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Ring-Tone Royalties
Bonker writes: "I shook my head sadly when I saw this article on Techweb. It's about a company in the U.K. called Envisional, who monitors intellectual property violations. It seems that they believe that each Ringtone download is worth 7.5 c. The 'monitoring startup calls the downloading of musical ring tones "another Napster in the making" and says the industry may be losing more than $1 million a day in related royalties.' Sad sad sad." If it was April Fool's this would go down much easier.
And what do they plan to do with all the half-cents they will collect, glue them in pairs?
One solution would be to only listen to music whose copyright had expired. This would include many of the great song writers of the last century such as George M. Cohan, Paul Dresser, Jack Norworth, Cole Porter, and thousands more. Sure, it might not be "current". But it is free, and those old tin-pan alley tunes are considered pretty good.
Well $1 million divided by 7.5c a ringtone makes 1.33 million downloads a day. I think this number is roughly equivalent to the number of people who actually though about doing that.
Seems either really farfetched or just plain dumb to me.
You might laugh but sites in the UK charge about £1 per ring tone, billed to the phone-bill. The royalty estimates are based on these charges -- so money really is being made off the back of artist's work (and if you disagree, why else would someone want a ring-tone of "It wasn't me" without Shaggy's brand-image?). Not all copyright claims are unfair.
According to GigaLaw.com "There are three major defenses to copyright infringement. The first is 'de minimis' use, that is, the amount taken was so small that it does not make a difference." Unless these ringtones are playing a more than a few seconds of music, it isnt likely that they contain enough to be considered copyright infringement. So much for my scheme to copyright the power chords. However, I might be able to trademark them and spew forth litigation later.
AFAIK here in Finland each ringtone you download has a small percentage in it which goes to support the Gramex/Teosto copyright organizations.
My personal opinion is that the said organizations suck ass because of them you do not eg. hear radio in the bus (it would cost too much to pay the copyright mafia "their" money for the priviledge of "broadcasting" music to an audience). So you just have to sit quietly and stare out the window. If you've been in a Finnish bus, you know what I mean. Also, basically the money you pay end up supporting the most popular artists, Finland's equivalent of someone like B. Spears.
Why should there be these kind of organizations? Why should there even be record labels? Straight from artist to the consumer is the way to go. At this point there are too many middlemen in the chain.
BUt its true and you know it.
If 10000000 people get something for free, then how can you know that the demand would be the same for $20, or $100?
its like saying , hey we sold 12000 copies at $39.95, but if we sold these CDs for $100each we could have made more money, thus did they really LOOSE, 7200000, or gain 479400. Im sure the tax man would tell you to fuck off, if you told him you made a loss of selling software fore $39.95 and said you made a loss of 7.2M$ because you could have sold it at $100each.
The BSA is full of shit.
I just want General MIDI on there! So many instruments to choose from, ahh. And, none of that nasty FM Synthesis either ;).
Alex Bischoff
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Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
I can see it now... some sharpie compiles every possible (western scale) progression of six notes, copyrights and "publishes" that work, and sends an invoice for "royalties" to any company or prosperous-looking individual who is suspected of using any of the "tunes" as a cell phone ring -- or in any other form.
Sure, most people/companies would throw the notice in the nearest trash can, but who knows? If the amount requested wasn't huge, enough might pay it "to avoid litigation" that this could be a viable "business" model.
Isn't the 21st Century fun?
- Robin
No...if they can hear the music down the street in their houses, you may or may not be evil, but you are definatly an asshole.
My old neighboorhood must have been full of commies, cause everyone played their stereo so loud so everyone could share.
Why? Is it a parody, scholarly work, or other protected derivative work?
:)
I think that any music trying to come out of a cel-phone would be a parody of the original
More than a few bars is really annoying-- forget the fair use issue. If I want to listen to music, I have a stereo. Reproduction on a cell phone cheapens the percieved value of the music.
(It's akin to the line "It's like a Mozart symphony" in Spinal Tap's "Listen to the Flower People, played to a really bad rendition of "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik").
And out of curiousity, how do you feel about the abuse by pirates using such things as Napster?
Obviously that's ok, because you are getting something for free, right?
When I initially read this article I thought it was bogus. Then I read it again and realized what they were saying is that companies that sell ringtone downloads to phones for $1/song or whatever, should be giving a percentage of that to the original song owner.
I think that makes since. The only thing that differentiates their $1/song from my bring*bring is the tones from the song.
So whose work is that? Is the work to transpose 12 notes from a pop song worth $1?
Obviously not. So shouldn't the entity which is truly responsible for the work that makes the 12 notes desirable over bring*bring be rewarded?
I think so, and that's the entire basis of intellectual property.
Now if I encode it and put it in my phone myself... Then I consider that fair use, and I suspect the courts would as well.
As much as I dislike the Bush administration, your attempt to compare this to his disasterous energy policy plan is kind of silly.
It's not clear to me that it is fair use if you are essentially making money off of someone else's work without permission.
If you encode the songs yourself, without paying this third entity... Then that is fair use.
In the UK press there are hundreds of ads for absurdly expensive "services" "selling" ringtones of chart songs at £1 a time. I suspect they are not run by the sorts of people who regularly 'fess up to the PRS (Publishing Rights Society). I've never owned a mobile, but if I did (and had the bad taste to want to draw attention to myself with the latest from Destiny's Child bleeping out from my crotch) I'd rather my £1 went to Beyonce than some dodgy geezer in a lock-up in the East End of London.
I also seem to recall seeing somewhere that if you do your own arrangement of a particular tune, you're not infringing, since it's not technically the same piece of music anymore. If you use the original lyrics, you're still required to pay the lyricist, though. This is why you constantly hear popular tunes done instrumentally and cheesily on Muzak - they don't have to pay any royalties on that particular arrangement.
Correct! We run a ringtone site here in the UK, and 10% of everything we make goes to the MCPS http://www.mcps.co.uk/, the Mechancial Copyright Protection Society. Just like the PRS protects the performance of a work, the MCPS protects the composer of a work, the composer being a much more appropriate recipient of the royalties.
I don't know wether I'm for or against this; one part of me (the bit that wants to be a millionaire;) says no but I can see the MCPSs point.
We're employing professional musicians to recode the essence/melody of popular (i.e. well known) tunes in to MIDI files. Sometimes this works really well and other times it comes out sounding awful, but bearing in mind the process I'd still say it's "music".
--
Every now and then somebody with a midi capable phone asks 'Can I convert a .wav/mp3 to midi?' on comp/alt.music.midi. There is software to do it, but your mileage may vary. After somebody asked this on /. some time ago I started writing a package, WaveGoodbye, available here, but this is designed for polyphonic conversion which phones cannot handle (yet). This is now the most capable of the free wav->midi conversion programs, and can rival the commercial packages at piano music conversion. The version 1, Windows only, binary is freely available and version 2 is currently under development. I am considering releasing the source for this and taking it cross platform. Any Kylix developers out there interested? The alt.music.midi faq (linked from the above link, unless it has moved again) contains a list of poly- and mono-phonic conversion programs. Polyphonic conversion is very difficult and still a topic of research in many university media groups. Monophonic conversion is easier and these programs are generally more accurate.
This sig is a figment of your imagination.
1) Most people are downloading these ringtones via
calls to premium rate lines, so somebody is
making money off them. It's a commercial venture
and as such should they be paying for rights to
use other peoples more-or-less artistic efforts.
2) Custom ringtones are so annoying that they may
in fact herald the apocalypse. I for one would be
for the human toaster in the event of such, so
anything that cuts down on their use is a good
thing.
K.
-
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
I'd challenge the uniqueness of a 10 or 15 note melody.
The publishers of the sheet music for Handel's Messiah took the publishers Handel's Messiah to court, claiming that the melody was a direct steal from the "Hallelujah chorus" from the Messiah. They WON. (This happened in the 1920's; the Westman Company, publisher of the sheet music for Messiah were awarded a share of "Bananas" profits. The court did not decide if the second line of the song was a direct steal from the second line of "My Bonnie").
So, using this as a precedent, it takes FOUR NOTES to successfully sue for stealing a melody. Ten or fifteen notes, is a blatent RIPOFF!
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
A ring tone doesn't use the original recording (yet). If it's just performing the song, then only the song's publishers and writers should be concerned, not the record companies. Keep your evil money-grubbing industries straight, you analysts and writers!
There is no exact limit to where copyright infringement starts other than a "substantial part". This is often interpreted as four bars, which (in popmusic) translates into eight seconds or some such.
...
// Jens M Andreasen
I doubt your ringtone is eight seconds long. You would't live to hear it
mvh
send + more == money?
New phones have this -- as others have pointed out, the Nokias do.
The samsung (maybe 3500, I know my 8500) can have distinctive rings for individuals, groups, pages vs calls, text messages, emails, etc. It's really pretty out of hand IMHO. There should be one global override available (you can set "all calls" and "all pages", which is close) so you can easily switch from rings to vibrate...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
so many people around you you can barely move, when you hear the sound of a cell phone ringing--loud.
If you set it to vibrate, the worst that would happen is the lady next to you might fall in love (but you'd know it was YOUR phone ringing)...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
The replies to my original post so far exceed 2,000 characters (including the /. formatting). You all together owe me in excess of $100,000. Since I have no way to identify or track you, I'll just send my bill to Slashdot and OSDN. If they cannot pay my bill, then I'll hire a patent attorney and tomorrow you'll all be posting on Pauldot.org
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
"Method of using symbols or verbal / musical tones to communicate thoughts, ideas, and emotions between individuals."
I'll charge $10 for every letter typed and $50 for every spoken syllable (special discounts available - contact me for details). That takes care of me ever having to work again, saving my time and energy for more valuable things like playing all the way through Doom in less than eight hours.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
You appear to have never worked in Tech Support.
--
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
This is to go along with their "Campfire Control." Whenever a group of Boy/Girl Scouts, YMCA campers, a family on vacation, etc., sits down and has a sing-a-long, the RIAA will have an enforcer present to throw poison ivy into the fire.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Basically, yes. The rash, and accompanying itching, swelling, etc. (depending on how sensitive you are) is caused by an oily secretion from the ivy. Not sure if it comes from leaves, stem or both, but I have gotten a rash from both. If you burn it, it becomes gas, and still contains the irritants. That means it can easily get into eayes, ears and respiratory. A friend of mine was on a Boy Scout campout when some idiot threw some in the fire. The kids who got into the smoke all ended up with seriously affected eyes, ears, nose, throat and pretty much all exposed skin. That, and the fact that I would have gotten beat up more, makes me glad I didn't join the Scouts.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Coppin said record labels are entitled to 7.5 cents for each download of a ring tone that uses copyrighted material....
Um, NO. The recording industry trades in music recordings, not music compositions. If I was to purchase the sheet music for the Brandenburg concerto and put an excerpt on a mobile phone, I owe the recording industry NOTHING. Same happens if I was to purchase sheet music for "Hey Jude" by Paul McCartney, or something else recent. The only person to whom I would owe money is the composer. The recording industry cannot claim royalties from anyone for making their own performances from the original, legally-purchased sheet music.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
All things aside about copyright laws, rights, etc. this story tells us something about the mentality all too many companies have:
"Someone is obviously ripping me off, or I can claim they are, and thus make money at it."
It's a treasure hunt to find out how to charge people as much as possible for anything remotely related to your business, or to other people's business (and claim you're just helping to enforce intellectual property rights).
It's the ultimate hope of making money for nothing.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
You still pay royalties on a "reinterpretation" of a song. I've performed a cover on each of my last two albums, and in both cases my record label paid about 7 cents per CD manufactured in royalties to the publisher of the song.
The law establishes what's called a "compulsory mechanical license", essentially saying to the owner of publishing rights on the song "yes, you own the rights, but if someone wants to cover your song, you MUST grant them that right so long as they pay the current per-use royalty rate."
You can check out more info at:
- http://www.nmpa.org/hfa/mechanical.html
-Ed http://www.funkatron.comI normally resent record companies going after people with lawyers, but I'd give anything to rid the world of those obnoxious cell-phone tunes.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
If it wasn't something they'll probably think of, that would be really funny...
Wondering- My car stereo is louder than most, am I an evil man because people outside of my car (and when I'm feeling annoying, down the street and in their houses) can hear the music too???
Remember when it was ok to listen to music, and you only had to pay if you wanted to own a copy? Those were the days, weren't they?
--Gfunk
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
that's how i tell mine apart :)
I mean as far as ring tones go, it's much easier to manually duplicate a series of tones.
It's not quite the same as the issue of a full blown song and trying to replicate that from scratch, or is it? If it is copyright infringement to download a ring tone, is it also copyright infringement to display a list of numbers to press and save that will "sound just like" a popular song? Additionally, would it also be copyright infringement for me to attempt to duplicate a song without directions, merely pressing keys to a song in my head that I know exists?
I assume this will happen in more countries and I assume it already happened in the UK.
Hooked on
This is just another step. Lawyers will keep trying to clamp down on intellectual property until we finally say "ENOUGH". Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should go out and pilfer every piece of IP that isn't secured (and even try to get the ones that are). But, at some point, Joe Sixpack will realize how insanely stupid it is for him to pay $0.076 for a tune on his Nokia phone. One that may or may not be copyrighted or may not even really resemble the original song. He'll then start wondering why CDs have never come down in price and why the artist (who we only want to protect, remember?) gets so very little. Then he'll wonder why he can't play his new "enhanced" music media in the car AND at home. Then he'll wonder why he spends so much money on IP in the first place.
Yes, it's fun to have a unique ring on my phone (mine happens to play Europe's Final Countdown). I wouldn't pay extra for the benefit. I coded mine from some very old sheet music I had laying around. I don't know if that's copyright infringement, but I do know I could play it on my keyboard in 1987, and I could even program my keyboard to play it ad infinitum if I so chose. I don't see the difference between it and my phone. If anything, the phone is lesser quality.
At any rate, back to the original conversation. The record labels are shooting themselves in the foot. Even Wal-Mart figured out that to get people in the door, you've got give a little bit away. They can lock down every musical format they want, make it where it's not usable any more, and guess what? Their customer base will die out. I'm quite sure they'll just blame it on piracy though, like they always do.
I'm just waiting patiently for the day the pendulum starts swinging back the other way. More and more people are getting appalled by the increased prices, restricted uses, and gestapo tactics. When they finally get this phone thing locked down, I'm sure it'll be about as useful as www.lyrics.ch.
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Sorry, that trick has been tried already. ASCAP went after the American Camping Association - which represents (amongst other) some Girlscouts camps - for royalties on the songs the girls tend to sing around their campfires. This whole mess eventually was concluded by the Girlscouts asking for and getting exemption because they're a non-profit organization.
Read it from the horse's (ASCAP's) mouth here:
http://www.ascap.com/playback/1996/october/girlsco uts.html
A bit of Googling around the web will yield more results.
--frank[at]unternet.org
He only wants you to contact him so he can then sue you for patent infringement - you must infringe the patent to contact him. Beware!
For all the people talking about public domain... take a look at: http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm. Basically there are different periods when different songs come into the public domain... just look at the chart for the info.
For those talking about Fair Use, we can basically say that Fair Use is a decorative law... basically it does nothing but offer guidelines... it doesn't say anything concrete.. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html. Take a look, you can read it... it's just pretty much fluff.
And then we come to the RIAA site (http://www.riaa.com/Copyright-Laws-2.cfm)... although very biased on the topic, you can see their position in the following quote.
The general rule for teachers and students is that you can use 10% of a song, but not more than 30 seconds... but as the RIAA page states... even value can be derived from a three second clip. So basically, if the people try and fight the music companies on this one... they are taking a big gamble... because "value" is what it all comes down to... nothing in the fair use law gaurantees anything for them.Steve
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the actual typeface and point size of the individual letters in a plain text file are identical. So if there are 26 letters in the alphabet, and we count the insertion of spaces and punctuation, there are finitely many possible combinations of letters and spaces, seeing as the notes themselves are undifferentiated in any aspect but character set and character code. And, compared to the total number of combinations of possible images (which for all intents and purposes is infinite), this number is rather small. Seen in this light, the argument that some of these texts are protected works of creativity, capable of being--nay, supposed to be--charged for seems absolutely absurd!
>
> Yes.
Modded as (+1, Funny)?
Moderators on crack again. That wasn't (+1, Funny), it was (+1, Informative)!
besides, you can probably hack a cellphone to be a passable FM synth.. and you wondered how they made that 'Dr. Who' soundtrack...
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
I see a lot of people here jumpning up and down like this is a big nasty thing. It's not.
Using something like this should be covered under fair use. Let face it, 5 or 6 notes of the latest boy band crud comming out of you cell phone isn't going to cause record companies any grief, if you programmed it in yourself. I doubt that even if you had a site that gave the little tunes you programmed away for free they would care. The problem comes up when somebody starts selling these little clips to other people. That's not fair use, that's generating profit from someone else's trademark. That's why record companies are going to get pissed.
The issue the article brings up is that people are selling these things and not giving artists, composers or publishers their cut of the revenue. I have a hard time thinking that it's a fair use situation.
But the problem is that the phone doesn't have Open Source Music. Tunes are objects that you can download by SMS, if you happen to live in GSM-land where SMS works, but at least the earlier and dumber phone versions didn't let you enter your own. It would also have saved them a bunch of memory by providing half as many tunes and letting you enter your own.
And this whole intellectual property nonsense could be pretty much avoided. Beethoven's dead, and from a copyright standpoint he doesn't care whether you enter just 4 notes of his 5th Symphony (fair use, if trite) or the whole first movement. Walt Disney on the other hand, is merely spending the century dead for intellectual property law reasons so you may not be able to use much Mickey Mouse music. Brittany Spears is still alive, so if you want your phone to play Oops I called you again you might ask your lawyer whether the Digital Millenium Copyright Atrocity cancels out fair use for programming 6 notes into your phone but I wouldn't bother.
Does the RIAA/ASCAP/MPAA mafia extract money from the people who make those car horns that play 20 different annoying tunes?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
...this has been a reality in Sweden for quite some time now (a fee of 1SEK, roughly .1USD, per ringtone). It's time to start up a new music industry since the existing one won't adapt to reality anytime soon :( Anyone with a master plan - please comment!
[screams] "HELLO!!?. NO, I'M IN A ART GALLERY.... NO... IT'S CRAP..."
Check out the Big Mobile Clip.
Pardon me, but where did I say it was alright to pirate software? Let me rephrase what I said in terms simple enough for you to comprehend:
A companies revenue if there were no piracy would be lower than the total of their revenue with piracy and the loss estimated by multiplying the revenue per license by the number of pirate copies. This is because not everyone who finds the software worth using at zero cost will find it worth using at $250.
If I read that Adobe was about to unveil a new perfect copy protection scheme that would make it impossible for anyone to pirate Photoshop, I would buy stock in Jasc Software, makers of Paintshop Pro. Why? Because many people who would prefer to use Photoshop at a cost of zero to Paint Shop Pro at a cost of $79 would prefer Paint Shop Pro at $79 to Photoshop at $479.
You also show a lack of understanding of basic economics when you say a license is worth $X to Microsoft. It is not. A license is "worth" only what they can sell it for. Since Microsoft can "produce" an additional license at very low cost (under $10 for office), they would be perfectly willing to sell to everyone to whom office is worth more than $10. Except for one little detail: they cannot use perfectly discrimintory pricing. So they do the best they can, and will probably be able to come closer when they go to subscription based licensing.
As for my communist propaganda, I'm a card-carrying libertarian. But I learned my economics in a classroom, not from press releases.
Whether piracy is good or bad from an pragmatic standpoint depends on details I'm not competent to find or interpret. I think it's probably bad, because it reduces competition. From a moral standpoint, I have no problem with copyrights, because they can arise from voluntary agreements among all concerned parties.
Your argument is flawed even if the argument you ascribe to me is correct. This is because printing counterfeit money deflates the value of everyone else's money. Pirating software, if you cannot buy it at a price less than what it is worth to you, and there are no substitutes, takes no value from anyone.
This is just like Microsoft claiming that since X home users pirate their software that they charge Y for, they are "losing" $XY. This is complete BS, though, because just as a home user isn't going to pay $500 for office, most people are not going to pay money to download ringtones.
Ok, if your cell phone is playing a full 3 minute pop song every time someone calls, you probably are violating copyrights (as well as risking justifiable homicide).
But if your phone is playing a 3-second clip from a song (never mind if that song is 200+ years old and the copyright has long since expired, like Beethoven's Fifth or something), that really seems like it should fall under the doctrine of fair use. Where do you draw the line? Is it a violation of fair use if I hum a few bars of a song? I don't think so.
But anything to get their greedy little paws on more cash, I guess...
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
Maybe this isn't such a bad thing after all... if I don't hear another monotone version of "Hit me baby one more time" I may just be able to hold off from hitting some 15 year old teenie bopper "one more time".
-ct
--
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
This creates two intriguing but very different applications. First, there's the fun you can have with calling people when you know they're at certain places (eg: at a funeral) and playing a particularly unsuitable tune (eg: for he's a jolly good fellow) on their phone. Second, this would change who is responsible for the ring tone to the caller rather than the owner of the phone.
When you make a performance of a piece of music, you must pay royalties to the publisher (the biggest in the UK is BMG). They in turn will arrange compensation to the composer, under whatever contract they have with them. If you were to buy the sheet music to Hey Jude and play that at a concert you would have to pay the owner of the copyright of the composition (usually the publisher, but in that case I think a certain mr Jackson bought all the Beatles' rights up a while ago).
Note that the publisher can't stop you making the performance or recording, but they can demand royalties. Contrast that with the copyright owner of a recording, they have absoloute control over it and can legally stop you using it.
Just as with anything else, any artist in a "normal" contract doesn't own squat. Their compositions are owned by the publisher, their recordings by the label.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
And you thought your air time was expensive.
-no broken link
All I can say to these people is, "Get a life!" Geez! Talk about going out of your way for nothing! I mean, do any of the song writer's care about if their song was being played as a cell phone ring? At best they should be thankful. People like the song enough to play it on a nasty sounding speaker! ;) I believe that Napster is in the right, but if these copyright companies want total control over "their" songs, they shouldn't even air them. Keep them locked up in a safe somewhere, or else you will have them ripped to MP3's, copied to CD's, dubbed to cassette, streamed on the 'net, given to a friend, remade as a MIDI, turned into a MOD, played as a ring-tone, and God knows what else this evil public can do it.
As I said before, just get a life!
--
Ricky 'Whip-lash' Boone
ricky@2it.net
--
Ricky 'Whip-lash' Boone
"On the subject of copyright, all your arguments have been thought of before, better, by somebody else"
Wow, and just because you say this 3 times and shout it to the world, that somehow makes it true? Just because you aren't smart enough to think of something new doesn't mean the world is devoid of intellectual thinkers capable of this feat.
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Sorry, but if you want to get all prickly about it, to be exact the article makes no mention whatever of any business models based on dialing a pay number to download ringtones. Read it again--no mention. It ju7st says that the ring tones are being made available and that some BS company with no viable business model is trying to get copyright holders to crack down on it because they're supposedly entitled to the mythical figure of 7.5c per download. Nevermind that nowhere in copyright law does it get that specific about how much a copyright holder is entitled to whenever someone gets an extract of a work.
This is why I addressed the question generally, rather than making reference to specific business practices. That is, they're altogether beside the point, because anything available for a fee is or soon will be available without one courtesy of the Internet and other burgeoning technologies. So the question isn't, "Is a company liable for copyright infringement for operating a toll number whereby people may get ringtones of Top 40 songs?" Rather, the question is, "Is a short extract of a few notes from a piece of music converted to ringtone format a violation of copyright?" You are looking at a tiny piece of the puzzle. I am looking at the whole picture.
This is why your "streetlawyering" falls sadly short. Like most lawyers, whether of the real or armchair variety, you fail to see the real, underlying issues, instead nitpickering on various tiny and ultimately insignificant cases.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
> It's the use of the major melodic theme of a piece of music without paying for it.
Bullshit. Last time I checked, fair use encompasses the reproduction of small portions of a copyrighted work in both derivative works and for various other reasons, including the ever-popular "just because I want to as long as it's *personal* use." For example, I am entitled to go to the library and jot down a few paragraphs from any given book. If I keep that paper with a few phrases on it in my pocket, is that a violation of copyright? No. If I show that piece of paper to people occasionally, is that violation of copyright? No. That is fair use, and is entirely personal. Now, if I were to start photocopying that piece of paper with those paragraphs on it, and handing out copies to everyone...then it starts to fall into copyright violation, even though it's just a few paragraphs, because I'm distributing it and it is obviously not a personal use.
This ring-tone nonsense is identical, only with sounds. Anyone is entitled under fair use to copy the few tones of the phrase "hit me baby one more time" for personal use, just as I am free to copy sentences out of a book and keep them in my pocket. Keeping those few musical notes on my cell-phone is the musical equivalent. It is a personal use. I am only using a very small portion of the copyrighted work. I am not distributing copies of it, it is onjly heard on my own phone when it rings. It can be heard by other people, just as I would be free to show my piece of paper with a few sentences from a book to people without violating copyright. It is a fair and personal noncommercial use of a small excerpt. Now, if I were to charge people to listen to my phone playing such musical notes, that would be a violation. If I were to make copies of the ring-tone and distribute them, then I would possibly be liable for copyright infringement--maybe, there are still arguments to be made either way. But just taking a few bars of music and programming them into my cellphone is NOT copyright infringement, it is a valid fair use.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
It's just like radio play, except better, because the people within earshot who have to listen can't change to another station.
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
My phone is usually silent, but vibrates ;-)
when call comes in. Whan idustry
is losing money here? (I would not rather guess).
If only I had copyrighted "brrrriing, brrrriing" when I had the chance.
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47% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
obligatory absolutely fabulous reference:
"Oh, that's what it's for!", in reference to a vibrating pager.
(Followed by: "Eh, do you want it back?""No! Keep it!", heh heh)
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News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Repeat after me: Puuuuubbbbblllliiiicccc Ddddddoooooommmmaaaaiiiiinnnn wherein just about any use is fair use. So I can play my Beethoven's fifth reproduction all I want... (note that in this instance a specific performance of music that is effectively public domain is still unique and copyrightable, so you make up your own, as DTMF ain't that hard, burning copies of a recording by $orchestra is still piracy).
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News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
In any case, my point is only salient to music in the PD
This set of music is limited and will not become larger. The major source of additions to the public domain has previously been expirations of copyright terms. However, since the late 1970s, effectively NOTHING has expired into the public domain. The only significant thing that can potentially stop this is the death of the Walt Disney Company, as all senators and representatives have a price, and DisneyCo has enough money to buy them.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Secondly, how much of a song does a phone have to play before it becomes copyright infringement? A bar? A chorus?
The Yes! We Have No Bananas! case dealt with this very issue (a song's four-note hook was copied), but I forget which way it went.
Will I retire or break 10K?
All you really need to do is get some hard drive space, write a script to output all the permutations, copyright it, and then sue anyone who "dares" to use your "original" work.
I've analyzed this situation before and given a formula for the number of possible melodies with x notes. I've also written programs that use music theory to generate random but pleasing contrapuntal music on the fly.
Will I retire or break 10K?
371574977536 possible tunes
Information theory states that anything for which there are fewer than 2^40 (approx. 10^12) possibilities can be encoded in 40 bits. How's that for compression? They don't even make encryption keys that short anymore. (Or is this the MPAA's argument, that the 40-bit title key on a CSS encrypted DVD is copyrighted?) In the world of words, where a letter has about 2 or 3 bits of entropy to keep things pronounceable, things that short are trademarked, not copyrighted. (This opens up another can of worms.)
Here's another ballpark estimate: Take 6 choices for the next note (no accidentals, no adjacent repetitions, disregard rhythm) and you get a smaller number of melodies. Allow that all melodies can be transposed to start on C, and you get 6^(n - 1) melodies of n notes. This formula that gives only 6^7 = 279,936 possible eight-note melodies, representable in 19 bits. There are an order of magnitude more unexpired U.S. patents than eight-note diatonic melodies.
Will I retire or break 10K?
http://www.azstarnet.com/~solo/4min33se.htm
No - theres a terrible human cost to listening to too much Steely Dan.
perhaps his estate gets some cash whenever someone has their phone on silent or vibrate?
The Nokia 8260 takes a step in this direction. You can assign people in your phone book to one of five distinct caller groups. Each of these caller groups can be assigned a different ringtone and graphic. It is also possible to configure the phone so that it only rings when the caller has been assigned to a group.
It still uses the RTTL format to define ringtones, but progress comes by taking many small steps more often then by taking one giant leap. For those of you with an 8260 who haven't found a place to download ringtones check out www.the-mobile.net.
"You can't fight in here! This is the war room" --Dr. Stra
Wait a second...
"Envisional Ltd., which sells software and services for monitoring intellectual-property rights violations online... decided to pursue the ring-tone research on its own."
Well, it's obvious then. Envisional Ltd. is a company that does very little at all, if anything. They 'monitor intellectual-property rights violations'? They'd be more aptly labled 'master serach engine operators'.
Isn't it obvious that this kind of controversial announcement, with no industry backing whatsoever, is simply an effort to gain public attention and therefore clients?
"...cell phone usage is pervasive enough that users are looking for ways to distinguish their cell phones' rings from others."
Funny, I usually have no trouble distinguishing my phone from the others _because it's in my own fucking pocket_!
Just how retarded do they think the users are?
"8#g2 8e2 8#g2 8#c3 4a2 4- 8#f2 8#d2 8#f2 8b2 4#g2 8#f2 8e2 4- 8e2 8#c2 4#f2 4#c2 4- 8#f2 8e2 4#g2 4#f2"
(Typical cell phone melody, see here for more.) People who think that such information should be copyrightable are a danger to society. This is one of the many, many cases that outlines the idiocy of the concept of "intellectual property", the idea of monopolizing the information space.
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and says the industry may be losing more than $1 million a day in related royalties
Yeah, and Ed McMahon and Publisher's Clearing House say I may have already won $10 million, but do you think I'm ever going to see a dime of it?
Its only lost royalties if they would have gotten them in the first place.
NO CARRIER
Two stories in a row with comments along the lines of "This isn't an April Fools Joke"...April was last month. I'm confused
So perhaps a more appropriate comment would be "Mayday! Mayday!"? After all, this is May day (May 1).
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Am I the only Slashdotter who is sick and tired of losing 9000 karma points every time they moderate?
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Right.
Why? Is it a parody, scholarly work, or other protected derivative work? Is it a backup or time-shift of a broadcast signal? No. It's the use of the major melodic theme of a piece of music without paying for it. Please don't weaken the concept of fair use by trying to shoehorn obvious ripoffs into it.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
You see, this is the "geeklawyer" approach at work. On the left, we have a legal system which has a vast heap of precedent, technical language and provision for review in order to ensure that the spirit of the law as well as the letter is obeyed and that massive injustices don't result. It doesn't work all the time, but it works well enough and it works a fuck sight better than the Linux kernel's still non-existent DirectX support.
Over on the right, we have a smart-alec, painfully literal-minded nimrod who thinks that because he's spotted a minor linguistic infelicity in a hastily drafted post, the entire legal system has been savagely indicted by his genius. And therefore if only "engineers" (ie; fat arsed Quake-jockey sysadmins) could take over the legal system, blah blah wank. Get bent, the fucking lot of you.
Ok, let me spell this out in plain language. Whistling a tune in the street is not "using" that tune. You're not using it because "use" is use for a purpose, to gain some benefit, as opposed to enjoying something for its own sake in a way which does not detract from the creator's rights over his creation.
But what if I sing the song to put a baby to sleep? Surely that's a "use"?
No it isn't, not in any normal circumstance outside a concocted science fiction story, and certainly not in any sense that would allow you to extend it to making Napster legal again.
But what if I recorded myself whistling and ...
No. Whatever it is, no. And the answer is "No" to all the other fucking thousand and one hypothetical examples you're about to come up with, if they mean a legal loophole to allow something obviously fucking criminal.
But what are these "rights"? I'm not actually taking anything! What do you mean "benefit"?!
Sorry, not listening any more. Please remember this; I'm going to repeat it three times, with increasing emphasis.
On the subject of copyright, all your arguments have been thought of before, better, by somebody else.
On the subject of copyright, all your arguments have been thought of before, better, by somebody else
ON THE SUBJECT OF COPYRIGHT, ALL YOUR ARGUMENTS HAVE BEEN THOUGHT OF BEFORE, BETTER, BY SOMEBODY ELSE!
Now stop bothering me.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Which just goes to show what a fucking stupid comparison that is. Let's take the set of possible melodies of only eight notes. There are 13^8 = 815730721 different combinations of the 13 notes plus rest. In fact, of course, if you then consider rhythm and allow each note to be a crotchet or quaver, there are 26^8 = 377801998336 different combinations. Subtract 13! as combinations which start with rests are indistinguishable, and you get a total of 371574977536 possible tunes. In the circumstances, to claim that combinatorics puts any meaningful check on the number of possible tunes is ludicrous.
jsm, not bothering to check whether subtracting 13! was the right thing to do since 1999.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Fair use depends upon exactly what it says; the use. If my business model is to take the week's top 40, then to convert them into ringtone format, then to place advertisements in the newspapers inviting people to dial a premium rate phone number in order to download the ringtone tune, then it seems pretty obvious to me that I am making money out of someone else's copyrighted work and ought to pay the royalty. Guess what -- that's exactly the business model discussed in this story, and the vast majority of these ringtone operations in fact *do* pay royalties to the Performing Rights Society. There are presumably a few cowboys who don't.
On reflection, I think that on this occasion it's likely to be differences between US mobile phone technology and the rest of the world rather than widespread ignorance of copyright which is responsible for the toxic level of cluelessness in this slashdot thread. Happy to help to clear up this misunderstanding.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Using your brain to store music: A Napster In The Making?
As if the music industry doesn't already have its share of digital headaches, it may have a new source of potential copyright infringement to contend with: human memory.
A British Internet monitoring startup calls the ability of the human brain to store music "another Napster in the making" and says the industry may be losing more than $1 trillion a day in related royalties.
Envisional Ltd., which sells software and services for monitoring intellectual-property rights violations, discovered the potential infringement while doing an MP3-related research project for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
Co-founder and chief operating officer Ben Coppin said the company decided to pursue the research on its own.
Studies have shown that the human brain can store over 30 terabytes of information, and there are currently no copyright protections in place that allow recording artists to recover these financial losses due to downloading and sharing. The most common form of uploading was through auditory senses, or the ears.
Coppin said record labels are entitled to 7.5 cents for each memory and song in a person's brain that uses copyrighted material, but industry sources couldn't confirm that figure.
Envisional arrived at its estimate of potential losses based on analyst research indicating that very few individuals with brains who are paying the required royalties. Coppin said he considers his firm's estimate to be "rough," but adds that "our feeling is that it's fairly conservative."
He said Envisional has had discussions with multiple, well-known music labels about taking the research further.
Webnoize Inc. analyst Ric Dube said storing music in the human brain is becoming big business, particularly in Asia and other regions where humans have bigger heads and can store the music much easier.
The storage of copyrighted memories, Dube said, could present a revenue opportunity for the labels.
Meanwhile, Gartner analyst P.J. McNealy said concerns surrounding music memories aren't about to take on the magnitude of file sharing, at least not until streaming technologies allow flawless playback from the brain. He went on to explain that quite simply, many people just can't sing.
"I don't see the [Recording Industry Association of America] launching a round of lawsuits," said McNealy. "But rest assured we have the technology to stop these offenders, it's very easy to perform a lobotomy."
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Hammer of Truth
That's right: millions, if not billions, are being lost because I'm able to play a CD in my car radio when I may have unauthorized, unpaying, passengers in there with me. The auto industry (as well as the car stereo industry) are complicit in this massive conspiracy of intellectual property theft.
And don't get me started on "Boom Boxes" that can quickly turn a whole backyard of people into a group of criminal anti-capitalistic pirates.
So now a ringtone is a derivative work of a full piece of music, and all the work in encoding the music is irrelevant because it's derivative?
I can understand that.. but surely that means that a full piece of music can be a derivative of a ringtone. After all, you can just take the ringtone as the melody and add lyrics and orchestration, but that's irrelevant - it's still derivative. (I always thought that "having the potential to be a derivative work" was pretty much strictly commutative (*being* one isn't because it depends on which one was (c)'d first).)
Also, ringtones don't take up much space. And they have a limited range of values...
Anyone for a distributed.net style project to enumerate all possible ringtones? By their logic we'd also enumerate all possible music, so all music produced would be derivative of something in the ringtone space. Then GPL the ringtone archive..
The RIAA is lobbying for legislation mandating the deployment of "secure showers" -- if the user hums an unlicensed song during a shower, it switchs from water to sulphuric acid.
Are lawyers really that devoid of ethical and moral sense that they'll spend time on this?
Yes.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Aren't ring tones sort of like a reinterpretation of a song? IANAL, but is this a legally valid claim?
In a more broad sense...
Are lawyers really that devoid of ethical and moral sense that they'll spend time on this? I know I know, all lawyers are not bad... but...This is the kind of crap that gives them a bad name.
Humorless sig goes here.
That's nothing!!
My band of lawyers have been working with several key record labels in order to go after people who sing along with the radio, music video, mp3 and "I can't get it out of my head" songs. We figure that the record companies are losing 5 Kabillion USD per day to people enjoying others sing their favorite tunes...not to mention least favorite. This will include humming as well as not knowing the correct words, but having the melody correct.
IBM is already working on a system to track such offenders as they sing a long. The combination of facial and voice recognition will uniquely identify you and the song, so that record companies will be able to immediately draft your personalized lawsuit as soon as you utter the first few notes of the tune!
Look for your lawsuit in the mail soon!
I know it's only Rock-n-Roll,
but I like it, like it
Yes I do!
-dman7
Blarf.
This one falls squarely under fair use as you are at the most using just a few seconds on the song not the entire song. Now if the recording industry wishes to create specific ring tones then they would have a rightful ownership of the ring tone.
:P
I for one am waiting for the inevitable backlash that will make corporations, evil empires, bad laws, and politicians turn and run. I for one will welcome it when it does come.
The copyright system started out as a way to encourage production of intellectual property by making sure the person or people who "Created" it were paid for their creation. The recording industry is a promotional system and not a content creator. In plain, English the RIAA is a leech on the musical creation system. They exist to make themselves the most money possible screw the consumer and screw the artist.
--
When I'm good I'm very good, when I'm bad I'm better, But when I'm evil you better run
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
The record industry has announced today that it may be loosing as much as $12,000,000,000 a day due to people thinking about a song without actually paying for it. They claim that "Radio stations are largely to blame, for playing music that the listener probably does not own, but only paying royalties once" stated one RIAA official, "We need to find a way to read peoples minds, so that we can force radio stations to pay royalties on the mental music that they distribute" he also added that upcoming lawsuites may include charging royalties for singing or humming to oneself, including charging anybody who may be able to hear you singing or humming, even if they have no desire to hear how horribly you sing. Also, bystanders that may have heard your CD player as you pulled up to a traffic light will subsequently be charged. "We then intend to pursue charging aftermarket audio system manufactures because of the flagrent copyright violations that they contirbute too by allowing anyone within 500 feet to hear copyrighted music." Mr. Kissmy Ass, a lawyer for the RIAA explains, "In a public setting, like near the beach, subsequent violations can reach into the thousands"
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
Dictionaries only report the way people are commonly using words. They don't make a value judgment as to whether that usage is "correct" or not. The appearance of that definition of "piracy" in the dictionary is thus unsurprising and means basically nothing as far as the issue of whether copying and sharing is piracy or theft or being a good neighbor. ----
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
"So I sez to the guy, I sez, that ain't no fish, that's my sig!"
----
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I don't see the big deal, I think they are well within their rights. Someone wrote a song, someone else is trying to profit by selling that song without paying royalties. End of story, they need to pay royalties. This is the way it's supposed to work, this is what it's all about. Despite what the RIAA, MPAA, and their stooges may have you believe, this is the reason we have copyright law. To protect one company from other companies who would profit by selling another's work without proper compensation. That is the real intellectual property threat.
Now in something like Napster I think the situation is much less clear cut, and I don't think it's a good comparison.
They claim 1 million a day at 7.5c a download, well thats over 13 million downloads a day or 390 million a month. Wow the RIAA missed that many alleged thefts? Add to that the large cell phone companies sell ringtone change a feature but nobody seems to be going after them for enabling the "piracy" like Napster. Looks more like a lawsuit troll than anything else.
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more. - Albert Camus
The article is referring to the capability of (at least newer) cell phones to play music when an incoming call arrives instead of just an ordinary "ring". The alleged problem here is that companies which make ring tones based on copyrighted music available for download aren't paying royalties to the record industry for that music.
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BACKNEXTFINISHCANCEL
The music company should not be entitled to royalties here, because the mobile phone ringtones are not original copyrighted material. The people who put the ringtone codes on the internet have to work out the notes and their corresponding keystrokes, etc. The result is far from the original - no lyrics for instance. If royalties are to be charged on these, then they should also be charged on a person singing along to a song they hear on radio or a CD, after all it too is replicating (albeit, mostly poorly) the melody of the songs.
"Australia... The land up over, depending on your frame of reference."
It should be free to trade music, you're just adding to the group's popularity. And everyone knows they just make their money from tours and ringtones, right? :))
--
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
at least then I won't hear the fucking top 40 coming through tinny little monophonic speakers...
I think we need to upgrade phones to have full midi capability.....
Then worry about ring tone copyright
----- One piece short of Legoland
Yeah... isn't this every software pirate's argument? "I never would have paid $500 for Photoshop, so they're not losing any money by my piracy."
No, the scope of trademarks is generally limited to the relevant market space. You could open a chain of McDonald's Pet Stores without being sued by the fast food chain. Or you could say, "Gee, McDonald's makes some really shitty tractors."
"Police today pulled over Jane Deaux on I-75. She was charged with copyright infringement when she could not prove she had not received proper authoriation from the music industry to sing along with the radio. Music Industry spokeman I. P. Freely was quoted as saying that sing-along piracy was costing the music industry 'billions of dollars daily.'"
Reading your post, I had an interesting idea. Each phone probably plays a certain number of tones at max. Each phone probably has a certain range of notes. So, there is a set number of permutations that can be played on the phone. All you really need to do is get some hard drive space, write a script to output all the permutations, copywrite it, and then sue anyone who "dares" to use your "original" work.
Of course, this idea is safely in the realm of fiction, right?
This is just going nuts, what's next, oh yes. You go camping with your friends and some of them bring a guitar. Night comes, and you decide to make fire and sing some stuff. Suddenly a pair of RIAA agents appear from nowhere and sue all of you for copyright violation.
Perhaps I like to play the devil's advocate at times and debate both ways on a subject because I can. Does that really make me a hypocritical fascist? This is not a religious site, it's a tech/science discussion forum, and as such should not be held to your impossible standards of complete accuracy in doctrine and beliefs from all parties. In fact, without discussion and debate, this would be just another news site, which would be obligated (although not required) to hold to journalistic standards.
Now if only I could charge the record and advertising companies for storing those annoying tunes in my head. Illegal use of neurons or something. Nah, some record company executive will read the above and get the idea that they can charge me for act of remembering it. SDNI.. Secure Digital Neural Interface... Just to make sure I don't hum the tune to anyone else.
So someone's lawyers decided that each ring is worth a value of exactly 7.5 cents. Who comes up with these figures?
I have just now decided that each post I write on Slashdot is worth a value of exactly YOUR SOUL. Please, upon your having completed the reading of this post, return said soul to the possession of its rightful owner, screwballicus@hotmail.com with all speed. Thank you.
What I want is to have caller-ID distinctive midi ring tones. All my friends could be assigned a MIDI riff that describes them. Then I'd know who it was BEFORE I looked at the phone!
ipv6 is my vpn
When that awful phone goes off next to you, grab them by the scruff of the neck and exclaim:- ------
"YOU HEARTLESS SOD!! My Grandfather wrote that ditty and died a penniless alcoholic because of heartless pirates like you, YOU!!!"
{Break into false uncontrollable sobbing}
---------------------------------------
The best lack all conviction
While the worst are full of passionate intensity
{YEATS}
First off IANAL.
Secondly, how much of a song does a phone have to play before it becomes copyright infringement? A bar? A chorus?
If they're referring to the playing of theme songs on phones, does copyright still count even if the phone doesn't contain all (or even most) of the song?
If it does, I think I might just go copyright a few bars of music, and wait for the $$ to roll in..
-Scott
I can not believe that time is wasted with this sort of thing. Someone actually wasted the time to fester about who gets the proceeds and royalties for the cacophonous blips that emanate from a cellphone.
This sort of continual ranting and raving about who own what makes people like me, and most of the "little people" populace want to go out and steal everything in sight. At least I do. Its cathartic to think that my actions may in some way violate some injunction a bastard lawyer crafted.
This is the beginning of the end in the way of copyright law abuse. To think, some day, this horrible lawyer type will look at his kid sticking his quarters into a playschool wind up music box to hear the music so the record labels run by people formerly known as humans can glom a royalty.
I like to see audiophiles stashing away thousands of SHN files - they make nice MP3s and music CDs. The over-regulation of music is like the banning of sex and drugs, didn't work to well, and it wont for the rock and roll either. Just like prohibition created the mafia, this kind of crap just promotes boot legging.
I hope that people can stop focusing on what they are losing and start adding value to things. Try a CD with some words printed on it or some lyrics. And I wont be wasting airtime trying to quip clips of copyrighted music on a device which currently has no mass storage.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
(why is the article in the "funny" category btw?)
We've definitively paid royalties on these a long time already in Norway, but it's very little. But principally of course, it should be illegal to claim ownership of something that is so small it can be sent as an SMS message.
Hmm. Perhaps this is why the melody is often just a little different. I thought it was just people with no ears who made these things, but perhaps it's deliberate to avoid having to pay royalties.
Hey, what if i write a string quartet which includes a chromatic scale? Can I sue everyone who uses a chromatic scale?
C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# H C or as you say
C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B C
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Every time I visit slashdot, all I see are childish people moaning on about 'micro$oft' (ooh - very clever), praising Linux (which still hasn't got office, or anything nearly as good).
Grow up.
It's amazing how much time and effort goes into suiing other people. What's next? Sue someone for singing along to the radio? They can't copyright everything.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the actual timbre and dynamics of the individual notes in a ring tone are identical. So if there are twelve tones in a octave, and we count the insertion of rests, there are finitely many possible combinations of notes and spaces, seeing as the notes themselves are undifferentiated in any aspect but pitch and duration. And, compared to the total number of combinations of possible sounds (which for all intents and purposes is infinite), this number is rather small. Seen in this light, the argument that some of these are protected works of creativity, capable of being--nay, supposed to be--charged for seems absolutely absurd! Ring tones are lifeless blips and bleeps, despicable apings of real music. Every time I hear Fur Elise monotonously oscillated out of a purse or a pocket I feal like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, strapped down with shunts in my eyes screaming "Its a sin!-using Beethoven like that!" And they have the gall to want to charge us for it. Not Beethoven of course, he's been dead too long for them to wrench any money from his carcass, but probably something worse. moc.nogatnep-eht@umhecbaa
If I'm playing a RIAA song in my head the RIAA should have to pay me for the damage caused to my brain.
If the RIAA could find a way to monitor our thoughts we'd probably have to pay royalties on every tune that goes through our heads! :)
What is the inverse of the Matrix?
Economics tell us that the losses attributable to any kind of piracy, be it software, MP3, or ring-tone, cannot be boiled down to a simple "X illegal copies in existence times Y cost per retail copy equals Z space-bucks lost".
In the real world, people will tend to use something more if the cost is lower. Free ring tones mean that the fad is quite popular. Start charging (and enforcing, if you could) $100/tone fees, though, and next to nobody will use them--it's just not worthwhile. Microsoft and the RIAA's constituents WOULD make more money if nobody ever pirated anything, but the true amount lies somewhere between 0 and the XY=Z figure mentioned above.
Really, I think, the incredible numbers quoted by Coppin amount to little more than a publicity stunt--and guess what? IT WORKED.