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The Software Police vs. The CD Lawyers
guerby writes: "Dan Bricklin's (author of Visicalc) article
The Software Police vs. the CD Lawyers recently reprinted
on the ACM Ubiquity magazine provides
an interesting (and debatable) parallel between the
SIIA (Software and Information Industry Association)
and RIAA (well known to /. readers ;-) strategy against 'pirates.'" It does raise some good points -- and helps explain why groups like the BSA don't raise hackles the way the RIAA does: they tend to go after the large-scale counterfeiters, not kids with a cracked copy of Photoshop.
I think we are looking at a future when all music is totally free, and artists will make there money through other channels (live performance, for example). Even better, the recording industry itself might die a death. Just imagine - no more intense promotion of artists, hype etc. Artists would have to start from the grass roots.
One thing I wonder about, though, is books. What if a novel equivalent of napster appeared (please excuse the pun:-)? How would authors make money then? Through publicly reading their works? I don't think so. I can't think of a mechanism whereby authors could continue to make cash, which is why I would be much more scared of the internet if I were a novelist rather than a musician.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
Re: books
:), and it's usually based on a universe created by somebody else, but some of it is quite readable & engaging. My only real complaint might be that some of the good stuff doesn't get finished :(, which drives me nuts.
Actually, there's a pretty high volume of "fan fiction", both on USENET & on the web, which is essentially non-paid writing.
Granted, most of the stuff isn't very good
I don't think that many of these people are expecting remuneration for their work (and, in fact, usually pathetically beg not to be sued by the original character creators), but they still keep churning it out.
It's not a useful COMMERCIAL model, but for those people who have creativity oozing from their fingertips, it's certainly one way to get a bit of name recognition for their work.
As recording technology lifted music out of the domain of the concert-going elite, mp3 should liberate music from the clutches of the recording companies and bring it to a wider audience. What I reckon will happen is that there will be fewer Britney-Spears-alikes, as the pace at which bad music fades from the collective consciousness increases. Proportionally, there will be more acts of quality, working on a similar basis to the software industry ("You want our music? Pay us, or we stop")
On the contrary.
The democratization of media ALWAYS lessens the quality. The path of music from the Renaissance to the digerati-controlled 21st century is court -> concert -> records -> free MP3's.
In each of these the quality of overall music has decreased. The officials in the court were musically educated and did not admit fluff from their composers. The concert going public were also educated elite, and barely a step down from the court. The early days of the phongraph were also elite (because it was an expensive instrument), though it was not musically advanced until the middle of the first decade of the 1900's (mostly consisting of operas) and not further until the 1930's, where the symphony was first recorded in entirety. The compact disc democratized things further, to the point where you could buy symphonies in tin cans in drug stores, and culminates in free MP3's, where the repertoire consists of youth orchestras recording war horses.
You can also see this in literature. The pre-Gutenberg texts were exclusively for the educated elite (at the time, very elite). The early printing press brought the advent of the novel, but the mass market paperback brought the advent of the romance novel, and dummy books.
Your implication (that Nine Inch Nails isn't cultural dialectic) is naive at best. If anything NIN is a perfect example of modern culture. The fact that it's also good music is irrelevant, but they ARE talented and their music IS good.
You are culturally illiterate. How many books have you read in the past week? And I mean real books, not novels, sci-fi, or technology books.
I dunno, I always thought DIVX was evil, but thats just me. I took great delight wandering into Circuit City and seeing their latest tactic for selling DIVX to someone who has a clue, instead of the general population of sheeple.
Although this is a very enlightened attitude, I am not sure the use of the collective term we is appropriate. Even now, there still are software programs like Mathematica or Scientific Workplace that have dongles hanging off the parallel port to enforce their copyrights.
So some software houses are still unenlightened. But do they make less or more profits, I wonder.
However, the RIAA hasn't gone after individuals.
Oh, yes they have. I just happen to be one of them. I'm lots of money in the hole due to litigation taken against me from these guys... my attorney's fees alone (not counting the reparations I now owe them due to an FTP site I used to run) were over $5,000.
