Slashdot Mirror
A Love Song For Napster
CyberLeader writes: "Discover Magazine has an article in both their print and online editions by musician and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier in which he conducts a thought experiment on the logical consequences over the current content control battles. A chilling excerpt: 'By 2005, every stream of sound had to present the right documentation to a pair of headphones or speakers- or the music couldn't be played. Before long people were hoarding old analog speakers. In 2006, the recording industry persuaded eBay to refuse to list them.'"
Did anyone else notice the copyright at the bottom of the article. © Copyright 2000 The Walt Disney Company. Isn't Disney one of the people responsible for the napster fiasco!!!
no, I'm black thus I by definition cannot be racist.
then people wouldn't listen to the "big musicians" we'd listen to local bands, local people, who's life is music, not money. same idea with open source, really.
Zeigen Sie mir Ihre Papiere!
You Have Been Trolled . . . (what's the rest?)
And the other .04%?
They are the marketers who will try to sell us on SDMI :)
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Yeah, it is cool, but you're a couple decades too late :-). Colin Fletcher, while revising The Complete Walker for what would become The Complete Walker III, writes in the intro (IIRC) that he tried to sell his publisher on calling it The Pre-antepenultimate
Complete Walker. I'm still waiting for the antepenultimate edition.
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
Sheesh. Don't buy the products? And did YOU buy a Macrovision-protected DVD player? My point is that the industry will force all the companies to play along with their rights-reducing schemes under threat of lawsuit.
- -----------------
The only thing I see breaking this movement is an anti-trust lawsuit against the media producers for colluding to limit consumers fair-use rights and to stifle competition from rogue hardware producers.
-------------------------------------
BTW, do Americans really believe that left-handed people can't drive stick-shifts?
Should the content providers be allowed to form a cartel whereby only members of the cartel are allowed/able to produce content?
How much does the artist get per T-shirt sale ? How much money does the artist make on the concert ? (hint: a lot of artists barely break even, even the big ones). Unless you actually know the answers to these questions (I believe you don't), your comments have no factual basis.
My feeling is that since we 'the consumer' made the industry what it is, we have the right to take it away.
Doesn't take long for the napsterites to start spouting raw communism, does it ? No, you don't have the right to loot. You have the right to buy or not to buy. If you don't like the conduct of the industry, you have every right to boycott and protest, but you don't have the "right" to take anything from anyone.
Anybody with a basic knowledge of how they work, a piece of wire and some ferrous metal can make a basic speaker. With a weekend, some permanent magnets and a decent basement shop you could even make speakers that sounded OK.
Will it be a criminal offense to spin an old vinyl record on a stick and play it with a needle taped to a 3x5 card? Ooh, I'm "chilled" to the bone. Get real.
Without a law change of similar magnitude outlawing analogue 'old' technologies this won't happen. I think such an attempt would struggle as people will not obey laws they deem unreasonable
The only problem with this is that in some cases, outlawing the old tech isn't necessary. Take for example the numerous balls in the air with HDTV. They (MPAA, cable carriers) have already gotten laws passed requiring HDTV manufacturers to include copy protection in the hardware level, now they're pushing for complete content control (copy never, copy once, view once, what have you) on all digital TV signal. And, FCC has granted cable providers to not be obligated to provide analog signal with their broadcasts. So, if they get everything they want, the hardware won't display non-approved signal, and the signal won't be viewable by non-approved hardware. So even if you keep your old TV, it won't be able to decode any meaningful signal.
The changes in the laws are quite minor. They probably wouldn't be able to overturn the Betamax decision and make copying for archiving purposes illegal. What they can do is make it so legal copying and archiving are impossible.
Personally, I think that if they do get everything they want (full content control of hardware and signal, plus phasing out all non-digital signal in five years), given the expense required in getting an HDTV, and the fact that it's so tightly controlled, there's a fair chance that a lot of people will simply stop watching TV. So that's not a bad thing, i don't think.
Another damned comic
+++ NO CARRIER
...or is it just me? This sucks, because I was kinda looking forward to reading the damn article. Well, I guess I'd have to wait for a while... Unless some people dare to post mirrors of course.
--
Slashdot didn't accept your submission? hackerheaven.org will!
if nobody buys the new fancy gear, They lose.
You mean like they are losing with DVDs?
Heck we can't even get geeks not to buy DVDs what chance do we have with the clueless?
Grey (Chris Lusena)
Once the industry starts trying to push it down people's collective throats, people will care. Remember DivX?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
CD's cost more than $2 to make. Factor in:
a) studio time/artists expenses
b) mastering/mixing
c) package design
d) marketing
e) shipping.stocking
f) etc.
Just because it costs less than $2 to replicate the master for each commercial CD, doesn't mean that the above costs are somehow negated.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The way i see things, events will neither get substantially better (the serious reform of IP laws that "we" want), nor get substantially worse (the absurd reality that Lanier shows the logic heading to).
From the Big Mean Media Corporations point of view, they have to keep things tolerable, otherwise you get revolution.
This is far more sinister than Lanier's "possibility", because our freedoms will be abused by Corporations (with the help of our friendly democratic government), but not to the point that things get so bad that they must change.
What we will see is that those of us who wish to exercise our freedoms will get caught in an endless cat and mouse game of crack-countercrack in some grim parody of Spy-vs-Spy, and we will be criminals and life will not be pleasent. Yes, every securtiy measure will broken and those who want to break the law will be able to, but at the price of it all being a big pain in the ass.
I don't really want to be a criminal, and i don't really want to have to spend my time and energy cracking stupid security measures in order to get what i want, and what to a large extent I have a moral and even legal right to. I would rather see IP laws reformed in a fair way... but that's seems a long way off.
From a certian view, I actually do wish that Lanier's proposed reality happens. Once things sink to that level, there will be a massive need for change which will be clear to all people, and all people will fight for this change. It might even mean a larger revolution. But as long as we can crack the security with relative ease, we will, rather than fight the big fight to change the situation at it's root; and as long as the situation doesn't get really absurd, it will be that much harder to push things back the other direction.
please tell me i'm woring...
adrien cater
boring.ch
Point and Grunt
then performers with popular (choose your own definition of "popular") MP3s on Napster should sure Napster.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
DVD is a case where the new technology is better than the old (VHS).
if we're strictly talking about stereo sound, there's not much you can do that's better than a CD...is there?
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
sure it's idealistic - the subject is "Here's an idea..." not "Here's an algorithm". :)
so, you're suggestion is to, what, sigh and play along?
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
big deal. within hours of their release, these albums will be MP3'd, burned to CD-R or cassette.
if you can't decrypt the content to a WAV file, just put a mic in front of the magic-copyright-smart speaker.
the record companies can't put copyright-enforcers in our ears (yet).
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
- Care for another example? How about VCRs? The majority of the VCR-purchasing audience was completely unaware of Macromedia protection schemes. Hell, many people still are. That doesn't stop them from buying them.
Small nitpick, but it's Macrovision. Macromedia is the creator of Shockwave and Flash._______
Scott Jones
Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
FC Closer
people won't buy copyright-enforcing players. this is the grassroots approach to something consumers don't want. however, i think that capitalism itself will provide the tools that crush the SDMI, etc. - because people _will_ buy the players that don't enforce copyrights. and one day, the big companies have to play along or lose.
points in case:
- the DivX player. a stupid idea, died a very rapid death despite massive marketing.
- DVD. there are tons and tons of 'region-code free' players produced as we speak. Sony has no power over China. sooner or later, the region code (which was only a minor annoyance anyways) will be dead.
- mp3. Sony is producing CD players that can play mp3s now. they really hate to do that, but they had no choice. it was do or die.
once enough people don't like copyright-enforcing players, they will buy the players that don't. money will do the talking. the SDMI is fighting an uphill battle that cannot be won, no matter how powerful the organizations behind it are.
but I can learn how to make my own speakers. I'd rather have crappy sound quality than put up with that crap.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
It's different because now the audio equipment is programmable, and will be checking to see if you're allowed to listen to what you're trying to play on it. If the corporations are allowed to program the equipment, they can force a new format to become mainstream by just disabling your ability to listen to older stuff. You'll be stuck with scavenging old equipment and old recordings. And, as Lanier noted, you won't be able to record your own stuff because the recording equipment will be programmable too.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
I think you're missing my point here. (Although I may be missing your point instead; if so, correct me please. :) )
Legislators have the power to stop ATM transaction fees -- all they have to do is pass a law against them. But when asked about ATM fees, the average legislator will say 'they're not a problem'...because he never has to pay them. He uses a special ATM the bank installed down the hall from his office. So he never pays a fee, and he never thinks about the fees, and he never considers it an important issue when someone raises the possibility of passing laws against it. The banks are working our lawmakers in order to get the laws they want.
Back to the original post, the RIAA can do the same thing. The speakers and microphones in the Senate will never have secure software as Lanier described, because the RIAA will give them special equipment that works normally, hoping that if the lawmakers don't notice, they won't do anything. Meanwhile the rest of us, of course, will be screwed.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
SDMI is not going to take off. The partners are struggling among themselves. People left, .... Look at eetimes.com for more info.
nosig today
fwiw: the page is owned by Walt Disney :-)
just thought it was funny that the greatest storytellers on the earth are making it up
nosig today
Back in the day, the copy protection of games used to take the form of a booklet full of codes, which the user would have to refer to at certain points in the game to be able to continue. These booklets were printed with black ink on dark red paper, which made them pretty photocopy-proof.
Until you bleached the booklet. Which left clearly readable (and photocopyable) text. The text was actually *easier* to read afterwards, due to the better contrast.
Not that I'm suggesting that anybody bleach their SDMI-enabled hardware (although now that I think of it, it seems like a pretty good idea to me).
If you want to get rid of the bathwater, you've got to throw out a few babies.
So what? Yes, Disney is a plaintiff in the DeCSS case. No, the author of this story is not a party to this suit, except peripherally as an employee of Disney. The editors at Discover obviously thought that this story was worth running, so let's give them credit for that. Subtly implying that because the author is employed by an unscrupulous corporation does not, ergo, make him unscrupulous.
I mean, with the DeCSS case and all, you can
still buy MacroVision FREE DVD players:
http://www.dvdcity.com/codefree/dv333cf.html
As long as there is money to be made, people will not want to play along with the rules, no matter what they are.
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
Oh no.. if everything's encrypted some hacker will be forced to spend two afternoons cracking it!
How about an alternate future scenario:
Major record companies begin to be crushed by the yoke of their own oppression as they realize with the advent of the internet and inexpensive recording equipment, that artists can record and promote themselves without signing draconian recording contracts. In fact it's already happening. There's recards labels called net labels, and like anything else on the internet, anyone can start one.
Of the gigs of mp3s that I have on my computer I don't have a single 'illegal' one. And all the music I have comes with a creativity and freshness that you just don't find in mainstream music anymore. The RIAA can put that in there pipe and smoke it.
Of course the RIAA is trying to combat this by encrypting future DVD-audio *NOT* to combat piracy but to force an independant artist to pay the RIAA to press cds.. but with cds sticking arounf for a while and mp3s this is pretty much a moot point.
Good article. Let's extend out to the year 2020.
Between 2015 and 2020 the MPAA and RIAA has the DMCA extended to cover biological media. The RIAA and MPAA lawyers then argue successfully in court that human memories are covered by the DMCA. Everyone who listens to music or watches video must agree to an MPAA/RIAA renewable license that covers what was just watched or heard. Those that do not wish to renew their licenses by paying a small fee for each piece of licensed IP must report to RIAA/MPAA authorised medical facilities to have the areas of their brains containing the unlicensed material burned out with powerful lasers (see Total Recall and listen to Arnold S. for more info). Regulations against unlicensed material in human brains is enforcable by the FBI and the cost this new system is offset by the Biological Media Group tax imposed on all parents of newborn infants. Payable to the MPAA and RIAA.
