Piracy vs. Privacy: MP3, Microsoft And Real People

Pragmatic reader Crashnbur contributed the below piece, his own take on the world of fair use and software. If you've ever burned a CD of MP3s, you may find yourself in the same philosophical boat -- or you may think that increasingly narrow copy-restricting licenses are the greatest thing possible for software (and music, say) under freer alternative licenses. I'm not sure that software and music licensing are quite this parallel at all, though, or that Microsoft really doesn't mind consumers playing musical upgrades, even on their home machines.

Napster, Mp3s, & Burning CDs

I download MP3s. I burn MP3s to CD. I do not burn complete albums to CDs; I buy those, but I love to make compilation CDs. I also love the inserts and lyrics and stats on the band that come with purchasing a CD; nothing can replace that. Is that so dishonest?

I don't see what I do as so horribly wrong. I buy about three CDs per month, and I use about two BMG subscriptions per year, so I am legally purchasing between 30 and 50 CDs per year, which is a very significant portion of my income. (College income sucks, you know.) Before MP3s, I bought maybe ten CDs per year, but I made about the same amount of money.

Hmm. What's going on here? Could it be that my interests have changed? I think not. I've always loved music, and I've always had the money to buy it. The difference is, now that MP3s make it possible to hear music that horrible local radio stations would never allow me to hear, I am exposed to literally hundreds of different bands and scores of styles of music that I wasn't before. I find out about new stuff that isn't played locally, I download a few singles from the album -- and if it's worth buying, I somehow find the CD and buy it. If the album sucks, but one or two songs are good, I'll download them to my hard drive and possibly burn them to a CD of random songs that fit into that "like the song, not the album" category. Is that so wrong?

The Napster issue has been blown way out of proportion, and the music industry (read: RIAA) is only in it for money. CDs are overpriced as they are, and the price is only rising, yet people are buying more and more!

Conclusion: Napster has not only not hurt CD sales or the music industry, but I would also argue that Napster has even helped the music industry by allowing millions of users a much greater exposure to music in general, thus the increase in CD sales. Sure, CD singles sales are bound to drop, but with full albums and MP3 singles, what's so bad about that? We're not screwing them over; the music industry is screwing itself. And they're not the only ones.

The Windows milleu for real people

I never buy a brand new OS, ever. They are severely overpriced, and only businesses with their business budgets can really afford to buy them. What I do is buy Windows OSes that are a little over a year old, usually, and I get them pre-installed on a new system.

• August 1996: bought a Pentium 166 with Windows 95.
• September 1998: bought a Pentium II 300 with Windows 98.
• August 2000: bought an Athlon T'bird 800 with Windows Me.

Note that each of the above systems were fast for their time, but not the fastest, and Windows wasn't brand new (except perhaps Me) when I bought the systems, so I got great performance for decent prices.

However, when Windows 95 began to destroy my 166, I upgraded it to Windows 98 using my 300's Win98 disc. And when my dad took the 300 back in September (he let me have the fast one; yay!), he upgraded to WinMe using my system's disc. We have spent several hundreds of dollars for Windows on each computer, why should upgrading and duplicating our newer OSes be considered wrong in any way? We have paid for the products that we have. We have three Windows OSes and three systems. Let us configure them how we like. I don't think Microsoft has a problem with that.

Upgrading an OS should not cost $80, or even $40. If I buy Windows Me, and Microsoft brings out Windows Me2 [heh] a year later, a very minimal fee or no fee at all should be required to upgrade to Me2. This is already somewhat implemented through Windows Update online.)

And applications? Some applications can be priced at up to $600 for a single CD. As if someone of college age has $600 to spend on a CD. I suggest that some of these applications drop in price -- like down to $60. There we go!

Closing Arguments

WPA (Windows Product Activation) is not a bad thing. It is meant to protect Microsoft's investment in its own endeavors. Microsoft is a software developer (among other things) and has the right to implement such a feature on their own software. When we have cold, hard proof of abuse of such features, that is when we should lash out in defense. Until then, let's not get bent out of shape over hypotheticals, okay?

