That is not logic in any meaningful sense. No progress is possible in this debate until people recognize that the real question is not, "Is it ok to steal?" but rather "Does it make sense to classify something that can be endlessly replicated without cost as `property'?"
The argument in favor of intellectual property is that creators need incentive to create. I'm not entirely sure I believe that, but it is certainly true that creative people need to pay their rent and grocery bills the same as everyone else. The arguments against intellectual property are, first, that people are naturally creative, and they create more efficiently when they are free to build on previous work, and, second, that intellectual property laws can be used to stifle freedom.
The latter point is most troubling to me. As our economy evolves, we expect information products to become every bit as much necessities of life as food and shelter; in fact, in many cases we expect information products to displace physical goods as necessities of life. With physical goods the economy has always worked on the principle that once you buy it it's yours, and the seller has no further say in what you do with it. Not so, intellectual property. Intellectual property is governed by a license which binds you to an ongoing commitment to the seller. Vendors of intellectual property would have us believe that the terms of these license could be literally anything: a continuing financial commitment, refraining from using competing products, and disclosing sensitive personal information are all terms that have appeared in intellectual property licenses, and we can only expect the license terms to grow bolder.
To me, finding a balance for intellectual property law is the single most important challenge facing our civilization today. What good are the guarantees of liberty we have worked so hard to build (literally centuries of human endeavor) if we and our posterity are going to have to license ourselves into bondage just to participate in the digital economy? A fair and equitable balance must be found. I don't pretend that that balance will be found in "information wants to be free", but there's a lot less danger in that than in the "mine, all mine" espoused by the intellectual property industries and their apologists.
-rpl
Bullshit. The central problem here, which this article makes perfectly clear, is that someone who owns and creates something has every right to sell it under any terms they want. If those terms suck, no one will buy it. Just because people want something does not mean they deserve to have it- especially not on terms THEY choose.
I agree completely with above. However, once they bought it, it is theirs to do whatever they want to do with it. Listen to it. Break it. Convert it to mp3. Sell it for double price. Sell it for half price. Sell it with contract that requires buyer to give their soul. Give it away for free. Pay someone to take it away. Whatever. Since it is now theirs, THEY (and not original seller) can make terms. If the next buyer don't like those terms, they won't buy it.
Piddling about what file format the music comes in is just plain cheap. It's like saying that just because a car doesn't come in red, you have the right to steal a car and paint it red
Agreed. Let's say I bought I car for 30k$. But it was yellow. And I want it red. So I paint it red. And the sell it for 60k$. Or for 10k$. Or even give it away. It is mine, I can whack it with a big hammer if I want.
Only problem with this comparasion is that the first seller is trying to convince me that I did not bought that CD I payed for. That I bought only the plastic cup holder, and not the music on it.
But, in their great goodness, they will allow me to listen to music that is contained on that cupholder, provided I do not try to do some foolish things, like playing that music when other people can hear it (public performance or broadcast). Or hireing or landing it to anyone (even to my neighbour, even thou I won't charge him a dime). Or try to make copy of it, in case this one breaks. Or some of the other thing which are assumed by 'All Rights Reserved' copyright...
Sorry, over-dramatic words.
My intent with that statement, that information by it's existence violates the 2nd law was intended to convey the fact that information is equivalent to your N2 bunched together into the corner of the room; unless more energey is used than the information is worth, the information will dissapear. And this energy has to be maintained for the information to stay useful. If information is made free in the way your analogy would suggest, and in an uncontained way, it would disappear, degrade into the noise.
I argue usefulness by the very fact that someone is willing to absorb and transmit information; if it is useless information, it will disappear back into the noise, and no one will know about it.
Money==information *is* valid. Money *can* be copied. Interest rates, banks, printing presses, mints, counterfeiters, are all avenues by which money gets created. The cost of creating money is much less than the money is worth, a lot like mp3s, knowledge, etc.
Information is simply a pattern that is subject to interpretation; I disagree. Information is already interpreted. Without interpretation, it is just noise.
And to further my money argument, money is simply a acknowledgement of value-by itself it is worthless unless someone accepts that value. Much like 'information' becomes noise unless someone values that information
The nick is a joke! Really!
GPL Deconstructed
I guess, but I don't think it's any more inflamatorry than saying that people want to maximize their own advantage. That's not news - most economic models (but interestingly enough, very few compsci models) assume that user-agents are "greedy maximizers" out for their own gain. The trick to creating a market is to set up a system in which everyone wins without having to change this property. Whenever you see a black market (like Napster, as another user already pointed out), you're witnessing a problem with the market structure. Greedy maximizers (IMHO) will be willing to sacrifice their time and energy to get a poor copy of a pop song rather than spend $20 for a high-quality copy. However, I also believe that these same people would gladly pay for a nice, clean, high-quality copy of that same song for a reasonable price. I bet they'd even be willing to pay microcharges on a per-listen basis.
Anyway, you should go look up the old MP3.com editorial "Drug Dealers Don't Sell Aspirin" for a good summation.
Can your IM do this?
Wrong. The GPL has to dictate the terms under which software released under it is licensed because copyright, by law, kicks in automatically, making it, by default, illegal to distribute and modify under the terms which the GPL allowed. The GPL effectively simulates copyrightlessness in a world run by copyright. If we removed people's ability to control how their product is distributed (read: abolished copyright), programs would effectively be "under the GPL" -- there would be nothing stopping us, once we had the source code, from modifying and redistributing as we wished, and anyone we subsequently give the source to can do likewise.
So, yes, GPL advocates can advocate for the removal of information hoarding without putting their own interests at risk.
-- Brett
that's why I hotwired it and drove it off the lot one night, honest your honor, it's not my fault!
.50 cent platter, why is this so expensive? It's so easy and natural, the limitation is a purely artifical human contrived scheme to limit supply and keep demand and prices up. I always have to giggle when I order a copy of MSft OFFICE and am told they are out of stock, har har. I just put 'em on backorder and install from another disk, at least a license is on the way. But Msft is going to turn real fascist and enforce electronic registration so we can't even do that as a way to get around their user inconvience problem.
One car dealer has this slogan: "I'd give them away but my wife won't let me"
I tell potential employers, "I'm not a free man, I'm expensive"
I think what ppl are getting at with the "wants to be free" slogan (and who could be against freedom??) is the low cost of copying, compared with purchasing an official license - something that costs $499 only takes a few minutes and a
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Oh fuck off. There is no huge corporate conspiracy to keep whatever shit home-town folk band you like off the airwaves. The reason that the music you like is not popular is that it is shit. The record companies have no secret mind control formula which is not accessible to anyone else; what they do have is a skill in producing a product (the "marketing" is part of the product; people like to have "stars" rather than bearded recorder playing granolas). Your music is shit. Deal with it.
So, by this rationale, the only good music is the music that sells the most? Ergo, Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys and N'Sync are the best music of the 90s?
What I'd like to see is sales figures for albums that ignores all sales in the first 5 or 10 years or so since the album was released. I.e. how well does the album sell once the marketing hype wears off, and how well does it last? Just for the sake of example, Michael Jackson's _Thriller_ may have outsold Dark Side of the Moon, but I'll bet DSotM outsells Thriller at least 5 to 1 nowadays.
---
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
First I would have to agree with the article. Having a lack of money to buy something is no excuse. If the Napster "community" were acting as they are supposed to be (which is sharing), I'm sure there wouldn't be that much of a problem, but because most people would rather steal then contribute, problems arise. Let's face it, you wouldn't want someone taking your masters thesis (which is information) and turning it in as their's.
--Reggie
--Reggie
Adam,
Very well written article. One of the most
important foundations of a moral society is the
ability to own your own property and sell it as
you see fit.
The flip side of the coin is even as powerful.
The buyers have all of the power. Everytime
we buy a CD from the RIAA, we empower them to
act in a way that we disagree with.
If we boycot the RIAA because we don't believe
in their tactics, artists will be forsed to go
to different measures to distribute media so
they can still make a living and feed their kids.
You buck the system by talking with your money,
not by destroying the concept of civilization and
stealing property.
~Twivel
By the way, for all y'all who you don't like the RIAA, don't listen to their member companies' music -- no problem. After all, there's plenty of other music out there from promising local bands, who could probably use your support. Maybe I'm just cynical, but I find it comical that people take up the cause of vigilante justice against the oppressed musician proletariat by downloading as much major-label music as strikes their fancy.
Come on people, you know you want it. Don't be coy. Tell major record labels that you're going to fill multiple hard drives with the music they sell, not because it's anything personal, but because you can. That's what you really want to say, isn't it?
The "Information wants to be free" catch cry has been annoying me for a while. I too want information to be free, i agree that MP3s on napster is a form of stealing. I want to know how do we change the outlook on d/l and distributing anything from software to books.
.plan = NULL;
But how does one change the view of not only the average Internet user at home, but also the company executives that it is possible to release certain information (in some manner) and make money on it? Things like the napster controversy will only set back the availability of information being cheap and readily available.
.sig =
Do the following really mean anything? SCSA MCP CCSA CCNA
--I'm not actually after an answer!
Information wants to be a ballet dancer
Copyrights ARE property. It IS there to help compensate people. If the whole world listens to a song at the same time, should the artist get only one payment?
The people spoke, you, all of you, have to listen...Information CAN be stolen. Doesn't mean it should be. I am a Christian and don't recall Jesus telling anyone to share something which isn't theirs.
How can Copyright be a Monopoly?!!! C'mon! Intellectual Property is different (IANAL). Barcode scanners, video cards, etc, all rely on Intellectual Property but when done right, this can be maintained whilst still writing open source drivers for these devices. But I think you're going a bit off-track here. We're talking about Napster.
The Free Software community is based around the GPL, which is heavily dependant upon copyright in order to enforce its open-ness. Read the GPL! (get an adult to read it with you).
John Locke. His book is copyright, I suppose. Doesn't mean anything about power, just preserving his right to be known as the creator of a work. He has the right over who copies it and claims ownership.
When you grow up you will realise that there are a lot of laws, in most countries, which are unjust (some more than others) and people very much DO have to obey those laws. You have free will and are quite possibly CAPABLE of breaking those laws, but I'd like to see you tell that to the Judge!
78.32% of statistics are made up on the spot.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
If millions of people are willing to pay $15+ for a CD, that -is- the market value. And the cost of something is usually at least somewhat decoupled from production costs - there's the time spent in creating, prototyping, developing, testing, marketing, etc. that gets amortized in.
Which isn't to say that the IP situation isn't wacky :-)
(And am I the only one who can't highlight the article's text to paste it here?)
These recording moguls have already admitted and settled out of court for hundreds of millions they bilked the American consumer out of with illegal price-fixing schemes. If IP laws (which are nearly fictional in their moral authority) are to be obeyed then so are trade laws. Of course if you can afford enough lawyers you can afford to ignore the law and just cough up a nice hefty bribe to buy a few senators and change the laws.
This lawsuit is not about criminality, but about who gets a nicer slice of the swag. Eventually like mp3.com the RIAA will force Napster into a settlement, because they're the older and more well-established pack of thieves.
As for RIAA, fuck them. These bastards have pushed for decades to create new copyright legislation that extends copyrights nearly indefinitely, which amounts to wholesale theft from the public domain. Essentially, if they get their way, there WILL be no public domain. I consider it total war and basically anything goes. Hell with them.
They'd gladly wipe out freedom of speech or any chance of privacy in order to achieve their goals which they cloak in the flowery rhetoric of "responsibility" and "property" but which really means total control, forever, of everything "intellectual."
If given the choice between one word of free speech and all the intellectual property in the world, my choice is burn it all, fuck it, we don't need it.
What line to the internet are you using? Phone + 2400Baud modem?!?
640MB which is the ~ size of a CD will take around 35min on my Cable modem at the cost of next to nothing.
What stone did you climb up from?
This must be a troll....
-H
The first time I read Stallman's manifesto, the first thing that popped into my mind was, "Information wants to be free?" Now, FSF advocates under close scrutiny will admit that this only works as a figurative statement, but the fact of the matter is that Stallman uses it as base for his ethics of intellectual property.
What people need to realize is that information is such (vis-a-vis white noise) because someone put effort into creating it; to say that information has some intrinsic quality, or worse desire, to be free is ascribe behavior that is downright anthropomorphic to well-defined, abstract concept. That it is infinitely duplicable does not mean that there is not compensation due; a person is providing you a service, and you should reimburse that person for his time and effort. I like the author's charge: If you don't like the pay music, create and distribute free music.
To this end, I like Stephen King's revenue model: Honesty. He writes "Don't steal from the blind newsboy;" he has successfully gambled that people will pay the small one time fee to experience his work, not just out of grace ("patronage"), but due to a sense of ethics ("captialism").
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
And I'll compensate them well for doing it.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
wrong wrong wrong wrong WRONG!
Taking shared music on Napster is excercising your RIGHT to "fair use" - guaranteed by the 1992 American Home Recording Act.
It does not make one a theif. It makes one a human being with rights.
Fair use does not apply to software. Punish the script kiddies, punish the Hotline dorks who are sharing copyrighted works for commmercial gain. Don't punish the law-abiding citizens who take advantage of their right to "fair use" by sharing copyrighted works for non-commercial purposes.
On the Skywalker Ranch where the Storm Trooper Posse says:
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
So what you are trying to say is that there is no way to buy Purple Haze? It's not on any CD available anywhere? That's funny, I just did a search on Amazon and came up with 87 CDs with the song Purple Haze on it. Even assume only 25% are correct and not duplicates, that's 21 CDs with the song. Seems like someone sure is selling it.
As for used CDs, you have every right to go and buy a used CD. The RIAA doesn't make any money off that sale, because they already made their money of the original sale. Unlike downloading it from the web, the money has already been made, and the person loses the ablility to use the CD once he sells it. Now, compare that to NApster, where one person buys a CD and a million people download it. Kinda different, huh?
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Yes it is obvious that the saying "information wants to be free" is a simple summary of informations tendancy to become more and more widly deseminated over time. That however has does not mean there isn't a value in pointing out the obvious. Many people have taken the expression "information wants to be free" and converted from on observation of tendancies into a moral axiom that is used to justify actions that reinforce the statement.
Information wants to be Free. Superficially, it may seem anthropomorphic. But it is essetially the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Aha... so that might be another reason why some people are lobbying to get the Second Law Of Thermodynamics repealed.
Wait until the MPAA and RIAA join the Religious Right in that crusade. ^_-
Nick is a Linux advocate. If the Open Source is not Linux, or installed on Linux, he wants nothing to do with them.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
So what you are trying to say is that there is no way to buy Purple Haze? It's not on any CD available anywhere? That's funny, I just did a search on Amazon and came up with 87 CDs with the song Purple Haze on it. Even assume only 25% are correct and not duplicates, that's 21 CDs with the song. Seems like someone sure is selling it.