Oh yea - Walt Disney gets the copyright period extended again and the US Supreme Court ratifies again that US Copyright and Patent Laws apply to everyone in the world who has money to spend.
At the bottom:
© Copyright 2000 The Walt Disney Company
Better stock up the earphones and speakers now.
But then again. We can always use the imports.
Seriously, though. My dad has the same speaker set for the past 20 years. I don't see MPAA coming to the house and destroy it.
NIANAS (Now, I am not a soothsayer) but CD-ROM media isn't going to die out anytime in the next 10 years.
With the booming production of CD-Recorder coupled with the ultra-extended lifespan of the CD itself, the lifespan of a recorded media just did an approximate 50,000 times. More CD-Recorder is sold than Cassette recorders, which is a sure sign of technology taking a firm hold in consumer market.
With the CD-ROM supposedly 100-year shelf-life as opposed to cassette's 3/4 years (or less if it's in the automobile)...
CD-ISSO-9660 format isn't going to go away anytime soon, neither is MP3's sliding scale of quality (with bit rates of 256+ attained already).
It'll be around probably for the rest of our lifespan. So, enjoy it, RIAA!
Wow.. touchy. Work for ebay do you?
*elevator music plays*
...yeah, or like having the US actually start using the metric system. ;^)
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
I completely agree with the first observation that the big next gen format will have to offer something substantial that CDs don't. And i agree that mp3 and formats like it, offer some very substantial advantages. For me, the main advantage for me is having the "anything, everywhere, anytime, jukebox in the sky". Even just having 10G of mp3s on my harddrive is pretty rad. 150 hours of shuffling! Or even better, playlists galore, for every possible mood and situation!
Now, to take issue with the previous poster:
Mp3 sales exist? where?
Sound like crap? Did you use a decent ripper? at what bitrate? played on what hardware? with what speakers?
In my opinion a 128/44 mp3 sounds better than a tape and very near a cd in quality. If you disagree, rip at 256!
Regardless of whether or not the marketplace ends up with mp3, mp4, mp5 or some other format (or all of them), who needs the cd? Why buy the atoms when you want the bits? You won't you'll buy the bits.
stu.
from what i have been reading about the new generation of hdtv. if the tv or a/v receiver does'nt like the source the signal is coming from, tough sh*t it will not be displayed. this is food for thought though. i'm keeping my analog headphones for a long time now.
You see a problem, I see potential. - Vincent 'Vinnie' Antonelli
Nah... just get a "Dubcutter" and cut all your media to vinyl records. Then play them on the old victrola... you're set
-----
"Defenestration" is to throw out of a window; what's a word for throwing 'Windows' out of something?
How many Britney Spears fans are there versus real musicians? Many more. How many Britney Spears fans like the McDonalds Britney Spears flash card player or something like that? Many. How many Britney Spears fans have your analog equipment? None. How many companies are going to continue to make stuff nobody is buying because nothing will play on it? None. You'll be the last one on the block w/ usable equipment. Wait that's a good thing!
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
That's not the reason why DVD is taking off. The average person does not give a flying f**k about quality. They want convenience. DVDs are smaller, lighter, and have random access (no more rewinding or fast-forwarding!). That is the only reason why the sheeple are buying into DVD.
if we're strictly talking about stereo sound, there's not much you can do that's better than a CD...is there?
Actually, there is. Have a look at this review of the new Sony/Philips SACD format. The reviewer was very skeptical of the so-called "golden ear" people's claims of problems with CD sound -- until he heard the demo. (Scroll to the bottom few paragraphs for the relevant part of the article.) Sure, there is Nyquist to consider, and no rational person would argue with his theorem. But the question is not "is Nyquist wrong", it's "Is the human ear able to hear anything beyond what is contained in CD sound?" Based on some of the reactions so far to formats like SACD and DVD-Audio, I'd say the answer seems to be, "yes, it can".
But that's not the issue when it comes to the success or failure of a new audio format. The general buying public will not care about increased quality -- they rarely have. They only care about increased convenience. If somebody comes up with a format that is smaller, more durable, and has a longer play time than CDs, people will buy it, no matter what copy-protection schemes are included. End of story. Sad but true.
Free Hans!
I thought Radiohead was a shitty Pink Floyd rip-off?
Also, by 2016 we should all be listening to nothing but electronica, because the same braindead sheep^H^H^H^H well-informed cultural critics that inexplicably named Basement Jaxx one of the top albums of the '90s has been heralding this newfangled "electronica" as the music of the future.
I don't know about you, but I look forward to a future of BMW buying out Aube and Coca Cola snatching up the latest MSBR release for the backing music.
I hope Richard Ashcroft cracks down on music by those goddamned homosexuals. They're corrupting my morals or something.
Now shut up and give me some more Fucked Pix, you lazy bastard.
(virtual instruments? literally sucked, no doubt...)
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Wonderful how we can type so much and say so little, isn't it?
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
That's true, but it doesn't matter. The masses won't have (non-SDMI) MP3 players, (non-scms) CD players, or casette decks. We're not talking about now, but 5-10 years down the line.
I expect to see players for the secure formats in Best Buy for half the price of the current non-secure stuff. The prices will be subsidized by the RIAA and MPAA. If it's cheap and flashy, the masses will buy it. This is how they will crush the "non-secure" stuff.
Granted, that's what was tried for DivX at Circuit City, but it was only one retailer. If the BMG's and Disney's of the world are behind the subsidies, it will be universal at all retailers, and there will be no way around it.
If you don't think companies would take the loss on something like that, look at how cell phones are sold. The concept of loss leaders is well established. Lose a little money selling the razor, make a ton of money selling the razor blades.
(Rebroadcast or retransmission of this telecast without the express written consent of Major League Baseball is strictly prohibited)
Hmm. I thought they made the machines cheaper. maybe it was the discs that were cheaper? Anyhow, it's still a good thing it died...
Bye Bye to your rights (Score:3, Funny)
I hate to sound like I have a stick up my ass, but how is the above funny? I'm not arguing with it being modded up, but it's more like "frightening" than "funny" if you ask me...
Unfourtunately, I don't see any way we can. The sheep will buy whatever format has the latest Backdoor Boys or Britney Speers or whatever. When the RIAA releases their 2006 albums only in whatever the new "secure" format is, that's when the old formats become obselete. Go into Best Buy sometime and watch the sheep in action.
OFF-TOPIC RANT
Last time I was in Best Buy, my experience at the cash register left me in disgust of the education system. The person in front of me was buying 2 items, a $30 pair of headphones and some audio component that was normally a couple hundred bucks but was open box selling for $95. They asked the cashier to ring up the items "so they could get a total" to see if they could afford to buy them. They couldn't do simple addition - 95 + 30 = 125 + a little but of sales tax - call it $135-$140. What's even scarier is the cashier couldn't just eyeball it either, she had to ring it up, although perhaps store rules prevented just giving a verbal estimate.
Right, copy protection. Copy protection isn't that insidious. Anybody has the right to protect what is theirs. The problem comes when the controlling entities gain too much power, and start to erode personal freedoms and liberties in favor of their own interests. Want to copy protect your DVDs? Fine, logical, but why restrict their use to certain computer platforms and regions? Don't people all over the world have the same rights to watch DVDs? Don't Linux users? Why willingly restrict your user base? It was a suit, not an engineer that made that decision, and that decision seems to irk people more than the copy protection aspect of it. I paid good money for this DVD-ROM, and a healthy portion of that money went to the MPAA. Why, then, isn't the drive useful for its intended purpose? I addressed this "how much is too much" point in an all-together too long reply a few threads up.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
You wouldn't believe me if I said I came up with that on the spot, but that's pretty much what I was thinking when I was replying, and reading other, similar stories. Maybe I passivly picked it up somewhere and it popped back into the forground. There used to be a time (waaay before I was around) when businesses understood they owed their existance and livlihood to their customers. And yes, hopefully one of these days slashdotters will realize that the issues at hand are much larger than being allowed to trade music freely. In fact, everyone should count themselves lucky if that's as far as it goes!
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
It has been proven time and time again that the Suits are only concerned with money. They'll destroy the planet, manipulate the government, erode our rights and liberties, lie, cheat, steal, and sue, all in the name of the noble cause of money. The suits, however, are not the Creators. Somebody has to make this stuff (in this case, information control systems), and it sure isn't going to be some Market Droid or talking head.
What about the engineers?
Anybody with the ability to create this kind of system must be able to see the terrible implications of its use. Who, being of sound mind and technological intellect would voluntarily work to the potential end that this paper has predicted? Maybe I can say this as a mere undergrad not yet out in the workforce, but there must be some sort of job consiousness in everybody. Am I completely wrong? Will engineers do anything for the right ammount of money, or will there be, as the revelation of what's going on spreads, a mass exoudus of geeks from the likes of Sony?
This of course raises questions about those who work for military contractors, or whoever built that god-awful singing fish, but is there a possibility here? It should be clear just from reading Slashdot that there are multitudes of technologically mided people with a social and political awareness. If people refuse to build the system, there will be no system to worry about. They're not implanting music-decrypting chips in our ears yet, so there's still time!
That's a mind trip right there...an extrapolation of the article could be that all audio and video output is ecrypted at the exit point (as well as points along the way from leading-up developments), and you'll be required to have surgically implanted decrypters in your eyes and ears to determine if you're eligible to see or hear whatever is being played, and subsequently bill you for the pleasure. Anyone not subscribing to this system and undergoing the surgery would see and hear encrypted noise.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
I hadden't realized that all existing software and hardware companies had either turned evil, or had been aquired by them, leaving absolutely no alternative for geeks but to work for an evil organization. Have to read The Wall Street Journal more, eh? And I caught the analogy...lets try to keep the patronizing to a minimum, shall we? If there weren't well meaning people offering theories that, while admittably not completely and meticulously thought out, researched, and cited but present a different approach than "F*** THE MPAA", there would be no posts for people to make obscure references, condecending remarks, and flex their egos on this anonymous forum where anyone can sound like a scholor with a few hyperlinks and weak insults.
:-)
Your welcome
But anyway, good point with the foreign labor. Extra points for not saying "Japan", too...India and Russia are much more chic references, and Japan has had DVD and digital media long before we did. Russia and India are really variables as far as technological saturation goes. In both cases, the largest groups who can really afford it are the government officials and the engineers themselves. Everyone else is just struggling to survive, and have more pressing issues to deal with than the government messing with their media. Their governments are messing with them enough already, especially in Russia, they probably wouldn't notice, anyway.
It's past my bed time, so I'm going to regroup my bug-addled brain, have some apple juice with my medicine crushed up really tiny and mixed in, and come up with a few more half-baked but hopeful solutions for arrogant nay-sayers to shoot down. (wow...hope *and* solutions in ONE post, and on SLASHDOT...)
"Behold ye corperations in thine ivory towers, I am The Consumer, thy God, and thou hast forsaken me"
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
It was also a huge masturbation session for the author. How many times do you have to "casually" list your name and your achievements in an article that isn't about you?
Minidisc isn't exactly dead...
Thats not exactly true, the old napster is true and even the VP of Bertlesman (sp) said that the old one would remain free, rather Napster is creating a new Nap-type network that is for pay.