I would be very interested in more info on this (without you having to give up your anonymoty, of course). It sounds like you were probably guilty, but I'll reserve judgement as I know for a fact that very innocent people have been found against, such as Superpimp.org, makiers of the PAN newsreader.
I noticed this when downloading Pan (a newsreader for gnome and the BEST USENET newsreader I've ever come across or had the pleasure of using) -- On Oct 11, 2000 an either corrupt or clueless court found in favor of the RIAA against the small startup, simply because some users MIGHT possibly misuse the software to save copies of MP3 files posted to USENET to their local hard drives.
Disgusting. This is like finding against ACE Hardware for selling hammers, one of which might, somewhere, by somebody, be misused to konk someone over the head with (hopefully an RIAA/MPAA lawyer). What is more appalling by this decision, is that this functionality has existed in newsreaders and stand alone programs since at least 1987 (when I first got on the internet). Superpimp wasn't doing anything revolutionary in making their newsreader that hadn't been done for the last 13 years or more, with perfectly legitimate application (such as allowing users to easilly download and save pictures of my vacation I post to one of the bin newsgroups).
We all comfort ourselves that this will be overturned in appeals, but sometimes I wonder if we aren't behaving very much like many Jews in Germany did prior to World War II, telling ourselves that this will pass and sanity will prevail while standing on the brink of a pending age of darkness. I'll believe the optomism when I see an actual case overturned in appeals -- in the meantime, I think we would all do well to look at this entire War Against the Internet which the Old Media are waging (and winning) with a little more realism and concern, and get involved politically and do something about it.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
A. The recording industry is not a government granted monopoly. The recording industry is made up of thousands of different companies competing in a free market.
B. The recrding industry has signficantly decreased prices since the dawn of the industry. In 1906 Red Seal records, which were one-sided, three-minute long records of extremely low fidelity, cost as much as $7 each, at a time when a suit of clothes cost $7, while today a CD twenty times as long, with infinitely higher sound reproduction quality, costs $12.99, even though inflation has decreased the value of the dollar by ten-fold. The effect is a decrease in real price per minute of music of over a factor of 100. CD's have decreased in nominal price since the introduction by about 50% while increasing quality trmendously, during a period when the CPI has increased by over 50% (a decrease in real price of 75% not even accounting for the quality increase)
C. The recording industry does not use high costs of production to justify high prices. It loses money off of 90% of titles, and makes it up only through mega-stars. If it used the high cost to justify the price, CD's of the 90% of non-profitable artists would be a lot higher than $12.99.
Of course, a fundamental tenent of business that almost no Slashdolts understand, is that you can only buy what business wants to sell you. You may think that you have the right to buy songs without buying the album (if you are so musically clueless that you buy music made up of "songs"), and 100 million people may also, but it doesn't mean that anyone will sell it to them. .
Why is it that capitalism and the 'free market' are not simply meeting the needs of the patrons? I thought the capitalist economy was based on supply/demand? See below.
Of course, the free market says that if it is possible to supply the consumer with what he wants, the market it eventually will.
If the music industry really was a 'free market' we wouldnt see the present situation. Music would be supplied in singles -and albums- pick-your-own would be widely available at music kiosks (burn your own *.wav CD, $xx per track), available via download on the internet (wav & mp3 & ogg ect), artists would be able to license their copyrights to a 'distributor' for a fixed period (or maybe a production run) and they would be able to license to more than one distributor at a time. After all this is the product of the artist - not the industry. The point is simple: the music industry is not a free market.. Abusive copyright legislation. Blatant collusion (ever hear of the RIAA?). The music industry does not have to 'innovate' and adapt to the market - they are organizing the market, to only their advantage. They are specifying the terms to the market. How is this possible? Oligopoly and collusion, price fixing, predatory business relationships (deals with radio stations/record stores/'PR' Firms), purchased legislation (witha a corrupt government(another bigger problem)). The RIAA controls the whole deal. The barrier to entry is beyond approach - and the industry is talking about more consolidation.
This is a free and 'right' business climate? This is a free market? Puhleeze.
I hope the bastards suffocate under a collapsed pile of their own vile stinking greed. Bullocks to the whole lot.
Piracy is all about the LACK of RESPECT for an AUTHOR's work.
Did the AUTHOR say that you can FREELY DISTRIBUTE his or her works?? If No , then it is illegal.
On the other hand, am I "stealing potential profits" if I buy a CD (which is the "right" to listen to it), and then lend it out to a few of my best friends?? Morally maybe, legally no.
If piracy is a loss of potential income, then WHY do businesses NOT list it on their budgets??
P.S.How the hell is this parent post a troll?
Moderators, it is a fact that piracy is immoral & illegal. It is not a troll, dumb-@$$es.
"Special programs"? Does this sound familiar to anyone? Take out a loan and buy a clue, RIAA and MPAA and friends -- people just don't want to put up with complicated protection schemes. Most people probably don't want to pirate material in large volumes. But they also don't have any desire to put up with inconvient copyright schemes (cough, cough, SDMI), regardless of whatever "noble" intentions ("Let's stop those pirates!") they might be designed with.
Look what happened to Circuity City's DIVX. It failed not because it was immoral or evil, but because people just didn't want to have to put up with such an awkward system. And, ultimately, nothing that isn't accepted by the mainstream populace will ever be worthwhile. They can throw out new data formats and encryption schemes until the cow comes on, but if puts too much of a burden on the average consumer (who just wants his movies / music), it will simply never catch on.
After all, the customer is No. 1.
Green Monkey
The software industry went after large counterfeiters, instead of users. They also seeked to educate users, and scare corporations.
There are NO corporate buyers of music, so you'd HAVE to go after the individual. However, the RIAA hasn't gone after individuals.
They went after the "large-scale" copiers (MP3.com) and the "large-scale copier enabler" (napster).
I personally think that MP3.com is in the moral right (although not the legal right) and Napster is in the legal right (and moral right, but I maintain that copying for personal use is fair use).
HOWEVER, the parallel to the counterfeitting shop is the napsters of the world...
The article is flawed, the RIAA is doing what the SPA did... Go after the big boys, and leave your customers alone. SDMI was a bad idea, and the pricing model sucks, but they haven't been suing people for using napster.
Alex
Mathematica doesn't have a dongle... I saw people in my physics class trading around a Mathematica CD just the other day.
Why were they trading it? The physics lab server is slow, and it's inconvenient to walk all the way to the damn physics building do to some work. SSH/X port forwarding is screwed up on that server, and you need special mathematica fonts, so you can't really use it remotely.
If those people couldn't get a pirated copy, they would just have to use the legit versions in the lab. They can't afford to buy Mathematica, and it wouldn't really be worth the cost, anyway. Wolfram Research isn't losing out a bit through them pirating it.
What happens when they graduate? Wolfram now has that much more market share over Maple and its other competitors, thanks to those "pirates". Once they have real jobs in physics or whatever, they'll probably buy Mathematica (or ge the department to buy it).
I don't use games that often :)
But the intrusiveness is the issue. I don't mind that I'm not able to make copies of my software for friends, or that I can't steal theirs.
I *do* mind having to find a floppy on my desk every time I want to use my word processor, and another for my spreadsheet, and another . . .
*especially* with a laptop!
ANd then there's those stupid "on page 17" schemes. My wife threw out my manual for Master of Orion with the newspapers. At least its multiple choice questions about something that's in the game as well (and you can reboot before the third try and take up a couple of turns back). But the boo, is nearly as big as my laptop . . .
Am I likely to buy another game from MPS? not on purpose . . .
Without responding to the rest of the post, you have to realize that this part here is complete BS. First of all, except for CEOs, workers are never paid in accordance to what their work does for the company. There would be no profits for any company if they were to pay in relation to the profit they made off of the product. Sure the battery can't be made if the factory worker isn't there, but it doesn't mean that he deserves a $2 million salary because Duracell makes $5 million in sales this year. Economics just doesn't work that way.
Secondly, do you think that a programmer would make anywhere near $200,000 a year based on shareware? This post talks big, and it's romantic to think about what would happen should our current economic system be turned on its head and completely decentralized, but I hear no concrete plans for what would happen then. Sounds like a big rationalization for plain old piracy to me.