Yeah, it's on the Greatest Hits CD. I just picked it as a random example of a relatively hard to find song that everyone has heard of. It's on 2 other CDs as well, one of which is no longer produced or sold, and one of which is sold someplaces but very hard to find. The fact is that SOMEONE somewhere bought the CD. And if that CD is no longer for sale, and the song on it is not available to be purchased through an RIAA approved distribution method then they CAN NOT lose money from me downloading it. You CAN NOT lose money if someone copies something you are not selling.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
- Even with Microsoft monopoly, the software industry is full of opportunity. Anyone can learn how to code, and find a way to make money out of it. The music industry is not that simple.
- Music is entertainment. For some idealistic minds, entertainment is not business. We all now thats its wrong - entertainment is BIG business anywhere in the world.
- Maybe it's easier for college kids to see themselves making money out of code than making money out of music. So in a sense they are trying to protect their own future. To be a great musician is hard, and to be a top band is a distant dream.
- Maybe file size matters. Some years ago, trading software was hot in BBSs. Most commercial software could be found for free in Warez BBSs all around. Many of them were large downloads at that time. Some could even fill an 1.2 Mb 5"1/4 floppy disk
:-) It was not viable to download music, for technical reasons. PCs were not powerful enough for MP3 and similar codecs. Now if people try to copy Win2000 over the Internet... not even DSL is close to allow this to be done in the next few years.
Anyway thats my personal opinion... lets see what the guys outside here think...The central problem here, which this article makes perfectly clear, is that someone who owns and creates something has every right to sell it under any terms they want.
I know we're really talking about music here, but this point takes the argument onto a broader level. Bear with me here.
As I see it, "owning" something is not a god given right. It's more an agreement that we use to share out the finite resources of the planet. (limited land, fossil fuel etc.) But because those resources are finite, their use ultimately affects everyone else (eg. pollution, deforestation etc.) So being the "owner" also carries a responsability to make good use of that resource (its criminal to pour beer down the sink). Ie. other people do have a say, even though it's "yours".
Now lets look at a strictly IP example. Certain US drug companies hold patents on AIDS related medications. South Africa wants to provide these drugs to the huge numbers of people with AIDS. The drug companies want a lot of money. South Africa can...
You think that bussiness model sucks? Fine- drive them out of bussiness with your own
... by manufacturing the drug by themselves, locally in South Africa. But the US is threatening sanctions if they do -- the point of IP is that no-one else can provide their own competing product.
Anyway, this example is some way from music, but it's worth bearing in mind that some of these arguments "if you don't like it, don't buy it" don't scale too well.
The problem is that nobody gets it.
The statement "information wants to be free" is a true one. However, thanks to the rather poor word choice concerning the last word in the statement, it seems nobody really understands it.
Napster users don't get it. They somehow get this idea that "free" means "zero-cost," and while that may be true in the dictionary it isn't true in the context of this statement.
The author of this article, though, is guilty of precisely the same thing. He isn't stealing music, but he still doesn't get the idea that the "free" in "information wants to be free" has precisely nothing whatsoever to do with cost.
And worse off, almost none of the Slashdotters are getting it either; every post I've seen in favor of this article is still making that exact same error. I suppose it's somewhat understandable; all Open-Source software, at least as we know it today, has been zero-cost. However, that doesn't mean it has to be. We've had software that was "speech and beer" and software that's "beer but not speech." Why could there not be software that was "speech but not beer"?
I think it's possible. No one seems to have tried it yet, but I don't think it's an impossible task. Cross-model software isn't entirely new; look at Id, which tends to release its software under a combined shareware/commercial model (get the demo for free, get the rest of the game -noting that the engine itself is absolutely identical- upon registration). If this can be done with "beer but not speech" as one of the models, it would seem sensible that "speech but not beer" might also be possible. Id hasn't tried that yet, but I don't see them as being entirely averse to trying it a few years down the road.
It's certainly a possibility. The question is, who will be the first to try? Do we really want it to be, say, perhaps Microsoft, who could take the idea, run with it, and then try to claim credit as the real "innovators" of the Open-Source movement as the people who made it profitable (untrue, of course, but they could say it and people would believe them)? I don't think so.
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As a human being with a soul your biggest tool in fighting a soul-less, imortal, and amoral being is to join together with other beings with souls. In the end you will win because soul-less beings are ugly when exposed to the glare of public scrutiny. All soul-less beings want to keep a low profile remember that.
Here is a though for you. If you are a liberal person why would you shop at wal-mart and help support republicans? Why would you watch fox tv and help Murdock give even more money to politicians you hate? Same goes in reverse if you are conservative why would you give Ted turner money by watching CNN?
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
Lemme see. Four years ago, the copyright on _Huckleberry Finn_ expired, Russ. The copyright on _Alice in Wonderland_ expired about a decade ago. Sometime recently, _The Strand's_ copyright on _A Study in Scarlet_ expired.
Yes, the current state of copyright law is abusive. Yes, the terms accorded to items of value are ridiculous. Fine -- you want my help (or even my money) fixing that? You got 'em. But the only way to provide any return on investment on a commodity with zero marginal cost is to grant a monopoly on that commodity. For literary and creative works, whose content is independent of the form of their presentation, that means something not unlike copyright.
If information wants to be free, and people need to eat, then if you want people to produce information, then you need to prop up the cost of the information they produce. You can do it through government subsidy or you can provide it by monopoly, or you can use a hybrid, such as we use now. The hybrid -- a small number of people get government subsidies to do basic work, and everybody else gets a monopoly on their content -- seems to work. The other two extremes don't.
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what a nonsense. DNA as the first known medium to organise information is the basis for most of what we call life. it organises molecules by investing energy into maintaining an ordered state. free molecules (or better: free particles, since molecules maintain some state, too) are the opposite of "information". a somehow ordered state is required to create information.
coming back to DNA: living creatures have always been fighting for access to "good" DNA. the fight for the best male, the fight for the best female. nothing like free information here. information has always been traded: "my good DNA for your good DNA".
but anyway, the post is highly irrelevant. the important statement in the article is: if you want free information, create it. and there comes the dilemma: I'm afraid to say that writing reasonably good software is much easier than writing and performing reasonably good music. go to mp3.com and listen to some free music. hard to find good stuff there. so I assume that we cannot simply apply the rules of free software to music.
cheers
If someone creates content (i.e. music), they have the right to put whatever restrictions they like, through the use of copyright and license agreements.
No it doesn't.
Excessive or illegal restrictions on the licensing of intellectual property can and has been construed as "copyright misuse" and has caused the IP owner to lose copyright infringement actions.
See this article for information on the Lasercomb case and others in which this has occurred. Specifically, licensing agreements forbidding reverse engineering are covered by this.
This is why the Microsoft EULA says this:
Limitations on Reverse Engineering, Decompilation, and Disassembly. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the SOFTWARE PRODUCT, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation.
Bolds mine. It wouldn't have that added disclaimer if it would be illegal for them to forbid it outright, since they'd love to do that.
I for one would be interested in helping fund (with my cd buying money) a label that plays a part similar to that of the Free Software Foundation. Such a label would require the artists signed to them to release their music under an open-content license. In exchange the label would provide the normal features such as production, distribution, publicity, etc and only take their royalty from those sales up to the point where they've made back their costs. This would allow artists to keep a lot more of their own money and still provide the community with free music. Since free music drives sales (I for one bought far more CD's since MP3's) their should still be a lot of money to be made. A lot of new artists would also be interested as they'd have a lot more options with our FreeMusic Label.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Nicholas Petreley advocated creating "Crookster" for commercial software. Well, here's an analogy. Imagine setting up a site that you could visit and download an entire and full featured operating system, and here's the kicker: IT'S FREE! You can download it. You can modify it. Here are a couple examples: www.slackware.com, www.redhat.com. Maybe you've heard of them? Windows 2000 distribution is too tight an example. Creating Napster to distribute music isn't necessarily about stealing the existing infrastructure of music. I'll admit that quite a few users have that in mind, but hear me out. Napster was created as a way to express our disgust of paying $20 per CD for $0.30 worth of manufacture and $0.50 of pay to the artist. It may not be the best method, but it's loud enough to tell the Record Labels and the artists that we don't want this method of obtaining music. We want the labels to change their method. Nicholas Petreley wants us to change the method, but frankly, most of us are too lazy. :) Example: Flag burning. I personally don't think that's the way to go to get attention (I'm too patriotic), but when it happens, boy and how do people sit up and listen.
We need a better advocate to explain that Napster is a means, not an end. We need to explain to the corporations that what we want as consumers. I'm sick of Sony Entertainment, BMG, whoever, telling ME that Brittany Spears is good. Telling ME that rap/hip hop is the wave of the future. I want to find for myself, without a strong negative monetary penalty, that Moby kicks ass, Ani DiFranco speaks too much truth, and the Marriage of Figaro can bring a tear to my eye.
Why should something have to be paid for multiple times when it was only produced once? Because it allows the costs to be shared among the people who are interested in it. That's why lots of people can see a movie for under 10 bucks instead of having to individually pay the millions of dollars that it cost to create it. Which specific items are you referring to when you say that they cost nothing to create? Time is money, after all.
Congrats to Petreley for his article, btw, it's probably the best article he's ever written and is what a lot of us have been saying for a long time: While there are a handful of principled people defending the likes of Napster, it's mostly people just wanting free stuff.
And nope, that's not my quote in the subject, I saw some other Slashdot poster using it for his sig. I'd credit him for it if I could, but I don't know who it was (whoops, IP violation? ;-) ), but wanted to throw it out there because it's a great line.
Cheers,
The thing with MP3's is that for 2 songs off of an album that they play on the radio, there are another 8 that they will never play on the radio and will never be heard Unless you either borrow or buy the album.. That's not freedom.
That's when you realise you've made a big mistake and should have just bought the single because the rest of the album sucks... That's where the free part comes in, As in free previews of the rest of the CD that no one will play on the radio, and sometimes for good reason...
I would love to do as the author stated, and create some free music.. Problem is, It would HAVE to be free, because No-One ine their right mind would pay for it.
I can see a day when there will be Time Limited MP3's where you have a day or so to "Preview" before the file will self destruct in 10...9...8 ETC....But like everything else It Will Be Hacked...
Spaz
Stupid can opener! You killed my father and now you've come back for me!
I think it should be mentioned that the USSR effort in WWII was extremely poorly managed at best. Many times units were shipped the wrong ammunition. The only reason they held the Germans off were because the Germans weren't all that well supplied either for their situation and that the Soviets had a huge population to work with, putting them in front of the German slaughtering system in the hopes of hurting a few of them. I think the mortality ratio was on a 10:1 for the soldiers, Russian to German, the soviets lost something like half the 50 million figure for the cost of WWII.
In my opinion, the super power was always a peasant nation. Yeah, they had some nice stuff for a while and managed to hold off Western influence for 70 years, but they have also made calculated attempts to keep out any and all western influence or even real facts. The USSR system was about lies and half truths, far more so than I have ever seen in the West. Even then, they had decades to recover from the war, and they have, but since then they have also made some very poor decisions that would rarely happen in a capitalist system. Communisim is about changing the economy to fit the political system, at the expense of the economics. Capitalism tends to change the political system to its own benifit, at the expense of the political system.
Personally, I prefer having the wealth to feed everyone rather than using the same power to uphold a stupid political party.
i meant what i said. Content, by virtue of being something that a Creator creates, is the property of the Creator. Perhaps I should have said "inherently" instead of intrinsically, I did write the post in 5 minutes while procrastinating. sorry to have offended you, my pedantic friend.
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
no, thats not what i am saying. I'm saying that it is currently legal to download, and play, MP3s from Napster, because the AHRA does not specifically make any distinction between you copying your friend's music and downloading music from millions of people on the web. It's still fair use. Go ahead and use Napster, and be comforted that you are doing it legally (unless the law changes). DONT say its legal because "information wants to be free". Music is not information. Music is content, and the rules for distribution of this specific content currently say that copying is fair use. Keep in mind that laws may change and if they do, then Music may no longer be protected the way it currently is. For example, Music may become as controlled as software. In which case we lose our legal umbrella. Chanting "Information wants to be free" is irrelevant and misses the point.
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
The remarks in the preceding appear to be trolling, but taking them on their face:
(1) Napster has NOTHING, really, to do with the conduct of its users. They are not parties to the suit. There is NO allegation in the complaint of direct infringement -- the sole Count (apart from an irrelevant state claim) is for contribution. The question is not whether two people using Napster to trade another's IP without fair use or consent is infringing -- on this point I agree with the troll. The relevant legal questions in this case (rather than the troll's straw man) are: (1) whether space-shifting is noninfringing conduct; and (2) whether Napster is, in fact, capable of substantial non-infringing use.
(2) At least one three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit has its doubts. The injunction was stayed in an order, finding substantial flaws, both in the form and the merits of the District Court opinion.
(3) The Supreme Court, whom I reasonably rely upon for constitutional advice when conflicting with the unsupported statements of a troll, knew full well the constitutional status of the Patent and Copyright Acts when it wrote the Sony opinion. Moreover, they recently held that the Amendments (including the First, Fifth and Eleventh) trump the Patent and Copyright Clause in the Florida College Prepaid and Seminole Tribe cases.
In short, I agree that Copyrights and Patents have special, indeed, constitutional status from Article I, Section 8. But so does every law passed under the Commerce clause! No provision of Article I creates a power in the Congress to block free speech. Period.
(3) You could easily count the aggregate number of people who have been jailed for copyright infringement on a hand or two. Thus, either there aren't that many "theives" [sic], or the troll is wrong.
How about; YOUR ARGUMENT IS SHIT?
grow up, will you?
^popular ^= shit.
Or do you think that the Ford Escort was the best car of all time?
Or do you think that Miller Lite is the best beer in the world?
How about the dominant computer operating system in the world? Is Windows 95 REALLY better than Linux?
Do you honestly believe that Brittney Spears, #1 selling artist, is a better musician, produces better music than say, Robert Fripp? Sure, she produces a better "product", by the scale that products are measured on, which is sales, but by no means is it better music.
There is no huge corporate conspiracy, true, but record companies DO tend to favor promoting performers that are young, sexy, well packaged, and not necessarily artists. You see, people with real talent can walk across the street to the next record company, people with talent are often intelligent to demand better contracts, people with talent often espouse viewpoints in their art that are not, shall we say, appropriate for mass consumption? In short, they're harder to deal-with, on a business level, and harder to sell to the masses. (I'm talking about real iconoclasm here, not teenage rebellion crap) Why sell products that are hard to sell? Brittney Spears is easy to sell to millions of spoiled American teenage brats with mommy and daddy's credit card. Robert Frip only sells to a few wierdos with eclectic tastes, who may not have enough money to blow on a new CD every week.