Well, the cassette decks are already obsolete. :)
Why not usa a bank that refunds the ATM fee? My bank, (USAA) will refund up to $2.00 for up to ten transactions a month.
They recover the cost by not having any ATMs of their own out there.
I'm pretty sure there are other banks that do the same thing.
Who's going to want to buy new speakers and new players for this format? It's going to cost more too.
Sheesh. Don't buy the products? And did YOU buy a Macrovision-protected DVD player? My point is that the industry will force all the companies>to play along with their rights-reducing schemes under threat of lawsuit.
actually no, i paid an extra 30$ and got a region free, macrovision free dvd player. They arnt that hard to find, just do a google.com search. The people that want macro-regionfree players are still able to get them.
no
Once they get the Teeny Boppers hooked on their crappy system (like they hooked them on crappy music ;), they'll have the leverage to force everyone else to follow suit.
Those who don't know me, probably shouldn't trust me. Those that do know me, DEFINITELY shouldn't trust me.
Thats a load of poopoo.
I think Jaron's been reduced to the absurd. A randomly chosen AP English High School student could have written a better essay against copy control than Lanier.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Uhm, I second that motion.. Or something to that effect. Specifically about the part about disney.. Yech...
"We're so tough we're made of nerf!" --D&D Character Tagline
If any of the later stages mentioned in the article were to come true, the U.S would start on the slippery slope of decline thus making the whole issue unimportant as it would affect only a backwater - the world will march on, with our without the U.S.
Someone want to tell me how you make a digital speaker? Every design I know of involves magnetic fields, controlled by some wires that respond to voltages. When whoever comes out with fancy digital speakers all you need to do is rip out the digital wiring and viola, voice coil... Not that it would work at all afterwards with your SDMI compatible crud, but somewhere in there the signal is analog of digital quality...
Don't Panic...
You Have Been Trolled.
You Have Lost.
Have A Nice Day.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
Maybe. But here in germany a pay-TV company called premiere sold a few units when they started and then did hit rock-bottom. They have spent a lot of money in marketing and they are not selling many units. People do not buy them.
rmstar
The problem I see with this change is that going to secure system doesn't provide anything valuable to end user. There's only a few people saying that vinyl or cassette is superior to CD so quite clearly it's better way to distribute music and therefore it's logical that other methods gave way to it. On the other hand all later distribution methods - especially all electronic-only-medias such as MP3 - only give end user up to CD quality.
Why would I want to "upgrade" my system when everything I get is lower quality sound and no rights at best? I'm afraid that like so some many times demonstrated, average end user that cannot even hear difference between 96Kbps MP3 and CD audio, selects new and "better" method.
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Spelling and grammar mistakes left as an exercise for the reader.
And then, right, check this - they`ll put markers in certain frequencies when you are playing it on approved speakers, then they can drive around with microphones on vans and listen out for music, then listen for the markers - if they`re not present then you have `illegal` music, and you`ll get arrested and they`ll brainwash you and put a microchip in your brain just like David Icke says.
No wait, they wont need vans and shit cos - get this - they`ll *just know*. Thats right, they`ll just know because they`ve already microchipped *everybody* - even you - and the chips will transmit back to the big spy satellite thats *watching everyone* all that the chippee sees and hears. So they`ll just know. They know you`re reading this, right now!! Spooky!
Is it just me or are people taking this anti-copyright thing a little too far?
"Lanier, One semi-novel idea, endless rambling"
:)
Well, that`s one semi-novel idea more than Katz - give the guy a break!!
How do you get to be a `virtual-reality pioneer`? Did he write all those embarrassing articles for Mondo 2000 in the early 90`s. Man, i checked some of those out the other day - unbelievable! Cyber sex - remember that, with all the suits and shit! Fucking hilarious.
Damn right!
Minidisk allows you to stop recording your cds onto cheap magnetic media, with a neglible loss of quality, and instead record cds onto an expensive magnetic medium, with neglible loss of quality.
Its quite literally a breakthrough in making profit out of stupid people... eh, i mean... a step towards the audio of tomorrow.
Yep..see this article about how the record companies "care" about their artists http://www.billboard.com/daily/2001/0202_04.asp?mn
Griffis
Seekers of the truth don't need to be spoonfed. I will not feed you. So I suggest you go find a nanny.
>
> 1) Opennap is bigger than Napster
> 2) Opennap users are more prone to sharing
> 3) The signal to noise level is much much
> better
I wish that was true, but i'm afraid it isn't. The data returned to you by Napster on the number of users only applies to the server you're connected to. They have several thousands of those connected together on a big funky LAN, as opposed to about 20 machines for OpenNap.
The current user base of Napster is about 2 orders of magnitude larger than that of OpenNap.
In case no one noticed.. the owners of Discover Magazine are, Yup, you guessed it:
Disney!
--
The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.
They did that in Germany a few years ago.
What, me worry?
"Now I'm not saying that even ID3V2 tags are the be-all-and-end-all, but at least it's an extendible format. CD Text is not sufficient to search my collection in a changer, and it's not extendible."
Dude hit shuffle and walk away...
---
This
Only skimmed the article but I think it won't happen.
Too big a change. Like saying everyone in the USA should drive on the left of the road like UK. In principle you pick a day and say "Tomorrow we all switch sides". In practice far too comprehensive a change.
Without a law change of similar magnitude outlawing analogue 'old' technologies this won't happen. I think such an attempt would struggle as people will not obey laws they deem unreasonable, for instance speed limits.
I've only recently got into music sharing (gotta love broadband! :) and the first thing I downloaded was LOPSTER which put me on to part of the OPENNAP network.
I was really impressed, then I connected into musiccity who have about 20 servers chained together. Last night there were 12,000 users and about 15 terrabytes of files to download.(That is any file, not just MP3!)
I've figured out how to make Lopster connect into the "real" Napster servers and at the same time, there were about 7000 users with only 4 terrabytes of data shared.
This says a few things to me:
1) Opennap is bigger than Napster
2) Opennap users are more prone to sharing
3) The signal to noise level is much much better
All I can say is that Lopster is an excellent client (get the CVS version if possible) and that the opennap servers are in my opinion better than the whole Napster business in the first place.
Napster is dead, hail the OpenNap network!
Now we'll see how long before they try to shut Opennap down. I think, the sooner the better, because each time they try to close the doors, the system will become stealthier and harder to stop.
It is all over for the record industry as far as I'm concerned and I'm not even a music fan!!
I don't advocate piracy, but when I can download exactly what I want, faster than I can listen to it and faster than I could even get to the record store. What possible motive am I going to have to hand over cash for overpriced media?
I think that open source can apply to hardware, too.
Given parts and plans, a whole cottage industry could spring up as a workaround to the DMCA, manufacturing "retro" audio and video gear that uses free codecs and public formats. Seems like there'd be more than enough demand from geeks and audiophiles to compete with the "mass" electronics manufacturers.
The MPAA and RIAA may carry weight in the USA, but their powers in Europe and Asia are far less
Try telling that to Jon Johansen.
---
Check in...OK! Check out...OK!
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Meanwhile, at the Desk of Hillary Rosen...
Note to self: Contact eBay in 2006 regarding listing of analog speakers. Don't forget to thank Jaron Lanier for the inspiration!
Sean
No, they'd let big business do it and refuse to stop it because "that's not government's job."
Require everyone to copyright?
No, they'd let big business do it.
Set up a large enforcing agency that had to micromanage business transactions?
No, they'd let big business do it.
We have 2 choices: we can fundamentally change human nature or we can fundamentally change human nature. I move that we use opressive Orwellian legislation to avoid some promising technology being used in an opressive Orwellian fashion.
--
Dyolf Knip
But when Bob Smith buys a DVD and gives it to his son, who cannot play it because it's not registered to his player, he'll care. When he finds he is actually unable to (as opposed to being restricted by a totally unenforcable law) copy his cd to tape to play in his walkman when he goes jogging, he'll care. When the DVD player decides that his saturday night party has too many people and thereby qualifies as a 'public performance' and refuses to play unless some people leave, he'll care.
The only chance IP-happy industries is to make any such transition really, really slow, but look how much caution they've been showing in the past few years. And it's only going to get worse. They'll shoot themselves in the foot soon enough, and ordinary people will begin to hate them as much as the /. crowd does.
--
Dyolf Knip
However, the technologies behind driving a car do not change very much, while digital media does. So while Sweden, Germany, Pakistan, etc can prepare nicely, the IP-happy people make lots of knee-jerk reactions to anything new. Which will do them no end of harm and bad PR, thankfully.
--
Dyolf Knip
Nuts to that, what I want is JavaScript code that tells me whether I want to read the text or not! For instance, anything by Jon Katz is not fit to be shown on my monitor.
--
Dyolf Knip
i dont see why content creators shouldn't be able to protect their content. they made it. they made the investment. 99% of the /. knee jerk reaction is the fear of losing the free lunch.
/. Don't decry the RIAA because they want a return on their investment. THEY'RE A FOR-PROFIT COMPANY IN A CAPITALIST SOCIETY! I don't understand why this concept is so alien.
studios made fight club. they didn't make you buy it. they didn't make you watch it. if they release it on the theoretical 'uncrackable' system so that you can't make a copy - they still can't -make- you buy it. even if the new system has a higher quality output. if studios back a standard you don't like, then vote with your dollar and take it somewhere else. It's the only thing they can and should react to.
believe it or not, studios do a valuable service. they sort through crap and take risks. they make 'safe' movies because it's exactly what audiences demand. did you guys ever notice that the pop culture obsession with fight club's philosophy is cruelly ironic considering the lifestyle of its fans?
If they put content on a medium or system that you don't approve of. just shut up and don't buy it. explain why you wouldn't buy it to your friends and family and
They listen to who knows how many terrible bands, record albums for 1% of them, and when 1% of those albums hit - they try to recoup their investment and make a profit. They produce what sells. They produce what the consumers demand. Consumers want bare midriffs, and blondes with questionable morals and erotic dance routines more than they want good music - and that's what they get sold.
You people are wasting time waxing philosophic about free content, when in reality you're just trying to justify your habit of stealing this 'crap' content that you all complain about incessantly. either hollywood produces crap that you don't want to buy or watch - or admit to yourselves that Warner Brothers deserves to get their $20 for that Matrix dvd.
educate one another on the limitations of new technologies, don't try to sell each other on neo-communist, free content rhetoric. You don't do it very well and you do it -every- time a standard with a protection scheme comes down the pipe. maybe when consumers demand artistic content delivered via the Modified Street Performer Protocol the markets can have reasonable content and freeloaders can hoard content from artists they refuse to support.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
In order to get chips into head phones that check for watermarks, documentation etc, that means the algorithm can't be that complex and could probably be reverse engineered quickly. One quick solution that comes to mind is to put a pic microcontroller in line between the source and the output device that routes all the musical data and generates a generic signature inline and sends it along to the speaker/headphone. The speaker/headphone thinks everything is on the up and up and only the inline device knows for sure. I don't think that sort of control method would work though, this is due, in part, to the easily circumventable nature as well as the stronger methods available within the component cd/mp3/dvd/movie player. But even if a SDMI type method is used, it won't be useful for long. General purpose computing devices always have more power to throw at cracking an algorithm than a limited device (e.g. DVD player) has to decode. The limiting factor on a chip that decodes in A/V equipment will be price. It would be extremely difficult to get strong crypto working in a player that is easily portable and cheap.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
What would help is a trademark certifying that the manufacturer of a certain piece of equipment uses no technologies in its products that contribute to the closing off of technological avenues. Thus, if Intel works to enable the destruction of our commons, AMD or Transmeta would have a reason to take the open road, because by earning Open Society Certification (note: get Soros to okay use of trademark and contribute funding) they'd get to label all their products as compliant, and tens of millions of us will do our best to buy (and spec our companies to buy) nothing else.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
www.Filerogue.com
Another alternative to Napster, gnutella, and the long dead scour (although isn't there a new breed scour going through beta now by the purchasing company)
*shrug*
ymmv
e.