Comments

Now for Something Completely Different

[Anonymous Coward]

If this darling young thief's inept attempt to justify his actions left you a little dissatisfied, then perhaps you'd like to read something that's about as completely different as possible. In the other corner, weighing in with the weight of careful consideration of both the historical roots of copyright and other IP as well as a keen understanding of the changes of the last few decades to the context in which those laws and regulations exist, we bring you Richard Stallman on Copyright and Globalization in the age of computer networks.

Anyone who really prefers the self-serving whining that the doubtless noisome slashdottie wrote... well, I pity y'all, okay? Now run along and go ferment in the street like good trailer park trash.

How they can imagine that they'll ever grow up to be good coders with such sloppy habits of thought...

Re:Commercial Software

[MadAhab]

There's a big exception to this rule; Adobe Photoshop. It's expensive. The usual way to handle this is to make a much cheaper version with the one or two features removed that separates the professional use from individual use. For example, the differences between NT Workstation and Server fall into this category.

Adobe, however, has done an unusually terrible job of this. The smart thing to do would be to remove the fine color control needed for professional printing. Those of us dumping photos to our inkjets wouldn't give a crap. The second smart thing to do would be to remove really slick controls for reducing image size, to separate out the web developers. They didn't do these things.

Instead, they ignored the first smart thing, and screwed up the second smart thing (first by putting it in a separate product, Image Ready). Instead, they've produced special Adobe Photo Extra Lite Dumbass Express for Losers products that get bundled with other apps or products (like digital cameras). I'd be surprised if those are really profitable. So Joe College wants "real" Photoshop so that he can actually do something cool. So he pirates it, making Photoshop one of the most pirated products ever.

And once someone makes an Aqua port of The Gimp, Adobe will have lost the best way to make millions instead of losing them. Hell, the Gimp has better JPEG export control than I remember using on Photoscrap. Screw that, I'll use The Gimp.

A bit more on-topic; the direction XP is etching in stone for Microsoft isn't all terrible, but a few years from now, OS X has the ability to make Windows seem like a very, very downmarket product. Trailer park computing.

This is more likely if Apple does two things; hustle to get games out on OS X, and be very, very nice to developers. Which pretty much comes down to the same thing; be very nice to developers. Keep decent developer tools available for free or damn cheap. Don't make crazy power plays with them by keeping it clear what is part of the OS and what is free territory.

Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

I don't get it.

[brianvan]

The article starts with a very good, yet oft-stated point about mp3s and Napster. That is, the only reason why the RIAA could possibly be upset at the habits of mp3 users is that they're obsessed with gouging us as much as possible... mp3 files don't reduce album sales, they simply help people avoid bad purchases (and sometimes help them make better ones too).

Then he rants about MS and their OS pricing policy - actually, he's not happy with ANY company that sells an OS, he feels they're all too expensive. He states that he does pay for them, but only once and with the intent of using them multiple times. This is apples to oranges when compared to the first story... the first story should have been something about wanting the right to buy a CD and make copies to keep in the car, at work, at home, backup, etc...

Then the third point has nothing to do with the other two, and philosophically disagrees with the first two: WPA has the indirect effect of removing the priviledges that he expects in the first two stories!

Perhaps the author should try posting three separate, complete, philisophically agreeing essays about each topic rather than provide us a grab bag of snippets. I would be more interested in seeing that.

Ah, if we could only moderate stories posted to the front page... there's some good stories on the main page that need some bumping up today.

Re:I don't get it.

[Chops]

mp3 files don't reduce album sales, they simply help people avoid bad purchases (and sometimes help them make better ones too).

Yep. Have you noticed that Napster now blocks John Fogerty, Bob Dylan, Steppenwolf, and John Kay, but not N'Sync or Snoop Doggy Dog? Try it; I think the RIAA is smarter than we give them credit for.

Re:Poor little kid.

[TypoDaemon]

your answer is... the us is nowhere near free market and getting worse because of all the new laws which regulate the economy.

Yeah, I know what you mean...

[Greyfox]

I got my OS free, too. Oh... wait...