While it's true that there are few to no corporate buyers, piracy of music CDs is a booming business in Russia and China / Hong Kong. However, the USA is trying to remain on "good terms" with these countries, and so the RIAA has to look for enemies at home. They're just taking "at home" too literally.
Let's not forget that the SPA encourages people to turn anyone who pirates software in. They've only shifted the burden of finding pirates to honest users.
1.5. Did the RIAA really sue Pan?
No. It's just a joke.
Ouch! I fell for that one hook, line, and sinker. I haven't been taken like that since an April Fools joke on the 'net back in 1987
*wipes egg from face*
(I never had any reason to look at the FAQ, as PAN was trivial to compile and install -- mae culpa)
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
errr... reading books on a CRT? yuk! I don't see this sort of problem happening until we get a *good* and *cheap* replacement for paper books (i.e. flat-flexible electronic paper) ...yes, books are expensive too (AUD $16.00+ for a standard paper-back? come-on!) but who would go to all the trouble to "rip" a book? It's easy to do with CD's now, because it's digital, but books are to analog to make this easy.
Anyway, that's just my $0.02 + 10% GST.
Yeah, so he could take twice as long to write the same program. That'd make him real marketable :)
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
I could be wrong, but I would think the analogous Corporate Buyers in the music industry would be:
Radio stations
Stores who pipe-in music to their customers
Karaoke companies
Music clubs (Columbia House)
Retailers
I don't know how often these buyers pirate the music they use. I do remember some news reports of pirate retailers, in the US and asia.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
digital piracy has the potential to tear down an infrastructure that we see as RIGHT, even though it may not be.
elaboration:
music piracy is a really great thing. i hope it sinks the recording industry. the recording is EVIL. it steals artists rights and property and benefits very few, very successful artists. artists have very little to gain from the recording industry. for instance, even the biggest artists, metallica for intance, don't make more than 50 cents per 15 dollar compact disc. so if they were to sell 10 million albums this would amount to 5 million dollars. not chump change, but FAR below the amount of money Metallica makes every year. metallica makes all their money on tours and merchandising, something that they don't need record companies for.
imagine if all music were distributed over the internet for free, if the music were good enough, people would go pay to see the artists perform the music. much the same way people buy cds and go see the artist if they like the music. digital or physical, it makes very little difference. except that w/o the recording industry the artist would be able to keep their publishing rights, not worry about distribution and not get trapped into unfair contracts for money needed upfront to record albums. artist would get paid for performing (where most of their money comes from anyways) and record companies would go away. sounds perfect to me.
software piracy has the potential to do much the same thing. it would be a wonderful thing if every copy of Microsoft' windows were pirated. or if all commercial operating systems were pirated for that matter. in essence, this would lead to a free OS for all. it's been shown that a quality OS can be made by open source communities with free labor. imagine if your operating system was free and had mass user acceptance.stealing from MS and other is actually a good thing. if ms went bankrupt people would use a free os that would eventually (if it hasn't already) surpassed windows in quality.
stealing applications has nearly as much potential. obviously at some point programmers need to get paid. but do you think that adobe or microsoft pay progammers nearly enough? even if you make 200 thousand a year hacking away in redmond, it's nothing compared to the money MS makes off your labor. imagine if all applications development were shareware based. developers could reap the fruits of their labors much more directly. it's not too different than big corporate farming versus small organic farming. small organic farmers actually earn MORE than by being a part of some huge corporate farming collective that buys their crops too cheaply. a small nimble software company that operated on a shareware model, could compete effectively and make more money for the individuals. because they were relying on a shareware model, they wouldn't have to worry about distribution costs and their small size would allow them to be price comptetive.
think how kewl it would be if there were 20 different small companies that created word processors that all used a standardized (ISO standard maybe) .DOC file. or we have today's 100 mb word process full of bloat
that doesn't even handle it's own proprietary .DOC file correctly.
now i'm not advocating that digital piracy is always justified. nor am i saying we should all go steal cars and computer. what i am saying is that digital piracy has the potential to change software and music for the better.
revolution through stealing? hey, it worked for robin hood ; )
Hi - I respect Dan Bricklin, but I think he left out one major point. IMO, in the traditional third party software market, a copy "stolen" today has a greater chance to result in paid sales tomorrow than with music. (I know both the web and the open source movement are slowly changing this business model.)
1. The idea of a software "learning curve" and complex document formats tends to lock people into specific software. So it is actually better for people to use your company's software for free than to buy from your competitors.
2. Mass software sales are largely upgrade based. Even if people get today's version for free, there will be a new version out every 18 months or so. Since in the past the percentage of people with computers was always growing, a little bit of piracy here and there did not hurt as much since there were always millions of new "virgin" computer users for each new rev.
Also, Bricklin did not say this, but I think the software suite approach was largely a Microsoft innnovation to dominate the applications market. In the golden age of the late 80's I would have taken the best of breed WordPerfect, Lotus and dBASE combo over the clunkier MS bundle any day, but that is now water under the bridge.
Now, I know there are people who will say that many people download MP3's and later buy the CD and/or will buy future CD's from the same artist. However, based just on my own contact with other people, I think this is a much smaller percentage than is sometimes claimed.
But having said the above, I think the RIAA and its big business approach to music is terrible. The false saying that "artists won't create if they won't get paid" is a total crock. True artists have little concern with financial gain. Did Mozart choose music over becoming a banker or something? Did he say he would only complete the final act of "Don Giovanni" if 75% of the audience agreed to pay for it?
I know I have said this here before, but the RIAA fighting with strong arm tactics to keep CD's at $15 each will only cause free or low-cost music to flourish. Let me quickly plug the Cynic Project just because I stumbled across it via mp3.com - I ordered his CD for $8 new and got 70 minutes of great music. Why would I now go out and spend $15 at the mall for a Ricky Martin CD that has only two good songs?
Again, I think the RIAA and the big four labels largely suck, but I seem to be one of the few here that think the much vaunted (by the right wing) "invisible hand" of the marketplace will actually come back to haunt them in the long run.
TWR
- Someone else writing the crack: illegal (DMCA)
- Someone serving you the crack: illegal (DMCA)
- Using the crack: legal - until UCITA is enacted, or until you're no longer sold a 'proof of purchase', but sold a license agreement that gets around all consumer protection laws.
Never, ever get into a license agreement without consumer protection backup if at all possible. If the company doing the licensing doesn't like the cut of your giblets, it can point to clause 666: "the company reserves the right to alter the terms of your license at any time without prior notification", revoke your license and leave you high and dry, with no recompense or legal recourse.Does my bum look big in this?
industries. The tactics of fighting against the pirater may be similar in the two industries, but the actual product being pirated is very different. Lets take a look:
Software:
Use: To create with and utilize our computers. To connect to other people, to help grow and make money.
Cost : Anywhere from 30$ to 15 grand for a product that is usually worth that.
Music (ala RIAA):
Use: To listen to and enjoy. That is basically it.
Cost: Under 30$ for a product that is never worth that.
The main difference here is that the RIAA controls more of how we function with the product than any of the software associations. They can control what over-zealous-low-self-esteem-pre-adolescent-girls hear, and sell products to them. They can censor thoughts, ideas, lyrics, good music. All of this controls the consumer market, in order to make more money.
The software industry, however, tries to prevent piracy in order to minimalize losses. Thats it. No mind control there.
Just my 2 cents.
-Fred
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American Public." - H.L. Mencken
Well, I don't know him, but he looks like he has things to say, so may be he'll accept the idea. Laurent
Here's the interesting points:
The tapes were propritary.
The decks the tapes played on were propritary as well.
The music company owned the tapes, as well as the equipment that played it.
From what I had gathered from the whole thing, the coffee company paid the music service, not on a flat one-time fee, but on a continual basis, due to the fact that the music was considered a 'public performance' Sound familiar?
(as a final note of little interest, my beloved, yet much persecuted opera tape was found in the sanitizer one evening, quite melted and dead. No one confessed to the act, and instead of a decent burial in the trash can, it had to be sent back to the music company for supposed credit or replacement. I never did see that tape again... )
Shameless plug for my photos on Flickr
.. before posting this only one article, /. potential material on patents:
Laurent
Stephen King is doing well with the "Internet" shareware version of his new book, the PLANT. Why is Stephen King doing this (open distribution)? To get more of his share of the cash that his literary creation makes. The RIAA is worried that any musical artist can do this, and bypass RIAA's bank accounts.
"Many have chosen to follow. They aren't the ones I'm worried about."
Piracy is ALWAYS wrong. It is the equivalent of theft.
Except when you steal something, the original is not there anymore. When you pirate software or music, the original is still there, but the profits aren't. It's not quite the same.
--hongpong.com
The point is that the RIAA is not trying to improve their distribution, but they are only suing. What they say is that Microsoft made it easy for you to pay for Windows and Office (not paying is not quite as easy, but that's something else). While the RIAA is making it really hard for you to get music on the Net.
I would say that the RIAA is much more arrogant than the software industry and that's because they are not used to competition. Even Microsoft is nice compared to them and that's because they are used to having competition. While the RIAA think that they can change the world to fit their business plan, the software people changed their business plans to fit the world...
Is it just me, or does the "Information Industry" part of the SIAA name sound a little odd? As in, it used to be STUFF people peddled, now it's INFORMATION, which is an entirely different beast.
:-) Witness:
At least they are FAR more clueful than the RIAA, though.
-- all of those nasty copy-protection schemes of the '80s, like bad floppy sectors
-- now, you don't get none of that
-- serial numbers (think windblows) keep honest people honest, while not affecting the dishonest
-- the industry mostly realizes that the battle against the user is not worth fighting
-- instead, they go after the biggie counterfeiters
And, I think we all know that the RIAA is currently at the top of the list -- silly protection schemes to try and prevent all users from doing anything the RIAA doesn't want you to. Hopefully, they will progress down the list further in the next ten years.......
Oh well. I don't care too much whether the RIAA lives or dies, as long as they don't buy legislation (in the US of A mostly) that affects me. In other words, I don't care much for their music. Classical rules!
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Your implication (that Nine Inch Nails isn't cultural dialectic) is naive at best. If anything NIN is a perfect example of modern culture. The fact that it's also good music is irrelevant, but they ARE talented and their music IS good.
I enjoy a good symphony as well, but it's just arrogance to imply that all pop bands have to be untalented or removed from culture. I can agree a lot of pop bands are shit, but there's talent in there if you look hard and long enough.
Stealing software, though, isn't the way to go about it... regardless of how much bullshit has become attached to the concept of "intellectual property," I still feel a strong ethical obligation to honor the author's wishes as regards what I do with his or her stuff. Remember that the same copyright laws that stop Cheapbytes from burning Win2k CDs stop Microsoft (in theory) from stealing GPLed code for their own commercial gain, or re-packaging and selling shareware to people too uninformed to know better. I don't think it's my place to force MS's programmers to work in small shareware shops, if they want to work for an evil monolithic closed-source company that pays well... particularly because it doesn't get me anywhere. I've got a Free OS, web browser, and development environment, and three CDs and an internet full of any other software I might need, all with the source code included... why would I challenge the same copyright laws that protect my code against corporate misuse, just so I could get my hands on a handful of buggy, unmodifiable nonsense?
Shit, man, the revolution's over. We won. BSD and Linux work better for me, and I believe very strongly that the people behind them should have their IP respected by the community at large. That means I also have to respect the IP that went into Windows, which is not a problem for me -- not that I'll respect the license my buddy "agreed to" and refrain from installing an illegal copy of the OS he already bought so his computer'll work again, but that I equate installing one Word CD on ten computers with including "just a little bit" of a GPLed driver in a closed-source product. There's enough information out there that actually is free that there's very little cause to tread on the wishes of the guy who stayed after hours to make your computer run properly.
Howsis for irony: After writing a pretty blatant piece of karma-whoring about how much better Free software is than all that other crap, I click on "Preview," only to discover that Mozilla has suffered some sort of obscure brain damage and is unable to complete my request. Let's see if "Submit" works...