The reason that the music I like is not popular, is because it is not a convenient product to sell, therefore the companies do not market it as enthusiastically, and not as many people are exposed to it.
Of course, as a consumer of music, I have to think about my priorities about what I consider "good" music, and "bad" music. Among those criteria are NOT how good looking the performer is, or how many CD's they sold last year, or how many weeks their single stayed at #1.
True, people LIKE to have "stars", because they've been force-fed the romance of this "star" phenomenon since Elvis. The record industry created this environment, and this market, but we don't all have to be mindless little sheep for them.
Therefore, my musical tastes run incompatible with the business model of the music industry. Therefore, I require a promotional and distributional model that exists OUTSIDE of the mainstream music industry.
Unfortunately, Napster suffers from the same pop-culture overflow that hit radio does, because Napster doesn't have a lot of good music. Mostly pop crap. Oh well, there's still the few underground record stores left out there.
On the Skywalker Ranch where the Storm Trooper Posse says:
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Have you noticed that few, if any, Napster advocates are arguing that it should be legal to purchase a copy of Windows 2000 and share it with a community of Windows fans on the Internet via a peer-to-peer networking system? Why not? Is it because there are no fans or potential fnas of Windows 2000?
This is an apples and oranges argument. "Why not?" Because if you are already an owner of Windows 2000, then you already have a copy in data format. When I download an MP3 from Napster, it's because I don't want to take the time to rip and encode the tracks of my CDs--I have them in audio format, but not data format. Napster saves me the time. That's why, Mr. Petreley.
but corporations should be spending millions of dollars entertaining us for free... we are consumers. all of us consume.. if corporations want to keep us consuming there product they need to spend more to make more. understand?
We spend our lives learning, if you like learning life is hard. it can never be only the ups the downs will always co
A war the music industry started years ago? I don't remember any declaration of war. Look, if you don't like the terms that the Cd is sold under DON'T BUY IT. If you don't like the little legal disclaimer that says that your purchase price does NOT cover the right of making copies for distribution, then DON'T BUY IT. If the record companies really are doing something wrong, then why don't you form a company and show them how it's really done? Fact is: record companies COULD sell their Cds with the price of the right to copy and distribute the data included. But I'd bet they charge lots more for it than a regular Cd, because that's a very valuable right. That they don't choose to do this is their choice. Either buy it or reject it, but don't try to tell me that you're striking some moral blow against evil execs by stealing it. I don't know what the heck your holy "war" is all about, but I suspect it DOES just all boil down to: you're just as greedy as the record execs.
The GPL *requires* that you release any changes you've made to the "copyright-less" material you're working with (if it's based on the GPL, of course). In a world without copyright, I could take your work, modify it, and sell it, keep it to myself, or give it away for free, it's *my* choice. It doesn't quite translate to music cause you can't hand out binaries only.
The GPL is all about freedom for the user, and restrictions for the developper of related works. For all you out there who argue "There are some freedoms you shouldn't have", think about that the next time you download copyrigted MP3s from napster or wherever. If I respected the GPL license as much as you guys respected copyright for music, I'd probably end up in court with RMS.
You say that Jesus told us to share. Would you mind quoting scripture to support that? I'm not sure what you're basing this idea on.
You can trust me. I'm with the government.
As for used CDs, you have every right to go and buy a used CD. The RIAA doesn't make any money off that sale, because they already made their money of the original sale. Unlike downloading it from the web, the money has already been made, and the person loses the ablility to use the CD once he sells it.
By your argument I actually create value every time I download a song that's on a used CD that's for sale. The artist, the studio and the RIAA lose nothing (because they would have gained nothing from the sale), the used CD store loses nothing because he still has the CD, I have what I want at less than I might otherwise have paid, and the person who uploaded the song in the first place still has the CD, which he may or may not have bought from a used CD store.
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E_NOSIG
They fail to remember, to run a business, you have to make money to support the costs of the business.
This mentaility is similar to the way communism is. One of the reasons that communism did not work so well is there was no incentive (money) in doing certain things and no concideration for how to fund it or get people to do it. But let's not change this into a politcal debate either.
There are obviously several issues in the IP fight:
(1) The rights of a user to listen to content he buys and where he listens to it (mp3.com) (2) The rights of the user do with it after he purchases it (distributing it outside of the normal distributors - napster).
(3) The rights of the writer of the music (to make money from what he writes)
(4) The rights of the corporate funding the writer to insure they can pay for the costs - if they can't earn enough, then they don't resign the artist and the artist goes into obscurity and they sign another artist that gives the people (the consumer) what they want.
(5) The price placed on the music by the corporating is deemed too high. Price to produce, distribute, market vs money made from sales of all products (CDs, tapes, concert tickets, posters, buttons, etc). Because of the high return for the corporations, the consumer trade with no insentive to buy. Although prior to napster, mp3.com,etc...no one ever seem to make such a big deal on this before.
Sorry to say...humans are greedy. They need incentives to do things they wouldn't necessarily do, like give away something for free. Why do you think Heaven and Hell exist. And no let's not get into the "Existance of God" debate either. (And before anyone asks, I actually do believe in God and Heaven and Hell.)
BreezyGuy
Eric B
ebresie@gmail.com
You can't make people money by watching their TV channel... unless maybe you've got one of those Nielsen devices on your TV. The advertisers pay them in hopes of getting a return. There's no way to calculably measure how many people are influenced by a particular commercial.
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
It doesn't matter whether or not the RIAA is bad--and I'll be right there with you saying that they are. The problem is that whether you like it or not, the music shared on Napster is someone else's property. And taking that property makes you a thief.
If I write a piece of software that I want to sell commercially, I don't want the l33t skr1pt k1dd33z spreading it all over the net. I want my money's worth. Sound greedy, immoral, and ineffective? Think of it another way.
If I write a piece of software that I want to distribute under the GPL, I don't want Microsoft to take, modify, and resell it as proprietary software. I want the users to get their freedom.
If you're going to argue against rights to control your own media, then you're going to have to get rid of the good as well as the bad. You can't have it any other way.
Visit the
I realize there is a difference, but just the ideas involved make me think about why Napster is so different than CopyMax, Kinko's, Canon or Xerox...
To get back to Mr. Petreley's article - he is absolutely right, information does not want to be free, people want it. Just as there is a big upsurge in people that want music to be free. Music wants nothing - it is not a person, a thing - it is a concept, an idea, a form of expression, a form of entertainment. The people that make music, well, as I've attempted to say, its up to them whether or not they want their music to be free or not.
Personally, I don't care one way or the other. I don't create music to make a living, I do it because I enjoy it. Likewise, I am in no way in foavor of the RIAA's lawsuit - that's just old-school thinking... I hope that one day soon they'll see the light. Do I care for the buisness model operated by so much of the recording industry - no. The power should lie with the musicians. And on that note, the musicians need to take a real stand in the midst of all this.
Enough of my ranting - as unintelligable as it may be... I've got things to see, people to do.
One Can Never Own Enough Musical Instruments...
mp3.com was about indie music getting distribution via non-RIAA channels. RIAA sued, won, and pocketed several million. So if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
I think Nick's missed the real meaning of the (over-used) phrase.
"...wants to be free" doesn't mean that everyone has a right to copy any information. We still, now, mostly respect the idea of old-school copyrights with all their in-built fair-use provisions.
What it means is that it's very difficult to stop people copying information. To do it would require not only complicated and annoying copy-protection and licensing schemes that kill the traditional copyright-based rights we have, but also an insanely harsh set of laws against circumventing them. To effectively stop copying, you have to build what is more or less a fascist state. Most people consider this sort of effort to counter information being free far too much hard work, if not simply unnatural.
Of course this is exactly the action the MPAA, RIAA, and other DMCA proponents are working on right now. They'd happily screw up the world to protect their right to make a buck from someone else's work. Because the world owes them a living, you see.
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This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
I'm sure you have some very valid points here, but due to your refusal to format your post properly, I can't read it. Just looking at your solid cube of text makes my eyes hurt
In short, use whitespace, (make paragraphs, and double-space between them) and more people will read what you have to say.
I never said anyone should be compelled to release any information. You fail to see the distinction between compelling someone to release their secrets and allowing freedom of thought using information once it has reached your senses.
OK, so musicians who love their art will be compelled to produce as little as possible? Only the people creating art whose primary reason is money will lose their motivation. And good riddance to industrialized art. People selling material products will always be able to make money since people will always want to consume them. Demand isn't going to go away. So the supply will be there. And you're confused again if you think I'm talking about communism. I'm all in favor of paying someone good money to provide a good or service that I have neither the time or ability to create for myself. And I think those who offer the best implementations of a good or service for the best price should be rewarded with more business. This only stimulates higher productivity. Patents diminsh productivity because they create monopoloy power and allow a producer to be lazy since nobody can compete with them fairly. I'm arguing for capitalism pure and simple. Except IP shouldn't be capital because IP isn't necessary and it negatively impacts our individual quality of life and takes away our natural rights.
There are two questions here that are being treated as one. 1) Does and should the creation of creative (ie new and unique) material bestow upon it's creator some form of ownership? The answer to this question is NOT a force of nature; it is not a universal moral principal and it is not an absolute. It is what an individual society chooses it to be. In today's world, in our society, we have chosen to grant ownership of new creations to their creators for a period of time. Contrary to what many people here seem to think this is not an unreasonable decision. By granting an individual ownership our society is recognizing the individuals efforts, HOWEVER, we are not bestowing any value upon the individuals efforts. I can record and copyright the noise my dog makes when play with her toys but I find it highly unlikely that I will get any monetary reward. It is perfectly reasonable to think that creators do not deserve ownership their work but it must be recognized that this is an opinion and it's an opinion that is contrary with the current consensus of society (as defined by our laws). It must also be recognized that this opinion has absolutely nothing to do with technology. This question DOES NOT addresses the effects of technology on production and distribution of new creations. Technology has had a major impact on the cost structure of production and distribution but changes in costs should be related to changes in values and as observed earlier the bestowing of ownership does not address the issue of value. 2) What should a creator's reward for their work be? Assuming that a creator deserves to be rewarded for their work what should the reward be? I find it very notable that one comment referred for support to Marx because it is exactly Marx's line of reasoning that people seem to be taking. The disparagement of the current cost structure appears focused on the cost of production in relationship to return. One comment observed that the cost of producing an album was a few hundred thousand dollars and so the return should be limited to the same range and that once the cost had been recouped the album should be free. Sounds good if you want a socialist economy. The cost of a creation, such as an album, is and should be related to the value people place on it. This is not wrong. Record companies make a lot of money on albums like Britney Spear's but they also loose money on albums that don't sell well. Why? Because we, us, the average Joe, have chosen to pay money for the Britney Spears album but not for the ones that bombed, the ones we can't even name because they bombed so badly. And this is not a result of marketing. Marketing works because when someone goes to the store they by what they know. We have heard of Britney Spears because of marketing and that's why we buy her album. It is obvious but needs repeating that no one has ever walked into a store and asked for an Album they have never heard of. The decision complaint of many of the comments is that artists don't deserve to be rewarded much more then the production cost of their creations but it is a short sighted complaint. The choice in practice is between devising a system where every artist or creator gets rewarded the production costs of their creation, (a system that does not recognize a creations value), and a system that bestows rewards proportional to the value of (i.e. demand for) the creation. Again this is a judgment call but as far as I am concerned Capitalism easily beats Communism.
About the money. Sure money can be printed by the Federal Reserve, but it is still not a good analogue of information in my mind. It is not a pattern or idea that dwells in the mind. It is legal tender. Those who wish to keep information in captivity may wish to give information certain legal properties that resemble money, but I don't believe that's what information is about. At a fundamental level, money is a purely social-legal construct whereas information is not. Information is fundamentally just a pattern that can be represented by any number of schemes.
However..could you not, in turn, consider the music as a musicians private information and as such what he or she chooses to do with it is also a consideration?
If he choose to not want people to freely distrubute it, does his/her right to privacy apply here?
From this point of view, then the two issues are not so different.
But also from another stand point, celebraties and well not people, tend to be less able to have rights to privacy as us normal average every day Joes.
BreezyGuy
Eric B
ebresie@gmail.com
Your right, paying money doesn't mean you "deserve" to hear a song. It means you have the right to have a copy of the song. If you hear someone else's copy, or here it on the radio or whatever, that's fine. But that doesn't give you the right to "own" a copy of the song. Paying money gives you that right. If you download a copy of the song, you now "own" a copy of it, which means you should pay for that privilege (because it certainly isn't a right).
The point is that artists and record companies need to be reimbursed or else they won't be able to continue producing music. We shouldn't reimburse them simply because to do otherwise would be "wrong." We should reimburse them because we appreciate their efforts, we enjoy their songs, and we want them to produce more. If we do not enjoy the songs, if we wish they'd stop putting out such crap, then to reimburse them would be counter-productive. (Some might even say harmful.)
If you don't like what someone is doing, you shouldn't be purchasing their product, or using it. If you think it is worth taking the time to download, play, and take up your HS space, then obviously you enjoy it. There are many ways to sample songs before you buy them which have been around for quite a while, you should be using these to find out what you want to spend your money on. If you don't want to buy an album, you have no right to "own" a copy of the songs on that album (that's right, not even that one you really like). If you really like one songs, buy it as a single. But just because you don't want the whole CD doesn't make it right for you to steal even part of it. If I only want to plumber to come to my house and unscrew the cap to I can get into the pipes in my house, but he wants to charge me for the whole thing anyway, can I have him come over and unscrew the pipes and then kick him out whitout paying? Why should I pay for the whole thing when I only wanted part of it?
Speaking for myself, I believe we have the right (and sometimes obligation) to reimburse those who provide a valuable commodity, such as music or software; and we have the right to withhold reimbursement from those we choose.
So what your saying is that no one has a right to charge for what they do/make? Or more specifically, they have the right to charge for it, but you have the right to use their service/goods and not pay that charge (thus negating the purpose of charging in the first place). Do you have the right to charge your employer for your time (ie get paid)? Does your employer have the right to withhold paying you? What if they think you didn't work as hard as you should have this month, can they not pay you? What if they think you're charging too much for your time, can they just not pay you? If you use a good/service, you agree to pay for it. Not doing so is stealing (yes, I understand if it's a service nothing is lost, etc etc etc, it's all semantics).
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
The Napster controversy is about a bunch of kids who don't work and can't pay for stuff they want. So they think the world should give them everything they want for free just because they want it.
Napster will be shut down. People who trade copyrighted material will be arrested and will do jail time. Some people may go for years without getting busted, but once the Fed decides to stop waiting it will be a lottery based on who give out the most files. Whoever's server is visited the most will get busted.