Re:Not just money

[GrouchoMarx]

When? At what fictional point in history did people on a mass scale have enough disposable income to spent money on what they are force-fed but did not? The 1980s? Hardly. The 1960s? Nope. The idealized Leave it to Beaver 1950s? Sorry, wrong again. Any time in the 20th century? Nope. The late 1800s? Heyday of the robber barrons. The early 1800s? Not then, either. Earlier? Sorry, you're getting into the pre-industrial era, where everything was hand made and the whole capitalist concept did not exist in the first place. Nor did people have disposable income, except for the elite gentry and royalty. And THEY certainly spent a fortune on frivolity.

You call for the removal of government from the economic system completely. False. Deregulation has been negative in almost every case. Do you remember why government got involved in the first place? Because people were eating rat meat and doing nothing about it. Are you aware of the fact that if you buy a piece of children's sleepwear, that you have no way of knowing if it's flame retardant or not? A decade ago you knew it would be, because it's required. Today, it's not required, nor is it required that it be labeled. That's what the removal of government does.

I will agree with you that the current legal system is grossly flawed. But the answer is not to remove the law and the government. It is to alter the law (not expand, alter) to make it less biased towards the manipulator, towards the glutton, and towards the finagler.

The control-freaks know that. Witness the DMCA, the UITCA, the Napster lawsuit, the 2600 lawsuit, and so on. They know how to abuse the legal system and its holes for their own ends. Don't abandon the government. Don't pull the law out of it, because you can't. That's called anarchy, and then nobody wins.

Do your part to plug the holes in the law, and to fix the problems. If the problem is the law, you don't try and fix it through a boycott (aka "voting with your dollars"). You fix a legal problem through the legal system. That means get up off your arse, stop whining on newsboards that no one in a position of power reads, get involved in your own government, and get people elected who will work to fix the problems in the system. If you can't find one, run yourself. Government is YOU.

Yes, candidates are bought, by campaign contributions for advertising to automitons who will vote for whoever gives the best sales pitch. That is, the best marketing. Use the system right back. Ignore the marketing, get behind a candidate you support, and push. Campaign. We have a popularly elected government. If you let it create loopholes for control-freaks and conglomerates to abuse, then it is no one's fault but your own. That is what I mean by fighting back through the law. Not by removing it, but by altering it to be protective, rather than abusive.

--GrouchoMarx

You're not entitled to everything out there.

[mgkimsal2]

I don't see what I do as so horribly wrong. I buy about three CDs per month, and I use about two BMG subscriptions per year, so I am legally purchasing between 30 and 50 CDs per year, which is a very significant portion of my income

It's my understanding that BMG and other record clubs don't pay the artists for those albums, but chalk them up as a marketing expense. I could be wrong, but I thought I remembered reading that. Doesn't really matter how many you buy - you're still taking stuff that isn't yours. My own use of Napster has been pretty limited to searching out bootlegs and live copies of stuff that I CAN'T buy, but even then, I'm pretty hypocritical. :)

And applications? Some applications can be priced at up to $600 for a single CD. As if someone of college age has $600 to spend on a CD. I suggest that some of these applications drop in price -- like down to $60. There we go!

As many other people pointed out, you get college discounts. One of the guys who used to work here had a son in college - he got MS Office for something like $50. The guy here was asking why we didn't use Office. I told him what it costs for me as a small business owner to go buy it retail. He said I should just go to the university and try to buy the $50 copy.

Further to the point, however, is that just because you can't afford it doesn't mean it should be cheaper. Do you have any idea how long it might have taken to develop that $600 package? It's not priced on a whim - generally there's some research or surveying of the marketplace to see what they can charge, but there's a cost of development that has to be recouped as well.

Some applications can be priced at up to $600 for a single CD.

DON'T USE THE SOFTWARE THEN. Is there some mandate in your life that you HAVE to use that package? Will your existance end if you don't? It's probably geared toward a business. When you start working for one, if they have a need to use that package, they will provide it for you.

For goodness' sake, there's too much good FREE stuff out there already - free in the legal sense - to whine about high-priced stuff. If you want the $600 package, get a job, save your money, and buy it.

Odd set of beliefs...

[dachshund]

This is a very confusing thing to see in a Slashdot story. It's not particularly informative, and we've heard (and made) many of these arguments before.