I personally liked the idea of DIVX. Though I never studied the matter extensively, the fact is that I would _save_ a significant amount of money, not to mention hassle, by not having to bother with returning videos, and the inevitable late fees. I had no moral or "hassle" objection to DIVX. The reason I never bothered to actually buy one is because they weren't sufficiently common. Much like Laserdisc (only worse), if hardly anyone rents them with enough selection/quantity, then the worth of the technology to the consumer approaches zero. I believe DIVX failed more because of poor management of the technology by trying to be too propreitary.
Piracy is illegal, and pirates should know that they are commiting a crime, but the crime in question is not theft. Theft is the act of *taking* something away from its owner. At worst, pirates simply don't *give* something to the owner -- the owner doesn't lose anything that they had already. It is simply Orwellian Newspeak to call piracy theft.
There's no difference between buying a CD today and an LP thirty years ago. Many people still pay for songs they don't want.
Obviously, you are very new to music. The main format for FM radio thirty years ago - AOR - was album oriented rock, where the stations played selections from albums. For example, "Stairway to Heaven" was never released as a single, and yet is almost always considered one of the top two or three "classic rock" singles of all time.
Today, in contrast, practically every song played on the radio is available for consumption via CD single. CD singles are also longer, and contain more different types of songs, than the 45 RPM thirty years ago. You are "forced to buy the album" much less frequently today than thirty years ago.
Of course, a fundamental tenent of business that almost no Slashdolts understand, is that you can only buy what business wants to sell you. You may think that you have the right to buy songs without buying the album (if you are so musically clueless that you buy music made up of "songs"), and 100 million people may also, but it doesn't mean that anyone will sell it to them. I bet 100 million people would love to buy a BMW for $1000 too, but I don't expect anyone to sell it to them. Of course, the free market says that if it is possible to supply the consumer with what he wants, the market it eventually will.
SPA approached them with an educational campaign, such as a "Don't Copy That Floppy" rap video
The RIAA should make one of their puppets (boy bands , bubble gum pop girls , etc.) whip up a snappy tune about why you should give the poor RIAA more money. Wait, the RIAA would probably try to sell it for way more than it's worth, and then it would just get traded around illegally. The irony would be great though.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
because they realize that most of the top users learned from pirated copies...
ie: i began programming in 8th grade, but there was no chance in hell i could have afforded to buy a copy of VB at the time....and if i hadn't gotten a pirated copy back then, i wouldn't be nearly as good of a programmer as i am now...
on the other hand, copying music cds doesn't bring any long term benefit to the industry
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I have to disagree with you there...
If you need some expensive CAD software to do your drawing, you should pay them.
If you could do the drawing with something cheaper.. then you should. I would bet that, unless you are an architect or engineer, you don't need the features of AutoCAD or Minicad or whatever you use..
Macrovision's making a killing with their "SafeDisc" CD protection scheme, which is pretty much a bad sector check on top of an encryption scheme. Never mind that there's an automated program out there that undoes the encryption without checking the bad sectors first, companies are forking over billions for this.
The reason? The PC game software industry is dying. Powerful easy-to-use consoles are murdering PC software sales in every category except first-person shooters and real-time strategy, and that's only a matter of time. Publishers believe due to timing that it's because of the rise of CD-R drives, when it's actually because of Windows and the PC architecture, neither of which was designed to play games and both of which act strangely when forced to do so.
Ironically, the only thing SafeDisc prevents in real life is playing the games on Wine (the bad sector check hacks it's way into kernel mode on Windows), and once cracked (either by automated or more traditional means) that's not a problem either.
Gee, if he'd figured that out a couple of years earlier . . .
Visicalc blew a fully owned market, monopoly beyond even microsofts, by refusign to sell on platforms it couldn't copy-protect (e.g., CP/M).
They figured this out far too late to save themselves.
While I'm at it, for those not old enough to remember, copy protection died a fast death somewhere around 1990. Copy protection was the norm, so even after you installed on your hard disk, you had to insert the install disk as a "key disk" on many progams (Microsoft business programs were a notable exception, iirc).
Then a magazine (MacWorld, I think) called for a flat-out boycott on any copy-protected software--and was heeded. About six months later, copy protection was the exception rather than the rule.
hawk, showing his age
It's unfortunate that such a flawed view is so pervasive on Slashdot that it gets posted (and modded up) regularly.
The reason you are wrong, is because the fixed cost of a CD is much more than the marginal cost of a CD (which is almost 0).
Most records costs hundreds of thousand or (for bigger name rock albums) millions of dollars to produce. When you buy the CD, you are paying to cover this cost. When you pirate the CD, you retain value for this extremely costly service, yet you don't pay for it.
If nobody paid for a CD, and everybody copied it, would be negative the cost of production (and not 0, as you claim). This is why you are wrong.
If you think when you buy a CD all you are paying for is the media and the packaging, then buying a blank CD and a jewel case would be the same thing as buying a pre-packaged CD.
:)
The recorded music industry is less than 125 years old. To suggest that humanity was deprived of culture for the preceding three million years is ignorant at best.
Fin-de-siecle France, or early Nineteenth Century Vienna (the former emerging when recorded music was only in its extreme infancy) were almost infinitely more "cultural" than 20th Century teen culture where all recorded music is simultaneously and instantaneously available, but yet most youths would rather play a Moby or Nine Inch Nails song really loud, than experience anything resembling serious cultural dialectic.
i will say it again (though i know nobody's listening :) ) :
not every program costs $4000. my company doesn't sell anything that costs over $50.
we need piracy... there is nothing negative about it since the people who download warez would never have bought those same warez in stores, hence the companies dont loose any money...
you are either 16 or a complete idiot, or both. i get at least one email a month from someone telling me that they tried to find a crack for our stuff but couldn't, so they are registering anyway because they really need our software.
let me rephrase that for you: people want our stuff. but, if they can't find a crack, they will sometimes pay for it.
it is quite obvious, to someone who is on the producing side of the deal, that "we" don't need piracy.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Although you wouldn't know it from Bricklin's tone, in its heyday the SPA did raise a lot of hackles with its tactics, which basically amount to bullying businesses to open up their systems for SPA audits (which would only find unlicensed copies of major packages published by SPA members) and discouraging people from trading any software via modem and floppies (conveniently forgetting the existence of shareware and free software.) The software publishing industry had to be dragged into the present day kicking and screaming, and the audio and other media publishers are destined to follow the same torturous route.
Complicated 'protection' mechanisms are no longer found on many pieces of software. As they said, they found they still got paid even when they did *nothing* technical to prevent piracy.
Someone else brought up a good point that I think holds a lot of truth.
If we look to the software industry, for example... those little warez dudes who 'hoard' tons and tons of warez... so what? These software houses *don't give a shit*. It's not worth fighting, and they know it. WOuld any of those warez kiddies actually have a reason to buy the software? no. DO they need it ? No. Are they a 'lost sale'? No. Are the people who get it from them? No. Let's face it. 99% of the 'warez' scene are just people who like being part of the scene.. plain and simple. They are not threat to the outside world.
Without a shadow of a doubt piracy is not ALWAYS wrong. For example, what if your favourite program, album, book, anything else went out of print, but one of your friends have it? Piracy would certainly be a good choice for your problem, or not?
I don't disagree with Bricklin's ideas, I just think that his article should have balanced his details a bit more. It seems like he devoted so much time to explaining where he came from that he ran out space to explain his ideas.
~=Keelor
> Piracy is ALWAYS wrong.
Define piracy.
According to Lars Ulrich of Metallica, if I copy a live performance, then sell you copies from the trunk of my car, it's not piracy, it's a bootleg & a l33t mu5ik thing to do. But if I make a copy without charge for a friend to listen to, I'm a pirate & stealing his Intellectual Property. (Or is it his record labels? Seems to be something in the US Federal law that says Meticallica's album library is considered ``work for hire" -- unless that law *did* get changed.)
Same applies to software. Only the difference is that software corporations are letting the programmers remind people ``Hey, love us or hate us, if you don't pay for the software you're using, we won't be in business to maintain it."
Now if those software corporations could be convinced to fix bugs before they glue on more features . . .
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p