__
Ask Emperor Palpatine
www.randomdrivel.com -- All that is NOT fit to link to
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Firstly we will need global harmonisation of copyright regulations. The MPAA and RIAA may carry weight in the USA, but their powers in Europe and Asia are far less. The lobbying powers of their counterparts aren't as strong.
Also one contries strict regulations are another opportunity, how much in the counterfeit industry worth to contries that do not honour them?
So before these mechanisms can work we'd need universal harmonisation on copyright checking mechanisms. These can either be ratified by individual soverign states or by trading blocks (Euro Zone).
Ok, hands-up who can tell me when the last trade agreement was ratified between the US and Europe. If I remember the last round of GATT nearly ended in a trade war between the EU and US.
I feel the only group of people who will be shafted over this is the US.
Again correct me if I'm wrong again but isn't their a 'voters charter' in California that allows a grass-root vote to be placed on the statute book in that state? So if enough Californian's lobby they can repeal any law that's passed at state level, and throw it out?
So we won't have to be subjected to the 2005 equivalent of the Backstreet Boys? Hallelujah! Seriously, though, on the one hand this sucks. On the other hand, we have no right to be entertained. If we don't like how our mass media is packaged, we don't have to buy it. Perhaps we'll be better off without it.
The right to the pursuit of happiness is not equal to happiness itself. As far as boredom goes, what about all those people who migrated west 100+ years ago, and lived in dirt huts and shacks when they finally made it to their destinations? They didn't have mass media, other than a bible and a few reading primers, and got along OK for themselves. They certainly had a culture, even though they had no movies or recorded music.
Are you contending that mass media define our culture? I would hate to think that "Battlefield Earth" may be viewed by future denizens of our planet as representative of our 2000-ish culture. Culture is what we make it, not just what gets spit out by the mass media machine.
Did you ever stop to think that the only reason you don't beleive we have those rights is because someone trained you to think that way?
Please do not characterize my beliefs about rights. You don't even know me. Further, your characterization is irrelevant to our discussion.
I think America should stop and think once in a while about what might happen instead of how to make as much $ in the shortest possible time. The intersting thing about this whole problem is that is moot already, by making Napster(gnapster,hotline,blah) illeagal it just sends the problem underground.
Do you realize how silly that sounds? I think you left out some details or something, but basically you said they are setting things up so cars and trucks will crash into each other. Please elaborate. :o)
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Quality? CD quality is pretty damn good, especially to your average clueless consumer.
Agreed. In fact, we see acceptance of MP3, which shows that most consumers are willing to take a very slight downgrade in quality.
Faster seek times? Any cheap CD player can seek to the track you want pretty damn quick.
Disagree. Show me a CD player that can seek from track 1 of disc 1 to track 20 of disc 100 in less than half a second. Dead air at the party. Dead air in the car. No ability to overlap or beat-mix. That's one area where the consumers will start to buy into hard-disk or other media that gives faster access.
Another area where CD falls down... track organization. ID3V1 is a lame start, but it still beats CD. Try searching your CD changer for a combination of genre and year. Or even just artist. Yes, some changers allow creation of playlists and "don't play" tracks. But the music itself isn't self-describing (ie, it's up to the user) as it can be with digital music. Now I'm not saying that even ID3V2 tags are the be-all-and-end-all, but at least it's an extendible format. CD Text is not sufficient to search my collection in a changer, and it's not extendible.
Someone needs to reverse-engineer money and then come up with a hack that prevents money from being spent on anything that would further the agendas of any company that is abusing consumer rights, violating privacy, or suppressing free speech and fair use.
If someone came up with a credit card that did this, say it didn't actually prevent purchases, but warned the buyer of the agendas of the corporation that they were buying from, I would sure as hell sign up for it in a heartbeat!
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
netslaves figures out that napster probably won't work as well as it hopes.
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
Actually, as we've seen many times before in articles like this, the recording companies will probably introduce new "protected" media that won't play in your "older" players. Then, record stores will have mostly those media. CDs will be relegated to the corner in the back of the store where the casettes are now, and the casettes, well... The point is, Lanier is right, because information is being treated as property. The whole reason for copyrights is to reserve the right to publish information in forms that are valuable, like books, CDs and such. However, in our culture, information has become valuable in and of itself. The disjuntcion occurs when copyrightable information, information which has the most value when published, is confused with valuable information, which is most valuable when kept secret, like corporate intelligence. Then you get record companies who think that a stream of electrons has as much value as a compact disc, because they see information for sale elsewhere and want to jump on that bandwagon.
Fuck it...play monopoly
There is a war going on for your mind.
We may be hugging the middle path, but it often seems to be drifting a little more left every day.
Free as in speech, free as in beer, or free as in lunch?
You forgot to mention that for young kids who need to start their entertainment system, they should look through obituarys to find out who died. That way they can go after a surviving relative to buy the deceased person's non-protected equipment.
When Britnie Spears and *NSync's new albums are only available in this format, people will buy them.
I swear to you that's not me.(putting karma on the line saying it. It's some guy the real Cyborg_monkey works with. Ask him.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
*cough*gnutella*cough*
Seriously tho, From what i've read, album sales have actually gone *up* since Napster has been around. Personally, I download music, listen to it for a week or so, and buy the album if I liked it. I've got the money, and I like to support artists I enjoy. Yes, not everyone has the money, especially the college kids with the bandwidth to abuse Napster. But would they be buying the albums anyway? Napster has been good to many artists in getting their music out to the audience, and getting them known. As for established artists like Metallica, I don't think they'll completely kill services like Gnutella. At least not for a while. I thought this article was fairly amusing.
Guess what, we've no legs to stand on. digital-blue-ink-tags.com
Napster the word is also a metaphor for personal freedom from the corporate state - do what you want even if the Big Guys don't want you to.
Hope this helps,
Chuck
Well, they had a culture in the academic sense perhaps, but you don't see much literature or philosophy from the area at the time.
As for media and culture, they are a part of it. Maybe not every last bit, the end all and be all, but they are a portion, and lack of access to that portion can't be considered a good thing.
Not relevent? May just be me, but I think that the question asked is relevent to everyone, even me. Never simply accept what you are given, or you may lose more than you ever knew you could've had.
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
- Pray UCITA passes everywhere.
- Create a shrink-wrap license that signs away all of the clicker's (clickee's? I don't know what word to use) copyrights to you.
- Send license (embedded in an email) to CEO's of MPAA and RIAA companies.
- They're now violating your intellectual property and your copyrights. Sue the f**k out of the Nazi bastards.
- Either
- You settle with them to give them back their copyrights in exchange for some serious changes in how they behave, or
- They have to fight UCITA, DMCA, etc., get them struck down, and do it out of their own wallets.
I like it.The winners write the history books. During the railroad age right here in the good old US of A, when settlers won skirmishes against Native Americans, they were called battles. When Native Americans won against the settlers, they were called massacres. When settlers used tactics, it was called strategy. When Native Americans used tactics, it was treachery.
If things happen as described in the article, history books will show that Napster was in the wrong and everything the court, MPAA, and RIAA did was correct and for the good of the nation. Our kids will grow up believing that, no matter what we tell them. It's just like the Pledge of Allegiance, when kids are forced to say it; Hitler used the same tactics in Nazi Germany to turn children against their parents.
Aciel
aciel@speakeasy.net
Yeah. That souns good until they come out wuth SDMI music that delivers 24bit/96KHz/5.1channel sound. And it cost the same as a CD. And you get something extra, like say all the lyrics to display as the song is playing.
/.ers won't buy SDMI.
Then see how many
I think that the MP3 culture is so widespread now, that at the end of the day, its going to be too difficult for companies to take away these rights without people noticing. Everyone uses MP3, then suddenly they cant, i think there will be a stink. Everyone will smell a rat straight away and buy the MP3 compatible players. New companies not traditionally in music equipment might start making "MP3 compatible" players. The reality is, the culture is ingrained too much now for consumers to not realise.
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
with the "opportunity" to lose most of the 60 millions Napster users? I would be surprised :->
They certainly can make such knowledge illegal to implement, or to pass on to other people. Bomb-making instructions are the same way.
Burned CDs have a shelf life of less than 5 years. And thats if you keep them out of the sun.
good lawd! divx was rejected because it was the worst of both worlds - all the annoyance of having to travel to the video store with none of the benefits of owning! why would i go to a store to "buy" a disc that i can watch for 48 hours and pay for again if i want to watch? it was (thankfully i can use it in the past tense) a marketing initiative.
sdmi, on the other hand, creates no obvious limitations to the end user. the vast majority of people don't care to manipulate music the way we do and even less realize what's truly at stake. the industry also have a twofold advantage - they have managed to put "fair use" in a noxious light and they're backing this up with the law.
the two cannot in any way be compared. the former was doa because they knew nobody would buy it. the latter isn't even on your dad's radar.
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
i'm working on such a plan (sorry i can't be more specific but i think it's likely you'll see it here when it's launched) but even i'm pretty skeptical that this approach will work. a person who is an advisor to the project tends to think that people are brazenly apathetic. i really hope he's wrong.
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
I think not. Turntables (Technics 1200's anyone?)are selling like crazy right now, and there are literally hundreds of new tracks released only on vinyl every month.
OK, so that's a little facetious. But the "chilling" scenarios described in the article are so ridiculously far-fetched that one can't help but laugh at them. The technology will always exist to record and play back sound and video, no matter what new technologies emerge. And people will always do so, because it's easy and natural and overwhelmingly tempting. It's not something that can be stopped, despite the usual lamentations of the paranoid Slashdot-type conspiracy theorists.
Advice to Mr. Lanier: there comes a time in every man's life when you just have to put the crack pipe down and get some help. Seriously.
omega_rob
And the other .04%?
Although we're not as powerful as some have said in this very thread, we're probably more numerous than you are saying.
Current schedules say that digital televisions will be phased in by 2006. http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyN ews/digital_tv010110.html
Today, the newsticker at www.heise.de had the news that the parliament of the EU will probably demand regulations against content protection logic that would undermine the european versions of fair use rights.
If they have their way (the EU government does not 100% agree), we will get the opposite of your DMCA:
National governments would be obliged to make laws against content protection logic if it prohibits legal copying. Now take into account that german copyright law explicitly allows copying for personal use, and we might get one market where such copy protection is illegal.
C - the footgun of programming languages
You have a very valid (and scary) point. What you don't mention is that the people that are in charge of making the decisions that will be detrimental to the smaller independant artists are the very same people that want to make sure that independant artists are kept in their place and not allowed to distribute thier work in any way that could be competitive with the big name companies "product". So, while you do have a valid point, the people that care about that point are screaming in vain as the people that have the power to stop it from happening are laughing merrily saying, "Ha, ha, we finally have complete control of the music distribution channels. Play our game, or be crushed under our heal."
Granted, they are going to have a tough time wiping out all of the older tech that is still used in home and basement and garage studios, but it will only be a matter of time before the concept of analog will be completely and utterly outlawed and anyone that keeps analog equipment for the purpose of recording their own playing will be laballed a pirate just as today anyone that wishes to watch a DVD on a non-Windows or Mac system is labelled a pirate. Amazing how we quickly upgrade the number of people that are outlaws isn't it? Sooner or later, everyone will be an outlaw and we can all just be locked up for not obeying the laws of the rich. Ah, such a bright future.