Read the Constitution of The United States. Intellectual property is not an afterthought like 'free speech' or giving women the vote. Intellectual property rights are in the main body. These rights form the foundation for our society. So you better get used to paying for the stuff you use, cause the tolerance isn't going to last. Every country in the world, even communist and Socialist states, recognize intellectual property. Only high school kids don't because they have never recieved a decent education and they are not equipped to judge these weighty issues. They just don't want to work so they imagine they are having some kind of revolution when they steal using Napster or Wrapster or Gnutella.
But they are just theives. Nothing special. And many of them will eventually go to jail.
I'll concede that Thomas Jefferson has already made this argument for me so I'll let him do the talking:
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
- Thomas Jefferson
Free Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
And yes, you are right, we don't live in Utopia. We have and will continue to further strip people of their rights. Given the opportunity to seize power like this, it is the natural thing for corporations to do! I don't blame them. However, we don't have to give corporations and business entities everything they want! If nobody objects, we will just keep losing more and more rights ad infinitum until we, and every scrap of our cultures, are property of some corporation!
The overlap between the group that gets it for free online and the group that pays is very small. You may be in both groups, the majority of people is not. Fortunately the "get it online for free"-group is still small compared to the group that buys stuff the traditional way, however that is bound to change.
Information only exists in terms of people.
The distance of the earth to the Sun is empirical. But its meaningless AND unknown without human interpretation.
Information only exists insofar as we can interpret it.
I do agree that making better information is the anser to stealing it.
But information rights should not be measured as property rights.
If you take my house i'm homeless.
If you copy my cd collection i still have it.
And the artist who amde it will always be the artist who made it.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Now, if you try to lie about the origin of the money in your hand - that is, if you try to convince me that it came from the Federal Reserve - or if you try to tell me that you wrote the novel (plagiarism) - then that's immoral.
Got a girlfriend?
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I shouldn't be allowed to produce any technology that might possibly allow someone to make a copy of that information.....
;)
Not a problem.... create away...
I'll just go after the end users....
people want the things that they want to be free.
So? Everyone (even my .sig) knows that, they just won't acknowledge it.
Here's an idea... instead of free music, let's make a free code system. Having copies of code hosted all over the Net means that none is lost if SourceForge is destroyed in an earthquake or something. Anyone have a domain to throw at it? OpenNap has an GPL'ed Napster server and also conveniently maintains a list of clients on their page....
<<< CmdrTHAC0 >>>
__CmdrTHAC0__
In Soviet Russia, Spanish Inquisition doesn't expect YOU!!
Information wants a new car and a townhouse with a full larder. But Information doesn't want to work. Information doesn't want to be responsible for itself. Information wants the world to pay for everything so it will never have to grow up and get a job to support itself. But Information is dreaming. Even socialist states recognize intellectual property.
The people who provide the most downloads will go to jail. The Fed is a little slow to get started some times but look out once they get started.
And there is plenty of space in jail for every one! We can always build more!. Just because tens of millions of people do some thing doesn't mean it is right or that the Fed will turn a blind eye to it. Just look at marijuana users. There are easily 80 million of them in the US. But that doesn't stop them from going to jail. Potheads don't hurt any one. It is a victimless crime. On the other hand, Napster steals revenue from artists and industry.
Yeah, these kids can go to jail too!
And DNA is in no way guarded. The natural mechanisms that are associated with DNA have evolve to promote as wide of a dissemination of genes as possible. This is precisely why DNA containing organisms are so widespread, and why they all share a great deal of common code. Viruses copy and spread genes among prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Plasmids are exchanged among bacteria. Under certain conditions, the DNA can simply go naked and spread from one organism to another. You could say it "wants" to be free, if you don't mind the anthropomorphism. If you object to that phrase, you would have to at least agree that DNA tends copy and spread among organisms through a variety of mechanisms. This is one reason why the genetically engineered crops are so frought with potential problems for both the manufacturers and the public at large.
And you've got it backwards with music too. Do you think that the mass produced music out there these days - Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, etc. is quality music written by artists who are passionate about their art? Or do you think it is "engineered" by the labels to meet certain specs that they know will lead to sales. Most of the crap on the airwaves these days is devoid of artistic merit, IMHO. Of course art is subjective, so I can't back that up. I believe that if money were removed from the music, we would lose all the crappy corporate music and would be left only with music made by true artists who are making music for the right reasons. And they will still be compensated well with live shows as it has always been. If you would like some links to some fine quality music created for free let me know and I'll post some links.
Consider the futility of stopping the Potheads. You can't stop them, but many of them do jail time. And now you can too!
Napster *was* designed with the *supposed* purpose of allowing small artists to get their music out to the world. However, the boys at Napster were taking into account that mp3s were bigger than Elvis, the Easter Bunny, and even Santa Claus. By only allowing the sharing of the mp3 format, they basically stuck themselves into the niche of pirates. I would be willing to bet that 95% (if not more) of the mp3s files in existence are illegal copies of songs from major copyrighted artists. The idea behind mp3 compression is great. It is the real world usage that has made it the shady activity it is today. If I take albums that *I* own on CD (or tape or vinyl for that matter) and convert them to mp3s only for my own enjoyment, then I am still within the legal right. If I give them to my friend, then it is illegal. The concept of a peer-to-peer mp3 sharing system is pretty shady IMHO. It pretty much guarantees abuse and illicit activity.
On to the warez scene... Warez traders and mp3 traders generally have the same argument. If company X didn't charge so damn much for it, I would be able to buy a copy. I call you on this one. Bull-poop. If they charged only a dollar for Adobe Photoshop 5.5, you *still* would rip it and distribute it illegally. The kick is not getting something for free... It is getting something for free that *you aren't supposed to*. Otherwise, every little warez kiddie and mp3 freak would be jumping on the linux bandwagon wholeheartedly.
I totally agree with the idea of freeing information, but information is *not* products. Yes, give out all the information you can on MS APIs and system calls. That still doesn't make Windows a free product. You are paying for a completed work. You are paying for the thousands of man-hours of development. There are free alternatives within the law. I run linux, not because it is free. I run linux because I like it. I own a copy of Windows. It came with my PC. I paid my Microsoft tax. A completed product is where companies (including record labels and software companies) make their money. Who are we hurting but ourselves when we pirate software or music?
Unfortunately, there is a thrill in being outside the law. I don't agree with Napster. I don't agree with warez. These things aren't going to go away just because I do no like them. There are too many people who get their kicks from doing illegal activities online to ever have these things completely go away. So they close down napster... How many replacements do you think we'll see?
To anyone I may have offended, tough. Grow up. Breaking the law is still breaking the law, no matter how you try to justify it.
wolf31o2 Developer, Gentoo Linux Games Team
If people care so little about Brittany that they won't pay to support her, well, I guess that means she won't be able to pay her bills. I believe that's called capitalism. Whether or not they get to listen to her music is incidental to the matter. If the only way you can get people to pay you is to hold a figurative gun to their head, what a sad state of affairs it is for you.
Try that the next time the plumber comes to your house. You don't care about him, so after he gets done fixing whatever, tell him to leave and that your not going to pay him. You won't pay to support him, because you don't care enough about him. For some reason I don't think that that will fly. If you use someone's service or goods (and yes, listening to music can be considered using a service or good, it is the artist's "product" you are using) you have to pay for it. There is no clause about "If you don't feel like paying for it, or think it's too expensive (even though you agreed to the price up front) then you don't have to pay". Can your employer keep you working there and just not pay you because they don't care enough to pay to support you? No, they have to pay you for all the time you worked there.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
true
Discussion Never Hurt Anyone.
Libertarians
The big fallacy I see in this case is the idea that if Napster is convicted then peer to peer will be made illegal.
Say people start stealing fish. Suddenly, one day it occurs to them that using a bucket to steal the fish is much more efficient. So everone who steals fish starts using buckets. Does this mean buckets must then be made illegal? No, not necessarily. No change is required; It is already illegal to steal fish. You don't need to specify how the fish are stolen.
And you cannot discount all the hype on Napsters web site telling everyone they are above the law and esentially telling users to break the law. The web pages at Napster have been full of this kind of rhetoric. So proving intent to subvert existing law is easy.
That is accurate.
I never said there was a problem with hoarding your information or trying to keep personal secrets. What I said was that you are not justified in making money on the basis of preventing other people from acting on information, which is what IP currently allows.
But lies are information, and it is clear that you do see limits on what sort of information may be propagated, and how they may be propogated.
Of course you should have recourse in the event of slander or character assasination. And of course it is unwise to shout fire in a theatre. And if your wife asks you if that dress makes her look fat, it is wise not to say something that sounds equivocal. Basic social etiquette. But these things have no bearing on the issue of whether ideas and patterns can be owned and whether the current IP laws really benefit "we the people".
That's because as an information producer, if I am unable to control in any way when (not "if") information I produce will be shared, then I am unable to control any sort of income which may be generated by controlling how that information gets spread.
This is not inconsistent at all. If I have access to the information and can act on it intellegently to solve my problem, then I don't need to pay you to help me - I am self sufficient. You propose that I stunt my self determination and self sufficiency by trying to tell me what I can and cannot do with information. What you fail to realize is that information alone is rarely enough anyway - your services will still be in demand, not for some information that escaped your control in the past, but for your problem solving skills. You will get paid to generate new specific information tailored to somebody's specific problem. Of course, once you solved their problem you no longer have control over that particular information, but you will be needed again when another problem crops up that requires analytical skills. It's a bit naive to think you should just stop by your client's place and drop off some generic information and be done!
Besides, why should attempting to make some money off the art you produce be a bad thing, or even degrade the quality of the art produced?
Michelangelo was a skilled artist for reasons that have nothing to do with money. Of course he should be paid to paint the Sistene Chapel - a task that the custodians were neither able nor willing to do for themselves through any other means at their disposal. Popular music is now an sophisticated industry. Music is produced and promoted with the primary goal of selling CD's, not producing great art. Of course there are exceptions, and you may not believe this at all. I personally would not miss any of the crappy music that would disappear if the labels all went out of business.
On the other hand, it's pretty clear that this notion of "high fidelity" meme sharing, while in and of itself not inherently bad, does not justify posting Metallica songs on Napster. That's because you're not sharing your experiences that you may had when listening to Metallica (be it revulsion or just annoyance)--you're just publishing Metallica songs without authorization.
Well, I've never published anything on Napster, and I don't care for Metallica, but I still don't agree with your assertion. You are sharing your experience. Do you not show pictures or slides of your skiing trip to share the experience. Videotapes of your wedding that your sick mother missed? Recordings of sounds you hear are no different. They are clearly a way to share an experience. That is self evident.
These (and other) apriori assumptions are the garbage in--it appears you do not prove these assertions, only make them.
What you apparently fail to understand is that you cannot prove any statements you or anyone else makes about your natural rights. I happen to believe that the notion of IP is garbage. Please prove to me that you have a natural right to own patterns or ideas. You say you can't? Well I guess everything you've said is just GIGO then!
My beliefs are more accurately stated:
Now of course I cannot prove these assumptions. They are simply part of my moral belief that people should be controlled and restricted as little as possible. You can't just call them unproven garbage when your moral beliefs have no more proof than mine.
I have never been convinced that it makes sense to give away this right. I do not believe that good music, art, software, food, other luxeries of life, or the ability to make a living depend on curbing that right. You apparently believe that they do.
What I said was that you are not justified in making money on the basis of preventing other people from acting on information, which is what IP currently allows.
On this I disagree (obviously), as I believe that to some extent I should be able to control the information I produce. More below.
You propose that I stunt my self determination and self sufficiency by trying to tell me what I can and cannot do with information.
Because it stunts my self-determination and self-sufficiency by preventing me from making an earning as an information provider.
It is a fundamental paradox of philosophy that "freedom" sometimes requires restriction in order to truely be free. For example, if you wish to be thin, you cannot eat everything in site. If you wish to be an accomplish pianist, you must devote yourself to the piano which means giving up other freedoms you may have otherwise enjoyed.
This extends to relationships and interactions as well: if you are dating one person, that person may require you to not date another or else the first will leave you. And if you wish to learn something from me, I may require you to compensate me so that I may be free to continue to teach, rather than have to give up teaching in order to put food on my table.
Actually, I do not propose to stunt your self-determination and self-evolution. I do propose that I may wish to stunt these things if (a) your self-determination and self-evolution requires something from me, and (b) my giving these things without compensation will stunt my self-determination and self-evolution. That a situation may arise that my self-evolution and self-determination as an information provider may be stunted is part of this philosophical paradox: I need to eat, I need to put food on the table, and the time it takes for me to produce information is time that I (in your world) cannot use to put food on my table.
What you fail to realize is that information alone is rarely enough anyway - your services will still be in demand, not for some information that escaped your control in the past, but for your problem solving skills.
Oh, I realize this well enough--as a freelance software developer, I get paid to produce information (in the form of custom software) on demand. And I do produce free software--open source modules which I give away because I like working on those modules.
Yet--to specify that any program I sell in the future I cannot necessarly control the sale of that software, or guarentee income from that sale--that takes away one of my rights as an information producer. To me, if we should take away that right, and to what degree we should take away that right: that's the debate. I have no problems with giving up some of my rights as an information producer. But your solution seems to me to be too draconian.
Music is produced and promoted with the primary goal of selling CD's, not producing great art. Of course there are exceptions, and you may not believe this at all. I personally would not miss any of the crappy music that would disappear if the labels all went out of business.
I wouldn't miss the crappy music either, but taking away the artists rights to make money off their own music doesn't strike me as a good way to have great music. Part of the reason why we have crappy music is because the RIAA strips artists of their rights for promises of large payouts which never happen--and only the intelligent who figure out ways to cut corners in the production process survive. It's too draconian to assume that these artists will be better off if we do an "RIAA" on them and take away their right to sell their own music.
Well, I've never published anything on Napster, and I don't care for Metallica, but I still don't agree with your assertion. You are sharing your experience. Do you not show pictures or slides of your skiing trip to share the experience. Videotapes of your wedding that your sick mother missed? Recordings of sounds you hear are no different. They are clearly a way to share an experience. That is self evident.
Yeah, but there is a far cry from having a bunch of friends over and sharing an evening with them while I show slides or play music, and uploading those pictures or that music to Gnuster or Napster.
There is no experience sharing because the publishing process is anonymous. There is no commentary. There is no face-to-face enjoyment of the process, or the periodic stopping of the music to bring a couple more beers. Instead, your pictures or the music you uploaded to napster just shows up as another item in a long list of "hits" on a search engine, or appears as a sliding bar showing the number of bytes downloaded.
This isn't sharing an experience by any stretch of the imagination.
What you apparently fail to understand is that you cannot prove any statements you or anyone else makes about your natural rights.
I personally believe there are no "natural rights"--only those rights we as a civilized society create for ourselves to govern our own behavior.
But "natural rights?" Nature won't sentence me to serve time in jail if I steal your car or murder your dog or spray paint graffiti on your house. Nature doesn't give a damn if I take a large hacksaw to your head and cut your brains out. Only you, and the people around you, care. And I fully expect if I were to attempt to do these things I would be stopped (and rightfully so) by the people around you--not by a passing grizzly bear or a couple of Canadian ducks that happen to observe my crimes.
