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Interview With Bill Joy
richard koman writes: "In an interview with Bill Joy on openp2p.com, Bill reveals that he's working with Sen. Orrin Hatch to devise public policy on the Net and copyright infringement, and states his belief that wholesale copying of content is "too much of a nerd view of the world."" He's got an interesting perspective on Napster, despite being a shareholder of it.
I have to respectfully disagree.
The nature of the internet is different than, say, books or tape recorders or any other information distribution system, and you fail to understand the distinctions at your peril.
The fact is, the internet makes copyrights either:
1) unenforceable, as so many have violated the law (e.g., Napster) that we can't lock them all up, or;
2) unendurable, as the only way to make sure copyrights aren't being violated is to invade our privacy and violate our civil rights.
This wasn't a problem before the internet, as the average information distributor couldn't do as much damage, and could be caught once he did become large enough to be a problem. For instance, the RIAA wouldn't prosecute you for taping an album off the radio in the past, they would get laughed out of court. Then they (not the RIAA this time, but the MPAA) got a little smarter and encoded VHS tapes and put the FBI WARNING! notice on the front of all movies. Okay, so far no invasion of privacy, but it did work a little better, although you can (legally?) tape a movie off of Showtime and give it to your friend.
But now copyright violaters can copy a four minute song down to an mp3 and distribute it to thousands of people in minutes, who can then forward it to a million in an hour.
That's a million criminals in an hour, or, if you want, 95 million criminals on Napster right now.
Which should we do? Arrest everyone on Napster (I imagine its a misdemeanor), stop them by monitoring their machine via Carnivore, or write new legislation that is cognizant of the new problems brought about by the new technology? I opt for the latter.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
I don't drink, but I voted for Howell. :)
When it comes to copyright law, I really do think Hatch has good intentions. It's just that he can't really see past the "what's good for corporations is good for individuals" and "there is no God but market" stuff. And I think he thinks he "gets it" just because he's a semi-professional lyricist who's collaborated with a few Utah/local big names (though really, it's likely that his privileged position and semi-celebrity status has given him a distorted view of things).
There was a Senate field hearing held at BYU a couple months back. You might want to read my take on the event.. I think it gives some idea that Hatch:
1) really was fishing for corporate support. I can't figure out why else all those corporations were there and allowed to read their press releases in the middle of the hearing
2) really is listening to people at Napster and to independant artists
3) really wants to do something, even if it might not be the greatest... ("let's look to the legislation that killed DAT as our possible solution")
--
Tweet, tweet.
Copyrights reflect something fundemental to human nature. The idea that what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours, and you can only have what's mine if I let you, and under my conditions.
Early Homo-sapian grunts to neighbor: "My walrus."
Other Homo-sapian grunts back: "Me give monkey?"
Early Homo-sapian grunts in reply: "Uggh (ok)"
In another example:
Early homo-sapian grunts to neightbor: "My walrus"
Other homo-sapian grunts back: "Infor... warluses want to be free!"
Early homo-sapian hits other homo-sapian on the head.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I don't get the ball example. In the case that we have two equal red-balls it really *doesn't* matter which is whose. However, music is not like that. In the distribution of music, one person gives, and the other recieves. One works, and the other enjoys the fruits of the work. Take a comparison with the car industry. Say a car costs the consumer $500. Of that $500, $50 is profit for the manufacturer. So cars sell for $500, and $450 of that goes to making the copies. In the case where the cost of making a copy goes down to $0, then the car's cost should drop down to $50, the previous profit. Think about this very carefully. In a $500 car, the $450 covers the work to build a copy. The other $50 goes for the one-time costs of development, the idea, he design, the name-brand, and profit for the makers. Even if the copy costs nothing, these costs should still be paid. So the only thing that direct-internet music should do is get rid of part of the price-tag that reflects the cost to manufacture and distribute the CDs. The other part of the cost, including profit to the record label if the artist chooses to affiliate themselves with one, should be paid as normal.
Maybe I'm too old-fashioned to understand the whole real-new-economy business, but as I see it, if I do something, I am entitled to direct fee from everyone who uses it. Moreover, I'm entitled to ask for whatever I want in return for the use of a copy of my work. If the artist wants to set up a direct-to-consumer website where he/she sells (or gives away) her songs, then good for them. If they want to ally themselves with a huge record industry whose only purpose is to make a profit (nothing wrong with that!) then god for them too.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Okay, so you have a 4.7% royalty. I never said otherwise. By "burden of studios advertising/distribution/etc" I mean the studios do the advertising and such is done by the recording studios which take their cut out of the profits. (I did not, know, however, that recording studio-costs are out-of-pocket, not based on actual sales.) My point is that that is the state of affairs the market has created for itself. You could argue that the recording industry needs to be pushed to increase their royalty rates (maybe through competing labels that offer better actual rates) but making music free and paying just the artist doesn't do anything to help the situation. If music is made free (that wasn't intended to be free to begin with), somebody gets cheated; the record label, or the artist.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Which should we do? Arrest everyone on Napster (I imagine its a misdemeanor), stop them by monitoring their machine via Carnivore, or write new legislation that is cognizant of the new problems brought about by the new technology? I opt for the latter.
I've got a different perspective on the whole matter of Peer-To-Peer copying. I'm all for it. I think that whether it's legal or not, the widespread availability of media has opened my eyes to whole different genres of music and culture, allowed me to experiment at little or no cost with independant music (some of the stuff I listen to would cost rediculous amounts of money imported from Europe), and because of this, encouraged me to spend money - on tangible things, like concerts, stickers, and t-shirts - not infinately reproduceable media. Really good music and games - and movies - I've even been inclined to buy (and buy it in a media that I can listen/watch forever, without endless royalties).
Another observation: I've been around computers for something like 14 years or so - and they've ALWAYS been used as tools to pass copyrighted media around to your friends at no charge. There's been the profiteering scum, yes - but they're quick to catch.
What I see happening is that shutting Napster down will be the worst thing the record industry ever did - because then a bunch of hackers are going to design a better, noncentralized, two way anonymous, global system like FreeNet, make it easy to use, and then you have the ultimate tool for freedom - or piracy, depending on how you look at it. Properly designed, it becomes near impossible to track people down, and could become part of every internet enabled OS out there. (I suspect this is what initiatives like Windows XP are about - I hope that product flops worse than DivX). This is also why people are horny to get protections on hard drives before we start talking about terabytes instead of gigabytes - although, I suspect they're not going to be successful.
Even better is the technology developed by Zero Knowledge. Too bad it's not free, but I like their tech - a lot.
Interesting times ahead. What is the law, anyhow? If the majority of the population decides that something is OK and acceptable, then it's going to be legal at that point in time - Yes, I'm all aware about slavery and WWII Germany - but all that was legal at the time, too. Comparing copying music to killing people is a little extreme, too. The government exists for the people, and by the people (in the USA, anyhow..). Not for the corporations, by the corporations. Profits or no profits, that's not what it's about - sorry.
Information wants to be free, and two-way anonymous transfer & peer-to-peer copying means that it's about to be.
..don't panic
Bill Joy just doesn't get a fundamental point about everything that is going digital today: none of them is a product, and any idea that categorizes them as such is flawed and doomed to failure. Music is a service, always has been, and it's only when music had to be imprisoned in physical objects such as tape and compact discs could it have justifiably been called a product. But now music is rapidly reverting to the form it was before Edison invented the phonograph: a service, and all the RIAA's horses and all the RIAA's men cannot put the broken record back together again. I remember reading an article by Courtney Love on Salon that takes this view, and I think Mr. Joy should read it for his edification; this from someone who is actually in the music industry. Courtney Love doesn't see the kind of dichotomy between the music industry and the software industry that Bill Joy seems so sure exists. There really is very little fundamental difference between the music and software industries and I suppose Joy, being ignorant about the former, fails to see its connection to the latter...
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
rush to exploit it, lengthen it, retroactively apply it, and otherwise destroy its nemesis, the freedom of
speech? It's not good. Not even a little.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Ah, but some speech is mine, and some speech is yours, and I get to decide how you use my speech. If I want $5 per copy that you make of it, then that's fine and the copyright allows me to enforce that.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I am willing to bet several dozen donuts that these two companies in particular (in addition to whatever tricks the RIAA and MPAA might be up to, per usual) are lobbying the US Congress to establish a legal framework for an all-out assault on untrusted clients. The ability of an individual to write or use free software that eschews the Digital Rights Management (a more honest term is Copy Prevention) constraints being built into the next generation of commercial software is the "threat lawmakers need to be made aware of" whereof Allchin spoke. Today we have Bill Joy, an influential blowhard with no love for Microsoft, stating openly and publicly "I think that the copyright laws need to be enforced, and maybe they need to be changed. We need an enforceable digital-rights management scheme..."
Why would anyone choose to use software that adds no value, but instead restricts what an individual may do with the hardware which he or she has purchased? Answer: They would, if the alternative was a stiff fine or jail time. A full-court-press is underway on behalf of the media business (with the help of technology companies like MS, Sun, and RealNetworks) to require DRM technologies be built into all connected devices.
The grand irony here is that Microsoft and Sun both know the value of free distribution, in terms of architectural lock-in, regardless of whether the copies are authorized or not. Don't look to Microsoft to build "phone-home"-style copy protection into versions of Windows sold in the developing world- they know there's more value in people pirating their software and driving up their market share in these places than there is money to be squeezed out of the few groups willing and able to actually license all of their MSWare. Sun gives away their software for the same reason. These two sharks are just along for the ride, because they know that having the government mandate the use of DRM technology is a sure recipe for vendor lock-in. Microsoft wants to control the whole pie (from server to client), where Sun is just realistic enough to know that they're not in a position to control the client themselves (that's for their friends at AOL TimeWarner), and so just want to own the server platform.
Folks, even though the lobbying going on here is smoky-back-room shit, bills will eventually have to come before Congress. I urge all of you to keep up with what bills are before the Judiciary and Commerce committees in the Senate and House. I would be astonished if new legislation mandating DRM did not get floated during this Congress. Hold on to your CD-RWs and non-SDMI-compliant MP3 players, folks. And your wallets. We're in for a dirty fight.
-IsaaC
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
So if an author who has distributed a work via DRM loses the original, and posesses the copyright, what prevents him from unlocking a DRMed copy, as is his Constitutional right?
If he can, why can't the rest of us pretend to be him and spoof the system?
If it's power left with an external authority, what if it doesn't comply with the author's wishes, won't that infringe on the copyright? Or are little guys who can't pay entitled to copyright but not entitled to this govt. mandated system?
Do the DRMs vanish magically when the term expires? How do they know? It can't get set at creation, b/c Congress might retroactively REDUCE the term. Does he propose that 99% of Internet traffic become "copyright queries" between content and a server?
How can it tell the difference between me quoting in a fair use manner, and in an infringing manner? Will each piece of content include a Pocket Judge as seen on TV?
If I compile enough materials togethether that I effectively have an unprotected copy of the original, what protects it? The OS? Will it be illegal, under the aegis of "promoting the arts and sciences" to write one's own readers and OSes? Seems to be now, but this will take very general purpose software, like say, vi, which can open text files w/o checking the DRM, and make them illegal unless a giant corporation owns them.
How is the DRM aware of changes that it needs to accomodate due to legal issues? If the courts decide it's unconstitutional, and that any work protected under it shall be stripped of copyright (not entirely unheard of, IIRC) do they all automatically comply? How? What if Congress or the courts add more forms of fair use? Do these things magically accomodate these changes in the law? Or are they stupid, inflexible computer programs? Which is the par for ALL programs... it's the human element that's important.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Yes! Very much on the money...
It reminds me of what I was told about alcohol regulations for College football games. The regulations are there, but they are not routinely enforced. It's only when some jerk gets too drunk and has to be thrown out that they use the booze law as an excuse to get him out of there. Likewise, copyrights are violated every day and the industries allow this behavior routinely. But when they feel threatened they rally up the lawyers and make a big stink out of it. Gnutella hasn't hit the threshhold yet, but the thing is, if they succeed in getting the govt to prosecute the copyright law as it was written, and so many of us are subject to fines, jail time, police harrassment, then the people must revolt, for they are not being represented by their legislators.
So the laws as written are wrong, and although fundamentally the internet isn't different from Steve Gutenberg's printing press, it has brought the copyright law to a logical end through its efficiency and mass distribution capabilities. We have to re-think our laws, here.
I personally don't think that many laws should be on the books: 55 mph speed limit comes to mind. Can you think of any others?
Don't make half the country into outlaws!
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
That's the thing: when a majority of people do something that is not inherently harmful (think about it, using Napster has Zero moral implications) the laws need to be changed to reflect the change in the will of the people.
But it's not like we work that way anymore. It has to do with the way our legislators operate.
Funny, this is as good an argument as any for my pet peeve: the need for campaign finance reform.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
(maybe more accurately 2b, since it's part of the same issue)
You know, there's no reason we can't just pay people for making good stuff. They don't need a way to force them to pay, just a good argument that it is in the donor's own personal best interest to pay.
---
What, you mean we don't get to interview him? This is just an article about some other interview with him? Hemos, you tricked us!
---- Just another spud server.
I live in Utah, and every time I hear "fair use" come out of Hatch's mouth I hurl the technicolor yawn (excuse me, puke)
1 1- 25.html
m l
He is responsible for the CTEA (written by Hatch), in which we all ironically know about today. More here.
http://www.eagleforum.org/column/1998/nov98/98-
He co-authored the DMCA that's gonna throw a lot of slashdotters in jail for wearing the DeCSS t-shirt. More here.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/14179.ht
He's also responsible for this juicy piece
Do actions speak louder than words?? I think so. The difference between a whore on the street corner and Senator Hatch is at least the whore is honest about what she does.
I would invite other's in Utah to go have a beer with me where we can talk about Senator Hatch, but I'm the only one who drinks beer here and who didn't vote for Hatch.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
That's exactly the issue!
Now, most artists would just be happy that they have more listeners !
BUT
*SOME* artist's don't want their work (yes, work. Those songs just didn't appear out of mid-air one day) being copied without their permission. *cough Metalica-in-it-for-the-money cough*
If geeks are not going to respect other's people "property" aka copyrights, why should we expect other people to honor the ones we hold dear, like the GPL.
That's the "crime" of napster. People not respecting other people's work.
To muddle the issue, Napster also provides one nice advantage: It makes it very easy to listen and try out new music.
I know a lot of people have bought new albums, specifically because they were able to hear the whole album first. But copying someone's work, when they the didn't give you permission, still doesn't make it right. (No, it's NOT stealing, it's "unauthorized reproduction." BIG DIFFERENCE.)
Oh well, this is will probably get modded down as flamebait, since I'm just expressing my opinion.
Strange, that Bill Joy is on the board of napster, but doesn't agree with it's principles...
bill joy may have some technical skillz, but he is very weak on history and humanity.
until two *personal* systems can connect, privately, without any government or corporate interference, unless granted by a search warrant (via a judge), our rights are being trampled.
it's as simple as that.
the internet desperately needs a way to tunnel existing services through an encrypted connection.
this is the only interim solution to the theft of our rights and liberties that the governments and corporations are currently undertaking.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
This just underlines the reason I get so annoyed at Joy. He seems to be unnecessarily against the nerds of the world: computer geeks, scientists, etc.
All his talks are about how these people are completely irresponsible and are going to kill us all with their actions. When I was at that Stanford talk a while ago, he spoke at length about how we should regulate biotech/nanotech/robotics/etc, and seemed to dismiss or just not hear many reasonable points by the other speakers. His statement here that building products that destroy our economy was a "nerd view" sounded like he was using "nerd" as an insult. I can see that from mainstream media and such, but he's in the industry.
On another note, I hear he got a few laughs at the talk in SF a couple of days ago. Unintentionally, of course. I don't think he gets it. Oh well, I'll just continue to use him as a contrast to sensible futurists.
[insert witty quote here]
Joy: ....the fact that we can easily get access to music is of no use if the music industry falls apart.
O'Reilly Isn't that somewhat alarmist? The fact is there are certainly studies that show that people are buying more music as a result of free sampling.
Joy: I'm more concerned, as I said, with the book industry.
O'Reilly: Yeah, well I'm a publisher and I'm not concerned about that one... what about software?
Joy: Well, software is a safe harbor that's morphing into a service.
So... the publisher isn't worried about the publishing industry. The software developer isn't worried about the software industry. Free sampling may increase music sales.
So who, exactly, are the copyright laws protecting here?
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
The key arguement you bring up is FAIR. Take a quick peak at CD prices? Fair? I think not [its why I haven't bought a CD in 2 years]. Take a look at the cost of ANY M$ product? Aagain, fair? I think not. If you refuse me a fair price, I will not buy. I you refuse me a fair price for something I need to survive [in both the physical and mental senses] I will fight you for it. To expect a fair price is one thing, to expect to be paid repeatedly, ad infinitum, is quite another.
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
You see, the media companies had complained that the reason they did not have "micropayment" arrangements with external parties was that they were not adequately protected in the online/digital world. Mr. Hatch's subcommittee worked hard (and quickly) to hammer out some protections (as the constitution stipulates they should) to address the business concerns.
Then the good senator got screwed by the media companies.
In the subcommittee hearings a few months back (on CSPAN -- the one with Sean Fanning, Lars Ulrich, etc.) Mr. Hatch laid into the RIAA president (who didn't want to testify -- he threatened to subpeona her instead) on what he considered a betrayal by the RIAA members.
He specifically condemned the fact that the RIAA had not worked to create a system whereby any mom/pop site could provide content for the masses using simple, easy-to-use license schemes. No fancy contracts, just fair use. That was what the DMCA was supposed to do, provide for a legal response in the event one of these sites went too far.
He told the RIAA they had "months" to provide such a system or face the possibility Congress would act in their absence. He specifically warned against an exclusive system of arrangements between the big producers. He wanted to see all of us able to provide this music to our customers for the same cost as the big guys.
Quite funny were his quetions to the RIAA on what constitutes "fair use"...basically he told them they were wrong. When the RIAA president tried to argue that "the law" sided with them, he reminded her that he (or at least his committee) sets the law and he'd have to make some changes to get things straightened out.
Mentioned during the hearing was the fact that Mr. hatch is a musician himself and actually distributes his music over the Internet. I think I recall him saying that he's made enough money to "buy me dinner once or twice".
He also spent most of the morning listening to Metallica and teased Lars a bit about his style.
Now I read that Mr. hatch is on the prowl. Specifically quoted in the CNN article, he said that he'd given them time and they'd produced no deal. He warned 'em...
Yeah, you're jealous. The solution isn't to impoverish musicians but to reward people who create information proportionately to the good they provide.
There is a ridiculous assumption hidden between the lines here that musicians, authors, and inventors somehow aren't doing "real work" like manufacturers and printers. This is stupid, because without the musicians, authors, and inventors the manufacturers and printers wouldn't have anything to manufacture or print. They are the real architects of our economy, our culture, and our technology, and it makes sense they should be massively compensated if their ideas take hold on a massive scale.
Unfortunately, there seem to be no sane voices on this issue. One side wants to be able to steal freely from the creators of information, the other wants a fascist state. Surely there is another way.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
If a given copyright law was set aside then the GPL would be unneeded.
BSD makes their stuff freely available now. To them copyright is irrelevant already.
A company would have no way to prevent others from selling copies of their binary-only software
They sure would. Dongles, encryption, licenses, application key servers, you name it.
MOVE 'ZIG'.
well, remember his paper last year, "Why the future doesn't need us"?
Not exactly a nerd point of view.
Of course, Joy is one of the smartest people ever to sit down at a computer.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Artists have not lost control over the uses of their recordings. Artists never had control over the uses of their recordings. Artists were never supposed to have control over the uses of their recordings.
What they (or whoever they sell to) have is a temporary monopoly over the distribution of copies of their works.
This blurring of the fundamental distinction between reproduction and access is a key element of recording industry Newspeak, behind which they hide their grab of new monopoly privileges which are nowhere to be found in the Constitutional basis of American copyright law.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
A company can take BSD source, then apply their copyright to it. The law will back them up. BSD loses. Copyright is exremely relevant to BSD. BSD'ers are pro-copyright, they want others to be able to sell their stuff proprietarily. GPL'ers are counter-copyright.
They sure would. Dongles, encryption, licenses, application key servers, you name it.
Imagine legalized warez.
He does software, and doesn't see free software as a problem. What with his argument you'd expect him to want to stop free software on the grounds that it hurts the ecosystem! But software, the guy's familiar with, so he doesn't step in it on that issue.
He tells Tim O'Reilly that books are a problem, whereupon Tim (who's done great things with making O'Reilly books _competitive_ with free information by making them easy to handle, attractive, lie open to the proper page etc) rightly responds, "No, I don't think that's a problem and _I_ am the publisher".
And he tells the _world_ that free music is a problem, and who is there to say, "No, I am a musician and I don't think that is a problem"? Who, that has a CLUE about how the industry freaking works and where artists can reasonably expect to earn money! Does he _want_ to permanently establish a situation where consumer money is paid directly to record industry suits? Is he that naive and uninformed that he feels they are basically good people and their statements should be taken at face value? BAD mistake. Someone ask him if he trusts the Mafia too- the links are well, well established.
Then to top it off he uses radio as the example of happy fine control and regulation! Reality check- the FCC is _in_ _the_ _pocket_ of the media industry by now. You don't have choice, you don't have a market, you have Big Media locking out everyone else, and the only response to this has been the _thriving_ community radio movement, delivering programming that actually relates to the needs and interests of the community. You may be more familiar with it as 'pirate radio'... God knows what Bill thinks of that. Maybe he wants all the pirate radio people thrown in jail too, or at least to smash up their transmitters and 'clean up the airwaves' for the big corporate boys.
God, does this guy make me angry at times. The government people at least have this merit- they know what criminals act like, because half of them are corrupt or on the take themselves. Bill Joy behaves like he _believes_ what he's saying, and this is arguably worse. Scoundrels can be bribed or bought, but Bill Joy's liable to try and ruin my own personal career prospects just for my own good, liable to turn complete control of media over to the same _scumbags_ who run it today, even though the 'ecosystem' is TRYING TO REJECT THAT POISON. The 'ecosystem' is trying to _reject_ the Big Three record labels, the tightly controlled Top 40 Radio market, it is trying to develop choice and mobility and its own ways to work out what's good.
I think what upsets me most about Bill Joy right now is that he sees nothing wrong with viewing the _companies_ as the ecosystem, and totally ignoring the content creators and the content consumers. Maybe working for a server maker has left him unable to focus on anything but middleware! But his point of view is simply inexcusable. I could see _including_ the companies and taking some interest in looking after them (in addition to- surprise- new companies that might actually- surprise- compete with the old ones!), but to completely leave out the creators and the consumers is totally intolerable...
At least Orrin Hatch is fumbling towards a clue...
Yes, I agree technology requires new laws. But I wouldn't be worried about Disney or Sony losing money. If those companies went out of business tomorrow, very little of actual cultural value would be lost. Almost all our cultural heritage has been created without the benefit of copyrights, and the argument that we need extensive copyright protections now is flimsy at best.
I'd be concerned foremost about having mechanisms installed everywhere that give a few companies complete control over how and what we communicate. The risk of that isn't merely that Disney won't be able to make hundreds of millions with the latest rip-off of a 19th century fairy tale, the risk of that goes to the core of our democracy and freedoms.
I you refuse me a fair price for something I need to survive [in both the physical and mental senses] I will fight you for it. ...
My advice to you would be to use free software.
And support local music! There are plenty of unsigned struggling bands selling CDs at $5 at any given night at local dive bars, just to recoup the cost of production (hardly ever a profit). You will find that after sampling enough local bands, I can almost guarantee that eventually you'll encounter something good enough to displace RIAA and MTV culture-trusts' stranglehold on creativity.
(Of course, you'll have to get used to the fact that local bands can't support $30k engineering/production budgets to get the sound on any pop CD today, but consider it the same way you would aquire a taste for a new food.)
I realize this is a bit offtopic, but I felt that free source needed to be equated to local music.
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https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
The fact that the internet is a remarkably speedy medium in which to copy and exchange data does not change the *nature* of the medium. There should *not* be special laws for the Internet... if we feel laws must change for reasons made evident by the Internet -- such as, a general public willingness to blatantly steal copyrighted music and an otherwise blaze attitude towards such -- then the law much be changed... but it must be changed _across the board._ I don't think Napster did anything wrong. Napster should not be held criminally nor civilly liable for producing the means for end-users to commit crimes. That's silly. Photocopiers can be used to mass produce pirate copies of magazines, but, you don't see the Magazine Publisher's Association (or whoever ;-)) suing Xerox for making this possible.
It's absurd.
VCRs are legal. Paper is legal. The "Napster technology" (re: peer-to-peer distributed file-sharing) ought to be legal.
Now the courts disagree somewhat, but, only so far as to say that Napster, being a for-profit company willfully aided end-users to copy protected works and in fact encouraged such activity. There is culpability there, in other words. The same argument, however, could not be used against something like Gnutella.
Nonetheless, all of such argumentation aside the main point stands: under current law, *Napster* is not the one breaking the obvious laws. The end-users of Napster's services are most definitely and completely and without a single shadow of a double breaking laws.
The question is: do we feel that is right? Do we feel that we (citizens,end-users, whatever) have a right to distribute songs without paying royalties to the authors... If we do, we have to change copyright law to reflect our new attitudes. Otherwise, we can't complain that the RIAA is pissed off and Napster's being shut down.
I mean, think about what's happening right now... Napster is not fighting for your right to copy protected music: it is trying to establish for itself a monopoly position in this industry. If it comes down to it that Napster must team up with record labels so that end-users are allowed to trade songs... suddenly,the end-user is permitted to do what is otherwise illegal thanks to her use of one service... that being Napster.
Song trading would still be illegal on, say... OpenNap...or via FTP...
So what does this mean? Although our attitudes havechanged, our laws have not. And a large company moves in to dominate something we turned to in rebellion against large companies.
But, that's enough ranting for now ;-)
BRx.
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
Unless it's fair use. How am I stealing if I am obtaining a digital copy of a song that I own on LP? The issues are far more complex than you imply =/
beware the jabberwock, my son! the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Napster has its place. In its current form that place might be right below a fee-based service which serves quality-assured product, but not all Napster use is infringing.
I have downloaded about 1400 songs since getting broadband. (I regard MP3 exchanging as less than useless without broadband.) These fall into 3 categories:
1. Songs I never would have bought, about 200
OK, not "never;" if downloads were a reasonable price (say $0.50/song) I'd have probably paid willingly for this little collection. But no way would I have bought CD's totalling over $1,000 or, what is it, four bucks a song that one site wants to charge? Given the current distribution models, I think this was entirely fair. It isn't like I downloaded every song I ever heard; I used some discretion here.
2. Songs I already own, about 1000.
Before I got DSL, I spent almost a year recording a very large collection of LP's onto CD's. Naturally the ones I listen to most were in the worst shape. I have gradually reconstructed these reconstructed CD's using better quality MP3's from Napster. I regard this as a quality improvement comparable to the one I made when I ran the original vinyl through DC-ART. Why should I pay twice for something because it was originally sold on technologically inferior media?
3. Money lying around in the road, 200 songs.
All right, I have ID'ed someone who has a very fast connection and there is an entire Bob Dylan album there I don't have, I can Do The Right Thing (tm) and leave it be or select tracks 1-12 and hit Get Selected Music. It's not like I went hunting for it, but I was looking for something legit and There It Was, so I did the human thing.
In similar news it has happened a few times that drug couriers running payments up and down I-12 near here have had blowouts on tires stuffed with money. If you passed such a scene would you drive by or stop and pick up a few bills? There is only one answer I would really believe.
I don't know what the final answer should be w/r/t things like Napster. I want artists to be paid but I don't want dagummint's nose up my butt every time I download a file either. I don't think anybody is being very reasonable in the whole debate.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
The fact that so many people are willing to break copyright law when it is made easy for them to do so is a clear indication that copyright law needs to be changed. After all, the laws are to enforce the will of the people, right?
Trying to make special laws for the internet is a mistake. Laws should reflect principles that have nothing to do with the medium in which they are expressed. If it's illegal to be in possesion of copyrighted material without permission, then it's illegal; why do you need a special law that addresses the "internet version"? All these laws do is serve to defame "hackers" and other elements of the internet that the people in Washington hopelessly misunderstand.
Slashdot 's editors are dickheads
Device: A word substituted for Devise if your a dumbass moron who didn't spend enough time on your 3rd grade vocabulary lesson.
If we're all so smart, how come this happens so often?
Go ahead, mod me down for it, but damnit, it's true and I'm sick of it.
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+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
How about musicians having to _create_ and _produce_ and _work_ so that they can develop enough of a reputation that people will say 'hey, that guy's pretty good at music!' and opportunities will arise such as playing on someone else's session, mixing somebody's home-recorded album, or gigging at a private party of rich dotcommers?
I know at least two people who've gone and checked out my music when I mentioned it on Slashdot and took the trouble to write to me and say 'hey, that's pretty good!'. You give me ONE REASON why I should deserve that if I chose to just sit back and not do anything. My next recordings will _blow_ _people's_ _minds_ because I _work_ on the craft. I don't ever anticipate not working on it.
Besides which, the approach of 'internet-based penny-earning' for musicians (as opposed to label-based being-promised-millions) will work for a _lifetime_. It'll only get better as you continue to work and practice your art and craft. By contrast, the system you're defending has an average career length of _two_ _years_! It's completely screwed. Anything would be an improvement.
That said- now GO READ THE STUFF the nice fellow posted for you about why the record industry must die! He's probably referring to the famous rant by the great Steve Albini. Read it! Just because people are doing something positive does not excuse you from educating yourself about how totally unacceptable the music business is and how little alternative there seems to be. I hope guys like Jim at Ampcast can make an alternative, but if he gets his kneecaps broken for it I'd hope some people were paying attention to the fact that the traditional music business is a bunch of _criminals_, and that defying them is a good way to get blacklisted, locked out of pressing plants like Negativland, or even getting beat up. Did you really think it was like the computer industry? The music business has a dark, dark past. Even superstars like Bob Marley had record company thugs threatening DJs to get their records played. The record industry DOES need to be destroyed, stopped, replaced. Merely supplanting it is not enough.
He then steals^H^H^H^H^H^Hquotes the whole text of a Dilbert cartoon. Surely he's taking Scott Adams' work and passing it on to others without recompensing the original author. Bit like Napster users really...
It's even more important to have a somewhat balanced view. I think Bill Joy has a good point in defining the limitations of the nerd view, where if you do something because it's "neat" without understanding all its affects, the whole process can become self-defeating.
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It's amazing how much whining people are doing about the record industry, and how little they are actually doing about it. Do you want artists to get a better break? Form a company that does just that. Otherwise, quit your bitching.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Joy: Britney Spears blah blah blah java blah blah jini blah blah...
me: What?!? How is java related to Britney spears?
Joy: Britney blah blah blah blah java blah blah java blah blah.
me: Are you just making up quasi-random responses until you hit on a train that leads in a tangetial way to plug java?
Joy: Essentially blah blah blah java...
me: Okay, whatever, get out of here.
Joy: Jini.
me: Go Bill, get the hell out.
Joy: Java.
me: Gates is in the front lawn! Go get 'im!
Joy: Java! Java! Jini! Java! World Domination! Java!
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
It sounds like Bill Joy has found a wonderfully matched partner then: the deaf arm-in-arm with the blind and both totally insensitive to anything except their own agendas.
I didn't know about Hatch, but Bill Joy is notorious in nanotech circles for his Proposal to relinquish development of robotics, genetic engineering and nanotechnology, ie. abandon the research that the world's top visionaries see as not only the next major phase of engineering, but also quite possibly the next major milestone in the evolution of Mankind.
Be that as it may, Bill Joy is totally oblivious to even the simplest and most clearcut of arguments when it conflicts with his own point of view, to the point of farce. The fact that abandoning robotics, genetic engineering and nanotechnology would be the most unenforceable directive in the history of ineffective directives seems to matter not at all to him --- it doesn't support his position, so it can't be relevant and isn't even worth a response.
Even if there were a significant buy-in to the idea of relinquishment in the west, which there is most patently not, a single undercover research team achieving any significant advance in the nanotech field would have the potential to effectively destroy the western economy and possibly a lot more, unless counter-agents are developed before that time. Given that a simple SPM (one of the primary tools in nanotech research) can be created for just a few thousand dollars in nothing more fancy than a school lab, Joy's proposal is so akin to trying to bury our collective head in the sand that it's quite astounding.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
In essence, what the courts want Napster to do is limit its users' free speech. Napster is being ordered to prevent you and me from asking and answering the question "Do you have any files with the following pattern in their name?" Napster is simply a search engine not unlike Google or Lycos. Are we going to require that search engines recognize when a searcher is seeking to violate a copyright and prevent that person from finding the material that they seek to infringe?
I know that this sounds cynical, but I believe that if Napster was owned by a corporate giant like AOL or Microsoft, we would have seen a very different set of rulings than we have.
...I've got to hit Mr. Joy over the head with it several times.
His assumption that Napster/Napster like entities will 'destroy the ecosystem' of industries like books and music makes a few invalid assumptions [yes, I know they've probably come up here before, but so long as there are the clueless, we must continue distributing the clue]
1. All those who create do so merely for the purpose of making money, and as a result, removing that possibility means no one will ever create again.
Well now, and I thought I was cynical. Simple fact is, most who create solely to make money create inferior items. The true craftsmen [of anything] create because something inside them motivates them to do so. Its why many, many bands are far better before they became popular, its why much of the philosophy of mankind was conceived and written before copyrights were a wet dream in some lawyers loins, and its why open source software exists today. To attach art[and I mean art in the sense of any well crafted item] so closely with greed is to debase those who create. As a programmer, I take actual offense, and I would as a musician or a poet.
2. If folks give [music/text/software] away, those who make it have no way to make money.
Well, here he defeated his own arguements, by statign that software has become about service. Well, maybe its time for writing and music to become about service as well [you know, like the used to be a long time ago, before somone could create one above average collection of songs and retire?]. He basically gives a way for anyone who has been Napsterized to make a living, so how can the ecosystem collapse?
Sometimes, you wonder about people.
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"