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want your idea to work - start a big ad campaign, and hire some marketing bastards to sell the public on it. People are stupid - people are sheep. Its that simple.
eat shit and die, Bambi!
We keep discussing the hardware and the encryption as if that's going to be the be all and end all of free music.
I'm in my early 20s. When I was still discovering the worderfull world of music back in the early 1990s digital music (mp3s and like) were but a pipe dream and I got all my bootleg music on tapes etc.
Well, what's to stop that from happening again? If the record executives produce the media, then eventualy the public will get their hands on the same kind of technology. Just as DVD burners are becoming available now whatever They use to record will find its way to the mainstream market.
Encryption be damned. Cracking encryption in real time? That's hard stuff. But it won't take Mr Turing to crack this stuff and produce a legit looking duplicate.
It's simple capitalism. As long as it's cheeper to pirate the music people will pirate the music. I have unlimited faith in how far some people will go to save a buck.
Please excuse spelling, I had a hard enough time with it in 7th grade.
This has been another useless post from....
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
I think he has some really good analysis but I have to wonder about doomsayers and evangelists. Things are never as bad or never as good as either might say. We always hug the middle path. At any rate, I heard somewhere that the number of commuications that could potentially be monitored rises at a rate exponential to the ability to monitor them. Then again, my grad instructor who worked for the 'intelligence community' seems very frightened by some of the stuff he saw. He would tell save for the microchip embedded in his spinal cord....
There is no guarantee that the content has been read or understood.
You want corn? I give you corn.
I may be wrong, but I'm never uncertain.
You forget that the public isnt educated.
Not everyone reads Slashdot. No one outside of the "nerd" community has heard of the open-source movement. Most people now get their news from the exact same companies that are engaging in lawsuits against innovators. (Though occasionally they dont bother regulating what they say. Note the Disney copyright on the article.) Hackers are protrayed in the mass media as theives, which -- while not-without its real life models -- is not always the case.
Unless the public becomes much more knowledgeable much more quickly, it may not realize what it is doing (buying oppresive hardware, for lack of a better term) until there is no turning back.
Hell if I know what to do to educate the mindless masses though. Take out ads on MTV? :-)
Given a reasonably level playing field, who would win a fight between a bear and a shark?
The main obstacles to overcome are ignorance and apathy. The reason that MSN Messenger, ICQ, and AIM aren't being used in this way is simply that most Internet users don't even know about these issues. Ten years ago, getting information around the Net was much easier because there weren't so many users, and those users had much more in common. At present, you have many people who, although they are online, are completely clueless about how the Internet or computers work or what issues our society is facing. I've done Internet tech support, and, believe me, there are lots of Internet users who have absolutely no grasp of what the Net is or how it works. The only reason these people manage to get online every day is because nothing goes wrong. When it does, even the smallest thing, they're completely lost. But back to the subject at hand. Spreading a message from person to person is fine, but if you want this to really have an impact, you need several things. First, you need a tight-knit coordinating organization. You need this for several reasons. The organization has to develop a coherent message to distribute. It will need to write position papers, press releases, slogans, etc. It also has to act as a point of contact for the press because you're going to get reporters who will want interviews, at least you hope you will. When that happens, someone is going to have to talk this up, and they'll have to do it professionally or the media conglomerates will eat your lunch. They're going to say all you are are a bunch of freeloaders who want to pirate music and steal from the artists. They're going to be slinging truckloads of mud, and someone will have to respond, someone who is viewed as informed and professional. You're going to be going toe to toe with the big boys here. If you start to attract attention, the gloves will come off, and things will get bloody. The outfits that produce all those negative political commercials you see are guns for hire, and the content producers will hire them if necessary. Your organization also has to figure out how to organize groups of people who want to be volunteers. They'll need to be organized into regional groups to focus on various geographic areas. These people are just as important as your coordinating group because they're usually larger in number and ready to pound the pavement for you. However, they often lack direction. They're waiting to be told what they need to do, which gets back to your central group. Finally, when you begin to plan your publicity campaign, you have to figure out how you're going to reach the majority of the population who've never used the Internet. It's really easy to get tunnel vision and forget that Internet users, especially tech-savvy Internet users, constitute a minority of the population. You still have to reach the other people out there, and don't expect much help from the big media outlets. You might get some news coverage, but no one is going to fall over themselves to give you much press unless and until your movement gets too big to ignore. Until then, you're on your own.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
If you get signed by a record label, but you still want people to be able to post your songs on Napster, then you'd better get that put into whatever contract you sign. That's the only way it'll happen. As for artists wanting to be creative, that's true, but most of them also want to be able to eat on a regular basis and live indoors. If making music was only about creativity, no one would need record companies, especially not these days, with the easy distribution the Internet offers. These people want to make money as much as the next guy. They may not be greedy, but I guarantee that if you talk to many artists who are trying to make a go of selling albums, they'll tell you that, although publicity is great, it can't be allowed to significantly eat into CD sales. If you want an example of how bands publicize themselves, visit Oreo Blue's Web site. They have MP3s of songs from their albums posted, but they don't post the whole albums by any means. Why? Because, although they want you to listen to them and enjoy their music, they also want you to buy their CDs. Seems fair to me. And as for record companies needing to care less about money and more about the artists, that's why anyone signing a contract needs a good agent and a damn good lawyer. Record companies are there to make money, not care about their artists. That's just the way it is. As with many companies these days, they are completely amoral. When their executives come into the office each morning, they don't contemplate how to stab someone in the back purely for the hell of it (well, maybe they do from time to time, but not on a regular basis). That would be immoral, not amoral. No, they think about how to maximize profits. If that helps someone else, that's OK. If that totally screws someone else, so be it. These companies are looking out for themselves at the expense of all else. In case you're thinking that being amoral is at least better than being immoral, think again. Being immoral--screwing someone out of spite, vengence, whatever--can lead someone to make mistakes because their judgement can be clouded by their desire to inflict damage on their opponent, which can cause them to make tactical errors. Being amoral, on the other hand, means they calculate every more for the maximum benefit, which means that they're paying very close attention to their surroundings and the competition. That's the toughest opponent to go up against.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
No, DivX failed mainly because DVD was available as a better alternative. As I said in a post a while back, if the movie companies had it to do all over again, DVD would have never been allowed into the market. If you are starving and are given the choice of eating a cheeseburger or fried grasshoppers, which will you eat? Easy choice, right? What if someone took the cheeseburger away? Granted, this isn't a life-or-death issue we're discussing, but you get the idea.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
I think you're wrong about tech-savvy people only using Napster. My 13 yr old, non-tech savvy sister uses it all the time, but she hardly realizes the technology behind it all. She just knows she can download songs off the internet with it. And I know there's plenty more kiddies like her downloading the latest Brittany Spears songs cause they can. I think this is a real threat, and that the RIAA needs to grow up and quit screwing over their consumers with ridiculous laws that don't protect the artists, but protect their own profit margins. Most artists want more people to see, hear, smell, touch, or taste their creations, not have some big corporation tell them what they can and cannot do with their creation. If I put out an album and got signed on by a record company that worked with or was part of the RIAA, I'd be mad as hell if they told me I couldn't put it on Napster to let everyone hear it because it would violate my 'copyrights'. Screw that! If other people play my songs and claim them as their own creation that's a reason to have copyrights. But there's not a reason for copyrights to say that other people can't share my music with each other and say, "you gotta hear this guy, he's great!". Who cares if they pay for it or not. If my music is good enough than hopefully they will buy the album and attend my concerts. And even if they burn a CD off of the MP3's they downloaded, that means 1 more person is listening to my music than was before. I believe that artistry is not for the greedy, it's for the talented. The RIAA is greedy, the artists are talented. What an unfortunate mix we have today.
Simple solution: instead of gripe about here, send a letter to your congressman or whoever, attach $100. If enough people do this, then the'll begin to take notice. Sending a $100 is cheaper than paying the RIAA CD-ROM Tax because you might copy a CD, or other increased commerce fees because of all the needless litigation, or the litigation you may end up in because you used Napster one too many times. But no one will do that. That's why things won't change.
Depends on what your idea of "obsolete" is... Sure, the stuff will work four years from now, and probably even longer...but what will you be able to play on it? All of your old albums...but new ones? I doubt it. How much *new* music have you bought for that turntable in the last four years? How much new material is being released on LP records today? If I have a Beta video player, is it not obsolete because I can still watch Beta tapes on it...despite the fact that nothing has been released on Beta tapes for years? Cassettes are still around in the commercial music area only because they work better in portable players (no skipping like CDs), and maybe because the players are more common in lower-end car stereos.
;-D )...and as they move toward releasing nothing but the new "enhanced" format CDs, the fringe manufacturers who didn't get in on the deal in the first place will be forced to switch, because the old CD format will be obsolete.
The fact is, all it would take is for some of the big record companies to announce that within the next two years, all of their material would be released only on special copy-protected, encrypted CDs that only played with a special copy-protected CD player...and within five years, current CD players would be obsolete, because no one was making any new material that would work in them. Or, the recording industry may make a deal with some of the big audio companies to include a special decryption chip in all of their CD players. The chip does nothing now...but, in a couple of years, when the players with that chip have saturated the market, the recording companies begin slowly switching to an encrypted format...that needs a player with that chip to decrypt. Perhaps the record companies add some little extra to these new CD formats, so they can call them "Enhanced CDs" or some such nonsense. Now, their new "Enhanced CDs" will play in "most modern CD players," so there won't be an enormous public outcry (just some scattered grumbling from those who are too "technologically challenged" to upgrade their "pitifully outdated" equipment like they should...
Kind of scary, really, when you think about how easy it would be for the companies who control the media industry to force whatever standards they want to down our throats, eventually...
DennyK
Every digital signal has to be "decoded" i.e. turned into analog, before it can reach your ears. If you don't like SDMI encrypting your music, play it through some analog device and re-record it in another. Encryption never stopped the photocopier. - andrew
The only way I can see someone describing cassette decks as "obsolete" is if they believe that technologically they're inferior to other media. But with consumer music CD writing equipment several times the cost of cassette writing equipment, not merely now but the prices that existed twenty years ago, the two aren't in real competition.
Indeed, I suspect the RIAA would rather cassettes hung around than see them replaced by CD writers.
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Keep attacking good things as "communist"
KMSMA (WWBD?)
My post seems to have drawn alot of comments. People are sayin' I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground. Here's the dilly. First of all, I live in Canada, (not a major center like Toronto either), so yeah, discs cost $20 here, and the good ones cost $25. Secondly not only did I work in a music store for 6 years, but I have also met with many bands (Big ones like Green Day, and the Cranberries, and little ones like NOFX, and Strung Out) and discussed their feelings on these issues, and for the most part I fully believe that these artists deserve the cash they are getting. Also I am in a band and have also promoted many shows for other bands. Number one conclusion from all of this: The music industry is fucked. There are alot of artists out there working their asses off to write songs, promote themselves and tour like crazy just to put food on the table. I would gladly pay the price of a CD to any indy artist because I know exactly where my money goes.(at least i have a good idea.)But at the same time there are crack head record execs who sign talentless momos and pay them a whole whackload of money, which basically ruins it for the little guy. Sadly it is taking the whole industry down the toilet. It is true there are many different opinions on the subject, but I think what it boils down too is this: If people can get shit for free instead of payin for it, they will. 'Nuff said.