It also seems to be a little bit conflicted. "Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to charge for multiple installs" but "Microsoft should implement restrictive technological measures to potentially allow for this" seems conflicted. I guess this guy really doesn't want the government telling him whether it's ok to use multiple copies, but he's ok if Microsoft does it the same?

And by the way, there's nothing wrong with jumping the gun expressing your concern with a new feature that a company is putting into their product. That's the best way to send them a message that they are likely to encounter customer resistance, and maybe they might want to reconsider before committing themselves-- staying silent and waiting until it's a done deal does nobody any good.

Re:This has NOTHING to do with ships at sea

[Rogerborg]

• QUIT CALLING IT PIRACY

From Merriam-Webster:

Piracy: 3: the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright

Sorry, we lost that hearts and minds battle a while ago. :( You're damn straight about the rest of it though, the RIAA couldn't care less about artists.

Poor little kid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Upgrading an OS should not cost $80, or even $40.

And who are you to know how much things should cost? This is, after all, a free market. If you think something is too expensive, you can go ahead and record your own music, write your own operating system, and give it away. Or find someone who did exactly that.

Re:Poor little kid.

[WakieMakie]

Hey you can also steal it, that's also part of the free market system. Stealing is one of those pesky checks and balance bits.

Cute Comment...

[Cyclops]

How did it get promoted to an article?

Ok, after sounding like a flamebait, let me apologise and congratulate the author on this interesting comment.

Now, I justify why I consider it overrated:
It... is... too... superficial. Do not understand me wrongly. All I mean is that it is so light headed that all its points become just as simple as any average >3 comment on RIAA articles in slashdot.

Hey, Crashnbur, please reedit, make it longer, more to the point and make it a comment! :) Hugs, Cyke

Huh?

[NMerriam]

Closing Arguments

Closing argments? Where were the opening arguments? What was the question?

---------------------------------------------

My God....

[NeoMage]

How did this make a headline story? I'm not sure that you read this before posting it Timothy, or if you did then you have just as much a distorted view as this kid.

For one, it doesn't matter how many CDs you purchase a year it doesn't justify pirating ANY amount of other music. Sure, CDs are overpriced and that's not good but you are still depriving the artist of their well deserved income. Buying 30 CDs a year doesn't mean anything to an artist whos CD you -didn't- buy.

I agree that by downloading random tracks you might come across something you like and go out and buy that CD. But realistically (across a good spectrum of Napster users) how often did this happen? I know that I usually target music that I -know- I have heard and like rather than wasting time downloading random tracks.

While the RIAA may be protecting a large income, they do also happen to stand for a lot of artists. Without the RIAA, how the hell would any amount of artists got where they are today? Music piracy would be rampant, and there would be no controlled way to licence the playing of music to the masses. All governing bodies have some amount of evil, and it's easy to overlook the good when all you care about is what they are depriving you of (free music).

What makes you think that Micorosoft should give away upgrades to their software, simply because you personally gauge the price to be too high? I know it's a fair whack, but to think that you are getting all that product (consider the developer's time that went in to making this stuff) and you just think you are welcome to free upgrades? Try that at your local car dealer...(I hate to use that analogy.. but everyone else seems to relate to it all the time...). And then, you go on to say that WPA is not a bad thing and it's Microsoft's right to include it. Two faced?

Everyone's entitled to an opinion I guess, but this is clearly just a college kid that's pissed he doesn't get enough pocket money. Hardly ground breaking news Tim.

Re:My God....

[Wolfstar]

For one, it doesn't matter how many CDs you purchase a year it doesn't justify pirating ANY amount of other music. Sure, CDs are overpriced and that's not good but you are still depriving the artist of their well deserved income. Buying 30 CDs a year doesn't mean anything to an artist whos CD you -didn't- buy.

The point that he was making here was fairly simple. It was something that was pointed out on CNN a little over a year ago. The day that the RIAA announced their lawsuit against Napster, the blurb that followed it was "on a related note, CD sales are up an estimated x% this quarter" - paraphrased, and I think x was around 15 or so. There was a demonstrated increase in CD sales once Napster became popular. Whether or not it's due to Napster is another story, but I think it is.

All governing bodies have some amount of evil, and it's easy to overlook the good when all you care about is what they are depriving you of (free music).

Statement is true, concept is ... flawed in my opinion. If artists were making more than pennies on the dollar for their music, I might be able to accept this as a valid argument. But this is the Recording Industry Association of America, not the Recording Artist's Association of America. RIAA exists to protect the recording studios primarily, and as a side effect, it sort of protects the companies' artists - from everyone except the companies themselves, that is.

What makes you think that Micorosoft should give away upgrades to their software, simply because you personally gauge the price to be too high? I know it's a fair whack, but to think that you are getting all that product (consider the developer's time that went in to making this stuff) and you just think you are welcome to free upgrades?

Yes.

Reasons why: I go out and buy Adaptec EZ CD Creator 4.0 so that I can burn backups of all my text files - and I have a ton of them. I go home, find out that 4.0 doesn't support my neato-nifty-keen 16x10x40 burner that I got white-boxed from some 'net retailer. I hit the EZ CD Creator Website, and I see that there's an update to version 4.02, install that, it works with my burner. I'm happy again.

Now, you're most likely to say, "Yeah, but that's a point-release, not the same." My response is, tell me one thing about Windows 98 that couldn't have been done with a point-release type of update. I really don't see it. Let's say I upgrade my old Pentium 233 to a K6-2 500, and I'm running Windows 95. Suddenly, my computer won't finish starting Windows, and it's a SOFTWARE issue. I have two choices, fall back to my Pentium 233 and hope that I can find the executable - only usable in the Windows interface, by the way, which means you HAVE to fallback or underclock - that is buried somewhere in Microsoft's website, or go out and drop a hundred bucks or more for Win 98. This is a problem I've run into recently - also affects Athlons in excess of 1GHz under Win95 - but it's not included in Windows Update, and it's so well hidden that it took me two hours to find it. This is a software bug on Microsoft's part. Why isn't it included in Windows Update?

Microsoft actually bucks industry standard practice when it comes to updates. It should cost significantly less to upgrade if there's no way to add compatibility for new hardware to the old OS. I do agree, however, that the comment about the WPA, while not two-faced per se, is a contradiction in concepts.

Everyone's entitled to an opinion I guess, but this is clearly just a college kid that's pissed he doesn't get enough pocket money.

This I think is a bit out of line, since he's really not griping about not having enough money. He's griping about software prices.

Example: I'm a network engineer. I make a fairly good living, drive a sporty type of car made in 1997, have plenty of money left over to eat with once I pay all the bills, etc. Overall, I'm at a position where I'm living comfortably. Why is it that if I wanted to go out and buy, say, Microsoft Word or Excel, or heavens forbid Visual Studio, that I would have to save up for the next six months to buy it - either that or skip the rent AND the car payment - just so I can have a decent, industry-standard word processor and spreadsheet? Some will say get StarOffice, or maybe suggest AbiWord under Linux. That doesn't work too well. You go looking for a new job, and every recruiter or headhunter you come across is going to tell you to send them a resume in Word format. You ever try writing a resume in wordpad? Not the easiest thing to do and still have it presentable.

This is also moot. Most software companies that make productivity software simply grit their teeth and ignore the individuals with pirate copies - for the most part. It's the businesses with site licenses that they need to worry about. One company is literally hundreds and thousands of dollars in revenue.

It may not be news, but then again, neither are a lot of Op-Ed pieces in a traditional newspaper. They still see press though. Why shouldn't this?

Time to switch to Linux?

[infiniti99]

...why should upgrading and duplicating our newer OSes be considered wrong in any way?

Upgrading an OS should not cost $80, or even $40.

Some applications can be priced at up to $600 for a single CD. As if someone of college age has $600 to spend on a CD.

Seriously... you like to burn CDs? Go burn yourself a GNU/Linux ISO.

-Justin

Interesting viewpoint-- but look at UCITA

[einhverfr]

I wonder what consititutes fair use of software. I assume you can burn one backup disk (as long as UCITA does not pass) for personal use. However, can a person as the normal copyright law stands, be prosecuted for installing Windows 2000 on a single additional system?

I think that the above scenarios are certainly likely to be found legal (within limits) if tried, which is why Microsoft and other software companies back UCITA. I see the license verification program that Microsoft has chosen to impliment as an attempt to technologically do what they have been unable to get lawmakers to pass-- complete enforcement of licensing practices.

I think that this is a good thing. It gives people more incentive to use open source if UCITA continues to flounder (or if passed at least except Linux from mandatory warrantee clauses). It also shows the courts that Microsoft is in the face of stiff competition only from the secondary software market (i.e. piracy) meaning that they are, for all intents and purposes, a monopoly.

RIAA issues

[sakusha]

I have a whole collection of vintage punk records on vinyl. They're scratched to hell, and I'd love to have them on CD quality, except that the record companies rarely release them on CD format. And when they do, I don't feel like paying royalties a second time for records I already bought once. So I'll just download them as MP3s.
But think about the copy protection issues a little closer. If I record an original mp3, like for example, I want to sing Happy Birthday to my niece and email it to my sister so she can play it on her computer to my niece, with content protection, I'd have to buy a license from Microsoft to allow the mp3 to run on a different machine. And Paul McCartney would certainly want a royalty too, he owns the music performance rights to the Happy Birthday song!

Not just money

[GrouchoMarx]

It's not just an issue of money. It's a question of control.

The RIAA's accountants know that their profits have increased in the past few years. The RIAA's lawyers know that their profits have increased in the past few years. But there are people out there that are not using officially sanctioned music in officially sanctioned ways at officially sanctioned times with officially sanctioned equipment. That means there are people out there who are not under the control of the company, the mythical "consumer." This cannot be tollerated.

Microsoft has been making money hand over fist for two decades. Someone installing WinME on three of their computers when they bought one copy is not doing them any harm. If anything, it means fewer copies of Win98 in use, which means less old stuff for them to support. That's good for them. But it means that there are people out there not using the product in the officially sanctioned way on the officially sanctioned number of systems. Microsoft (and Bill Gates in particular) simply cannot deal with the concept of someone not using the product on their terms.

All of that goes back to one of the fundamental flaws in the capitalist mindset: The consumer. The mythical consumer is not a person. The mythical consumer is a machine that stands on the other side of a cash register and accepts input (products) and returns output (pictures of George Washington). They can be reduced to a mathematical equation of supply and demand. They can be manipulated by marketing. They can be made to fit into nice little cells on a spreadsheet. In short, the consumer can be controlled.

It fits nicely into the whole financial theory. Passive object Consumer (C) is convinced by active object Marketing Department (M) to purchase passive object Product (P), created by passive objects Employees (E) under the employ of the active object Owner (O). Add it all up, and you get a nice tity profit (n) for the Owner.

(C + M) + P(E) = O(n)

(A very efficent method, eh?)

There's just one problem: Not all human beings are passive objects C. Humans are not a mathematical equation. The equation works when it is not possible for a person to function otherwise. You force them into playing the role of C or E, and the equation comes out nicely. Everying is predictable, profitable, and controllable.

But as soon as something comes along that threatens the stability and controllability of that equation, panic mode sets in. The printed book would be the death of learning. TV would be the death of radio. VCRs would be the death of movies. DAT would be the death of radio. Cable would be the death of movies. E-books will be the death of learning. The Internet will be the death of civilization. And so on. A little control slips away, and the end is nigh, defend the System to the last lawyer.

No one likes uncertainty (except possibly Shrodinger), and no one likes surprises (except at birthdays). It's not your money that the RIAA or the MPAA or Microsoft want. It's your passivity. They want to know that you can be controlled, not because they want power or greed or world domination but because then you are predictable, and they can wrap their minds around something predictable. Everyone likes things to be predictable. Everyone likes knowing where their next meal is coming from.

So what do we do? Don't be a consumer. Don't be passive. Don't be swayed by marketing. Don't be a part of a machine, however well intentioned and genuinely useful it is (and it is). Most importantly: Don't take your business elsewhere. That doesn't work, it only makes your life more difficult. Saying "we'll just use open source software" doesn't do anything about the continued growth of draconian attempts at regaining control with their collateral damage. Turn and take the issue head on, at its core level: The law.

--GrouchoMarx