Because the only rights we have are the rights we grant each other, the only rights which are "inalienable" are those rights we believe God has granted us.
By the way, this is what our founding fathers believed when they created the United States on the "social compact" form of goverment. The "rights" we enjoy are actually restrictions on our freedoms which we implicitly agree to in order to enjoy the fruits of a civilized society. And most of these restrictions are simple, logical, and "obviously necessary"--such as restrictions on my ability to steal material posessions that you may own, or restrictions on my ability to cause you harm which prevent you from going about your life.
Other restrictions, on the other hand, are more balancing acts: our founding fathers believed in a limited from of Intellectual Property as was necessary only to provide information produces an opportunity to be reasonably compensated for their time and effort, yet provide for that same information to fall within the public domain after a reasonable period of time. That's because our founding fathers believed (as I do) that information producers should be able to benefit from their work--yet not at the cost of preventing others from building off their work, or learning what they can from that work.
Please prove to me that you have a natural right to own patterns or ideas. You say you can't?
Oh, but I can--at least to within a definition of "rights" which stem from a common agreement between individuals to act in a civilized manner. Of course, as there are no "natural rights" beyond what human beings agree to, I assume apriori that people who agree to a social compact wish to behave in a "reasonable" manner--which is not a given. (For example, slavery is not reasonable, but built into our constitution.)
The proof goes something like this:
1) It takes time and effort to produce information.
2) That time and effort, for really good information, is sufficient to prevent an information producer from engaging in other activities which would put food on his/her table.
3) In order to assure that information producers produce information, it is reasonable that they be compensated. Of course this assumes we wish information producers to produce information--and so this suggests we need to "value" that information in such a way as to provide incentives (or not) on information which we as a society may deem as valuable (or not).
That is, I assume we want the information. And I assume we want the information enough to be willing as individuals in a society to pay for that information.
4) In order to be compensated, an information provider needs to be able to control the spread of that information in a "reasonable manner" so that when information goes out, payment comes back.
In this case, "ownership" is not (nor has it ever been) ownership of an "idea" in the traditional sense that I can own a shoe or a baseball. In this case, "ownership" is an abstraction whose sole purpose is to provide a way for information producers to be compensated for their time, expense, and efforts in producing that information, in direct proportion to the value we as a society may place on that information.
I have never been convinced that it makes sense to give away this right. I do not believe that good music, art, software, food, other luxeries of life, or the ability to make a living depend on curbing that right. You apparently believe that they do.
But here's the thing. No-one will ever stop you (at least now, dunno in the future--but if they do, I'll fight it as hard as I can) from inviting a bunch of people over and performing a Metallica CD for them while commenting on how lousy a musician Lars is.
You are not prevented from telling stories, sharing your experiences, showing slide shows, playing music, or otherwise interacting with other people on a one-on-one basis. This is the core of "high fidelity" meme sharing, anyways--personal, one-on-one interaction, or interaction with a small group.
But there is a far cry between this and publishing. Once you start publishing, the question arises: are you publishing your own contributions? Or are you repackaging someone else's stuff? The current law permits you to publish a review, and even exerpt portions of that work for the purposes of review--that is, for the purposes of sharing your experiences with regards to that work to another.
What I am suggesting is that simply taking someone else's work and repackaging it is not sharing an experience with "high fidelity." It's not sharing an experience at all. And as such, software like Napster doesn't even come within a country mile of this "high fidelity experience sharing" which you describe.
You can't just call them unproven garbage when your moral beliefs have no more proof than mine.
My "moral" evidence (which I will gladly omit the term "moral" as irrelevant in the future) relies on one simple and unquestionable fact:
It takes time and effort to produce information.
So the question is, should we expect information producers to produce their information for free, so that you may be free to republish their hard work without compensating them, in the name of "high fidelity experience sharing?"
I think it's wrong to take food off someone's table if (a) they worked hard on something that (b) has value to society to a degree that members of that society would pay for that work if they had to. And don't even talk to me about voluntary payments--only the most naive fool would believe that a system of voluntary payments would ever work to the same degree if only because most proposed systems of voluntary payments have no regulatory checks to assure that payments are made. (And when we have to provide regulatory checks to assure that a "voluntary" payment is made, it's no longer voluntary, anyways.)
So if society values it enough to send a check if they have to, and if it takes time and effort to produce information, it strikes me as wrong to prevent an information produce from being compensated. Period.
That's an interesting question. I would have no problem with that as long as I'm in control of my personal body. If I'm forced into the machine against my will, then it's immoral. If an existing copy of myself is copied with the machine then I could care less.
The 9th Circuit took the same view in Sony, adopting a "primary purpose" test. The Supes shot that down, and stated that to be free from liability for contribution, all that is necessary is that the process merely be capable of substantial noninfringing use. If Napster can be used lawfully, then unlawful use of Napster by others is irrelevant to NAPSTER's liability.
Clearly, Napster can be used lawfully. I can sell Shelly a pen, hoping and wishing and advising Shelly to go ahead an infringe your book, and still not be liable for infringement. Your remedy is against Shelly, if she does, and not me.
That's just the way it is. Sue Shelly and leave the pen manufacturers out of it.
Yeah, you heard me.
-in a fast german car im amazed that i survived... an airbag saved my life!-
I think that we have to prepare for two futures on the freedom of information. "Tools," such as general-purpose software, will probably become free as in speech. The free software movement and the Open Source movement are making such progress in this that a lot of it will be free as in beer, too. On the other hand "Content," such as movies, music, and books, will use technology and law to become more tightly controlled than now. The only way I can see of countering that is in the enthusiastic development and distribution of "rogue content" -- made to be freely shared. (More likely beer than speech for artistic works; more likely speech than beer for reference works).
The control of tools was pried out of the hands of big software companies by people who created new software and gave it away. Music may still retain some freedom thanks to legitimately free MP3s. Movies are a lost cause, IMHO. They're generally too expensive to create for free (beer) sharing, and the industry won't allow free (speech) use, if it can help it.
-Gareth
He's obviously not serious. If he were as broke as he lets on, he wouldn't have the kind of fast internet connection he's talking about, or a cd burner. Unless he's doing this at work, but if that's how he spends his work day, he's not earning his $1/hr (as opposed to me, who is at work posting this).
Care about freedom?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Another stimulating thought. But I don't think that the conclusion logically follows from the fact that information can be traded for money or food. If the cost of information drops to neglible levels, people will still trade things for other things. Goods & services for goods and services. And they will still sell information in the form of expertise.
There will always be payment waiting for the person who can take the freely available information and apply it intelligently to the solution of somebody's specific problem. Look at the ars digita company set up by Phil Greenspun. They give away their code, yet they are rolling in dough because they have the brains to solve specific problems. So Phil and friends are having no problems paying their gas or grocery bills.
You asked about musicians. The vast majority of career musicians make all (or nearly all) their money from live performances. This has not changed since the times when it wasn't even possible to record and distribute music. Significant royalities are rarely seem by the musician who doesn't break platinum, and even then they are often not seen. So there will be little, if any, negative impact on the musician's bottom line. And I believe that the upside for musicians is significantly greater than any downside.
Sure they can- you're missing the entire point with music.
I wasn't talking about music. My post was a response to this statement,
The central problem here, which this article makes perfectly clear, is that someone who owns and creates something has every right to sell it under any terms they want.
which is very broad statement, ie. it doens't seem to be just about music, and being broad, I gave the South Africa/AIDS example --- not because the RSA/AIDS case was the same as music -- it plainly isn't, and I said so,
Anyway, this example is some way from music
but because I wanted to reply to that general statement about the rights of the owner. I wanted to say that the attitude of just "looking after" the owner,
don't scale too well.
to bigger situations, like RSA/AIDS. So I agree with you about not comparing it to music. I'm not. It seems fair to me that the artist have means by which he/she is rewarded. But I disagree with you on,
South Africa is welcome to develop their own AIDS drugs without violating patent laws in the least.
I mostly disagree, because it's a limited viewpoint. Because a higher and more all-inclusive viewpoint says that when humanity has the means, it should use the means to improve/save the lives of millions. The money/investment viewpoint is by no means without merit. It has value, and much material progress has been made with that view. But the "One World" viewpoint is simply a higher and more integral viewpoint.
The nazis loved their fatherland, and said to hell with everyone else who is outside the borders of the fatherland-race. They loved and protected their own race only. It is plainly a higher viewpoint that says we should love and protect all races. Yes, the mega-corp should care and protect itself, making sure it survives and prospers. But at some point the higher view tries to integrate this with the survival and health of everybody. At the moment people are saying, "yes, on the planet we have the technology that can help, but South Africa will just have to wait until it can develop its own tech, however long that takes..."
ie.South Africa is welcome to develop their own AIDS drugs without violating patent laws in the least.
And as long as people come from this limited view point, no political system is ever going to solve these problems. It was Einstein who said something about people suffering from an "optical delusion of consciousness" that limits us to caring for only those few closest to us, and that our task should be to "widen our circle of compassion".
Yes Exactly. I'm not even in a position to burn CD's, Nor If I ever get the chance to get Win2000 will I ever risk Microsofts' Lawyers' wrath. The Answer here Is obvious, I'm not sure where this dude is working for $1 an hour, that won't keep you alive in Aus. And our Dollars are gonna be worth less than beans soon. What IS something Worth? You Ever see a EULA on a Car? With "When you open this door, you agree to be Bill Gates' towel boy? Why? A car is kindof sold for cost + Profit. You make 300+ a day, in big factory, cheap ass labour, time and motion etc, you get rich and etc. Imagine some Inventive Adaptive, Fitter + turner. He Buys 1 Car. He takes it apart. ie Reverse Engineers it. He then arduously copies each part and assembles the 'Copy of Car ' What is it worth? He'd probably have to charge more than GM or Toyota or whatever, "economies of scale". You don't see people doing this much, but they do. I believe in the U.S.A. there are a number of places that supply 'pieces' of Harley Davidson Motorcycles, that H.D. no longer makes. Hardly many cries of "Piracy!" unless the makers fraudulently claim to be 'Hardly Driveable'. Now Yake your MP3 CD's: Recordable CD : price about $1 depending on your country [ thats 50 Cents to you 'yankees' ] Labour Cost: Well the guy above works for $1 an hour. "Plant Cost" & etc negligible. Shipping: paid By End Consumer Marketing: Negligible suckers Pay to use Internet. Hire of 'Top Class Musicians' subcontracting to provide 45 mins of 'Good Music' Let's be real Generous and offer them $1,000,000 Profit Demanded For Me: gee { it'd be good to see a $100 note again } but say $1,000,000 Payments to artistes and Me made in installments. So You can see: CD's with Music on em should be less than $5 { based on 1,000,000 sales ) But Here they are $30 + Why then do people burn their own CD's, at possibly crappier sound levels? Cost of own Effort? &etc.? Because they bloody well can! Of course the Big businesses would set price of Blank CDs at $30 ---------- Then you have outrageous Software Prices. Dare GM to sell you a car, that 'still has some bugs, it's in development....' and still charge the price for a Rolls Royce.......... Basic Packages Everyone needs to run a Computer cost around $1000 these days MS ME - latest Interface to DOS about $350 MS 2000 Server $1579 MS Visual Basic $450 I can't find a local Price on MS Windows 2000 except as an Upgrade, that's a Limited 'non-professional version' And MS windows 2000 doesn't really even do anything, it's just a supposed Operating System.. No Wonder there are people out there who 'pirate' this stuff....... AS for the stupid Quote "Information doesn't want to be free' Imformation is non-volitional -- anyone who's seen Sesame Street Knows: "A rock is not alive!" Too many people anthropomorphise everything these days.
Your, and a lot of others argument, and the argument of the writer of the original article, is based on the asumption that intelectual property exists, and is the same as property. If you accept that, you are clearly right.
The problem is: Do we define information as a property, and do we define the right to control the information you have created,once it has left your head, as a basic human right? The problem is not easy: The UN human rights list does not include any such right, neither does the US constitution, as far as I know...
---
This message was created while listening to totally RIAA-free music distributed by its author in mp3-format.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Does war need to be declared before it is war? I would call it a war if two groups started fighting.
Record companies are no longer needed. It's time for them to go.
- blight
You've entirely missed the point. The Africans are free to develop their own chemical compounds, and to do with them as they please. But the Western companies have invested hugely in development of their products, and the Africans have no right to steal the result of all that hard work.
If the world doesn't work like that, then the West will simply stop carrying the rest of the world on the shoulders of it's technological and commercial prowess. It will simply become economically impossible. Then, freed from our "cultural imperialism" and "capitalist exploitation", the Third World will be free to revert to chaos and anarchy.
Likewise, if people want music to be free, they should create free music and distribute it. We all have the right and opportunity to create new ways of doing things. Linux demonstrates that such efforts can be highly successful. But we do not have a right to subvert existing systems in the name of free speech just because we have the technology to do so.
Interesting idea: subverting the system.
In fact, that idea could be paraphrased "Systems want to be in control."
The problem is, we confuse systems (as they exist today) with meta-systems that represent different people's actual requirements.
For example, the music meta-system (the set of requirements that give rise to existing and future systems) is:
- The artist produces the work she wants people to enjoy
- People find out about the work
- People obtain the work
- People enjoy the work
- The artist is compensated for her effort and enabled and encouraged to repeat the loop
The real-world music system is more like:- The artist produces the work she wants people to enjoy
- The label massages the work, removing objectionable lyrics for the Wal-Mart version, substituting or rejecting songs, arranging, remixing, etc.
- The label generates buzz over radio, MTV, and other media, spending money to do so (legally and otherwise). The channels it uses are mostly mass-market, and the people who find out about it are mostly people with mass-market tastes.
- The label spends money to press physical copies of the work and ships them to distributors, who in turn ship the copies through various middlemen and transportation systems to stores
- People get in their cars and drive to the stores
- People find one of the copies of the work, stand in line, present identification, pay for it, and carry it home
- People find that the songs that didn't get played on the radio and MTV suck
- The label gets rich and the artist gets screwed
Do you see how far from the meta-system this (all too often realistic portrayal of the) real-world system is? A system this lousy doesn't need to be subverted. It's being discarded -- by consumers now, and eventually by labels -- because it doesn't meet requirements.Hmmmmm. A design is being replaced because it doesn't meet requirements. Sound familiar?
The Free music effort (note the cap) should be all about not just subverting, but flat out destroying the current system, and the best thing about it is that it doesn't take bombs or slogans. All it takes is a system that meets the design requirements better.
Napster and gnutella also fail to meet requirements. Finding out about a work is harder in that system than in the existing system -- in fact, the Napster system would collapse if the traditional "music industry" system collapsed. Just try to find something you like at mp3.com from an artist you've never heard of.