If musicians would just get it throught their thick-ass skulls that if they didn't charge so bloody much for their music, people wouldn't steal it. Since it is common knowledge that CDs (packaging included) cost less than 2 bucks to manufacture, who in their right mind would pay $20 for a disc? If only I were in charge of the world...
When a technology is pushed underground, or made illegal, it diminishes the opportunity for lower budget artists to utilize this technology. Independant and underground artists have always thrived on utilizing the scraps of corporate distribution technology and subverting it for their own means. However, when this technology is made less available, it is harder for this subversion to take place, and it is harder for distribution to be open. Some people may favor this type of Darwinism in art, but as an artist, I believe that art benefits from wide and open access to tools to the largest possible community.
-jim
Wrong. You listed a whole bunch of 'musical recording reproduction equpiment'. You didn't mention a guitar, a piano, a flute or saxophone, or even that you whistle into a microphone.
None of that stuff you listed can actually make music. Except maybe if we sample the noises that some of that gear makes and call it 'Industrial' music.
Music is made by people. All you're talking about (and all most of you folks seem to dwell on) is reproductions of music somebody else made.
Really, it's profoundly sad. All this tech and all we can do is trade around the same dreck music made by 1% of us, and it's a 1% controlled by big corporations.
It seems amazing to me, but there's still a product out there called Total Recorder that can be used to grab the audio stream on a Windows box and capture it to a WAV file. It even works on Windows 2000, which one would think Microsoft would have locked down the media streams within by now.
That goes along with what I was trying to say. If the end user doesn't get some value from a new method they won't buy into it. Tapes offered recordablity, and a compact size. There weren't many turntables in cars, but tapes were easily listened to in cars. When CD's were introduced, the argument was lifetime durability and superior quality. Consumers felt there was value. If record companies introduce a new standard whose only new feature is copy-protection, people will not buy it. Now, if there is a new system out that offers some compelling new feature that makes it take hold, it will only be a matter of time before copy protection is broken. It may not be right away, but everything can be broken anyway. I completely agree with you though, a secure system that offers nothing else will not be the "next" audio format. It will be the next DivX.
This is exactly what will happen. When technology get prohibitively difficult to use people will not buy it. Record companies are going to sell what people want to buy, that's how the free market works. If every CD maker out there now goes to some format nobody buys, a new company will emerge that sells what people want to buy. If memory is correct there was a spreadsheet company in the early years of computing that owned the spreadsheet market but because of some dongle protection scheme lost out because they were just too difficult to use. I seriously think this will be Microsoft's undoing also. When copy protection starts to get in the way of the regular user, they will seek out something easier.
But did you see the copyright line at the very bottom of the article?
© Copyright 2000 The Walt Disney Company.
Doesn't that make you feel good?
The biggest threat to more parties is costly and endless and absurd court battles we read about in Discover. We will always enjoy the endless waste of resources in most media production rather than endless wasting in courtrooms as indicated by Larnier.
Now one special day (coinciding with Star Wars final [final!] release of conclusion episode - on DVD) we detonate special official James Bond licensed EMP and destroy all old analog equipment while new equipment survives. Side-eFfeKTs easily distributed by one-world free-trade agreement (lalala the one between rad. dust and the atmosphere)
MTV news will say "Media (-drug-) War Rages On. Bombing The World (-small countries/poverty stricken people-) Does Nothing. People Still Do Things We Tell Them Not To Do...!!quote terminated - credit number rejected!!
And we R.I.Double-eh? emerge onto roof of tower and secretly watch the analog sunset, and wonder-wonder how all those tiny little c.o.n.s.u.m.e.r.s. (where are the people?) still slip-slip through our fingers.
These days, if you make the DESIREABLE STUFF, you deserve the world!
Granted, that's what was tried for DivX at Circuit City, but it was only one retailer.
Actually, IIRC, DIVX machines cost MORE than regular DVD players. Since the discs were also inferior to regular DVDs, people realized they were getting ripped off.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Record companies are going to sell what people want to buy, that's how the free market works.
The record industry is already buying legislation to enforce their desires on the masses. What difference does it make if there is a "free market" when the corporations are the ones that decide what is allowed to be sold in that market?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Sure, for now. How long until they are deemed illegal though? I think the corps are biding their time on that one. If they tighten the noose too quickly the masses might notice that they're about to be hung and do something about it. God help them if Oprah or someone similar decided to do a show on it or something. Then they'd really be fucked. (Yeah, I can't picture Oprah doing a show on SDMI either, but you know what I mean.)
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Ok, first of all mp3 sales are absymal because they sound like crap and nobody is willing to pay for them. The existence of mp3's is a side effect of the initial CD purchase.
So I don't believe MP3 will ever replace CD as a purchase mechanism.
Furthermore, MP3 is only a stopgap in the middle of the technology evolution.
Consider storage requirements. Why do you need MP3? A 80 Gig harddrive can be purchased for just under $300. That will hold around 125 CD's, not at MP3 quality, but at full ripped bitstream.
Consider also a DVD. Right now a CD-R holds like maybe 10 CDs ripped as MP3 files. But a DVD-R could contain the same amount of full CD quality WAV files.
The only thing holding back things right now is internet bandwidth. As technology advances in that realm... then who cares?
But still the initial sale is going to be in the form of CD or something similar.
At least for now, perhaps in the future I'll have access to 5 terabytes of reliable storage in my wristwatch with a Gigabit wireless ethernet interface and I'll refactor my opinion.
"BTW, do Americans really believe that left-handed people can't drive stick-shifts?"
I doubt most Americans think that. Instead their response would be "What is a stick-shift?"
The sad truth(for your argument) is that we, as consumers, really do have a great deal of control of what is foisted upon us by Hollywood.
DivX comes as the most recent example. Minidiscs are another one, or do you not remember when Sony first introduced them you were going to buy your pre-recorded music on MD's instead of CD's?
All it takes to kill a technology is lack of consumer acceptance. If people don't buy it, it won't sell. And companies are not stupid enough to put themselves in a position where they have no product consumers want to buy.
Of course you won't get paid. You would then be a performer, not a record company. Napster's settlement means that they will pay record companies, but performers will not get a dime of the money.
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By 2005, you say? I think I just saw that yesterday. Odd.
__________________________________________________ ___
rooooar
don't get me wrong, it's great to be an idealist. sometimes it pays off (thanks, rms).
.03 (hmm) it is the *first* .03 that buys new products in this arena.
Well then, do what he does and tell your friends.
And there is some validity to the idea. While it might be only
People know i'm a nerd, so when I say stuff like "SDMI Baaad!" they understand. Do so everytime a relative or buddy calls up asking for free tech support.
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+&x
The cassette decks are obsolete. The turntable's really obsolete. Not knowing anything about the tape decks, I'd guess that they're specialty equipment for audiophiles and thus meaningless in the mass market we're talking about.
:/
All you have that's modern is the CD equipment. And the RIAA's gunning for that. Yes, I expect CDs to be obsolete within 4 years, due to the machinations of the RIAA.
Note that by 'obsolete', nobody's saying that you can't play things on this equipment anymore. But you won't be able to buy any new media for them. No new releases will be made for any format you own. If a component of your sound system breaks, you won't be able to replace it with anything new -- all the new audio components will have new connectors and secure protocols, and none of it will work with your old stuff.
Since you won't be able to buy music or equipment to play it on anymore, you're going to be left with three choices. You can upgrade to new secure equipment. You can listen only to old stuff on scavenged equipment, mostly by trading with other audiophiles (although that's likely to become illegal, it'll be hard to stop.) Or you can stop spending money on music altogether. The music industry is betting that you won't just stop.
Yes, the future really is as bleak as Lanier's thought experiment.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Did you know that ATM machines in every state senate and the US Congress have no transaction fees? The banking industry is trying to hide how they're stiffing normal people, by not letting the lawmakers see it happening.
Corporations are determined to turn our goverment into an aristocracy, so that they're blind to how the public's being screwed. It can happen with sound equipment too.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
at the bottom of the linked article:
"copyright 2000 The Walt Disney Company"
?
They own Discover, of course, but I wonder if the top brass at Disney knows what they're publishing.
I've seen prototype digital speakers at the Consumer Electronics Show and CEDIA two years ago. Meridian is selling one currently with "copyright protection" built in. The DMCA specifically covers using FireWire for the connection between the sound source, the reciever and the speakers.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
For future reference, one country (Sweden?) HAS switched from left-handed driving to right-handed driving, to match the rest of Europe. They report few problems. Speed limits were kept fairly low (30 mph/50 kph?) during the first week while the old signage was covered or replaced, and then gradually returned to normal over the next few weeks.
This wasn't implemented overnight, but it could have been done in a year or two. The limiting factor was the time it took to fabricate and install the new signs (initially covered). Once they were in place the actual transition occured quickly. That's definitely something on-point here.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
with respect let this be recognized as a tertiary endorsement of said Dizney creep-out.
I for one would rather go to a free/cheap live show than deal with getting a telephone-like bill with charges for the music I listen to. I pretty much always have some sort of music playing, whether I'm working, playing or just driving somewhere. And though I may not be able to get a live band in the back of my car, I can still play the old tapes, CD's and MP3's that I already have.
Ender
Nothing to see here
And building tape decks and amps - even radios - really isn't that difficult. An A/B push-pull cheap amp isn't that hard to build - just a few transistors, some resistors, a few caps, and a couple of transformers (which could be homebrewed as well). Tape decks were originally "wire recorders" - sound was recorded on a steel wire. Fuck 'em if they outlaw steel wire - it isn't that hard (ok, it is pretty damn difficult, but it can be done) to draw your own wire - if they could do it in ancient (and not so ancient) times, it can be done now.
How are they going to take all that knowledge from us? From ME? Maybe they will kill me - that would be one way - but can they kill all of us?
Good luck to 'em - I say to hell with them...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
BTW, my favorite part of this idea is the concept that geeks who are capable of constructing an analog speaker might become the heroes of an underground economy.
I will be the first to do this, if it comes to it.
I tell you something, never did I think, when I was in the 8th grade and wanting a set of 12s and a 100 watt stereo to match (which I eventually got) for my bedroom, that I would ever contemplate using the skills that I learned to build a speaker from the ground up.
In an attempt to get around the cost of the 12 inch 3-way speakers that I wanted (at close to $200 each), I looked into building my own speaker, using construction paper for the cone, a toilet paper tube for the coil form, some old wire from a dead 3 volt hobby motor, a magnet from a busted antenna mount, plus a cardboard box - I managed to munge together a speaker that worked, and gave OK sound, considering the quality of construction and materials used. Never got much bass, though...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
While implementation could be made a crime, I would say that if it is, then a full scale war on the government would have to be the outcome (or war on the corporatat). Bomb-making instructions aren't illegal to possess or distribute - to implement a bomb - probably hazy area (probably illegal), to detonate - definitely illegal if not done on your own property (and providing it is on a large tract of land, etc).
For passing on knowledge, or having it - that would have to be a first ammendment issue - otherwise there would be ton of books at the library banned outright (not to mention encyclopedias, chemistry textbooks, and magazines).
Furthermore, bombs typically serve for nothing more than destruction of property or life - which is why they would be regulated in the manner in which they are. I doubt building a speaker or such could be construed as hurting someone. I fear that if it can, and it is allowed to be viewed that way - it is really time to fight.
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Question: if I make a 10 minute recording of myself crooning into a microphone, and get all my friends to download it from the new paying-service napster, will I get paid (as an artist whose work is being traded) for this?
