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A (Suprising?) Viewpoint On RIAA Lawsuits
colnago writes: "The Motley Fool has an interesting article about lawsuits and their effect on capitalism. You may also read this as "lawsuits and their effect on technology." In any case the arguments are similar to what we've read here, but it's good to see the financial community on the same page as the nerds. One tidbit: 'How about picking a judge who used to work for you? Judge Chaplain (who presided over the first DVD trial and ruled in favor of the MPAA) was Time Warner's lawyer on DVD issues before he became a Judge.'"
You people don't understand the importance of copyright laws and intellectual property. Most of you would love to live in a world where there were no IP laws, but guess what would happen? No one would want to publish their work online!
This is absolutely, one-hundred percent, wrong! Back before there was IP laws did people not invent things? Write poetry and literature? Perform music? Paint paintings? I really hate it when people say "without IP laws no one would publish anything" as history has shown that this is false. The very thought that one human can own an idea, or that a thought is the same as real estate, is absolutely absurd. Now I don't think we should do away with IP COMPLETELY, but it should be reformed drastically and protections severely minimized. Mattel sueing everyone and their dog over the name Barbie just shows that as it stands IP Law Doesn't Work!
This is similar to the good intentions behind communism, yet in practice it has proven to be a failure.
Again, this is false. One implimentation of communism crumbled so communism could never work, or doesn't work? I don't think so. This is another argumentative pet-peeve of mine. Communism as the Soviet Union practiced it didn't work, but that doesn't mean communism doesn't, or can't work.
The lawsuits may be hard to swallow at first but they are absolutely essential for the growth of the Internet.
No, they are not. They hinder the internet. For as many people you think wouldn't post their work online in the absence of IP law there are 20 companies and individuals who wouldn't post their work online in FEAR OF IP law.
Why do you think many hardware makers don't release specifications? Because Microsoft is bribing them not to? No. Because they are afraid of potential law suits over patents they may have infringed but because of the time and cost involved couldn't or didn't check with the patent office on each and every method they use. Look at 3Dfx getting sued by NVidia over patent infringement. 3Dfx is open with their specs and that is their reward, NVidia isn't and their reward is staying speed king in the 3D accelerator card market. This is what IP law does.
-- iCEBaLM
I applaud the fool for pointing out the hypocrisy of RIAA and the MPAA, and the absurdity of these lawsuits. Let me explain.
The DMCA is one of the most important bills to hit capital hill in a while. Why isn't it receiving more coverage in the media?
The DMCA is subtly undermining how the general populace understands their constitutional rights. Maybe I'm being a tad dramatic here, but why is it that people are simply throwing up their hands and letting someone else's money solve their problems? Why do they believe that money is the only thing that can solve problems?
I like the fool, but what I'm getting at is the irony underlying the issues in that column. The same invisible hand that entertainment industry is trying to slap or shackle, is the one that also allowed the biggest entertainment mergers in history. Those mergers have limited all televised, thoughtful, discussion on the DMCA, EULA's, and technology in general. Everything is a 20 second soundbite makingthe EFF sound like either a cult of terrorists. In the sixties and seventies, mass media conveyed the idea that computers and mass communication were powerful toold that could change the world for the better. Now, mass media feeds us the impression that these objects/concepts are nothing more than sleek tools, or toys.
What better way to protect your toy chest than to have people forget about it - claim that people don't even have the right to question you about it. For those few fringe people that know it exists and just want to expose it's guts, you can call them criminals and no one will care.
So the hand. The members of MPAA and RIAA used the metaphor of the hand to justify their insanly gigantic unions, but now they're not letting the market do it's job. Corporate rhetoric always sites "the market forces," but the Fool aptly points out that this only happens when it suits them. At all other times - complete ownership of market forces is what's best for business.
Capitalism is: an economic system in which the means of production and distribution (aka capital) are privately owned. Under capitalism, distribution of resources is controlled by market demand rather than central government planning.
A capitalist is someone who supports this economic system. Sometimes the term capitalist is also used to describe persons who provide capital for business ventures, e.g. Venture Capitalists.
Someone who manipulates the legislature or judiciary for financial gain is definitely NOT a capitalist. The term that is generally used to describe these people is 'unethical dickwad', although other vulgarities may certainly apply as well.
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DISCLAIMER: I am not a Napster user. Nor am I much of a movie viewer -- and don't have a DVD player nor do I watch them, so do not have a direct interest in that mess, but rather see it as part of a larger pattern. My hobbies -- ballroom dancing, choral singing, reading SF -- keep me busy enough that I rarely even look at TV.
The Founding Fathers did not regard "intellectual property" as a natural right, but rather as an artificial, legislated right which was of benefit to society as a whole, only if managed properly. The compromise they decided upon, and wrote into the Constitution dictated that "authors and inventors" might be granted for a limited time copyright or patent protection, with the consideration that after that limited time the work must pass into the public domain.
I contend that the present regime does not fit under these Constitutional conditions and limitations. In the music industry, it is rare for the true authors to have title to the copyright of their works (there has been rather a bit of commentary lately about impoverished artists, from whose work the big music houses have made fortunes). Nor -- and this is my most critical point -- is the present copyright term anything that can be considered "limited" at least from my point of view.
Under the present copyright law, works written a generation before I was born (I was born in 1953) are not scheduled to be released into the public domain until at least a generation after I die. This is not what the authors of the Constitution meant by "limited".
And even when works pass into the public domain, the publishing industry claims that they have not! As an example (I am an avid singer of classical music), my copy of Vivaldi's Gloria claims "Copyright Walton Publishing Co. 1988 All rights reserved No copy whether in whole or in part may be made without written permission of the publisher." (A quick survey of my pre-1800 music collection shows that this behavior by the publishers is pervasive.) This is not a claim "editorial markings copyright..." as case law would suggest, but of copyright in totality for a work first published more than two centuries ago! This kind of claim is widespread in the classical-music publishing business -- Kalmus (New York, Berlin) being the primary exception that comes to mind in this matter.
Some will claim that such protection is appropriate reward for the (mechanical! -- music-typesetting is a mathematical algorithm, described as such in the IEEE's journal Computer in the mid-Eighties) job of typesetting. Kalmus success as a publisher that does not make this kind of copyright-fraud sets the lie to this claim that copyright is necessary as a protection for the job of type-setting.
The publishing industry have hijacked copyright law in a way that seriously conflicts with the Constitution. After due thought, it is my considered, reasoned belief that they are (by and large) a bunch of thieves, robbers, and extortionists.
In the matter of "Two wrongs do not make a right," it is well worth writing about this first and primary wrong as well as the second ("music pirating") one.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
When Jack Valenti, president of the MPAA, said in 1982 - new technology (vhs tapes) "is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone." Yet today, so much revenue is the result of vhs tapes being sold... casette tapes were even shunned because people could tape off of the radio. Why is this man still the president of the MPAA? The statistics have shown that vhs and casette tapes helped the industry.
When Lars went after napster he generated more publicity for napster than he probably intended. I know many who learned of napster due to Lars. The MPAA publicized DeCSS when the went after Johansen... They are trying to fight the war the old fasioned way and it's not working... When will they wake up. They're shooting themselves in the foot. This 2600 case no doubt brought more attention to DeCSS. The MPAA hypocrites are bringing more attention to that which they are so desperately trying to hide from the public. Wouldn't it have been better for them to take a wait and see attitude?
New technologies are always feared by the tyrants and control freaks of capitalism. The market advances only when it's free of restraints. Would the MPAA have made billions of dollars of vhs tapes? NO... they would not be as rich as they are today. If Linux users could watch DVD's then they would buy DVD's. Unfortunately this is about Control.
The MPAA wants you to be a consumer droid... buying what they tell you to buy, watching what they tell you to watch, and watching it their way - through their system. I'm sorry, but if you look at the recent past, you will see that when consumers could choose how to watch, listen to, or enjoy their media the MPAA was financially successful. Now with the advent of HDTV, they want to stop you from recording shows because "it's digital." So what, people can record movies off cable now. After watching a few taped episodes of the Discovery Channel I would even consider getting cable. The more someone is exposed to samples of a product, the better the chance that they would buy that product. When will the MPAA get it!