And, of course, the Napster system fails to compensate the artist. What's important to the labels is that it also fails to compensate the labels, but that shouldn't be what's important to us. The key to the Free music effort is not in repeating the idiocy of the current system. Free (capital F) music shouldn't be free. That just flat doesn't meet requirements.
What we should be thinking about is designing a system that meets the requirements. All the requirements. Do that, and have enough savvy to stay out of the way of the dinosaur's death struggles, and you'll really have something that's worth people's efforts.
But you do have some interesting thoughts.
Do you agree or disagree with the notion that people should also be free to interact with others as they so choose?...etc..nondisclosure contracts...etc...
If A and B wish to keep a mutual secret then that is fine with me. I never said people should be compelled to tell me everything they know. But if information enters my mind in the absence of my explicit acceptance of a contract, then I am not bound.
I'm glad you put in the phrase "to me, at least", as it is not self-evident to me that all information must be shared without restriction.
Again you are confusing "must be shared" with "can be shared". Different things entirely.
Otherwise, I may just post that video of you, naked, humping a mule with a naked midget girl on it's back to your church group. Nevermind the fact it's a fake.
And again, the fact that lies are immoral has no bearing on this topic. Whether or not IP is allowed to exist, lies will still be immoral.
if you take away my right to make money on that information, then I may not be as motivated to produce that information.
And again, you're assuming that you have a right to make money on that information. Sorry, but in my book you don't have a right to make money by hoarding information. You have a right to make money by providing a good or service that I cannot or do not have time to provide for myself. If you aren't motivated to provide a good or service that is in demand, then you lose. Somebody else will provide it and get the $$$. And if you are producing art, then I don't want to see your benjamin-motivated art anyway. I want to see art created by people doing it because they are compelled to by something in their soul.
There is a big difference between saying to a friend "wow, I really heard this really kick ass song from Metallica--you've really got to get their latest CD!" and posting a Metallica song on Napster.
The difference is in the degree of fidelity. I could hum the tune. Or I could play and sing it with my guitar. Or I could record a rendition of it. Or, if my friend reads minds, I could replay it with high fidelity in my mind. Or in the year 2030, we'll just hook up our brains with our USB 16.0 ports and share. Or I could play a tape I made off the radio. Or an mp3 from napster. Or a tape I made at a concert. All are just different ways of representing the information with varying degrees of fidelity. They are all just ways of sharing an experience.
I'm sorry for you if you've bought into the corporate notion that sharing experiences in high fidelity is immoral.
this is all true, but what about emusic.com? they sell mp3s as you propose record companies should do, and for a lower price than that of a cd. yet i know no one who is an emusic patron. perhaps the price is still too high even there (more like $7 for a CD rather than $15 or more i believe and you can get individual singles just like on napster for cheaper) but the fact remains: why would anyone choose to pay for something that is attainable with the same ammount of effort for free?
But, the lawyers are trying... trying their sweet little hearts out. But we can all see where this is going: there are laws upon laws upon laws being drafted and approved and upheld and ignored,etcetc. Does this remind anyone of spaghetti code? Thought so
So... do we continue to patch the spaghetti code, or do we convince the lawyers that their design is incorrect?
It's certainly an interesting analogy comparing the distribution of software and music. The only problem here is that the author has completely neglected a key step that allowed something like a Linux to grow: a distribution channel. Could Linux have become the force that it is in the computer world without being able to bypass the old world retailers only interested in stocking Microsoft and Apple?
If the RIAA has power, it's not due to their legal staff. It's due to their ability to control all the distribution, and even advertising channels to the public. What the hell good is free music if it has no means of being heard due to a 50 year lock on all channels of distribution? To move further along the author's analogy, what the hell good is a free operating system if it's nearly impossible to get?
Not to leave out Napster in my rant here. Ever try going and hunting down some of Napster's featured new artists? What a freaking joke! I tried going through their so-so web site, found a couple of groups that sounded interesting based on their description, then as I'm sure you've already guessed I came up empty. The free music that Napster is supposed to eventually channel for just didn't exist. So much for this being the distribution model that can work around the locks of the RIAA.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Corporations and the people that run it pay taxes too...they are entitled to that info also..and what they choose to do with is how they make money...As much as we hate M$...they take a technology and run with it to make you have to have it and/or want it.
Information DOES want to be free - what you do with the information is totally your business.
If it's your information. When you purchase a CD or movie...the CD becomes yours...I don't know if I would necessarily say the content becomes yours.
I don't see how analyzing and re-engineering a process should be illegal - how anyone figured that DeCSS, which basically manipulates DVDs which are in YOUR POSSESSION, is illegal.
You own the DVD yes, but not the content, you can play it on recognized DVD players that lawfully decrypt things and play it. The issue, is that DeCSS "unlawfully" (right or wrong) circumvents legal encryption which is there to avoid unauthorized playing and (as the corporations love to say) "duplication" of the content. The breaking of the DVD encryption scheme is the issue. I think it is a protection through obuscation thing. Although an argument could be made, that to make better protections, you have to be able to identify the weaknesses.
I wonder - does this joker think that VCR's should be illegal because you can copy tapes from Blockbuster? How about cassette decks and the radio?
It is not an issue, because the (1) the duplicates degrade and are not as good as the original (2) there is nothing preventing playing (or duplication) on unauthorized viewers and so does not fall under the current laws in question. DVD duplicates would be almost identical to the originals, which is seen as a threat to the Movie makers.
This is a TERRIBLE thing to be coming from someone who's supposedly a computer person. This is lawyer reasoning.
Guess what...we unfortunately have to think the way the lawyers do, because if we don't they will run all over you. Adapt, think it through, and thrive.
I think one of the issues is no one wants to pay the high prices of certain things and so they find another way of doing it. I wish the same could be said about lawyers and the fees they charge.
Napster should be the world's pre-eminate collaboration tool for musicians.
Your right as a tool for distribution its good...but the musicians still don't make any money off of it. How do they put food on their table if no money is made for them.
People who can't afford to distribute their music any other way.
The authors of the music can't afford to distrubute their music any other way.
So instead, people pirate music with it.
The listeners pirate music instead.
That's not the fault of Napster - what people choose to do with the technologies they're presented is their own business.
We're setting very dangerous precedent -
I agree, it does set a bad precedent.
next, we'll have to toss our VCR's, cassette decks, you'll need a special license to own a port scanner, etc.
See the argument above on the VCRs and etc.
Public ports are necessary, otherwise, you would have no way of know you can connect.
Network traffic is another issue, but hopefully encrypted traffic would make network traffic privacy issue a moot issue...
I don't see how this country is all NRA happy, but we're having our information rights stripped from us by the second, and nobody says anything.
Your right...our rights are slowly being stripped away. But the issues of the problem have to be identified. And some of the issues are changing over time.
I think the NRA doesn't want what happened in Germany prior to WWII to occur. I know we probably won't have that happen here as apparent, but if something should occur...we have to be able to overcome a repressive government. And if the government has big guns...its kind of hard to overcome it, if you don't have as good of a gun.
What we choose to do with those rights (be they pop some gang banger or kill a robber) is up to us.
And what is a right and what is a privledge have to also be recognized.
BreezyGuy
Eric B
ebresie@gmail.com
...or sometimes it's good to do bad things
I think the Petreley essay was a bit on the love-it-or-leave-it side.
There are people who want to sell stuff and people who want to buy stuff. But the thing is, we are all both of those people. In any buying/selling situation, there are two possible outcomes. 1. both parties are happy or 2. one party has the upperhand for whatever reason and can force the other party to accept its terms. The disadvantaged party may agree to the terms, but he isn't happy about it. This is the situation with the recording industry. Consumer (and artists, for that matter) have been disadvantaged for a long time, and now they have tools to bring the deal back to the bargaining table.
Is Napster stealing? Yeah, kind of... You can argue for the sharing of stuff that belongs to you, but when you're 'sharing' with strangers it seems weak.
Nevertheless, Napster has demonstrated clearly that there's room for new models in this particular buying/selling relationship. I agree with Petreley that it's up to those who feel the deal is raw to come up with the new models. The recording industry, naturally, will continue to protect its upper hand, but it will have to come to the bargaining table eventually. But only because the peasents got their hands on some guns.
I tend to side with the position that information that can be shared, should be shared. But there's a thorny issue here that bothers me.
What about privacy?
I see people saying things like "once you decide to share information with someone else, then it's their perogative to share that information with others, without any further recourse to you".
But what about medical records? Credit card numbers? Legal briefs? Classified military information?
In other words, there *are* in fact cases where unrestricted distribution of knowledge may be harmful. It's not as simple as saying "distribution costs have been driven to zero, therefore distribution rights should be unlimited".
I think, I *hope*, that all the smart people reading slashdot would agree with this. So rather than wasting energy fanning the flames of an tired old polar debate, I wish the smart people on this forum would expend some energy discussing the thorny issue of how to define a reasonable boundary.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Petreley has a decent point in this article. Now before I get moderated to -18 for lack of dogmatism, hear me out:
Petreley's stance on the "open" craze that's so stylish right now is much the same as mine - he thinks people are confusing beer with speech (tho I don't think Petreley uses that overworked metaphor) to detrimental effect. The folks who are taking advantage of Napster as a source of free-as-in-beer music but hide behind free-as-in-speech ideals are destroying the credibility of the rest of us.
Understand that I myself have used before to download music (that I previously owned on CD, of course... *wink*), but I don't view my renegade downloading as part of a noble movement - instead I see it as a transgression against society on about the same level as jaywalking - nobody is going to catch me, and no one is hurt enough to prevent me from doing it.
That doesn't mean that no one is hurt at all, and it doesn't mean that a society of jaywalkers is a healthy society - it just reflects the fact that people will break laws if they feel like they can get away with it and the consequences aren't particulary dire.
The subtler point that Petreley misses is that not all "illegal" actions with regard to freedom of information are unethical. I might not believe that it's ok to duplicate Win2000 CDs (or even desirable, for that matter), but you can bet that I wear my DeCSS t-shirt (thank you copyleft) with pride.
What Petreley doesn't get is that there is a totally valid civil disobedience aspect of the freedom movement, and I wish I could have seen him acknowledge that in his column. I wear my DeCSS shirt not because I think source code is free speech (though it probably is), but because I don't believe a corporation should be able to dictate how I view the publications that I have purchased. The civil disobedience aspect of the information freedom movement, and the efforts of the EFF, are as important to the future of open and free (as in speech) information as the development of Linux and other quality open software.
Moral: Stop whining and evaluate your position legally and ethically before reciting geek dogma. Save the lawsuits for stuff that actually matters.
-ubermuffin
Tell me, please, what copyrights have expired in the last fifty years?
None, if the RIAA had their way. See also: copyright being extended just prior to Mickey Mouse becoming free. (Warning: reference came from /. and may be tainted.)
<<< CmdrTHAC0 >>>
__CmdrTHAC0__
In Soviet Russia, Spanish Inquisition doesn't expect YOU!!
If I were asked to answer the following question: WHAT IS SLAVERY? and I should answer in one word, IT IS MURDER, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: WHAT IS PROPERTY! may I not likewise answer, IT IS ROBBERY, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?
- Pierre Joseph Proudon, "What Is Property?"
Thus, the anarchists proclaim, "Property is theft," because the ownership of property by institutions (corporations, non-profits, governments, etc) deprives humanity of utilizing that property to their best ability.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
I hear that argument so many times, that people don't want to steal the music, but it's too risky spending their money on an entire album that they haven't heard for the most part because the other songs might suck.
Let's say that the record companies make available all the songs on their albums, but at a low bitrate, like 96 Kbps. Not something you'd want to listen to very often on your stereo, but certainly of sufficient quality that you can tell whether or not you like the songs.
Now, and I'd like your complete honesty here: How many people do you think would stop trading MP3s from CDs that they don't own. I think definitely fewer than 5% would stop the "illegal" trades, and it would probably be fewer than 1%. Agree, disagree?
Cheers,
The fact is our current system entitles us to some free information, and it requires us to purchase or license other information.
Why? Why should that be? Why is that morally right? There have been lots of systems, and they have had lots of different rules. Some have been better then others. I don't accept what The System entitles me to. If you have a problem, go cry to you're precious system, see what they do to me
But what they shouldn't do is license or buy existing information that is not free and then cut it loose without permission. That's just plain wrong
I'm sorry, but because The System believes something doesn't mean its true, and if you take that statement as fundamentally true, then you should seriously reconsider you're criteria for fundamental truth. WHY Is it 'just plain wrong'? Why should ideas be controlled? Saying simply that huge corporations loose money if it isn't observed is certainly not going to convince me.
This paper is seriously lacking in foundation, if this paper had been turned into my freshman English class at ISU, it would have been returned with a big fat F. I've heard this idea repeated with an almost religious air. And while there maybe economic reasons for this, I really don't get the moral ones. I'm not a religious man, and pirating is a lot more fun then not pirating.
And as far as his incendiary 'crookster' challenge, its 'gnutella' and win2k isn't exactly hard to find out there.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Content is not content. There's a world of difference between buying a professionally encoded MP3 and downloading a file somebody encoded using God knows what software, or pasted together from usenet files, or truncated, or named according to some standard they made up on the spot.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Its a simple theory, you give people something for free and they will accept it. You continue to give it to them for free then they will expect it next time.
I believe Napster style technology is going the same way as the mobile phone companies which in the late 80's/early 90's started to give free mobile phones to people to "try them out". After a few years, the people were so used to uusing them that, they were willing to pay through the nose for it.
Also, what happens during riots? People take what they normally would have to pay for, for free from stores etc...why? because the majority won't get caught and prosecuted for it.
"Information doesn't want to be free - people want it to be." I thought those exact words earlier today, I kid ye not.
One of the funny things I've always thought about the line "information wants to be free" is it's reference. Information does want to be free ( that's not supposed to be taken literally) I can go down to the library and read up on lots of information, all for free. However, I cannot go to the library and take all the software and music I want and keep for myself. For those I would have to go to the mall and shell out money. In this sense they are not information, they are products and as products they are only free if their creator wants them to be. They may still be classified as information on some levels, but they are still products which we buy and sell.
If we can look at them as merely products perhaps we can see a little more clearly. If you take a product that is for sale without paying for it and without having permission to do so, it is stealing by definition. This is where all the debate comes from: the clash between self-interest/capitalism, law, and morality.
Is the system broken? Is the RIAA an evil organization? Do we only care about ourselves? Are copyright laws outdated?
Personaly, I'm not really sure. For myself it's come down to a lengthy comtemplation of my own principles and the market, but I still haven't come up with an acceptable decision. I forget where I was trying to go with this, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm an idiot; it's food for thought atleast.
-Andrew Wright, is tired and wants to go to bed
-AW, knower of many useless things
Honestly, stealing IP is not a good thing to do, and the mantra "Information wants to be free" is not a justifiable excuse. IMO, this is not the real reason that people are currently ripping off massive amounts of IP without any remorse.
Most people are not naturally lacking in integrity as to go around stealing other peoples things. The exception to this is when people feel ripped off. Ripping people off is legal and will certianly stay legal, but it does invoke dislike and the feeling that retribution is needed. This is generally considered low class or bad business practice.
I think the reason digital piracy exists is because people do feel very ripped off, especially when it comes to music and software. Music is controlled by 6 (is it 5 now?) mega corporations which admittedly fix prices at an arbitrary high level, and manipulate congress to pass laws removing fair use from the consumer (DCMA), as well as disservicing 95% of their artists. When someone buys a $18 cd and does not like most of the songs on it, after hearing the 2 good songs on the radio, after being told that CD prices would have dropped to tape levels by now, and after the megas disallowed stores to advertise sales, this customer feels cheated. The customer will then feel no remorse for uploading the entire CD to a p2p service and downloading some better music in exchange. Perhaps if CD prices had lowered to a reasonable level ($7-9), and sales down to $4 had been advertised, and the artists made more than $0.52 per CD, people would feel bad about stealing IP. One might feel inclined to purchase the CD out of guilt.
I believe one of the reasons that the corporate IP environment has become so bad is the destruction of the capitalist system by laws passed purely for the protection of profits of select industry groups (5-10 companies). In a fair capitalist system, the government lays down a system of laws ensuring basic civility. This creates an even playing field for consumers, producers, and vendors where darwinian selection determines who will profit. However, when laws such as the DCMA or UTICA are passed for the protection of a handful of companies, the level playing field is corrupted, and specific parties are given a legal advantage by the government.
This creates contempt from upstarts and others who stand to loose due to new legal restrictions. As the government continues to support large corps through new laws, the natural selection dissaates, and the merging of corporations creates a system of quasi-monopolies, which makes consumption in america feel a bit more like a communist system, only with an uneven distribution of wealth.
The bottom line is consumers lost fair use rights, and don't believe congress cares. So they have decided not to follow the laws anymore. Many feel that if information can not be handled in a fair manner, they will just pass it around for free. It may not be right, but people tend to respond negatively after getting ripped off.
Dude, you're so missing the point. The issue is not about the musicians and the labels. If the musicians want to make more money they need to either work out better deals or find alternative ways to monatize their works. Yes, the labels are very greedy, but the artists will continue to work with them until they find alternative ways to make money. The issue is that people are getting copyrighted works without the author or the label's permission. People need to understand this point. Money is part of this, but in some cases it is more about controlling the destiny of one's own work. For example, everyone hates Metallica over the Napster incident, but it is unfounded. What Metallica is saying is that they don't want others deciding the fate of their commercial recordings. A little known and often overlooked fact though is that Metallica ENCOURAGES bootlegging of their live shows. They ENCOURAGE people to share and distribute that work. They have given PERMISSION to this. Obviously it isn't over money because they have no monetary gain from the distribution of these recordings of their live shows. They did NOT give permission for the distribution of their studio work though, and this is their main issue. Maybe one day people will learn to respect each others property...
--Jon
In light of the rather liberal US copyright and patent law, it might be more accurate to say, in the US (though not everywhere) that information wants to be "available", though probably not "free" of charge. (God Bless Disney for buying America those perpetual extensions to copyright, thus redefining the English term "limited time").
:-)
Regarding information and what it "wants":
Since information tends to enhance the quality of other information, people "want" it.
Since there is no "information" without an act of "informing" somebody, there is no information without people to be "informed".
Therefore, information cannot truly be said to exist without being exchanged. In light of this fact, information can be said to have a "desire". This desire is manifest both in the desire of the originator of the information to tell someone (e.g. ever try to keep a secret from everyone? You always have that urge to tell _someone_) and the desire of the recipient to be informed (e.g. everyone loves to _hear_ a secret).
Thus, it is impossible to separate what information "wants" and what informer or the informed want.
From another point of view, the author of the article really didn't give a great deal of thought to his topic. But hey, that's what journalism is all about, right?
This is exactly what's happening right now. Slashdot readers fear that in five years this will be a reality. It will be - get used to the idea. As you say, they shoehorn the new ideas into the old economy. These new-fangled computer things are very good at enforcing security policies such as these. Linux users are proud of how secure their systems are. PGP users are proud of how secure their emails are. All this technology can be used to enforce copyright. And as Slashdot readers know, if technology can be used to do something, it will be.
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
Property is something that has value of two kinds: scarcity value and subjective value.
Scarcity value is the value that something has because it is scarce. There is only so much real estate in the world and people want it to live on, hence, it has value
Subjective value is the value that something has because it serves to meet a need, such as a screwdriver or a painting that makes you happy. What I value, such as my shoes, may not be equally valued.
Which of these doesn't information have? Scarcity. Unless, of course, that scarcity is contrived through restricted access.
However, having subjective value makes it still property.
Technology Marketing is what happens when people turn their hard work over to people paid to manipulate others.
The way I understand it is that information has the universal quality that it is so difficult to keep wrapped up. The point is that, for one reason or another, people make that information free and that it is impossible to keep it bound and not free. I believe that is the purpose of the phrase.
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
One reason I don't feel bad about downloading songs from napster is that I have often already bought the albumn in some format in the past. Should I now have to pay for it again because my fuzzy warble is scratched or my tape got eaten? I don't understand the RIAAs arguments. They seem to want to regard music as a physical article when that definition maximizes their members revenue and as content to be licensed like software when that makes more money.
My point is that people want to buy what they want to buy. You might want to sell only what you want to sell. But what if consumers don't want to buy that? It seems patently absurd to me for the RIAA to be complaining about people stealing something that isn't for sale: compressed music files. Can I go into a store and buy an ISO9660 CDROM with professionally encoded MP3's on it? No. So how can you say that I'm stealing something?
If the RIAA wants to complain about theft, let them sell what they claim people are stealing.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
No it isn't and no it doesn't. It's someone's intellectual property, which is very different from physical property. For one thing, you can't strictly speaking "take" it -- you suddenly have more than one instance, with no effect on the original. This may constitute "license violation", but it's NOT theft under US law -- or morally.
It may still be wrong in some cases (as it may be in some of your software examples). But using improper terminology clouds the real issues.
--
"Information wants to be free" really should be "Informations can be free." No other property can be given away without loss by the owner. You give away a physical thing, you don't have it any more. You give away information, you've still got it.
What Napster has done is encourage others to break the law. Is the law just? Depends on whether it's right to create artificial scarcity of information (i.e., copyright). How do we determine what's right? Look at the consequences of making it legal versus making it illegal.
Case 1 (copyright): Copyright exists so that information can be shoehorned into traditional economic systems that are based upon scarcity, supply and demand, etc. If copyright is enforced, it's business as usual. If it's poorly enforced, you get the chaos that's happening now in society (a Bad Thing, since it discourages content creation and encourages the lawyers). How to enforce copyright in the *gag* "information age" is the big problem.
Case 2 (no copyright): Without copyright, traditional economic systems fail, and information creators are not rewarded. Thus, production of information decreases. This is a Bad Thing. The only solution is to find an alternate economic system. Just as a quick reminder, communism doesn't work, and all those other cool-sounding systems (street performers' protocol, etc.) haven't been tested in a large-scale economy. There's nothing that's known to work.
In other words, behind door A, we have chaos and uncertainty, and behind door B we have uncertainty and chaos.
I personally would like to see a system where all artists get accounts on PayPal or something like that, and we can just donate whatever we feel like for each MP3 we download (preferably off of the artist's high-speed, high-quality site). Of course, people will rationalize their way into not paying: "they're already rich", "musicians get all the chicks", "they suck too much to deserve to get paid for this MP3 that I'm keeping"... Nobody really knows if enough people will pay to make it worth while for artists. And before you start yelling about indie bands giving away their work, remember that a lot of them are doing that to build a fan base so they can start charging for it.
Finally, remember that what's right and wrong (and legal) is decided, to some extent, by society. Copyright is currently part of our social contract. For it to be right to ignore copyright would require a fundamental shift in the public viewpoint. This shift seems to have already begun, but it hasn't happened yet.
Do we have to abide by copyright until such a shift happens, or are we morally justified in ignoring copyright since we are leading the charge into this new economics of information? That's the real question.
There is an huge difference between sharing software and downloading copies of music that you have already paid for.
A good example of this is when CDs first came out many of the Dire Straits albums went back into the top 40 album chart as many people bought another copy on a different medium.
I do not agree with the Microsoft business model but at least they give you a 50% discount if you have already bought their software and want to upgrade.
If the music industry want to be honest about it why don't they just give you a licence for a year; after all that is how long music cassettes last before drop-out becomes intolerable.
I have used Napster to obtain copies of albums that I have purchased time and again. The law allows fair use in copying. I am allowed to copy my CDs to tape for my personal use etc. etc. I see no difference in obtaining that copy from a third party when the cassette or CD put out is of inferior quality.
Yes I do see the CD and DVD as an inferior product they are overly fragile and having been around for in excess of fifteen years I would expect these issues to have been addressed already.
Long before Napster was available I had all my music stored to hard drive to try to preserve it for the future. Hard drive space is now included when I budget for CD purchases. Napster is addressing problems with the digital medium's transience that the media companies did not deal with as it would reduce the profits from repeated purchases.
Slashdot Beta should die a painful death.
He missed the point of the saying.
What "information wants to be free" was *originally* talking about was not the desire of individuals for information to be free; it was the economic reality that information, unlike land and most other forms of property, is not easily excludable.
It's easy to build a fence around land and not let people into it; that's in general not true of information. Worse yet, while only one person can possess a given physical good at a particular time, the same isn't true of information --- and your possession of fact [x] doesn't reduce the value of fact [x] *to me*. Also, transmission costs are low and getting lower.
It is thus *economically impossible* to prevent the free transfer of most forms of information, just as it's more or less economically impossible to prevent the sale of drugs --- you can outlaw it, but all you'll do is drive it underground and throw lots of people in jail.
(This is of course, a gross overgeneralization: it is possible in certain limited circumstances to devise mechanisms for exclusive information use, and what many of the current legal battles are really about is determining in which circumstances it is appropriate to do that. But *as a general rule*, information is not excludable, and "wants to be free").
Warning: Lessig is not fluff. Prepare yourself for some heavy reading. A law class at my university uses his book to supplement the textbook.
People want it to be!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
i'm not the first to say this, but paying for something that isn't a specific service or tangible product is difficult to wrestle with. why -should- you pay for something (or why should lots of people pay for something) when the producer only produces it once? the reason you pay for a tangible product is because -you- get that product (and you want to have it/use it). if a specific item required nothing to create, isn't its inherent value zero? based on the idea that something is worth how much labor was put into it, marx would agree with me on this one...
That's the way the world started out, and as we see with the open source movement, that's where the world is headed again. It's death to the big info monopolies and mafias, and good riddance.
Information does want to be free, because once you learn something you can't make yourself unlearn it... why feel guilty about it?
Maybe it isn't fair to pin this on most open source advocates, but there are certainly interesting dichotomies in what Slashdot considers "news for nerds." On the one hand, any license that isn't strictly free is shouted down. Borland C++ is branded as free-as-in-beer and therefore unacceptable. Any story that mentions freedom of speech gets hairtrigger responses. Stories about The Man (i.e. Microsoft) are snickered about in a frenzy of populist hooplah.
At the same time, there's a worship of corporately created pop culture: The Simpsons, X-Files, Hollywood movies, big budget anime, The Cartoon Network. Now wait, this isn't corporate-fed culture, it's special stuff created only for geeks in the know, right? Not like other crap, like Friends. That's for the masses.
I think quite a few people would like these to collide, so everything they are interested in can be free of charge. But they are two completely different things, the second of which is created by a system that arguably would not exist if free everything was the order of the day. If you're really anti-corporate, then you should stop watching TV, stop buying CDs from major labels, and stop watching anything but indie films. That's much better than whining about how corporations should spend millions of dollars entertaining you for free.
First off, I agree with almost everything Nicholas has to say, but I must stress something that may have been said before and should be said again
Napster has helped expose one ugly wound of corporate exploitation that has persisted for a long time under cozy blankets of pop culture and marketing propaganda. If money, and the explotation of people to aquire money, is evil (ie less-than minimum-wage Nike sweatshops), then by god, wake up and smell the fuckin' ripoff. Please.
If Napster is so harmful to the creative spirit of the artists, then why are we hearing so much screetching and concern from the keepers of said musicians and comparatively little from the artists themselves? (if you're thinking it's a lack of money on the artist's part then you've just answered the question)
Does information want to be free? Fuck no. Do I want it to be free? Of course, dammit. I'm guessing that most people would agree...
If I like an artist's music then I should be able to compensate them for that directly. The argument that this scenario isn't feasible is no longer valid.
Wake up.
The issue is not whether information should be free, but whether corporations should be allowed to tell you when it is or isn't free.
You know, I would feel a lot less vehement about this if the artists (all of them) were actually losing the shitloads of money the record companies are claiming for compensation. Odds are, they never would've seen it anyway.
Mark as flamebait. At least someone might read the damn thing for pure amusement.
No sig.
Now this is a concept ... how about we have open source bands that create compatible songs through a clean room process of discovering chord progressions and rhythms, then simulating the song and releasing it openly?
Can music be considered free speech? Does everyone have the right to sing a song, and release the recording of it publicly and freely?
dave
----------------
veni, vidi, vivo (I came, I saw, I lived)
The problem is that these songs are shared cultural symbols. Legalities aside, there's a certain sense in which they belong to us all, just as Santa Claus and Paul Bunyan belong to us all. They are a part of our shared consciousness and cultural tradition. The mass media have essentially usurped the role formerly filled by folklore to create the symbols of our culture. This is a consideration which needs to be balanced against the "rights" of shareholders of music/entertainment corporations: current law essentially denies us the ability to speak in the vocabulary of our own culture.
I'm willing to buy commercial music, but I do not have a turntable nor a CD player. I do have a computer. So, record companies out there: are you able to sell me your stuff? No? Oh well, then I guess you leave me other choice than me using Napster. Loz
Funny how someone can point at napster and its users and say greed - but not the record labels. Man thats odd - isin't it? I'm wondering what Steven King is thinking about all this (after his own first attempt at net sales (literally)). Hmm, wasn't that last ruling with mp3.com giving the record labels 130 some-odd million, but they aint givin any musicians dick - right? greed - hmmm. And all this aside - arent record/cd sales up?
>> Information wants to be free. Regardless of your moral position, it's a law of nature.
The underlying philosophical problem behind this discussion and many alikes is IMHO the ABSENCE of formalized and generally accepted "laws of nature" regarding information. Except for second law of thermodynamics all other "laws" governing/describing/restricting information are fragmented, very specific to a certain branch of scientific knowledge and usually are not accepted even by adjacent branches of science.
It's safe to assume that all participants in this thread do work with information on daily basis. However even here there is no accord whether it is "free", "not free" or if "free" is applicable to information at all.
Outside the science and geek community the notion of "information" and "how it works" is even less understood. For majority of humans it is more mysterious entity than God, Devil or Fate.
When something is not understood yet exists it creates controversy always. This controversy will not be resolved until some genius comes up with new "Theory or Information" that could exist in "bimbo proof" form as well. Try to reduce Claude Shannon's works to something like "apple falls down", "earth rotates around the sun" or "everything is relative" and you will fail. Bimbos may have never heard about Newton, Galileo or Einstein, however they know the briefs of their fundamental theories.
Generally accepted "laws" of information are needed and will be described sooner or later because information is something used by all - geeks, bimbos, lawyers, musicians, etc. Until then all efforts to enforce these laws artificially (by legislators, artists, businessmen, geeks) will fail.
/nelliza
PS. I hope to witness these discoveries in my lifetime and I am sure it will be most exciting process! Probably this very discussion is a part of it.
A longer version of this essay can be found at http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-2000-09/lw -09-penguin_1.html.
I prefer anarchy, but only under a strong & wise anarch
Using my wireless broadband, I could download 650 MD in just over an hour....today.
I'd rather be strapped to a chair "Clockwork Orange" style while Jon Katz read every single one of his articles to me than make my way through a piece by Petreley.
The man is an ass and it's not suprising that he doesn't care for freedom of information since his essays are always free of any factual information.
He's a throwback to the days when the Linux community was hard up for advocates and he should be discarded now that his usefulness has passed.
--Shoeboy
Even with RIAA monopoly, the music industry is full of opportunity. Anyone can learn how to play an instrument, and find a way to make money out of it. The music software is not that simple. Software is just entertainment. For some idealistic minds, entertainment is not business. We all now thats its wrong - entertainment is BIG business anywhere in the world. Maybe it's easier for college kids to see themselves making money out of music than making money out of code. So in a sense they are trying to protect their own future. To be a great coder is hard, and to be a top coder is a distant dream. Maybe file size matters. Some years ago, trading music was hot in BBSs. Most commercial music could be found for free in a few BBSs. Many of them were large downloads at that time. Some could even fill an 1.2 Mb 5"1/4 floppy disk :-) It was not viable to download code, for technical reasons. PCs were not powerful enough for large programs and similar codecs. Now if people try to copy "The complete works of the 18th centrury music" over the Internet... not even DSL is close to allow this to be done in the next few years. Anyway thats my personal opinion... lets see what the guys outside here think...
It is only the social constructs that make information a commodity. A nice analogue is the court of law (it's not a court of justice - otherwise technicalities would not get people off the hook). All of the written law is available in libraries for free, yet people pay a lawer to spout out the information, you're not paying for the information, your paying for the convenience of access to it (and the filtration process involved). It's quite funny really, reminds me of the indigenous peoples view of reality when settlers wanted to buy the land. They just nodded, smiled and thought they were crazy. Own the land? we are part of the land. If anything owns anything, we are owned by the land. Just part of the ebb and flow, particles of the eco system.
Okay. Let me try to tackle this from the persepctive of a musician, who also knows how to code. Music and code, though indeed information and though easily transmittable from computer to computer are seen as vastly different things, even to those, like me, who are versed in both.
Software is seen, I believe, as a business thing. It's meant to be bought and sold and the vast majority of the people out there have been buying software, and not getting it from BBSes and such. They've not had the advantage that people who've been into computers longer have had. It's not sunk in that software is as easy to copy and trade as music, when you get down to it.
Music, on the other hand has been "free" since the time of tape recorders. It's been possible to copy music from the radio onto tape, and from tape to tape, and from CD to tape for two decades and this seems to have degraded people's belief that music is still a product. It also helps that musicians are seen as artists and art is, to most people well in the realms of something free. It costs nothing, or next to it to go to the local art gallery or to check out a book fom the libaray or to have a friend copy a really cool tape or CD for you.
Software hasn't had the advantage of that kind of time. In time, I'm sure that it will be regarded much as other forms of art (and I do believe that code is art in its very own way) and it will be treated much as music has been.
The other difference in people's mind between music and software is that they're been insulated from much of the music-making process. Most people who use software have at least a vague idea what goes into producing it. I would say that many fewer know what goes into producing a CD. If the process of making a CD were as widely known as the process of making software, I think it would help even out how people think of them, in terms of being something they want to be "free". I'm not sure how that scale would tip (toward music being less "free" or software being more "free"), but it owuld change.
-Jimmie
It's I don time to see an article like this posted on /. I don't really want to start a flame war here, but here's my opinion:
If someone creates content (i.e. music), they have the right to put whatever restrictions they like, through the use of copyright and license agreements. Most commercial music is distributed copyrighted in the form of CDs. I'm sorry, but "fair use" does not mean making that copyrighted music available to everyone on the internet for download. Sure, it's ok to make mp3s out of it, make another CD (if you use it and don't give or sell it), etc. This is common sense from the artist and publisher's perspective. They need money, and how are they going to get that money if the majority of content is freely available?
I especially like the author's comparison to software. Illegal music copying (yes, using Napster to get Britney Spears is illegal) is just like software warez. They're both copyrighted, and both creators want their money.
In the author of this article's analogy, he described Linux as being the free alternative to Windows, saying that the same had to be done for music. I can't agree more. The vast majority of my mp3's are from artists on mp3.com that give away their music, and make money by tours and selling CDs with a few songs you can't download. It's excellent music, definately beats listening the radio. Though you won't find the popular names there, I've managed to find 3 artists or more that I really like, and a select song here or there. The rest of my mp3's are CDs that I own that I rip to mp3 form for convenience.
Let's face it, if you like someone's music, the least you could do in return for the enjoyment of listening to it is reimburse them. The easiest way to do that is to buy their CDs, but you can also attend concerts, visit web sites with ads, etc.
Sorry for the ramble, but here's the point that I really agree with. If you like an artist, deal with how they distribute their music or look elsewhere.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Yes yes he sure prooved his point... of course nobody would distribute Microslothy software over the internet... but how many people do you know who use Win-9X or 2000 on there home systems when they themselves used someone elses disk... or in, this age of CD-R, just burned a copy of Windows... The point is people will always find a way to pirate if they believe it needs doing... I would be happy to pay artists directly for music... I say the artists pay the distribution method and the distributer gives all charges directly to the band... that way we eliminate the fat middle man RIAA and give the artists there due.... I am all for PAYING for my copy of linix... just as long as the people who get the money are the people who did there work on the product.
Remove *your pants* to send me email.
Umm, maybe I'm a bit slow, but why would someone interested only in "getting stuff without paying for it" go out and "buy existing information that is not free"?!? It seems that would be more of a selfless act, like providing food to the homeless, who are hungry, and can't afford to buy it themselves. (I realize this isn't a perfect analogy)
"this isn't a perfect analogy." DUH!
What would be a perfect analogy and a truely selfless act is if you were to buy licenses for everyone you gave the information to for free. For example, if I were to post a Metallica song from a single on the net, but for everyone who downloaded the song, I were to buy the single on CD and send the CD to them for free. That's selfless.
Buying one disk and sharing it with my friends is not selfless. Why? Because in exchange perhaps my friends will go out and buy one disk and share it with me--and if I have 20 friends, my music budget has dropped to 1/20th of what it would have been otherwise.
It seems obvious that this article was written purely to incite a riot, and as such, it was well done.
If "incite a riot", you mean "I strongly disagree with the points raised," perhaps you're right. If you mean "the points raised are totally off-base, and are only ment to piss people off", bullshit--not only is information free, but it's expensive as well. Or do you think it costs nothing for Metallica (our favorite whip-it boys) to produce a record album?
The fact is at some basic level we have to acknowledge the concept of property. Intellectual property being EASIER to copy doesn't make it more RIGHT to copy. I hear people say that ideas should be free. So, should the code to turn off the security on my car be free? Do we pretend there are no criminals and give them all the tools necessary to bring the country to its knees? Of course noone here would be reading this message if ideas were all free because noone would step forward and invest in making a great microchip (their R&D would be stolen immediately and they'd go out of business.) Or should ideas only be free after a period of time (can you say evil patents and copyrights!) If music should be free should concert tickets cost money? If not should only the already wealthy make music? Should music makers produce cars during the day to pay the bills? I fully agree that these days piracy is a fact of life on a HUGE scale and the music industry might as well face it and start using it as a marketing tool instead of attacking with lawyers. I do use Napster to listen to music from people I'm not really familiar with, and if I like it I buy it. I don't want the "method" of stealing made illegal any more than I want FTP sites turned off. But I do believe building a music library without paying money is wrong and illegal. Would my Linux box be worth a sh** if it wasn't playing feature catch up with commercial products? What if there were no contributors with future hopes of dollar signs working on the projects? Stop pretending people, intellectual property is the very blood that drives music, art and especially the computer industry. Even free things owe their success to commercial use of ideas. Even before there was money, the guy who knew how to do something special received benefits. Its only fair that people that make our lives better should have their lives improved too. If what they make (intellecual property) isn't worth much, they won't make much. Oh well, just sounds like socialism to me and I like the idea of working hard so I can retire early :)
Tim T.
Good reasons to pay for information:
Bad reasons to pay for information:
Enjoyment is not a privelege. We do not require permission to use our five senses. However, we must realize that if creators are not compensated in some way, they will not be able to create.
Just my $0.02.
his analogy is flawed - music is not software - purely for legal reasons. And Napster is NOT illegal whereas his "Crookster" would be.
Note that illegality is irrelevant to morality.
some definitions:
Information: ideas, concepts (ex. democracy, peer-reviewed scientific research, education)
Content: an expression of human creativity and effort. May be functional, artistic, or both.
While Information can and should be free, content is intrinsically the property of the creator.
So when we use Napster to download music, you CANNOT use the argument "it's ok cause music is information and information wants to be free". Music is not information, it is content.
But Napster, unlike "Crookster" is LEGAL because copying recordings is legal under FAIR USE. The inly differrence between Napster and copying your friend's tape (legal!) is the scae. Since the Audio Home Recording Act does not mention scale, we are not in violation. If the AHRA were to be amended to specify that millions of recordings en masse is bad, then we would then be illegally using Napster.
Software has no AHRA equivalent and therefore software remains illegal to reproduce no matter the distribution channel.
So use Napster legally but don't be a hypocrite. And Information SHOULD be free, but don't ingeniously label everything "Information" just to get a free ride. USE Napster because it is legal to do so and we can send a message to the RIAA. But don't confuse information with content.
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
Although I lost my warez connections around the same time I was old enough to get a driver's license, I imagine it's pretty easy to get Windows 2000 for free on the net. And no MS lawyers on your back! This point he makes doesn't really make any sense. People buy Windows 2000, either by itself or as part of a machine, because of the support (either documentation or pre-installation) that is provided with it. If it's a college hacker, it's likely he got his copy for free, because he's poor. If it's an older hacker, he may have bought his copy simply for the convenience of not sucking up to 14 year olds on IRC. Does anyone see the RIAA backing down? This comparison just doesn't make any sense.
Information wants to be convenient. For many people, it's more convenient to get music from Napster and listen to it on their computer. If the RIAA offered a reasonably priced, legal, Napster-like online service that didn't have Napster's inconsistencies, I think it would do incredible business. www.emusic.com is trying this out (a subscription service with unlimited downloads for $9.99 to $19.99 a month), however it has a limited number of artists (some of them are quite excellent, though, They Might Be Giants, Elvis Costello, Frank Black, along with hundreds of bands you've never heard of). Hopefully this model will be successful and become more mainstream.
I know this is offtopic, but I have to post this:. 1002.thed.ni
http://new s.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-2723858.html?tag=st.ne
It's an article about Transmeta that DOES NOT mention Linus Torvalds!
What the hell is going on over at c/net?!?!
heh heh heh
"Don't try to confuse the issue with half truths and gorilla dust."
Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman)
Information doesn't WANT to be free, and it doesn't simply 'become' free either. We've always had to go to great lengths to come upon ANY information. Saying information wants to be free is like saying a rock wants to think; it won't happen without intervention.
That's the beauty of the GPL and BSD licences - they help release information to humanity, rather than allowing it to hide in obscurity, or to be patented, copyrighted, and succinctly forgotten.
If information would simply release itself, we would have no need for the GPL or similar licences. We would have no need for multi-million dollar research projects. We wouldn't need to send robotic probes into space to discover more information. We wouldn't need to go to school to learn. We wouldn't need to spend hours researching algorithms to make more optimized code.
No, information doesn't want to be free. One of humanity's greatest pursuits has been to acquire it, and to create it. And there's nothing any idealist can say or do to change that simple fact. We spend our lives searching for information. And information will never just 'come' to us as if it 'wants to be free.'
Life isn't that easy.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Well next time you don't have the cancer medicine to keep yourself alive... you can thank yourself..
Since in your world there is no IP, therefore that drug company has no incentive to spend 10 million to find a drug that cures cancer... because once they do.. someone else will grab the recipie and that orig drug company is out their 10 million....
ok, so that's the way its been for years. guess what- current tech. basically antiquated the status quo. either fight it (they are) or deal with it (doesn't seem likely..sigh). but the smart move is to realize that its a new ballgame and maybe there's still a way to come out of this new era alive.
You may not like the fact that some information must be licensed, but that's how it is.
again, that's how it was. times have changed quite a bit since the current music-on-a-disc-for-money system came about.
today, its easy and common to move large amounts of data around on public data connections. audio is just another form of 'large data'. if the Net remains functional, audio will flow. sorry, dude; that's life. adapt to it.
Those who want information to be free as a matter of principle should create some information and make it free.
many are. I would bet that more than half the linux apps that exist are opensource; and were done with the full intention of releasing source. can't get more 'free' than that. music [mere entertainment] can't compare to someone releasing working sourcecode.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
It would be nice if this were all done on an honor system (like shareware). I want to be honest. I'll pay for what I use - I don't want to pay for songs I find that I hate, and I don't like paying too much. Of course, if the recording companies really did this, they'd probably want to encrypt everything and put security on it (it's all about control, right?). I can't blame them, given all the money to be made and all the piracy that exists. Too bad there aren't more honest and fair people out there (artists, fans, recording companies alike).
Think about it. It will have to be like this in the not-to-distant future. When everyone has high bandwidth connections, who's going to go to the store and buy a CD when they could download it instantly to their stereo? I say we stop buying CDs right now (and DVDs in the near future) and tell the RIAA and MPAA we'll only buy their goods via a download (maybe uncompressed for purists who hate MP3 compression...).
There. That was a nice little ramble.