The musicians who can get a recording contract with a big label will be protected from piracy. But will this increase the cost of talented amateurs producing their own tapes? I know dozens of people who fit into the later category. I have piles of tapes and CDs from them. It's a wonderful antidote to the prepackaged sameness of most radio stations these days.
This would mean that musicians would have to have a license to put on their music so that the media could grant that license to the user. I don't think for a minute that those licenses would be freely available to every content provider.
If that example doesn't hit close enough to home, imagine not being able to videotape your child's first words.
If and when these are available, I will buy one if I can get a guarantee in writing that it will never interfere with my ability to play back my own recordings of my family and friends or any legally acquired amateur media. I'd love to be a party to the class action lawsuit over it when that guarantee isn't met.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
What a horrible misquote of my fave military hero - The Marquis of Montrose - although I agree that if you trust your data to WinME, you are probably risking losing it entirely :)
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
>Anybody with the ability to create this kind of system must be able to see the terrible implications of its use. Who, being of sound mind and technological intellect would voluntarily work to the potential end that this paper has predicted? Maybe I can say this as a mere undergrad not yet out in the workforce, but there must be some sort of job consiousness in everybody. Am I completely wrong?
There will be no Nuremberg trial for these brave, bold innovators of technology, and apparently you also forgot about the Stanford Prison Experiment. But it's OK, we all have brainfarts from time to time.
That analogue too much for you to pull? See also: Milgram's experiments in obedience done around the time of the aforementioned Nuremberg trials.
If you're having an ADD day, let me sum up: otherwise good, rational people can do otherwise inexplicably horrific, evil things because someone told them to do it.
Lack of authority and the desire to keep your family fed are powerfully motivating forces; even if they can't find anyone over here to do the engineering for them (they can) then they can always look overseas and import smart, cheap labor. You can thank the US government for quietly and markedly increasing immigration visas from places like India and Russia while decrying the GREAT MEXICAN EVIL later.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
I've often thought that the logical conclusion of this process (enforcement of copy protection) would be the advent of a "licence to assemble" policy.
Since any copy protection (it seems) can be worked around by intelligent, motivated, people, I think the best way to stop those people seems to be to take away their fundamental tool: the ability to create arbitrary programs running on Turing machines.
Ultimately this would be done by issuing very limited licences to assemble against the hardware (which is, after all, owned by megacorps). OS writers and implementors of languages would be among the few allowed to assemble freely, and their efforts would be closely monitored by those parties issuing the licences.
The tools which trickled down to everyone else (OSes - even "free" ones, languages, set-top boxes, stereos, cars, wristwatches, phones, etc) would be hobbled by what amounted to copy-protection-enabled versions of read(), write(), and other low-level functions, effectively. It would be impossible to remove this copy protection because it's built in to fundamental parts of the system which could not be reassembled (legally, at least) without the proper licence.
Of course, people would break it - reverse engineering and all that - but could this defiance be done on a sufficiently large scale to make the system unworkable, if the system was codified in law?
Are you willing to go to prison to defend your right to assemble? Are you willing to die for it?
Scary shit, huh? I just hope information's purported desire to be free will be sufficient to route around this threat. But I have my doubts...
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http://www.gimbo.org.uk/
This is exactly what they are aiming at. So-called anti-piracy tools are not aimed to the tech-savy minority, but to the mass market. This is why Napster is seen as a problem, while FTP is not (unless you add some Napster-like front-end to it, that is).
One good point of the article (which is a bit too much on the catastrophic side ) is that you cannot have general purpose computers _AND_ end-to-end copyright enforcement technology. Computers give too much power to the end user. This is why digital contents sellers are happy with today trend which replace general-purpose computers with closed purpose-specific appliances ( tv top-set boxes, M3 players, net terminals, game consoles ).
Appliances in-se are good for end-users: they are cheaper and easier and, being engineered for a single task, are better at it.
But if this trend continues, general-purpose computers will be less and less mass-produced, and their price will increase correspondingly. And this is bad for the tech-savy minority, for free software movements and similar free content producers.
Ciao
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FB
It's not a question of if SDMI gets off the ground anymore... SONY already makes SDMI complaint memory sticks and players.
The challenge is to not accept the easy way out. We are not going to be forced into accepting these invasions of privacy by one draconian law, but we will choose to give up our rights in trade for discounts on products. For example, windows media player is free. However, it is set up so that it can report on every song you play via Digital Rights Mangement (an oxymoron if you ask me, given that it can only take away your ability to play). But most users are willingly going to give up their rights in trade for the free stuff.
And we are going to keep having to decide... is it worth the cost to protect our privacy? When microsoft requires everyone to phone in and register their Office products. Or when we choose to run the next windows operating system which will require registration to run? Can you swear off windows systems? There is an alternative (Linux), but are you willing to pay the price for your freedom?
Only you can choose to be a Micro-serf.
Download your mp3s any way you want, and support the artist via FairTunes
The bottom line for consumers is convenience.
Agreed. Which is why mp3 or some similar format will easily replace CD's. More fit in less space, and you can easily download them off the net. Eventually, pop wireless networking into your car, and you can send your entire song collection from your home to the car sitting in your garage.
Convenience? How about having your entire music collection everywhere you go? Home, car, and work-- impossible with CD's, but an eventual certainty with mp3 and its brethren.
Dont get me wrong- I would love to see the day when a consumer technology from another country actually made an impact back here. Especially ones that would help to allow fair use- not to restrict it.
And the scare story is needed. We've got to get up to support open-source hardware- software alone is not enough. DVD has already become the next VHS- the blockbuster near where I live is already at 50% DVD. And DVD is full of (weak but extant) rights resticting tech that your are legally resticted from trivially bypassing.
You dont want to wait until content pretection logic from a proprietary corp is legally required in all multimedia capable devices do you?
Advances in transportation and communications changed things so that a craftsman could consider a much larger area as 'local'. Eventually, it became hard for one person of average skill to promote themselves alone and compete. Enter in Labels, agencies, and unions as 'middle-men' to help the craftsmen perform their trade over the ever growing size of their 'local' area. These 'middle-men' did the same thing that the crafstmen use to do, sell directly to the customer, but they did it over a larger area and kept most of the profit to cover costs. So now the craftsmen could go about just as they had before and make next to nothing, or they could take a chance and join with the 'middle-men'. If they wanted even a chance to make a lot of money, they had to go with the 'middle-men'. They didn't have a choice.
Of course, there is balance in the world. When something happens to add to one side of the equation, something subtracts from the other. The technology and trade fields are like that. One advancement, the car, eventually killed the blacksmith trade. There was just no more need for them anymore. The old craftsmen in that trade had to change to survive. They didn't have a choice.
Now through the internet the world is 'local' to everyone. Thanks to the likes of FedEx and UPS, anyone can send their craft anywhere. Craftsman can sell their work directly to anyone without a middleman. The 'middle-man' is now just as un-needed as the blacksmith was after the car. Ordinarially, the uneeded 'middle-men' would just fade away like the blacksmith. However, these 'middle-men' have become very, very rich off the backs of the craftsmen and for the first time in history have the ability to fight and sustain themselves past their usefulness. They know what's at stake. It's survival. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain so they fight to control their main threat. The technological advances that have changed the world and outdated them. They are trying to deal themselves back into the card game through DMCA's and government regulations so they can hold on to copyrights and IP that they obtained from the craftsmen. They want to survive and that's what they have to do. Did they really have a choice?
Who's going to win? Who knows? Right now the 'middle-men' have lots of money and power. Sure craftsmen can bypass them to a small extent and sell directly, but because of their limited resources they would be no better off than the crastment of the late 19th century. With a hundred years of advancement they managed to come full-circle. It is logical to assume that if any craftsman will take a chance for big money and join with the 'middle-men' of their craft. At least there is a chance for them to make some real money and also it is the only real business model they are familiar with. So, they sell themselves out. Do they really have a choice?
Imagine Senator X trying to filibuster a bill, when he realizes that he can't speak into a microphone without having to register his speech beforehand so that it could play over the Congress loudspeakers.
I am not sure that it has to be an improvement or even have something to offer to sell. There simply might not be any choice for the consumer because the market is so tied up that, say, oh, I don't know, vinyl records are no longer being made and CDs are your only alternative. At the time, I didn't have the money to make the transition, and I had a Lot of records.
Yah, when it all comes down, I'll be able to listen to Chickenshack until my phono needle gets worn to a nib.
The root problem is that the market is not free because the entry threshold for consumer electronic devices is too high. If it wasn't all sewn up like it is, an enterprising young engineer such as yourself could just build a CD Recorder and it would sell like hotcakes on the market. But entertainment is big business, so the big businessmen have it all locked up, from conception to creation to recording to marketing to selling and now even to playing. BTW, they also have their congressmen on a short leash, and the principles of Liberty and Freedom have to ride in the back of the bus because there is no profit in them.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
Sometimes the article wasn't paranoid enough. If you're forced to register your home video before sending it via e-mail, expect the content nazi's to black out frames or the whole video. We clearly saw a sony logo in the background which we gridded out. We do not have a partnership with Sony. If this sounds farfetched, try getting your film developed at Wal*Mart. It is their policy to not deliver "offensive" material.
----------------------
The recording industry and other industries would want this sort of thing for the profit!! Why can't we profit off of it? The small electronic shop and tinkerer stands to make some money from this. Now they can build analog speakers and compete with each other to build the best analog sound in the wake of digital noise! (by the way, the name digital in conjunction with speaker can be confusing to people, to make it straight, speakers cannot be digital. But they can contain a digital to analog convert which can perform many other functions other than just converting. But the speakers themselves are not digital). Let's break out those old home speaker kits and get a buildin'!!
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
I do have a vote with my checkbook.
The truth shall set you free!
My newest receiver is from 1993. My better stuff is from the 70's when high RMS watts with low THD, and S/N ratio counted. Older Phase Linear, Kenwood and Pioneer stuff was great. Anything fully DC coupled with THD below 0.005% with a high damping factor and low noise was a pleasure to listen to. I don't listen to music on a PC. It just doesn't meet HI-FI requirements. The sound card has to live in an electricaly noisy environment and very few soundcards are DC coupled for true flat extended frequency range. Anybody got a sound card good down to 5 Hz with S/N ratio above 120 DB, with THD below 0.01% over the entire range?
The truth shall set you free!
It still can be killed by making the format too expensive for them to carry. Best bet is have a few hard drives crash and computers upgraded. People with storm the complaint department that their goodies don't work anymore that they paid for and will stop buying it as they discover it and spread the word in the media this is seriously flawed and the suppliers are seriously crooked.
The truth shall set you free!
http://www.discover.com/feb_01/featnapster.html
In related news: by 2010 every HTML page will have JavaScript code to check whether you can read the text or not.
"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"...
Dunno, but last time I checked, it was hard to be happy when you're bored.Also, Music, TV, Movies, etc. are more than mere entertainment, they are a part of our common culture. As such, for a company to with hold them arbitrarily is holding a part of our culture for ransom, and that is a loathsome practice.
As a side note, why do so many folks always strive to limit rights? "we don't have a right to X, Y, or Z". Says who? Did you ever stop to think that the only reason you don't beleive we have those rights is because someone trained you to think that way?
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
Man am I getting sick of Lanier. He took once somewhat novel idea, vurtual reality, that had been written about extensively in science fiction for years, and proceeded to turn it into a bully pulpit for his ludicrous ramblings.
Oh no, the command line is making a resurgence. I was too lame to understand UNIX 20 years ago, I guess everyone else is, too.
Oh no, there might be limits on digital music. In 4 years, every analog piece of sound equipment, and every non-compliant digital piece of sound equipment, will disappear.
Now, Jarod, I'm not a humongous music fan, but let me count my music equipment.
3 car cassette decks.
1 car C deck.
4 high end tape decks (Nakamichi, BIC).
1 lower end tape deck (TEAC)
2 walkmans type tape players
1 portable CD player
1 regular CD player
1 turntable
1 CD burner
4 computer CD players
Now, all this eqipment is going to become obsolete in the next 4 years?
Yeah, pass me some of what you're smoking.
The funny thing about this type of vision is that completely assumes that the production model for music is going to remain relatively unchanged despite the radical and unaprecciatedl rapid introduction (thanks to technologies such as napster and the hype surrounding them) of the computer into the distrobution model. WHO SAYS MUSICIANS WILL KEEP MARKETING THEIR MUSIC THROUGH MUSIC LABELS? If the ease of use and quality of music produced by independent labels who refuse to adhere to absurd market standards (and make no mistake about it, there are very few of these fantasies that the RIAA wouldn't like to see adopted) is picked up on by consumers, their alternate models could well triumph over the existing ones.
It is interesting because this is one case in which we can foresee the open-source movement playing a vital role in the arts. While big name software and media companies will join to try and control and restrict the use of cultural product, open source will become crucial to the exploration and success of alternate artistic and distributive strategies. Before people can be convinced to boycott or challenge, they must be shown a reasonable, practical alternative...let's build one!
I've also found a short and efficient tutorial about how to use OpenNapster on Cosmosonic.com (currently only in French).
I have to agree with the other comments around here.. this dystopian future won't happen. At some point hardware and software hackers will make, build, and sell a parallel set of equipment that doesn't have content access controls, etc. It probably won't be compatible with the big media company equipment, but many people will prefer it. Artists will eventually start using it. Etc. Just like we have "lfree as in freedom" software, we'll have "free as in freedom" hardware. And regardless of what some of you think, I believe the government is on our side with this. They may be slow sometimes, but they'll protect private enterprise and competition if enough people raise a stink.
this suggestion is so polyanna, i'm willing to use my real name and take the karma hit and say so. are you aware that we comprise about .03% of the electronics buying populace and the other 99.73% don't even *know* about sdmi let alone care?
don't get me wrong, it's great to be an idealist. sometimes it pays off (thanks, rms). but a dash of reality comes in handy sometimes too. notice what works and do more of it. notice what doesn't and stop. this is tilting at windmills.
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
Notice how in the article, every really bad scenario required the government as the enforcer. Would the libertarians outlaw speakers of the wrong type? No. Require everyone to copyright? No. Set up a large enforcing agency that had to micromanage business transactions? No.
Ashes of Empires and bodies of kings,
The truth about Michael
The core concept lurking in the background of all these discussions is that if there were no copyrights there would be no problem. Lots of things would be different if proprietary rights went away, but the world would not come to an end any more than it would if New York City or Los Angeles suddenly fell into the ocean, or even if everybody's financial records suddenly vanished. We'd get by somehow. Creative people would find it difficult to profit from their creations -- but that's always been true, only for different reasons. Business models depending on exclusive rights would break, but entrepreneurs would come up with other business models, not just roll over and die.
There is surprisingly little debate about whether we actually need a copyright system at all. A Google exact-phrase search for "abolish copyright" turns up only 42 pages; "eliminate copyrights" finds only 13. Very few of these pages actually discuss the idea. In contrast, you will find well over a million Napster references.
In April, 1999, Fortune magazine columnist Stuart Alsop seriously and articulately proposed eliminating government protection of intellectual property . That was almost 2 years ago. But the amount of genuine discussion of this idea has been miniscule compared to the endless volume of ranting about Napster, and what each of us feels we should have the right to do with a CD.
Can we think on a larger scale? In spite of the turmoil it would cause, I believe the complete elimination of intellectual property protection would ultimately lead to the greatest good for the greatest number -- a concept democracy is supposed to support. Can we revisit this idea as a sane, sober proposal, or is it too scary? Are we just reluctant to let go of our own pet fantasies of being the next Bill Gates (yeah, right) or what?
So what is the solution? Well, we have two choices. We can either try to fundamentally change human nature, which is impossible (everyone wants to make a slave of others. Life is a struggle for power), or we can remove or prohibit the technology that grants such powers. I would move that we campaign for our governments to place restrictions on how embedded microchips are used, and even ban them in some instances, because all to often they are being used in an Orwellian fashion.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.
To quote: "If Windows had to be bought separately, some people would share it for free over the Internet instead of paying for it, just as if it were a song on Napster. "
This shouldn't sound far-fetched. It is happening already.
I think that it may not be that easy to get a new format (media type) accepted by the public today. My theory is that (the majority of) people buy things that a) make it possible to be even lazier and/or b) complete mundane tasks faster. Take a look at the evolution of the audio formats:
1. Vinyl - decent quality, but you have to adjust speed, place the needle, etc.
2. Tapes - good quality, easier to use. Just pop it in and press play... but you have to ff/rew to the song you want.
3. CD - very good quality, very ease to use. Has track skipping.
These are the "big" formats; the ones that caught on. Notice the pattern: they each improve on the previous format, namely they require less effort from the listener and take less time to mess with (think having to fast-forward through a tape versus instant access on a CD). So why won't a new format replace the CD? Well, what can it improve on? Nothing that a consumer would care about. Quality? CD quality is pretty damn good, especially to your average clueless consumer. Faster seek times? Any cheap CD player can seek to the track you want pretty damn quick. Just about the only thing that can be improved on is size, but the failure of the MiniDisc shows that consumers don't really care about size; the CD is small enough for them to think it isn't cumbersome, and that's what matters.
Hell, look at the astonishingly fast acceptance of DVD. DVD is essentially the home video equivalent of CDs. Consumers recognized the convenience DVD offered, and ate the shit up. I think DVD is sitting where the CD is now: it's not really going to be replaceable because, aside from improving quality, you can't really improve on the convenience of the DVD.
The bottom line for consumers is convenience.
Perhaps corperate paranoia will climax with the production of a $1 billion film that they decide not to release at all for fear that someone might actually *watch* it. Oh the horrors!
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
The essay contains a classic prediction error... but it's something easy to correct.
:-)
That error is that people tend to think that change occurs in a linear fashion. This essay is certainly written that way, with an entry for each year.
In reality, change tends to occur in an exponential fashion - and predictions are always too wild in the near term and too timid in the long term. That's easy to correct - you simply "shove" the predictions from both ends towards a point about 2/3 of the way through, but it makes less interesting reading.
So, for everyone who says that "this will never happen in 4 years" you're right... but you're missing the bigger point. It doesn't matter if the actual year is 2008 instead of 2004, or even 2020. What's really important is that each step is modest and oh-so-reasonable given everything that has happened until that point, yet the cumulative effect is a disaster. Since none of this requires a massive leap in technology or law it could well happen within a generation.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
This sounds like the audio version of: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
-This sig intentionally left blank
And, sadly, people will follow... forums like Slashdot are nice - but we need to be sure that the rest of the world gets to see the other parts of the big picture, too.
I agree with Smallest, don't buy the new-fangled junk, don't help SDMI... but how do we mke sure others don't do it either?
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
A big ad campaign usually requires big money. Don't fool yourself; the anti-smoking campaign you see has lots of money behind it, and it has media companies behind it as well. That's why you see the PSAs on TV. Do you think that you're going to get an anti-SDMI ad carried on CNN, TNT, ABC, etc.? Not a chance, since the parent companies of these networks have an interest in seeing that campaign fail. I'm not saying that what you propose can't be done, but if you don't have lots of money, then you need lots of people and one hell of an organization behind them. OK, let's see. You can have all your people wear t-shirts to spread the word, but where will the t-shirts come from? You can make them and distribute them, but now we're back to the money thing again, or you can put the designs out on a Web site and let people download them and print them, but then how do you let people know where to find the designs? Finally, as several folks have already pointed out, how do you get past the sheep factor? How are you going to convince some 15-year old kid that they shouldn't buy that Britney Spears album because they're cutting their own throat in the process? If that kid knew enough to realize the problems we're facing with the big media companies trying to gain complete control of content, then they'd also realize that what Britney Spears churns out isn't real music anyway and instead look for something produced by a real musician, but you don't see that happening. So perhaps you should forget the mainstream demographic and instead focus on audiophiles. You'd have a better chance there, IMHO, but will that market segment be large enough to, if not turn the Titanic around, sufficiently alter its course to make a difference? And where do alternative, independent artists and labels fit into this? I think they could be a powerful ally, since they're getting squeezed out by the big media companies as well. Still, many of them hate the idea of having their work pirated just as much as the major labels, since they can tolerate diminished sales less than the big companies can. Some of these guys are literally living hand to mouth. So you must convince them that this isn't about being able to copy music but an issue of the dominance of the big media companies over the entire musical domain. Still, if the big outfits won't budge, the independents may be people's only source of music. (For an example of this, read up on how BMI was created out of the dispute between radio stations and ASCAP.) Such an educational campaign could work, but it has to be carefully planned and targeted. It ain't nearly as easy as it might look. Still, I do agree that something has got to be done, not just in regards to music, but to stop this insane rush toward total control of any information that someone somewhere thinks can be sold for a profit.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
Disney is a plaintiff in the DeCSS case.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
But seriously folks, maybe the next version of the "Anarchists' Cookbook" will contain instructions not on how to build bombs and make drugs, but how to build analog speakers and television sets.
How's THAT for a dystopian future?
-the wunderhorn
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
Sure this is a scenario that the RIAA/MPAA hegemony would like to have become reality, and one that doomsayers will put out in the hopes of garnering reaction, but it's hardly likely.
So companies like Intel are already moving towards content protection at every stage of a signal, from your hard disk drive to the cable between your PC and your monitor. But all this will encourage is technical solutions to what will be seen by many as either a technical challenge or an unwarranted invasion of their rights.
The best these companies can hope for is that their measures will deter some of the least tech-savvy from doing things they don't like. Of course, these are generally the people who are least likely to be downloading songs off of Napster or Gnutella anyway, but that's not the point is it?
And this scenario completely manages to miss the fact that the US is not the world, and that attitudes to copyright and IP vary from nation to nation, whereas the internet has the potential to allow people in one country to access material hosted elsewhere. Short of a giant firewall a la China (not that that is particularly effective) there is going to be precious little ways of ensuring 100% control, and any exploits will be spread far and wide as quickly as possible.
So I think this is just an alarmist scare story. There are just too many flaws for it to work this way.
Lanier is not making any predictions here. He is conducting a thought-experiment to try to extrapolate the RIAA-MPAA logic to the necessary extreme.
His purpose is clearly to destroy the industry logic by a technique called "reductio ad absurdum." When you flame him for the absurdity of his conclusions, you are agreeing with him. You are proving his point, which is that the goals of the industries which are trying to exploit the producers of intellectual property cannot be achieved without an absurd result.
BTW, my favorite part of this idea is the concept that geeks who are capable of constructing an analog speaker might become the heroes of an underground economy. (Note to the irony-impaired: I do not believe this will really happen.)
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
don't throw out your CD-RWs, your CD players, your old receiver from 1993, your cassette player or your gasp turntable! keep them, use them, encourage record companies (with your wallet) to keep producing CDs compatible with current players.
if nobody buys the new fancy gear, They lose.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
My head hurts.
k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank