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The End of Innovation?
Simone writes: "2001 has been a bad year not just for dot-coms but also for people interested in preserving the public's right to fair use of copyright materials. From the shutdown of Napster and the DeCSS case to the prosecution of Dmitry Sklyarov, federal prosecutors and U.S. courts have acted in support of copyright interests and against the public's ability to use technology to secure fair-use rights. OpenP2P.com editor Richard Koman talks about these turns of events with Lawrence Lessig." Not particularly coincidentally, Lessig has a new book coming out on this very topic.
A really simple logical problem in your argument: the store purchases a majority of the CDs at a fixed cost, regardless if they end up in the bargain bin or not. The CDs that end up not being sold get placed into the bargain bin, but the record labels (and artists) still get the price the CDs were sold at. The stores eat up the lost money -- not the artists.
Copying copyrighted information is not stealing. Stealing would mean that if I took it, you know longer have it.
These debates over semantics are tiresome, and unproductive. The result doesn't mean anything -- it neither proves that an infringement isn't wrongful, nor does it prove that an infringement is evil. I think it is fairly clear that infringement is probably malum prohibitum (wrong because prohibited) rather than malum in se (prohibited because it is wrong. But once again, so what?
Strictly speaking, however, the quoted remark above is wrong. Dictionary definitions support the use of the verb "to steal" to embrace misappropriation of a work of authorship. On the other hand, so what? Just because a word can be linguistically used properly doesn't mean that it "proves" that one use of the verb "to steal" denotes the same form of evil as another use of verb "to steal." Sure, the denotation is correct, but a connotation equating it with, say, theft of a diamond is wrong.
More significantly, stealing one of Jon Katz' works is quite different from, and less wrong, than stealing my thunder, or stealing away to marry my daughter. (Or, while with her, attempting to steal a kiss).
From a legal perspective, the remarks above may be technically correct, although, indeed, forms of theft for which the taking of untangible copyrighted works under some circumstances. It is difficult to "steal" something intangible, just as it is difficult to "steal" real estate. So what? The appropriation or unauthorized exercise of exclusive rights of another in such property, however denominated, is actionable and, in some cases, criminal.
That aside, my Webster's Third New International includes definitions of stealing that supports the theft-name-callers. So at least one dictionary proves the contrary point. But, once again, so what?
Here it is -- copyright is at least malum prohibitum, is probably not malum in se. It is certainly actionable, and sometimes criminal.
One really doesn't need to inquire much deeper. You would be wrong, denotatively, to flame at someone who calls an infringer one who stole a work, but so what? You would probably be wrong, connotatively, to demagogue as the person making the claim, but so what?
There is one paragraph that cuts through all the bull that surrounds the DMCA and all the other stunts being pulled by the legal vultures...
Lessig: Yes. I think we should go back to the principles that defined us originally, which was about open societies with free people who should obey the law but you don't get them to obey the law by basically coding it so that they can't do anything different. You get them to obey the law by making the law reasonable and getting people to be respectful of it, and that's the direction we ought to be going.
Now, to me that makes sense.. In all of history, when organisations have overreached themselves, and tried to force control on everything, then other groups have leaped up and revolted.
The more serious the overreach, the more serious the backlash.
The whole reason the States seceeded from England was because the king of the time was forcing unfair measures on each and every person there. And lo, they all got a little upset, and went independant.
Now, several hundred years later, the lawyers of the US seems to be forming laws that are just as unfair and predatory as those that were around back then.
Personally, I know very little about "The Law". At least from a technical point of view. I'd hazard a guess that I comply about 99.9% with it, simply by following the rules of common sense.
I have respect for those rules that are actually put there to protect people, and civilisation as a whole, and make the world a better place.
However, I strenuously object to those laws that are in place solely to allow money to speak, and ensure that it makes more money, at the expense of the little guy.
It seems almost like a throwback to medieval feudalism, with IP laws instead of land, and the consumer being the peon that does all the work, provides all the input to keep things moving, and at the end of the day gets shafted by the 'lords' with no recourse or protection.
So, I laud anyone who simply says "Make the law fair.. Make it something people can look at and respect, and lo, it shall be respected.".
That's sense.
At the moment, the law is saying "You'll respect me and like it, because I tell you so", which bears far more resemblance to a tinpot dictatorship than the enlightened society that the Western World is supposed to be.
Once disrespect begins to grow, it weakens the credibility of the whole.
The whole reason that there are software companies now is that the original concept of copyright seemed fair.
People didn't just copy everything in sight.. They actually respected the right of the producing companies to receive their payment, and the law that protected that.
The DMCA is a law that just begs to be disrespected, and one wonders what effect that'll have on the public perception of the rights that's intended to protect...
Malk
This is a potent argument, because of its patent fairness. However, I don't think it really applies to the kinds of copyright extensions and attacks of fair use, and onerous applications of IP laws we've been seeing.
The real advocates of this are the large corporate interests that hold huge bodies of existing, and in some cases quite old IP. I don't have anything against large corporations per se, but it is important to realize that they are posing as proxies of the creative people that in realities are employees, contractors or independent vendors. Their implicit argument is what is good for them is good for the artist. That is only partialy true: protection from copyright infringement on recent works increases the sale value of creative work, and thus certainly helps the artist.
However, artists and creators have an additional interest that the corporate interests don't share: an interest in their personal productivity. Creative people are empowered by being able to fairly use the works of others, to rely upon a body of works in the public domain, and to use publicly available knowledge as a basis for new creations. For artists, inventors, researchers and programmers, maximizing their return involves trading off having a rich source of material to work with, and having a restricted market for their output. They therefore have a much more balanced interest in the fair use/copyright extension/patent extension debates than their employers.
Traditional IP protections -- moderate copyright periods, fair use, limited kinds of patents that can be obtained -- have been proven effective to both incent and empower creativity.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
then don't sell dvd drives for pc's that are marketed for watching dvd's. Don't forget that these people bought dvd's and the dvd drives. They did support the technology. Perhaps this is a troll? Just because you didn't mind paying the money for home theater doesn't mean everyone is interested in purchasing it. These people have legally purchased these products only to be shafted because of their OS of choice.
2001 has been a bad year not just for dot-coms but also for people interested in preserving the public's right to fair use of copyright materials.
.ph0x
It's also been a bad year for the stock market, most all technology fields and on top of all that, my sex life is down 5 points... go figure, I'm still blaming el nino.
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ps -aux | grep mind
You didn't license the music on that CD; you bought a copy. That means that you get use of the music on that CD based on copyright law.
And the Courts decided that file-sharing is *not* fair use. If you don't think so, talk to your congressman. (And if you're not in the US... well, then start up your own Napster!)
Napster is stealing. You have taken something for which you are expected to pay for - it is stealing. You have robbed the record stores and record companies of money that they would other wise have if you hadn't illegally copied their content - again, you are stealing.
And committing a crime (stealing) anonymously is cowardice, not civil disobedience. Being willing to sit in jail for committing a crime, in order to make a point - now, that is civil disobedience.
"Microsoft has made computing accessible to a population who would otherwise not be able to use computers" - B. Kernigha
Agreed.
just the way the damn gun is being yanked away from you before you kill somebody with it. Oh wait, I forgot, the American way hasn't gotten to that point yet...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Go re-read the article.
Here's a little thought experiment:
If I can come up with a way to maintain an open
SMTP relay on the internet while at the same time
ensuring that SPAM is never relayed, would you
object to my deploying it?
Mail from MIT was not being blocked because it
was SPAM, but rather because the ORBS people
thought MIT might allow SPAM.
Now, think about a certain Russian hacker sitting
in jail, not because he infringed copyright, but
because he created something which might allow
someone to infringe copyright.
Lessig's background is law, and one of the advantages
this provides him is the ability to recognise
bad law in the same way a good programmer can
recognise bad code. This is what he is reacting to in his
article: this little 'war' is an example of how
policies should NOT be created.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Also, a major point Lessig made in the article you linked is the unaccountability of the people compiling these lists.
They're accountable to their users. If I use a list that is abused, I will try to correct the abuses. If I cannot correct the abuses, I will cease to use the list. No one's telling anyone they must use a blackhole list. It's a voluntary choice.
Regarding network admins polling users, I don't agree with that. A network admin is charged with operating the network as they see fit. I don't like that I can't listent to streaming radio at work. It is my employer's network, and they don't want me doing that, hence I don't do that. If my ISP used any filtering I don't want, I'd use another ISP. If my employer does something with their network I don't think they should, I raise the issue with management.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
The Offspring tried to release their entire new album (I forget the title) on their website. For free. What happened? Their record company shut them down.
Yes, because The Offspring signed away their ownership to the copyright. They don't own their record,Capitol does, and as any good capitalist would tell you, the owners have a right to do whatever they please with their property. That's why a lot of bands have their records shelved, and are never able to get them released.
Is this ridiculous? Sure, but The Offspring signed it, and they're not ignorant folk; one of them is a PhD, right? This is the way the mainstream music industry works.
Many smaller artists were/are finding that their music is NO LONGER available for download over Napster. This is exposure they *depend* on.
An entire underground music community existed before Napster and will exist afterwards, sport. Just because some jarhead's Big Internet Cash-in got shut down doesn't stop thousands of indepedent musicians from recording, touring, and releasing records.
Not all copyright holders are the RIAA. I've said this before and so have many others, but I will say it again. The RIAA represent themselves, and their own bottom line. They do not represent the artists.
No, they don't represent artists, and they've never claimed to.
They think they represent all of music,
No, they don't. They only claim to represent the labels affiliated with the RIAA.
You would do yourself a lot of good to actually educate yourself about the music industry. All of the whining Napster-heads do about their warez being taken away could be put to much better use protesting major labels' business practices.
But that would take some foresight and empathy for the greater social welfare, which is counter to the Libertarian feelings of most Slashdot readers. Decide what you want: a perpetuation of private property law, or your free music.
I withdraw in disgust.
mb
The admin runs the network. As such, he is the authority. They have the right to make choices for the network because that is their job. What is this point of law thing? The only place this touches the legal system is with the contracts between the customer and the Network provider.
The admin runs the network. He does whatever the hell he wants in pursuit of that goal (within the bounds of the law right?). Try and show me a law that says otherwise.
Reboot macht Frei.
Come on people, why is everybody defending Dmitry Sklyarov ? He found a way to crack and steal something and was SELLING this technology. This is quite different from finding a flaw in an encryption scheme and notifying the company responsible for it and the public. This guy was making a profit from stealing someone else's product. This is the same thing as bootlegging CDs and selling them on the street. I support Adobe a 100%.
2 GHZ, 1 GB computers for a grand,
:P
All right! 1GB for only a grand? Where do I sign up?
Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe
Am I the only one bothered by the fact that MS-Word doesn't recognize 'newspeak' as a misspelling?
:-)
Yeah, you are. Stealing the link from another poster to this article, it's in the dictionary
Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe
You believe that you can accept and reject packets as you like.
And he can. It's only vigilante when he's evading the legitimate authority. Since he is the authority, it's just despotic.
If you believe that you can do no wrong, then that is precisely a point of law that you've failed to grasp
There is no law which states that you must accept all packets, so i'm not sure how you can fail to grasp a point of it.
Reboot macht Frei.
Ever since the beginning of the nineties, and the end of the cold war, the government has started to become influenced by economic status of the nation. No longer is it as important to compete with nations in arms races. Now we are in a new race - an economic race within the world economy. There is a lot of pressure on our governing body to pass laws in favor of promoting a healthy economy. The people are happy as long as they have their HDTVs and SUVs. We are content to be comfortable. How does this relate to the topic at hand? Well, with the colapse of the so called "dot-com" indutries, we've seen an entire sector of the market drop in value by more than 50%. Part of that market lies in the area indicated - Digital Media. Outside of the previously existing mediums, these companies are strugling to find a way to show some earnings. Of course, once again, there's pressure on the government to do something about it. So, what do they do? Pass stricter laws protecting Copywrighted material to ensure these companies are making the money they should and, in turn, are staying in business.
What he fails to mention is that it's just a bunch of network admins using a self-compiled and maintained list to drop packets from open relays and known spammers from hitting their own networks.
Except the "known spammer" in this case was the entire MIT community!
Copyright *infringement* is of course, not free speech. If I distribute a modified version of your book I am breaking the law. However, first of all I do have the right to modify it for my own use without distributing the modified form, do I not? What about telling people about my changes? "I think a better ending would be..." What about going as far as writing a new ending, but distributing it without the original book? No copyrighted material is being republished. Similarly, a software patch can not contain any of the original material (if it contains addresses and insertions/deletions, not diffs/modifications that contain bits of the original).
A tool that modifies your existing (presumably legitimately purchased) software to do things its author never intended it to do...why is this illegal? Because the author said so? I don't think so. Imagine a tool or stencil of some sort that modifies the way a book is read.
Making a program like DeCSS illegal is like the equivalent of making Xerox machines illegal because they can reproduce copyrighted materal.
Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe
>>>Right, they could have signed with some tiny label and thrown their career down the tubes. See, choices are good! Your ignorance of the realities in the music biz shows here, my friend - Signing w/ an indi label & selling 10,000 or more copies of that release is the SUREST way for a band to further their career & attract major label contract. Less than 1% of major label releases sell over a thousand copie & the fact is that signing w/ a major label & being in that 99% is the surest way to throw your carrer down the drain.
Nah, not really, it's pretty small actually. On a side note, which sealand are you referring to?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
> Not everybody has the ability or the time to rip
> CDDA and convert it to wave files just so they can
> convert it to MP3s in bulk.
Uhhhhh there are some hypothetical people out there who are now mad that they can't instantaneously "fair use" a part of a CD with the push of a button, and golly, they have to go through some extra steps of actually recording it imperfectly?
But I don't understand. How do you "fair use" a perfect copy of a portion of a CD easily without allowing massive theft of perfect copies of entire songs and CD's, thus destroying reward for work?
For every fair-user, there are 10^^8 pirates out there. Something tells me this worrying about "fair use" is hiding some massive fraud.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Typical response of the idiot who's been brainwashed by a lifetime of intellectual property propaganda. You haven't robbed the record stores of anything -- if their music is that crappy that you don't even think it worthy to go out and buy a "best" quality copy of it, you wouldn't have bought it anyways. People who download hundreds of songs wouldn't have gone out to buy them in the first place.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Protecting the bottom line of the recording/movie/software industries does not justify violating our rights to (1) Free speech (2) Freedom to gather in assembly(freedom of association) (3) Privacy (4) Fair use (5) Liberty to do what we will in general. That you can not deny US OUR RIGHTS to protect the bottom line of the industries is covered in the 9th amendment, that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Namely, the industry can not use their priviledge to control ideas as a justification for violating our rights.
(1) Free speech. The Napster decision, the DeCSS decision, the corporate movement against P2P, all violate our right to free speech. Should you and I want to, we have the right to directly link our computers and share whatever information we want to with one another. Just because we *can* do this to share copyrighted material, does not justify denying us this right. People can get together in private parties to plan murder and scams, but that doesn't mean that the government is justified in stopping people from talking to one another. Napster/KaZaa/Gnutella/etc are all basically mediums of free speech. We have the right to speek freely to one another, and the right to share with eachother our entire hard drives(as Limewire allows you to do by specifying all file types and all folders).
(2) Freedom of association. This brings me to freedom of association. By banning programs like Napster and Gnutella(which I believe the industry will try to ban under the DMCA) violates our right to freedom of association. You can not possibly say we have the right to freely associate if we can not do it through the medium of our choice, or in the mode of our choice.
(3) Privacy. This ties in with freedom of association and freedom of speech. Privacy is an essential right: we have the right to privately(or anomyously) associate with eachother and speak freely. This is precisely what the industry is against -- because true privacy undermines their ability to exert their will on us. The industries efforts to try to eliminate all privacy from the internet -- via "net watchers," "spyware," and trying to blackball ISPs into revealing our identity -- are not justified by their priviledge to copyright/patent. Note, I say PRIVILEDGE, not right. There is no right to own an idea. The constitution says that congress may pass intellectual property laws solely for the sake of promoting progress: they are not by any means a right. Note, that while the constitution was amended and added to by the amendments, there has never been an amendment stating that you have the "right to own ideas".
(4) Fair use. If I buy a software program, audio CD, or DVD, I should be able to do whatever I desire with it, so long as I don't redistribute it in its entirity. I have the right to modify, tweak, disassemble, hack, etc, the CD/DVD/program. You can understand this to be my right in the same sense that its my right to have any form of consentual sex I desire with my partner: its covered under the 10th amendments, which states that the powers not delegated to the US by the constitution nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved...to the people. Nothing in the constitution says the government may act to stop me from performing a private act which harms no one else, which is precisely what hacking my CD/DVD/software is. When I buy a CD/DVD/program, I should own in at least the same sense that I own a book: I should have the right to use it any way I desire, to take notes on the side pages(so to speak), to modify it(so to speak), to analyze it to understand how it works.
(5) Liberty to do what I will in general. Namely, I have the right to swing my fist as far as your face. The equally important antithesis to this is that the movie industry nor the govenment may not deny or hinder our rights, as afforementioned, to protect their "priviledges". Not anymore than I can go around shooting everyone around me in public, to "protect myself". After all, any of those strangers COULD be planning on or about to kill me. The government may not violate MY rights, nor the rights of the public in general[as was done by the DMCA], simply because SOME people MAY be doing things which violate the "priviledge" of the industry to "control ideas".
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I doubt many people will read this note (posted this late since I'm just now catching up on reading stories), but for the record...
The moral disconnect is already present. As it is, people already lack ability to reason why a law is there, and thus to voluntarily obey the law, at least relative to the idealized past (though there is some evidence that said moral reasoning never was all that widespread). Furthermore, there are honest disagreements about certain laws - for instance, IP rights are basically limited to one's ability to enforce said rights (through any means, including raiding businesses that are using pirated software).
Given that, getting everyone to voluntarily obey the law does not seem to be feasable in all, or even most, cases. But where and when one can come up with a technological solution, that may be feasable for all users...
It is up to the author of a book to decide if they want to print it or they want the scribes to duplicate it by hand. Nobody IMO has the right to take a scroll made by a scribe and make thousand of press copies of it without author permission.
Ciao
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FB
Have you ever worked in network support for an organization that is primarily non-technical? Users see problems and complain, yes...but they report things as "My computer is broken" or "The network is slow" or "My thingamajig doesn't do right". The average user on a corporate net has no idea how any of the stuff works, or even how to separate email from accessing a fileserver from going to a website in their mind.
In many organizations, the person or handful of people who run the servers and networks are often the only people in the organization who can grasp the technical issues. What I was saying is that all too often these people subscribe to the blackhole lists with good intentions, but often don't think about the possible problems that could arise. No one else in the organization, even upper management and owners, might be thinking about it, either. You know why they're not thinking about it? They hired people to do that. And quite simply, a lot of technical people in the world have such a hard-on for killing spammers that they don't think about the possibility of an error in the lists, or a list manager slipping in something for personal reasons, etc.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Stealing is extra-emphasys put by the copyright holders, which also call the infringers (sp?) pirates.
Said that, I _do_ recognize the natural right of an author to dispose of the product of its work as he/she wants, including allowing only users with blue eyes to use it, and only on Wednesday from 15:00 to 17:00, while standing upside-down, at the modicum price of $100 per second. The same goes (unfortunately) for any entity the author transfer the right to.
Ciao
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FB
take
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?take
"So if your belief is that if you write a piece of software, book, magazine article or song and then anyone is free to redistribute it"
That's not a belief. That's a law of nature. We, as a society agree to artificially restrict people from performing certain actions for the sole purpose of fostering creative works. The second our restrictions go one iota above fostering creative works they are unjustified. That's the current situation - the scales are tilted inordinately in the favor of content owners (note, I don't say creators) at the expense of everybody else. "Rights" to constrain ownership of such non-physical objects such as ideas, sounds, images, are wholly artificial, and any laws created to enforce those "rights" should damn well be balanced so as to benefit the society as a whole.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Mp3.com has tons of legal mp3's that napster could have traded, but yet again i don't think it would have been as successfull because people want what they hear on MTV.
Out of curiousity, is there a real definition of "fair use" out there? Something on the legal books? It seems a majority of Slashdotters yell "fair use" whenever it comes to copyright issues, but when asked to explain it the definitions are all different.
It is not a crime to host a small webpage so that a few family members and friends can share photos. No commerce is being done, so what is wrong? Now these guys will just have to shut down or move to another port.
If there is any real victim of Code Red, it is these people who run a small Linux or BSD without ever causing or wanting more.
If the above quoted falls under the category of "promoting the useful arts," I'm a monkey's uncle. As an author myself (I do have a copyrighted work resting in the Library of Congress) I believe and subscribe to the concept that once an idea is disseminated to an audience, through whatever medium, that idea becomes part of a common conversation.
Copyright is the right to copy, not the right to dictate use, nor the right to dictate fitness of the user, or their method of use. Once you (or I) write a book and publish it, we relinquish most of our ownership of that idea. We are granted an artificial monopoly by the government over the copying of that idea, for the purposes of encouraging people to do it more. But if we were to really and truly enforce that monopoly in the fashion you dictate above, we would by the very nature of our dictatorial control over the material squeeze any meaning or purpose out of it. Draconian copyrights, copyrights that treat the consumer like a potential criminal, rather than the endpoint of your conversation, are killing the goose that laid the golden egg. If a perfect encryption scheme was created, and a book or movie or CD could be locked up for pay-per-view or pay-per-read use only, reading, listening to music, and watching movies would rapidly become pastimes of yesteryear. Maybe people would have to fall back on gathering for live performances, and memorizing the books before they are yanked from their personal collections and burned.
What happened with napster was the revalation of how artificial the copyright monopoly is. People have been copying and trading music amongst themselves for years. Napster just made it visible.
Please don't give me your starving artist routine. I know it too well, and I've been there myself, and I just don't care. Artists, authors, programmers, and musicians can make plenty of money, still, by charging for their presence and appearance. It's the tremendous parasitical apparatus that seeks to put itself in the position of fee-charging gatekeeper of "intellectual property" which stands to suffer from the free exchange of information and intellectual "property."
Ideas are only worth something to the human race if they are easily available. An idea locked in a box might as well not exist. And a book that can only be read on alternate tuesdays by the blue-eyed upside-down persons who qualify for the free discount on reading fees will be passed over by those not meeting its terms, for the book that everyone can read for a moderate and reasonable fee. A book is a thing. It can exist or not exist. The words on the page, however can only exist while someone is reading them. A book which cannot be read or a CD which cannot be played or a film which cannot be watched will become a brace for a wobbly table leg. I see the quote from time to time, "intellectual property is to property as fool's gold is to gold." I can't think of a more current and relevant platitude to have stenciled on my car bumper.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
You don't want Sealand, you want Freedom Ship. Who knows whether it will ever see the light of day, but the idea intrigues me. More the idea of travelling around the world over the course of 2 years, but it has several benefits that could appeal to the Slashdot crowd.
Additionally, copyright law gives the creator of the music to control its replication, subject to fair use by the purchaser. If Napster can build a way to track and verify who holds legal copies and allows only those people to "share" (which is obviously not its intended purpose - why "share" something with someone who already has what you are "sharing"?) then it would have no problems at all. It could claim fair uses among those using the service because those people would legally have copies already.
Face the truth - Napster is the equivalent of a huge cassette tape duplicator that hands out copies of copyrighted material for free. That has never been allowed before and cannot become the rule simply because the format has changed. Paper, 8-track, vinyl, cassette, CD, DVD - the format does not matter. The copyright holder controls the content. People cannot steal content and that is what Napster was allowing.
Is it any coincidence that Napster's usage has dropped off precipitously since it started filtering copyrightred material? All those users wanted to get property for nothing. Plain and simple.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
The whole slashdot concept of DVD's is pathetic. BUY A DVD PLAYER to watch your movies. 99% of the world bought dvd's because of the technology and advancements over VHS. YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THOSE ACHIEVEMENTS and technological improvements. SO FREAKING WHAT if you want watch your DVD's for free. You didn't write the codec, produce the technology, market the products and standardize the industry on formats. That comes to a huge cost and well, DVD's are so awesome for home theater that i don't mind paying that cost.
The price of the DVD and/or player isn't the issue. DVD's aren't priced much higher than VHS [in some cases they can actually be less than a comparable VHS tape]. Likewise, the players are now at rather reasonable prices, about where VCR's stabalized to after they became common [incidentally, VCRs are now DIRT cheap]. The issue is fair use violations [it is not possible, under current law, to legally copy ANY portion of a DVD, even a small excerpt for use in a classroom.] The other issue is region encoding [I can buy tapes from Europe, Asia, etc that play fine in my VCR so long as they are the right format {VHS}. Yet, DVD's from each area may or may not play depending on the region encoding]. Region encoding is, flat out, screwing the consumer. The only possible reason for it is so people in region A have no choice but to pay region A prices and can only get films at region A release dates. Currently, especially for those of us in the US, this is not much of an issue, but the potential is there for a great deal of abuse, and it would be best to nip that in the bud. Lastly, there have been reports of DVDs the refuse to fast forward [one of the wonderful points about DVDs is the ability to jump straight to a scene as opposed to winding tape] through trailors. On rental only copies, maybe I can see this, a way to offset the discount rental places must get, but for consumer purchased discs? I think most would agree if I buy it I ought to be able to watch however I like, be it straight through, no trailors, or the last 5 minutes only. I paid my money, it ought to be my choice.
Basicly, the DVD opposition isn't about copying. Even with today's huge hard drives, you still couldn't put too many onto them at DVD quality, and besides, to download them off the net would take forever even at broadband speeds. The issue is consumers losing rights they have been entitled to and enjoyed since the dawn of home entertainment devices.
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
Do I somehow have a God-given right and a state-sanctioned guarantee to somehow make a living off the painting on my car? I don't think so... If that was my plan, and if the cloning ray exists, then it's a pretty dumb plan and I deserve what comes out.
Of course, the cloning ray will threaten the Association of Decorative Car Painters, and I imagine that the ADCP will lobby Congress for a draconian law that says, "No, you can't use the clone ray for anything because you might use it to undermine our business, so, to the starving children, sorry.."
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
No, that makes so much more sense! Whoever is in charge finally realized that Dave Matthews Band is a virus spreading from computer to computer and it had to be shut down at any cost.
This isn't a question of 'the end of innovation' at all, except possibly in a Microsoftesque "Help! Stop the bad man! He's depriving me of my ability to innovate!" sort of a way. The issue is an entirely separate one, that of fair use and the purpose and extent of IP rights.
There's nothing to stop people coming up with new and better ways of carrying out these same tasks, or entirely different tasks - the constraints that we're looking at here are primarily on reverse engineering, which has never really struck me as being an integral part of innovation...
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Thanks for the correction. It does make a difference, actually: so those industries choose to do what they do. I think, it points out why this kind of law can be useful... Though I'd accept correction on that, too. It's always good to be proved wrong when you're kind of pessimistic. :)
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
There is an alternative to reverse engineering. With open specifications, multiple implementations can coexist. This is true of internet standards such as TCP/IP, SMTP, HTTP, and others. It's true of languages like C, C++, Pascal, and Ecma/JavaScript. To say that all interoperability is thanks to reverse engineering is overstating the case.
Hate stupid software on freshmeat? Laugh at
When was the last time you heard about private individuals making major discoveries in the automobile industry?
Well, let's see. Last time I looked at power windows. Oh, and last time I saw a friend's home built sheet metal intake (30% Horsepower jump). Oh, and the college kid I met that fabricated a jig for easily adjusting holley carbs. What about the guy who came up with splitfire spark plugs? Yes, sometimes innovation happens in corperate labs. Sometimes it doesn't. Don't assume that every industry has to turn to corperate labs to get anything done.
Unbreakable encryption is a myth...
Not at all true. There is lots of unbreakable encryption. Aside from 4096 bit keys and the like, just use a one time pad. The problem is that as encryption gets stronger, it becomes inconveniant(sp?). People aren't willing to go that far out of their way, witness Circuit City's DivX. Cheaper (sort of) but too inconveniant. People probably won't be interested in calling the publisher or what have you to get unlock codes for their DVDs. What you wind up with is a balance between what the consumer wants (completely open and free access) and what the copyright holding corperation wants (complete lock down of the work). This balence leads to balence in other areas, including fair use. This is how a free market is supposed to work- the current IP laws are broken and stupid because they upset this balence.
How do we fix it? Personally, I submit that if we make copyright non-transferable most of this goes away. I tend to think that a copyright should only be held by the creator. It cannot be sold and transfered, even if the creator wanted to. Then if Metallica didn't want their music traded, fine. If Offspring did, fine. Sony (Offspring's label IIRC) would NOT be able to block Offspring from sharing their music, because Offspring would still own all of the rights. Sony would only be able to contract for the privelage of distributing The Offspring's fine music, rather than contracting to own it. This would, IMO, shift us back to sanity. Artists would be protected not only from people who wanted to copy and illegally distribute their work, but also from those who would seek to own and control their work. Consumers would be given more choice in the sense that if I didn't like Metallica's restrictions on distributing I could listen to MegaDeath (better than Metallica anyways but I digress...) As it is, If I don't like Sony's restrictions on distributing then I can't listen to a whole load of bands.
Politics, Culture, Food?
Huh? It is also only a human convention that keeps me from kicking your ass, taking your property, savaging your wife, or doing countless other things that non-human living creatures do to each other.
What differentiates humans from pretty much every other living thing on the planet is an ability to reason. As a result, "human conventions" - that is, the laws of the land - are enacted to define rights that you seem to think are granted by nature. If you think that the right to life and liberty is a law of nature rather than a human convention, then why do you even need a Constitution?
Not only do humans have the ability to reason, it is fundamentally our primary means of survival. It is a good thing for us to enact laws to protect that. I won't argue the specific details of copyright law, patent law, etc., because there are undoubtedly some details that are ill-conceived (i.e. it may be too easy to pass off some obvious idea as "non-obvious" in order to get a patent for it). However, your general assertion that IP does not or should not exist in our "human conventions" is just plain wrong.
Slashdot is entertaining like pro wrestling is entertaining
What if the ISP had signed a contract specifically guaranteeing a certain quality of service?
No, but there have been certain liberties that you could take (and technically still can) with DVDs, such as taking quotes and excerpts from copyrighted work for scholarly or critical review purposes (the oft-cited fair use doctrine), or reselling YOUR ORIGINAL copy (and not keeping any copies) without having to compensate the copyright holders (first sale doctrine).
I say technically because the DMCA doesn't outlaw these things, it just outlaws posessing the tools you need to do these things. It's like making guns legal, and then making the technology needed to use guns (read: bullets) illegal. How long would the NRA let a law like that stand?
The whole point is that then you release a copyrighted work to the public, it immediately becomes a part of popular culture, and in a sense "owned" by the public, too. However, the copyright holder must be able to make a profit on these works, or else there is no incentive. Copyright law is an attempt to balance the rights of the holder with the rights of the public to access their popular culture. Current copyright law is balanced in facor of the copyright holder, at the expense of the public.
If you disagree, I'm sure you're already giving Fox a royalty everytime you say (or even think) "D'oh!" or "Mmmm.... Donuts". Because Fox owns that little bit of popular culture, and we have no right to do with it what we wish, according to your logic.
Hey buddy, why aren't you crying out that you can't use PAL DVDs in all DVD players? or why can't you watch PAL VHS tapes in NTSC VHS players?
Isn't that a form of region coding in and of itself? PAL is a "standard" that was introduced by "the man" to prevent this kind of stuff. So instead of really bitching about region coding try making PAL go away first...
Come to think of it, when did anyone become "sneaky" introducing region coding? Frankly, I'm not sure why anyone would want to own a German language only DVD of "Dude, Where's my Car?", but if you hate region coding so much, get a region free player, or just purchase region "0" DVD off the NET.
I have no problem with people using DeCSS for playing on Linux, but if a company come up with a commerical solution so you can pay a nominal fee to play them on a computer(WinDVD, etc.) the DeCSS case wouldn't exist. Oh, that's right...Linux users wouldn't pony up $$ for it because it's not free(as in Milwalkee's Best) and they would want the source so they could dick around with it, so what company would do that?
I have to agree with what you're saying about the legalities, but I have to say that I don't think MP3 should be classified as an illegal copy of something. It doesn't have CD quality, it's just a file on your computer. The record industry is punishing people who make CD's from mp3's by just punishing everyone who uses mp3's at all, and that sucks.
~ now you know
Yeah whatever. Last time I checked, Sealand was still a part of the Netherlands...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
so civil disobedience is a valid response.
...that is a part of civil disobedience, after all.
If you feel that way, fine. Yet do not scream or shout when and if you are fined/arrested/have your computer taken as 'evdience'...
To write a haiku - all you need is the correct - number of syli...
It's good to remind people of "medium"'s origins. It has been bastardized into being synonymous with "physical recording material" by way of that being one of the methods of transfer, and altered still further by "multimedia", aka moving pictures with sound, which really has nothing to do with being a medium at all.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
This is from the person who spells Grammar wrong! :)
http://www.themeparks.ie
When was the last time you heard about private individuals making major discoveries in the automobile industry? Probably quite a while ago. As industries mature, the innovations stop happening in garages, and start happening in corporate labs. That's the typical lifecycle of any industry as it matures.
This "maturity" isn't a result of everything having been discovered, or a shortage of creativity or new ideas, or of capital, or of an installed base unwilling to adopt new technologies. It is IMHO a direct result of the US Patent system and its propensity for favoring large Patent portfolio holders over small inventors, coupled with the effects of granting government sponsored monopolies and locking up ideas upon which even newer and more innovative ideas or improvements could have been based. This isn't maturity, it is stifling of innovation, of the economies, and of the wealth, which innovation creates.
Software didn't have this problem until software patents started to be granted. Even then, it takes time for a critical mass of founding ideas to be locked up before innovation is brought to a grinding crawl, and we are starting to see the beginnings of this now. Another thing that has, up until now, worked in favor of the software industry has been the fact that the rest of the world has not endorsed software patents and so has been free to continue to innovate, with things like GPG, xine, and livid being developed abroad, then imported into the US either serreptitiously or, when the patent(s) finally expire, legitimently (but with the development time already behind them). This advantage may be going away as Europe and others consider implementing software patents of their own.
The problem with the computer industry is that that wasn't happening, so companies had to turn to the courts to force it to happen. As for the dot coms, I think that was Wall Street's way of saying, "party's over, nerds, now get to work". I just hope things don't end the way I think they will (no more individual innovation in the computer industry, death of open source from IP lawsuits, etc.).
It is more akin to the Big Boys saying "get your bitch ass back on the couch and consume what we give you. Raise your voice, innovate in any manner that might threaten our cartel, or our hold over your lives and the flow of your money into our pockets, and we'll crush you, if not ourselves, with the politicians and police we have so inexpensively rented."
We seriously need to question the basic assumptions of IP law, the notion that granting braod monopolies for extended periods of time is somehow conducive to those things a free and competetive market are supposed to encourage: innovation and improvements in the products we create. In point of fact monopolies are antithetical to a free market, quite destructive and not at all conducive to innovation. We should seriously consider dramatic restrictions on copyright priveleges and getting rid of the patent system altogether. If that is to great a course-change for people to stomach then at the very least we need to address the problem of monopolies, perhaps through manditory licensing of copyrighted works (so anyone can start a radio station for example, not just members of the recording cartel) and offering tax exemptions to inventors rather than twenty year monopolies.
Until we reexamine our basic assumptions with respect to IP and confront the contradiction that is at its very heart these sorts of problems will persist, irrespective of whatever quick and dirty patches we apply to the system.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Napster? Kids getting music for free? FAIR USE? Nope.
DeCSS? Come on, do you really think most people cared about setting up DVD drivers on Linux? They just wanted free movies over the net? FAIR USE? Nope.
The only one of the three close to being about FAIR USE was Skylarov, and he's free now, so what's the big deal?
This "interview" is just a marketing ploy for a book. Don't fall for it, you hypocritical bastards!
One more post on the journey to negative Karma history!
Did anyone study the revenue generated by the recording industry and weather it was affected by Napster. I'll bet it went up rather than down. I personally have bought albums of artists I heard and liked under mp3 and the same goes for my friends.
I particularily liked the Smith and Weson point in the article. But then guns only kill people, software releases and distributes information and can reduce profits, which in this day and age seems to be a far greater wrong than the loss of a life!
is it big enough we can all move there? Or maybe we should just buy a fleet of air craft carries?
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
Easy: because marijuana is the Assassin of Youth.
Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe
True, but "innovations" like "rip-proof" CD's take away much fair-use for the everyday Joe. Most average users do not know how to get around such obstacles, so they would go to Napster, Music City et al. to get the music they might have already bought.
A lot of my use of Napster was downloading obscure/out-of-print material or music I already owned on CD.
Downloading pirated music is the same as stealing the CD from the store. Grow up: You're defending Napster with ridiculous claims of idealism when the basic reason is that using Napster is so much easier than paying for the CD.
Vilk, from the ranks of the freaks
You make some excellent points, especially the "no one made them sign w/ a major label" & the "nothing to lose since no one's buying their stuff anyway". I'm one of those "little guys" - a professional musician w/ a cd released on an indi label (& a good music law attorney). Any one who thinks "fair use" means that ANYONE is free to distribute copyrighted materials by making them available on the net needs to get a grip. The fact is that Napster was facilitating the commision of a FELONY crime - unauthorized distribution of protected music - period. As has been noted in other posts, usage of the site took a nose dive once most of what was available were files by "little guys". I make some songs of my cd available for free on the web - w/ the permission of the label that released it. To my knowledge, no music of mine was ever available on Napster - had it been, I would have considered it copyright infringment - but as a "little guy", would not have had the resources to go up against the Napster legal team. My income is derived soley from playing & recording music, & I can tell you it's damn hard to turn a profit on an indi release - the last thing any REAL indi artist needs is a vast network allowing the unauthorized distribution of their product w/o compensation. Sorry, Napster fans, but the view that Napster was somehow a "little guy", or somehow "stood for" the little guy, is bougus - no "little guy" could have afforded that legal team - a team paid for by allowing others to STEAL copyrighted music. I've got a pretty good music law attorney - he wouldn't have gone up against those guys, tho. As has been noted, useage of Napster took a nose-dive once the "big guys" music was no longer freely available. They never stood for "the little guy". There are more than enough legit sites on the web where artists can offer samples of their music for free download - and the key here is that it's the artist's (or legitimate copyright holders) right to have control over what material is or isn't offered for free. There is not now, nor was there ever, a "need" for Napster re: the music biz. It was a service that served NO purpose other than to facilitate the illegal, unauthorized distribution of protected materials.
Vilk, from the ranks of the freaks
I agree with you that copying material of which you do not own a copy is not allowed in the US.
However, your DVD analogy is flawed. CSS does not "prevent those pirates from bootlegging". It has always been possible to make exact duplicates of the encoded DVD disk, and those copies will play on any DVD player. CSS simply controls who can view it, not who can copy it. The analogy is more that you are charging more for your product in one market then in another and someone figures out a way to import the cheap product to the expensive market.
As for Dmitry, you missed one tiny little thing: Dimitry is russian, and what his company was doing is completely legal in his country.
For example, ISP's may want to reject incoming port 80 connections. becuase of the Code Red worm. Is this action so legally clear cut? What about the home user who needs to run a server now?
i personally downloaded a lot of music that i didn't already own on record, cassette, or even cd... i also downloaded songs by people that had been recommended to me by friends. i didn't own those either.
:) ). if it turned out that i didn't like the cd then its not very probable (zero percent chance actually) that i would have bought it anyway. who in their right mind would?
it's the easiest way to hear a song that you haven't heard before. if i liked the music then i would buy the cd. if i didn't like the artist (or a particular artist's album), then i would only own one or two songs (that means it's not illegal, right?
someone please tell me how the record companies are losing money. i only see them making money off of the free "advertising" that napster was providing. i sure know they made money from me... in a year, i'd say i bought a minimum of 30 cd's by artists that i previewed with napster. which is a decent profit from one high school student who doesn't have money to throw around.
just think: the people who are downloading songs so they don't have to buy cd's weren't going to buy them anyway.
when the RIAA took napster down, sure it made me hate their totalitarian attitude (and consequentially them) vehemently, but i was/am still willing to let some (read as most) of my money go to them as long as an artist that's making music i appreciate gets some of it. i just have to use limewire now. (java is better anyway shawn fanning!)
"No one forced Offspring or DMB to sign with a major label. People should learn to take responsibility for their actions and consider
the ramifications of their decisions before acting."
Right, they could have signed with some tiny label and thrown their career down the tubes. See, choices are good!
"The so called "little guys" have nothing to lose if people download their stuff over the 'net...The same is not necessarily true for the major players."
Except, of course for "major" players like Offspring and DMB. Oh wait, you meant "major" players as in the labels - they're the ones who get to decide how to market the artists' music. Oh yeah, they *do* have more to lose.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Although the battle appears to lie in the realm of copyright law, the real war being fought is over control of ANY distribution of content online. Lessig seems to take a stance that the public and big copyright holders can get along if only the DMCA was amended to remove the anti-circumvention provision. However, if you look at the whole picture, you'll see that the internet itself is what has "the establishment" worried. P2P is a very powerful technology that empowers the consumer, sometimes at the expense of traditional companies. I don't mean in terms of stealing; I mean in terms of doing things differently such that those companies become obsolete. Although P2P doesn't have to be anti-commercial, it does require businesses to adapt. But change is scary. Consider how dramatically the Internet has changed the technology landscape. Is it a wonder they are fighting to maintain control?
Open source vs. proprietary software
Independent films vs. movies and TV
Authors' web pages vs. dead tree publishers
Open media vs. newspapers / cable broadcasts
Online vendors vs. shopping centers
Internet telephony vs. toll calls
Email vs. postcards and letters
Magazines vs. online journals
Closed research vs. worldwide collaboration
Indie bands vs. mass marketed pop music
Open public criticism vs. limited word of mouth
Look at who is doing the complaining and realize why. This is not the end of innovation, it clearly marks a new beginning.
I think you have that exactly backwards. Precisely becuase I own the DVD, I should be entitle dto do whatever I wish with it. I should be able to play that forwards, backwards, do tricks with the sound, etc. The only thing I should not be doing is to copy the movie whole to give to someone else so that they can watch it in lieu of not paying the movie producers.
>>Taking another's property without permission. Intellectual property is property, thus the word "property" in the name.
Yes, Intellectual Property IS property. However, it is property that belongs to the Public - not the copyright holder. This is really a simple concept so I really don't know why so many people don't understand it (except of course, those greedy copyright holders who put out propaganda to the contrary.) When a work is PUBLISHED (see the word - its root is 'public') the work itself becomes the property of the public. (Read the Featured Article on http://www.limitingcopyright.com)
The copyright holder owns only the copyright. Yes, the Napster service allowed copyright infringement - but not theft. Since the property no longer belongs to the copyright holder it can't be stolen from them.
Don't just complain - DO something about it!
For example, ISP's may want to reject incoming port 80 connections. becuase of the Code Red worm. Is this action so legally clear cut? What about the home user who needs to run a server now?
1. Find an ISP who allows you run a server. Most home broadband ISPs have clauses preventing people running servers. Just because they haven't stopped you before technologically doesn't mean they approved of it.
2. Run it on a different port. You're likely still in violation of your user agreement, if it has such a clause.
3. Get a dedicated connection. T1's can be had for $500 port and telco. Just because you can run a server on a DSL or cable modem connection doesn't mean that you should.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
I think much of the /. regulars are totally clueless on why Napster in its original form was shut down: the small minority (about 20% at most) that used the service to essentially get copyrighted music for FREE and no longer wanted to buy records because the music was available freely.
No compensation for the artistic creators in any form is a major no-no even by Berne Convention standards.
End of Innovation? There are MANY, MANY more things developed NOT under the eye of the Open Source movement than there has been under it! How can you even begin to hint that this is the end of innovation? Are you stupid?
It would seem that the original intent of copyright was more hopeful to promote the progress of science and the arts into the future, but -- as with other aspects of our corporate controlled [U.S.] government -- it has digressed to the point that DMCA-like weapons are being created in order to instill fear into people.
Artificial scarcity is wrong on so many levels -- most people understand this to be true intuitively -- and no law, or above-the-law-technology, will ever be able to really enforce it. As John Perry Barlow said, "Whenever there is such profound divergence between the law and social practice, it is not society that adapts."
Copyright simply doesn't translate well to a post-dead-tree world, but that doesn't mean creative people will suddenly stop creating (the market will take care of itself), it means that Michael Jackson won't get paid "lazy-money" for "his" Beatles IP...
Power to the Peaceful
The DeCSS case is about the ability of a manufacturer to control a proprietary means of accessing content in DVD format. In my opinion, too bad for the manufacturer in choosing to protect its control mechanism as a trade secret. Trade secrets are only good so long as they are secret. Reverse engineering is an accepted method of properly discovering trade secrets. They should have gotten patents which offer stronger protection, even against reverse engineering, but they got greedy and wanted to keep their rights exclusive past the limited term a patent gives you.
As for Napster (yes, I know I will get flamed and/or modded down for this - I have enough Karma to take the hit because it is the TRUTH), since when is it "sharing" when you make another copy of copyrighted material that you do not own? People have been ripping off artists for years. 20 years ago it was by making bootleg cassettes. Now that the digital format has come of age, why does the ease with which something can be stolen convert "stealing" to "sharing"?
Don't get me wrong -- I believe it is a fair use for someone who has already purchased the music to convert it to any format they want and make back up copies for their own use. HOWEVER, when you make a copy of a song in a digital format that you did not buy, it is stealing. Plain and simple.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
This is my comment on the site, reproduced here:
Stuff distributors wrap their stuff up. Hackers create breaking technology to free it and there's nothing to be done to stop that. Stuff gets freed, even if its in the privacy of an individual's home.
Then another technology comes along (P2P) that allows the Stuff to be shared: it gets shared and there's nothing to be done to stop that. Stuff gets published anonymously from the individual's home into the homes of thousands of others.
So a law (DMCA) says, there's a (usually broken) technology to protect our Stuff, but you can't break it or allow others to break it. Too late, the stuff is out there, and will always continue to be out there.
Even if you add another law that says 'you can't share Stuff'. How do you stop people using Freenet to anonymously make Stuff public? That new law would be totally unenforcable.
So the next step of the corporate-backed lawmakers is to come up with a Better Law - even better than the appalling DMCA: the 'We own the Net: We own your Computer' law.
This law makes it mandatory on Operating System writers and vendors to include a reporting mechanism that can send back details on request of anyone's machine (what hardware, what software is running) to a central enforcement agency.
Further, it is mandatory on network owners to supply to this agency details of the ports and message protocols being used from anyone's machine.
If you're spotted running unapproved software or using unapproved ports or protocols, you are subject to investigation.
That's the only way to go! Look out for this law at a government near you.
Q1: Whenever someone gets caught and arrested for distributing copyrighted material, tell me, what is the charge against that person?
Answer: "Copyright Infringement".
Q2: Why isn't the charge "Theft"?
Answer: Because Theft involves deprivation of assets - something that doesn't happen when a work is copied. And no, potential sales - though they do have potential value - are not assets.
How is your freedom eroding? It's been pointed out in these court cases that you can get your (slightly degraded) fair use copies by piping analog audio out back into the audio in and .waving it.
It hasn't been very long at all, historically, that that's exactly how you did it! You recorded the song on your tape over the radio.
All this is doing is stopping mass-copying and distribution of perfect, complete copies.
Where is the problem here? Fair use is in no worse shape than it was 10 years ago.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
You might also want to check that contract for the "no servers" clause that 500 other posters have already pointed out.
2. I was merely pointing out with these examples that the will of the artists was not being done. This also makes me see the problem with that fact that the record company holds the copyright under the "hired works" loophole in copyright law.
Also, for 2, DMB concert recordings are not copyrighted works, and therefore should not be stopped from being published.
3. The little guy artists don't lose anything they already had (at least not anything physical). They lose the chance to have anything (e.g. a fan base, record sales). To me this is such a fine distinction as to make the distinction meaningless.
I understand the intention behind your post, and don't disagree with most parts per se (except that the little guys don't lose by not having their music heard as a result of record companies trying to protect their copyrights). I still think that there are many things the record companies choose to ignore to preserve a known source of income.
There are market forces at work here. There is enough of a demand for this pirated music that I think it definitely shows that the record companies are doing something wrong from a business perspective. They are charging too much for their records and it is starting to hurt them. Rather than lower prices as market forces might dictate, they resort to litigation.
I never really liked Napster, the company. But Napster, the phenomenon, is here to stay, and the record companies need to find a way to deal with it.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
It would hardly matter anymore, given the existence of a magic cloning ray. Its existence would mean that scarcity was no longer a factor in the physical world and current forms of economy (the distribution of limited resources), such as capitalism and communism, would be rendered obsolete - because there would be no limited resources. So you wouldn't have to work as a taxi driver anymore. If you want to continue being a taxi driver just because you enjoy it, then so be it, but if the only taxi drivers are doing because they enjoy it, they're not likely to want to copy your picture anyway.
The music-copying issue is only the tail end. Just wait until all factory workers are made redundant thanks to nanoreplication devices. It's already happened to the scribes, with the invention of the printing press - the scribes, at least in England, fought very hard _against_ the introduction of the printing press, and they had the ear of the King at the time. But look who won in the long run...
Choice of masters is not freedom.
What has been affected is a potential revenue stream, not an actual piece of property. It's convenient for the Content Cartel to use intellectual "property" because it automatically activates subconscious connotations in those who hear the term. But IP simply does not behave the same way physical property does, and it makes less than zero sense to pretend they're the same.
Make no mistake: It's not that you have a copy that the RIAA objects to. It's that you have, potentially, cut off a sale that they might have made -- a chance for them to make a zero-cost reproduction and so even more massively inflate their profits.
There's a reason why copyright "owner" is not the preferred term and copyright "holder" is, in the laws...
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Thus, in the book-publishing industry, you will see them having standard contracts wherein the author owns the rights to the book after some time, that the publisher only has a right to publish in North America. But in other industries like the music record industry, pracitices are different.
Why is this? Because of a loophole in copyright law that allows these records to be recorded as "hired works". A "hired work" is when someone asks you to write a song for them about x, y or z, etc., not when a record label says they will distribute your music.
An entire underground music community existed before Napster and will exist afterwards, sport.
Yes, and will the community get as much exposure with such a huge potential distribution method turned off for them? Read my other posts on this thread if you want to know how I feel about Napster (inc.).
No, they don't represent artists, and they've never claimed to.
Why then is that a major benefit listed by record labels when trying to sign independent artists?
You would do yourself a lot of good to actually educate yourself about the music industry.
Most of the above-mentioned independent artists which I reference are friends of mine, describing to me the trouble they have. Oh, and owners of small record labels which aren't part of the RIAA. As for protesting business practices, the only way to do that effectively is to put someone out of business. When the business practices go hand-in-hand with the law, there is little place to protest.
But that would take some foresight and empathy for the greater social welfare
The greater social welfare? Whose welfare? Just as there was an independent music community before the Internet, there was a flourishing music community before the Recording Industry.
When laws can be bought, social welfare goes out the window. And as for "Libertarian feelings", in what way are the opinions I've expressed here Libertarian? Private property is greatly espoused in the Libertarian philosophy. It would make more sense if you called my opinions (in this case at least) Commie-leftist propaganda.
As I've suggested elsewhere on this thread, you should read Thomas Jefferson's deliberation on copyright. It was intended to be a limited monopoly granted to an individual for a limited period of time. Individual. Limited. It was to encourage innovation. I don't see current copyright law and current recording industry business practices encouraging innovation in any way.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
What dampens innovations is people who gather up on the internet and swap mp3's, warez, and crack other people's software. All this is used primarily to steal and cheat what took lots of time and energy for someone else to create.
But of course these thieves only make up one excuse after another to justify their actions. First RIAA is too greedy and is taking advantage of the small artists. So then Metallica the "artist" sue. Now suddenly artists are bastards who should be content at earning as much as you do and not a penny more?
And then there are the various cracking groups on the net posting keygens and cracks on astalavista.box.sk. Guys like Skylorov reverse-engineer software protections created by Adobe and tries to sell it.
"Oh this software isn't for people to illegally crack and steal ebooks. It's just an 'educational' tool for the masses."
Come on people. Who are we fooling here? You buy a gun, put bullets in it, drive to my house, break down my door, threaten me, then point the loaded gun right in front of my face and cock it. Then you tell me you were just kidding around with me and expect me to believe you? Hey you didn't actually fire the gun right?
The thing that really kills innovation is this total lack of respect for creativity and enginuity. As long as it's someone else who creates it, you feel you can take it by force and use it for yourself, without any gratuity nor thanks.
And you wonder why innovation is going down the drain?
eTrade SUCKS
But that's exactly the point: digital copying is a new thing, compared to physical world stuff. The cost of many goods and services are based on not simply the IP, but also production, printing, distribution costs which can be very significant. When you obliterate those costs, it's unreasonable not to expect prices to drop radically in line with the new lower cost of distributing the IP. The whole 'everything must be free' thing is simply an overshoot of a shift in value that DOES need to happen.
Their products should not be encrypted at all! In my opinion, encrypted works should not enjoy the benefits of copyright. Copyrights have a purpose: to promote the progress of science and useful arts. All copyrighted works are eventually supposed to enter the public domain. If content providers were to truely make effective encryption, their products would never enter the public domain, thus disappearing from history. Such a result, does not serve the purpose of copyright.
The hysteria surrounding 'viral' spreading of copyrighted works, is just that, hysteria. One need look no futher than the software industry to see that copy protection is not necessary. The software industry remains extremely profitable, even though people can, and do, pirate thousands of products.
Many people, myself included, pay for their software. We don't pirate other people's work, because we know that it is unethical. If you wish to prosecute the pirates, go ahead, but don't destroy history and fair-use rights just because some people are selfish.
What's it going to be, folks?
The answer is education and well-balanced copyright law. I think you would see far less piracy, if the law were balanced and people were to understand the importance of copyrights. The simple fact is, people have trouble understanding oppresive laws; and even more trouble respecting those laws.
But unfortunately the growth of innovation in the "breaking the law" field. I'm not from US so I shouldn't pay to much attention to DMCA and others but as a normal human being I know that a community will accept and even enforce laws of certain strength, laws that most of their members see ar "right". If one tries to make that community obey a much "harder" law the community will fight. How can anyone imagine that a normal person will accept to have a book for only 10 hours? I read my books (paper or free electronic) many times, rereading parts and so.
I think that the companies are rushing things therefore making childish mistakes. While I agree that content providers must be protected somehow much more intelligent ways has to be found for this.
Ha, my speller wants to replace DMCA with YMCA.
Sorin M
The issue is not you or me making copies for close friends. Nor is it you or me downloading copies of music we already have on a different medium.
The issue is the rampant wholesale copying and downloading of new music in large volume. There have been cases where music was available on Napster before it was available on CD...
That's not fair use, that's plain copyright infringement.
Do I belive that we should be allowed to share mp3? Yes, based on either downloading of music you already have on another medium or giving to friends. I do belive that Napster has hurt fair use because of the abuse. I do belive that RIAA would be less insistent had the "online community" kept a higher moral standard. I do belive that to some extent the CD sales have benefitted from mp3 trading.
And, Yes I do think that RIAA's members are ripping us all off big time and they are partially at fault here!
People don't say "i want to smoke one bowl" they say that that want to get a certain amount of effect. Once they are as high as they want to be, they stop. The only effect of decreasing the potency is to cause people to smoke more, which is probably not what you want.
I honestly don't see why the "natural" level of thc is what we must be going for. We can use breeding to get seedless grapes, why not good weed?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Also, if you were going to make drugs legal, the idea is to make them less harmful than when they are illegal. You don't do that by forcing people to smoke ten times as much (and damage their lungs).
Making the other "drugs" legal would probably be bad. The psycogenic effects of pot are minimal.
It just emmulates the I just worked a long day, took a shower, ate a good meal, got all my bills paid for, made a million bucks, had sex, and ate some chocolate ice cream brain chemical.
My focus was on the fact that the THC levels in street pot are unnaturaly high. A study should probably be done on the amount of smoking done vs the high produced. At the least the amount of THC should be closer to it's natural state for US climates.
There were alot of figures I skipped researching in this :). I didn't want to go down the thesis path :).
It should be a percentage of THC that is less than current. It should still be high enough that the dealers are not apealing.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
As a software developer I'm actually offended that there are people who are trying to perpetrate the idea that innovation in software and on the 'Net revolves around violating people's copyright and redistributing the works of others. Of course, it all is put in perspective when one realizes this article is being hosted by the OpenP2P.com which was just another "jump on the buzzword bandwagon" venture whose major proponents are focused around benefiting from redistributing the works of others.
Napster is stealing.
Wrong. At worst, some uses of Napster may be construed as stealing. I own a large collection of audio casettes. Rather than plunk hundreds of dollars for CDs of songs I already own, I downloaded MP3s of them from Napster. I fail to see how this is theft (in case you think it matters, the sound quality is about the same).
You have taken something for which you are expected to pay for - it is stealing.
So, all I have to do is expect you to pay me for the privilege of reading this post, and suddenly you're a thief?
Right, they could have signed with some tiny label and thrown their career down the tubes. See, choices are good!
Hmm, that's funny: their first multi-platinum record ("Smash") was on an indie label (Epitaph), before they jumped ship to Capitol, where they have yet to match their initial success.
I have many friends on independent labels that make a decent living playing music. They tour all over the world, have a dedicated fan base, and best of all, they don't have to deal with the corporate music industry. Just because you're ignorant of it, and they don't drive BMWs and make asses of themselves on MTV, doesn't mean they don't exist.
mb
Copying copyrighted information is not stealing. Stealing would mean that if I took it, you know longer have it. This is blatantly false. Copyright infringement is a more accurate term, though far less emotive.
It is only human convention that keeps copyright around, not some law of nature. And, at present, the original motivations for copyright are being perverted in the current implementation, so civil disobedience is a valid response.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Wrong.
:(
Napster was sued because big corporations got scared that this type of file sharing reached such a wide audience (oh no, our profits!!! eek!), not because of copyright infringement that Napster had nothing to do with. They nearly pooped their pants at the idea that almost everyone could get music for free.
Just someone makes crank calls on a telephone doesnt mean that the provider, BT or Orange for example, are to blame -- telephones are just as wide spread if not more than the internet.
Erm... hold on... analogy alert... so if I play music down my telephone on call waiting they could SUE ME TOO?? OH NOOOO! Better switch off my answer phone too then
Pah.
"So there he is, risen from the dead. Like that fella, E. T." - Father Ted Crilly
At nearly the end of the interview, Lawrence Lessig makes the following statement:
copied directly from this article without permission, with all due credit, and with unknown intentions.
Yes. I think we should go back to the principles that defined us originally, which was about open societies with free people who should obey the law but you don't get them to obey the law by basically coding it so that they can't do anything different [italics added]. You get them to obey the law by making the law reasonable and getting people to be respectful of it, and that's the direction we ought to be going.
end quote
This statement interests me, because it seems that there is an even stronger statement to be made, namely that: Replacing the responsibility of the individual to obey the law with the inability of the individual to break the law not only encourages an ignorance of the law, but also encourages a lack of basic moral judgement.
Now for some justification.
Historically, moral philosophy has often considered the ability to reason practially about ethical and moral issues to be a sign of some maturity. Rousseau's Emile encourages this view especially with respect to children when it presents the advice that one not command a particular behavior from a child; rather, make it impossible for the child to misbehave. Similar thought has gone into modern society in every niche from electrical-outlet-covers to child-safety car-door locks. The underlying principle at work is that a child has not developed the practial reason required to go from an abstract commanded behavior pattern (Don't stick the scissors into the outlet) to the benefits (not getting electrocuted) without experimentation.
Very much simplified, in the case of persons without the ability to reason practically about ethical and moral issues (those who cannot understand *why* they should obey a guiding principle) technology is an oft-used preventative measure.
With respect to children, the profoundly impared, and other similar cases, no one argues that the use of technology to prevent a harmful outcome is innapropriate; however, I would argue that the continued use of technology to make impossible the breaking of a rule frees the faculty of reason from having any connection with that rule.
In other words, utilizing high technology to keep people from being able to commit a crime does not in any way educate the moral faculties of the people being so protected from their impulses. In fact, I would argue that through reliance on that protection, people become inherently less able to distinguish the moral reasoning behind the rule being enforced. Instead, it would be much like your telling me "It's illegal to fly by jumping up into the air and flapping your wings". Should you say that, I would give the moral reasoning behind it no thought simply because I can't accomplish the deed.
Certainly in such an imaginative case, giving the reasoning behind the law no thought would do no great harm; however, in a society where we are all in theory responsible for the health of our democracy (I seem to recall hearing that once with respect to the American legal/judical system) an inability to clearly reason about the morality and justification of the social contract under which we live spells the eventual end of that social contract.
Perhaps
it is better that way.
It is a crime to use DeCSS to remove region encoding.
Good thing that's impossible. DeCss doesn't remove region coding, it removes CSS. Region coding is implemented in a particular byte which can be modified after removing CSS.
It's much easier to change the DVD player so that it can be any region you want.
Reboot macht Frei.
I don't suggest this as a solution, but a springboard to think about further solutions. Look here for a discussion of something called the Stone Society. Enjoy!
--The basis of all love is respect
Maybe not by your definition and not in your country.
But there are countries where it is explicitly allowed and there are countires where the legal situation is unclear.
Claus
It is not a crime to make a VHS player that can play both formats. It is a crime to use DeCSS to remove region encoding.
exactly which part of downloading mp3s without paying anyone a dime is "fair use"? I didn't think anyone actually believed that Napster was used for anything other than wholesale copyright infringement.
Let's take a contrary example - windows managers on unix/linux. Now, if what you say is correct, then the chances are there would only be one or two about still being developed now-adays, correct? Because everyone would have "jumped on the bandwagon" and worked on just one of them. As it is, we have to very different desktop's being worked on, KDE and GNOME, then there's enlightenment, IceWM, etc. etc. etc
The problem with this, is that it doesn't happen. If there are two or three different ideas on what is "right" then people will choose the one that they feel has most promise.
And consider the case of the telephone, which you brought up. The technologies where similar, right? Well if they had the communication of the internet in those days, it's possible that they would have found out that they were working on similar things, and worked together, while as it was, they didn't. Maybe they wouldn't have worked together, but there would have been that air of competition to get there first.
And for your final point about venture capitalists, I agree. They got hit by gold-rush fever, thought that they were going to make lots of money, and a lot of them got stung. In hind sight, it's easy to ask "why did they even bother funding some of the things that they did on the internet?"
Napster was NOT fair use. It was plain and simple theft of copyrighted material. (Duh!)
If only downloaded MP3s from which were ripped from CD's I had already purchased, that would be (IMHO) fair use. If I downloaded MP3s from CD's I have not purchased, that would be theft.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Obviously you did not read the article. If you had you would have realized that the headline is the title of the article.
I think the "end of innovation" is going a bit far. Although no one wants to hear it, big corperations innovate too. I feel that the "little guy" gets stepped on all to often, but we tend to simply ignore the time and money large corperations spend on what is more or less innovation (so they can make more money)
Here is a clue for you - the man is a lawyer. He very definitely sees things slightly differently from you. You cannot ever expect someone, even your idol, to agree with you 100%. If you feel so sore about his opinions, why don't you email him with what you believe are cogent arguments and try to get him to see it from your point of view?
Because you're not using DeCSS. It merely enables the change.
Reboot macht Frei.
"The open source community will never stop innovating." Come on now, surely you don't mean that. I haven't seen innovation in years really (anywhere), and building an eight foot ladder in answer to a six foot fence isn't innovation, that's just being a huge unpopular kid on the way up the ladder expecting to hang out with the other kids, and really be heading for a fall. NEW ideas count as innovation; these are elusive things that have never ever been on the inside of the fence, so you see?, you don't really need the ladder..
-By attempting the impossible we can achieve the absurd..
Go ahead. I'd like to see you play a PAL VHS tape in your NTSC VHS player or a PAL DVD in your NTSC DVD player.
Yes, I'm aware that some DVD players have the ability to play both, but not all.
ANALOGY: This is just as stupid as me bitching that you can't work on OSS projects related to what you work on in your dayjob because if you signed an NDA, well "Duuuh". If that is a problem then don't sign the NDA and get another job and if you can't find an employer that will let you work on OSS projects then go in business for yourself as a consultant.
What do you mean with this?
What do law enforcement, in this case making sure people are getting paid for their honest work, has to do with "End of innovation"??
Please explain.
Even a non-technical person can figure out that email is being blocked. "User is not getting my email. Why?" would seem to be a pretty standard question. Unless you're dealing with Simon the BOFH, you'll get a straight answer. You can address with management as appropriate. If you're dealing with Simon, well, the problem's not so much with the blocking as it is the BOFH.
It all comes back to the individual, be it the network or its operator. If the owner doesn't like the operator, they change the operator. If the operator doesn't like the packets, they drop the packets. If the operator doesn't like the owner, they change who they work for. No one commands anyone to use or abide by blackhole lists. It's voluntary control of the network and its use. For someone (other than the owner) to say how I should run a network (in ways other than maliciously broken..) smacks me as being totally wrong.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
The moral attitude that we should take does not seem to exist in a lot of people. If the "net community" had a more reasonable approach big corporations would not make such a fuzz.
Noone can tell you who you can or cannot give things to. However, there are laws and rulings regulating to who, how and why you can give away copies of things. Especially copies of things that you didn't own in the first place...
RIAA does not think of the art or the artist, only about the bottom line on the financial reports. They screw the artists almost as bad as us, the consumers. They are big enough to cause trouble if you piss them off and that is what all the Napster trading has done, it pissed them off. They belive that Napster has caused damage to their bottom line and come cracking down. I think that Napster (et al) have been revenue neutral to RIAA companies, but that is not the point.
Unless things have changed recently, the store does not have to pay for unsold CDs. They are returned to the distributor for credit. There is usually a grace period in between when the store receives the CDs and when they have to pay for them. This allows the distributors to ship 5 billion copies of the latest boy band CD to your local CD store without the store having to pay for them up front. The store pays for the CDs that are actually sold and returns the excess to the distributor. This is how the record companies killed vinyl LPs. They stopped accepting returns of unsold records, forcing the retail stores to assume all of the financial risk for unsold merchandise.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Technically, the artist fails to get paid in advance for the CDs that are placed in the bargain bin. The contract will specify that of the CDs that are shipped, the artist will only get paid on a certain percentage of them on the assumption that the rest will wind up in the bargain bin or go unsold. Standard practice.
Except the "known spammer" in this case was the entire MIT community!
No, it was the open relay that MIT was running. If someone is running a relay that takes all comers, and someone else is using it to send spam to my network, I'll ask the admin to deny relaying. If they won't, I'll blackhole it. If someone doesn't prevent their resources from using mine in a manner I don't want, I disallow them the right to use my resources.
The key point is I don't tell someone how to use their resources. If they want to allow relay, fine. I just won't allow them to use my resources.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
I didn't generalize. I said (in brief): "if you do not own a copy of the song, downloading a copy is copyright infringement." That is exactly what you said: if you own the song already, even on another format, you can download it. No dispute here.
There is no such thing as a "target discovery". Pure research is speculative, you execute the hypothesize-experiment-revise loop until something interesting happens (Applied research is a whole other ball of wax).
Look at your example from this direction: You are not allowed to just give up and declare your research a waste of time in the scientific method, you are supposed to go back over it and see what can be improved (hence the experiment-revise part of the cycle). The only reason a team might conclude they are on the wrong track is that someone else proves they are on the right track or disproves a central theory of the wrong track. This inter-team communication requires widespread, highly efficient communication, in which case the Internet would be a great help rather than a hindrance. Plus, it enables useful things like direct publishing of data and global peer review.
Yes, there is a large amount of free and open material out there. However, this does not mean that Napster is either necessary or superior at delivering that material.
First, relatively few major artists encourage or allow bootlegging. Second, those bands which do invariably have vastly better organized websites and ftp sites dedicated exclusively to that pursuit. I am a DMB fan, and I would far prefer to go to from the dedicated ftp/www sites, where I can download entire/full/non-corrupt albums, than a disorganized system like napster, where anything I searched for (any time during its existence) would result largely in his COMMERCIAL recordings. Third, given that most of the legitmate uses are not from well known/signed artists and the fact that Napster's user base absolutely plummetted after they blocked the various signed artists, how can you reasonably claim that even a reasonable minority was using it for legitimate means?
I hear all this crap about protecting the little guy, well that's fine and good. But the little guys interests needs to be balanced against the interests of society at large (and the legal claims of, what is in economic terms, the real majority). When the vast majority of the use is for piracy and the minority can have their legitimate claims answered by alternative means, in a superior way nonetheless, why bother? Even if we accept P2P as being important, P2P does not necessarily mean that we need a system of total anarchy, whereby any content is allowed. Napster could have implimented a system of trust for the much-hyped little guy, where they could register their songs and allow them complete access to the system, but they choose not to. I have very little sympathy for them.
Everything about region encoding is about enforcing the status quo. These visionless MPAA executive snever think that one day, through diplomacy, we may persuade China, say, to enforce copyright. Or if one day, a favored trading partner may turn rogue. And when that happens, what will they do about this obsolete encoding?
Our government has been playing catch-up in techonology ever since technology starting making big leaps. This year is just another year (a bad one, yes) where the government is trying to retain control by making wild stabs in random areas to please coorporations, who by coincidence, are the only sides the government are hearing right now. All of this will pass when the government, and society in general begin to realize the implications of what they are doing. If it doesn't, it can't shut down the free software movement. It definately can't shut down the anti-M$ movement. Those things will become stronger and more defiant. The government, except to those who are directly effected by it, should be a non-issue at this point.
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor
is the new american way! seriously, think about it. we are having technology/information yanked away from us because we will 'most likely' use it for something illegal. heaven forbid we be trusted enough by the govt. to do the right thing ourselves.
When men of no vision rule the future world, that future will not be worth envisioning.
"Copying copyrighted information is not stealing. Stealing would mean
that if I took it, you know longer have it. This is blatantly false."
Cool - I'm coming over to your house tonight, taking your car out for awhile, but putting it back in the morning so you still have it....
For me, theft would be using any of my possessions in any way which I don't want you to. Whether you take my car for a drive, take code I've written and use it when I don't want you to, or download and listen to music I've made without my permission.. that's theft
In fact, the distinction is a really important one. There is a doctrine of copyright law called "first sale", which means that once you sell a copy of a copyrighted work (unless you are a software company and turn logic and the law inside out by calling it a "license"), you have no control over what happens to that copy. The reason that there is such a doctrine is that producers of copyrighted works would love to make selling your CDs to a record store or at a garage sale a crime; after all, it's "their" work, and by selling it to someone else, you are STEALING their property! Of course, once upon a time the courts were not 100% focused on maximizing shareholder value, so they explained the semi-clear legal principles regarding copyright with this doctrine and thus limited the degree to which copyright holders could use the law to create protections that nature does not provide.
So, really, each CD bought from a used bin is like getting it from Napster; the work is further distributed without the artist seeing a dime. Remember next time you buy used music that you are taking food out of the mouths of a boy band somewhere.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
And thus, becuase of these peripheral issue, the next generation of startups may never see the light of day.
Cool - I'm coming over to your house tonight, taking your car out for awhile, but putting it back in the morning so you still have it.... Umm... no, that's not copying. What you would have to do is to go round with a super-high-tech cloning ray, make a copy of the car, then drive off with the copy, leaving the original behind. And to be honest, if someone could do that, I wouldn't care if they copied my car or not. It wouldn't inconvenience me. hey-they could make a copy whilst I was driving along, and I wouldn't be inconvenienced at all. Jason
Not to be a party pooper, but that's the problem with the DMCA.
While the DMCA and an insistence to make the Internet world and business model look like the meatspace world and business model still exist, our freedoms will erode more and more.
So the RIAA has the ear of Congress. Napster was shut down for the illegal sharing of copyrighted MP3's. But if I want to make an MP3 of me singing a song that I wrote, that is also controlled by Napster's shut down (and the eventual shut down of all file-sharing systems, P2P, etc.).
Just wait until Microsoft gets the ear of Congress. Next thing you know, open source projects become the scapegoat for all of the innovations, legal (a competing word processor) or illegal (password cracker).
Maybe I'm a little paranoid, but Napster was innovation in music sharing. It can't be much longer until innovation in software sharing follows Napster's downfall.
Newsflash: There hasnt been innovation in the computer industry for YEARS. Hell most of the people reading this are running an OS thats over 30 years old. The OS I'm running is 10 years old.
/. likes to run stories about). Hell even PEZ is still that same as when my parents where kids (and probably their parents as well)
IE 6.0 and Netscrape 6.1 arent terribly different from the 3.0 versions. Office XP isnt terribly different from Office 95. The hardware in my machine is about the same as five or six years ago except for the fact that its a bit faster. Artifical Intelligence still sucks (dont even try to contradict that statement by pointing to one of those overrated expert systems
The computer/technology industry has begun to remind me of the automobile industry. Most of the changes that take place from year to year are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Innovation in that industry essentially died after the first combustion engine was built.
Perhaps instead of whining about this fact - you people should get off your collective asses and attempt to "innovate" something yourselves. Stop sitting around and whining about how your sources of copyright infringement have been cut off - and actually innovate. Otherwise I do not want to hear it.
Final Note: I cannot believe the majority of people here actually believe that Napster was innovative. Thats a good laugh. As far as Dmitry is concerned - if the encryption wasnt innovative - how the hell can you consider the crack innovative? Now theres the pot calling the kettle black.
Gam
"Flame at Will"
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
Vilk, from the ranks of the freaks
For example, ISP's may want to reject incoming port 80 connections. becuase of the Code Red worm. Is this action so legally clear cut?
Absolutely, IMHO. The ISPs own the network. They are entitled to run it as they see fit. Nobody is obligated to purchase their services after all.
What about the home user who needs to run a server now?
How many home users actually need to run a server? Some might want to, but few really need to. If that is a requirement, then the solution is to purchase a dedicated line.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
That's just the thing...you would raise issue with management, I would raise issue with management, many *technical people* would. But, news flash, the vast majority of people who use a network as part of their job are not technical people. They just know that they can't send mail to this or that person anymore.
Also, a network admin is not charged with operating the network as they see fit. In my view, the duty of a network administrator is to focus on the reliability, availability, and usability of the network. Yes, a network administrator should identify types of problem traffic that affect these three areas. But he should take great care that he does not inadvertently go too far. In the average corporate environment, killing p2p filesharing or streaming audio/video has only a tiny chance of affecting someone's ability to do their job. Email is a much trickier subject.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
The examples you cite are a vanishingly small pecentage of music downloads, to say nothing of those done via Napster. In fact, in the case of your Dave Matthews example, rather than using Napster, you could just put them on your web page!
We've heard these arguments before, and they're thinly veiled attempts to justify and rationalize the widespread copyright infringement software like Napster enabled.
If you're going to copy music, then do it. Don't pretend, however, that you're doing anything moral, any more than the wareZZ kids do. Copying music via Napster is the same thing as downloading from a wareZ BBS. Sure, maybe there's a few shareware files in there, but to pretend that these are somehow important compared to commercial copies is entirely self-deceptive.
It is presumptious to assume that the person blocking port 80 is the legitimate authority. You work to serve a client right? Diod you consider his wishes?
... is that according to the US laws, content entirely belongs to the producer, not the author. It's that braindead approach that's the cause of most so-called 'intellectual property' fuss from all BigCorps out there. You'll notice that (outside Metallica, okay *g*) it's the bean counters that are the damn thorn in our collective arse, not the authors, who more often than not, I'm told, get ass-raped as much as us for BigCorp's benefit.
:)).
I don't know for other countries, but in France, for example, while the commercial rights on the content belong to the producer, the intellectual rights belong to the author. There, a producer can't force an author to change the content in a way supposed to make it sell better if the author doesn't want to (alright, so that might explain a few things as well...
Of course, slightly less stupid laws doesn't mean less stupid lawsuits, but that's still something worth pondering, I think, since those laws do extend to software authoring.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Jose Cuervos. The case of Napster (the prolific and deliberate violation of fair use) versus Sklyarov (the enabling of fair use) should be seen an complete opposites.
Napster, and those who see piracy as a right, only serve to give excuse to legislators who would entertain the notion of "nationalistic firewalls", and DMCA itself. I would bet that if it were not for Napster, and those who engaged in wholesale music piracy, there would be no DMCA. Sklyarov would not be in jail, and we would not be moving headlong into a world of dummed down internet.
Look in the mirror and see where 1/2 of the problem lies.
Also, someone tell me how Napster and music piracy enahnces creativity. That will be rich.
Indeed, copyright law -- especially before the stillborn monstrosity called the DMCA -- recognized that, in creation of a work, an author is vested with certain rights and the public is vested with certain rights. Copyright has traditionally been seen as a balancing act between the public's interest in open sharing of the work, and the public's interest in encouraging other authors to come forward and create.
As noted in Digital Copyright by Jessica Litman, it is only recently that the attitude has begun to shift toward investing "property" rights to the hands of copyright holders. Ironically, this means that almost all of the culture held up as a justification for the current system is actually a holdover from the earlier one.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Hope they speak for themselves.
The advance of DVDs certainly did not have to include these features. Are consumers supposed to play dead and simply vote yes or no to the things presented to them?
It seems that under your vision, consumers aren't even allowed to vote yes or no.
> Individual.
And the individual can sign contracts to reproduce this. No problem here. They know they can earn more with a large company, especially if they are unknown, and the large company takes a risk.
> Limited.
It still is limited. To the extent it seems less limited by infringing on the ability to easily produce exact copies of entire large works and distribute them to millions, all at the push of a button, well, that is because (99.9999% of the use, remember) such ease of use completely eviscerates:
> It was to encourage innovation.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
>> shielded by one or two words of the English langugage...
>Um, what exactly does this mean?
Read the U.S. Copyright Code, Criminal Prosecution section and find out yourself. The section which keeps at-home pirates from being criminals isn't the magnitude of the crime, but that they are not doing so for a profit. That's a slim difference indeed, and easily redressed by the small stroke of the legislative pen (which, IMO, it should be).
As for your "we're on oppposite sides" statement: if you are outright against intellectual property, say so. Don't dissemble and misdirect by cloaking yourself in a affectation of fair use.
>> arrogance of redefining a word like "piracy"...
Ignorant! "Piracy" as a word describing intellectual property theft has been around for decades and is in common use.
C//
Blammo!!!
You hit the nail on the head.
Scarcity is no longer an issue with digital media.
You do not need a pressed CD, you just need the REALLY BIG number contained within.
Because digital content is really just a big number.
Nothing more.
I've overclocked my brain!!!
If I thought you were actually interested in learning something -- something which might, just maybe, open your eyes to the past and current state of copyright law -- I'd probably suggest that you pick up Digital Copyright by Jessica Litman. It's a lucid and incisive analysis of recent legistlative and PR initiatives.
But I suspect you'll just want to go back to munching your Cheetos and bleating at Must See TV.
By the way, I am not against intellectual output, but I am foursquare and certain against the bastardization of the word "property" to describe it. I would think my .sig would have made that clear. And while I am probably ignorant on many things, I know that "piracy" has been (mis)used to describe copyright infringement for a long time. But the usage only penetrated to the mainstream relatively recently (thirty years or so), and it has always been a misappropriation of a word in order to derive benefit from the subconscious connotations it evokes.
I will not surrender the language just because the Content Cartel demands it.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
There's a really great MP3 downloadable at Lessig's home page. Has a fantasy showdown between Bill Gates and Lessig in it. Check it out at: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/content/
Well, my analogy on DeCSS might be weak. I admit that I don't know as much about the technology as I should.
As for what Dmitry did being legal in Russia: it doesn't matter. He violated a U.S. law in the United States by making his program available in the United States, and then he showed up in the U.S. and got arrested. If a cocaine dealer in Colombia is involved in a conspiracy to distribute cocaine in the United States and then one day shows his face here in the U.S., he can be arrested and tried here. If Dmitry had somehow prevented his program from being sold to anyone in the United States, or limited its distribution to Russia, the U.S. would not have jurisdiction over him. But his program was available worldwide. The real problem in his case is whether he was the one responsible for making the program available in the U.S. If it was his employer and he had nothing to do with that decision, he might be able to avoid U.S. jurisdiction. Nonetheless, jurisdiction is a question for the court, not the officers who arrested him. He was lawfully arrested, but maybe he cannot be lawfully tried.
When they shut Napster down, you couldn't trade your recordings of Dave Matthews concerts unless the files were named undescriptively (read: uselessly). Many smaller artists were/are finding that their music is NO LONGER available for download over Napster. This is exposure they *depend* on.
Not all copyright holders are the RIAA. I've said this before and so have many others, but I will say it again. The RIAA represent themselves, and their own bottom line. They do not represent the artists. They think they represent all of music, when in reality they are crushing the "little guy" who is so important to musical innovation (eek, I actually used that word?!?) to preserve the status quo.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
"- Channels can have channel operators and a channel founder which is the client who created the channel. Channel founder privileges supersedes the channel operator privileges. Also, channel founder privileges may be regained even if the founder leaves the channel. The requirement for this is that the client is connected to the same server it was originally connected. The channel founder cannot be removed (kicked) from the channel using force.
yeah, that's gonna work well, what happens when the founder doesn't like the peeps in the channel anymore, yet the peeps in the channel like it? THIS will cause more bs than anything else.
Runnin' On Empty
BS. I am not "depriving" an artist of a profit if I copy something I would not have purchased at the market price. If I actually had to pay for Britney Spears and Eminem, I would have waited for the used bins to fill up so I could buy them at $4-$8 -- and bing! still no profits for the artist.
But I agree with the statement that Napster contributed to copyright infringement. Sharing Britney Spears and Eminem with people I don't know is not Fair Use. It is an attempt to get the goods at less than market price or for free. The question is still there, would Napster survive if it somehow was limited to legal file sharing? The answer is still pretty obvious: no. It required a mass of popular music to have sufficient users to be useful.
I am hosting two mp3s for your entertainment at www.ichimunki.com, just go there and type 'mp3' into the command line. I permit you and everyone to share these files as much as you will-- and I can do that. I created the songs and the files. However, there is not enough interest in work like mine to keep a Napster viable legally. And most work in which there is enough interest to get a Napster up and running is going to be work that the copyright holders do not want to share for free to the world.
But just because I am giving my files away for free online, does not mean I'd condone stealing the CD from a store. That results in the real loss of physical property. And if my bandwidth needs become excessive due to the files' popularity, I would-- of course-- have to charge for them to help cover the expense of hosting them. Internet services cost money to provide, and the people who do the work need to eat. This is the lesson we are learning in 2001.
I do not have a signature
But for now, we have a magic cloning ray which only works for artistic taxy cars ... so scarcity is still an issue.</i>
<p>Scarcity is an issue for some things, but not Artistic Taxy Cars. Seeing as we figured out out to eliminate physical scarcity for ATC's, its reasonable that we will figure out how to eliminate it for other items too. Its not so far fetched that we will eventually eliminate physical scarcity for all goods and services. Seeing this now as a strong possibility in the not-so-distant future, we should be thinking about and making laws that will work in a society unbound by physical scarcity.
<p>We should NOT be trying to perpetuate the physical scarcity economic model when it is evident that it is a square hole and we are working with some round pegs. While it could be done to some extent, its obvious to many people that it is less than optimal. They recognize that they are unable to access some resources for no apparent reason other than greed. And in a world with dwindling scarcity, why should we perpetuate a system which encourages greed?
<p>And people relies on its creativity and intellectual work to solve it.
It is up to the author of a book to decide if they want to print it or they want the scribes to duplicate it by hand. Nobody IMO has the right to take a scroll made by a scribe and make thousand of press copies of it without author permission.
From the American Heritage Dictionary: The question then becomes whether you believe that anyone who redistributes copyrighted works without the permission of the original author has the right to do so or not.
So if your belief is that if you write a piece of software, book, magazine article or song and then anyone is free to redistribute it without your permission and probably profit from it then according to your personal beliefs copyright infringement isn't stealing. If this isn't your personal belief, then yourself and the moderators that modded this up to +5 are full of shit.
Thanks for your time.
Not only that, distribution of the physical CD's isn't cheap, either. Also, the store has to get a cut, and a lot of these CD's sit on the shelves for months, and that money invested in manufacturing and distribution is dripping away with inflation.
Most people are shocked to find out the price of a loaf of bread at the store is only about 10% farmer, if that much. Shortages that quadruple the price of grain don't add all that much.
So to, with gasoline and the price of a barrel of oil. The skyrocketting prices earlier this summer, and last summer, were not tied to oil at all.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Arrgh Theft != Copyright infringement
A very typical Micheal headline. Sensational and uninformative.
/. This is for computer geeks and as such the community has only the most basic understanding of other subject ares.
Yes the computer industry has very little innovation. Heck I started coding for a living in the mid eighties and most of what we have now was available back then. That is why most of the stories posted are basically rehashes of older stories e.g. Redhat 34.2 is out, Micheal doesn't agree with the law, Katz spouts on about nothing in particular, Hemos loves the Mac, NASA does something neat, NASA wastes some money, Taco doesn't now how he feels etc etc ad infinitum
I think the last innovation probably happened back in the 70s, although I cannot name what it was. All we have now is evolution. It's a shame we as a species cannot or rather don't want to think more laterally.
But the computer industry is not the only industry. Check out nano-tech. Lots of new ideas being tried. What about micro biology, cloning, schroders cat et al
There is new stuff being done, it's just your not going to hear it first on
Let's suppose tha you had just spent one whole month painting a very cool picture on the hood of your car. Also assume that you are a taxy driver and that you now hope to attract more clients with your very artistic car.
Then you wake up next morning and discover that thanks to the cloning ray every other tax driver has a car identical to yours.
Wouldn't you be more than a little pissed of?
Ciao
----
FB
As long as we have Microsoft, there will never be an end to innovation :)
[o]_O
No. Regional encoding is to protect profits: nothing more and nothing less. Its only purpose is to allow the same product to be sold for different prices in different markets. A DVD that sells for $25 in the US may sell for the equivalent of $35 in the UK and $10 in the Far East.
This practice is thought by many (such as the large UK retailer Tescos) to be in breach a free trade, and should be banned by the WTO as a restraint of trade.
Dear AC, this is the last time I respond to an AC, so I'll make it good. You're the idiot. The point is this: if I'm "sharing" files in order to avoid paying the purchase price of a CD, do you really expect that I would have paid market price for all of that music? I'm guessing that a lot of the time I wouldn't. File sharing is not a big convenience over simply picking up the CD, and I could never afford all that extra music above and beyond what I would normally buy anyway. Napster was about getting free stuff-- much of which most of us would not have bought if we had no alternative.
My example point at which I would buy those CDs was as used CDs, where the record company has made no additional profit after the first sale. The only price I've paid went in part to the person who sold their used CD and to the used CD store. That's zero profit to the record company beyond first sale. Repeat after me, buying used CDs does not generate additional revenue for record companies or artists.
As for your example of clearance bins-- please tell me when you find a clearance bin that has CDs that are only two months old and were actually popular when they came out. I'll go there and buy the whole bin full (provided they're not cutouts, see the following discussion of cutouts), I'll be able to sell those CDs near full price here in the real world. And do you really think that major retailers who end up dumping stock into a clearance bin don't get a rebate of some sort from their suppliers? Booksellers learned this trick a long time ago WRT magazines and unsold books. They rip the cover off and throw the rest away. Do you really think the cutout process is any different? You have heard of cutouts right? Of course, you have, you just conveniently forgot what this probably signifies-- it means that you can't take and sell the CD at full price again if you're a normal record store. That would be like Barnes & Noble trying to sell cover-less books and magazines. Clear violation of their contract with their suppliers.
I do not have a signature
For me (and a lot of others in the anti-spam community), Mr. Lessig lost all credibility when he wrote The Spam Wars. In it, he describes a group of vigilantes looking to change the nature of commerce on the net. What he fails to mention is that it's just a bunch of network admins using a self-compiled and maintained list to drop packets from open relays and known spammers from hitting their own networks.
/. issues, all the while decrying network operators dropping traffic they don't want on their network.
I find it both amusing and disturbing that he can be so strongly in favor of fair-use, reverse engineering, and against the DMCA, among other hot button
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
They can't take away our freedom to innovate.
Bill Gates could not have said it any better.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
It doesn't and hasn't ever stopped me from playing a dvd on my laptop, my dvd player at home or my dvd player at my friends house or the dvd system at work or the dvd systems in hotels.. (i could go on and on..)
sure it sucks you can't run your dvd through your vcr because macrovision puts the god awfull blur effect on your screen, but DVD's are already a well preserved medium and there is no means of copying the movie without changing it from its orignal form which is considered REPRODUCING instead of backing up for backup sake :)
For me specifically, this usually means that I listen to free music (meaning music that is given away rather than music that I can take). Most people are not this principled (haha, I just called myself principled!! Will the wonders never cease?). Therefore they pirate the music.
You should read Thomas Jefferson's letters regarding copyright, which he termed as a "monopoly" given to an individual for a limited period of time. To an INDIVIDUAL. For a LIMITED period of time.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Napster was NOT fair use. It was plain and simple theft of copyrighted material. (Duh!)
The open source community will never stop innovating. You can't suppress people's freedoms. Governments and corporations will keep trying to enforce rules and laws on the internet, but it won't work. They will build a 6 foot fence, but the open source community will build an 8 foot ladder. They can't take away our freedom to innovate.
Claric
There's no problem that cannot be solved with a suitable amount of high explosives
If you READ what i said then you wouldn't come off sounding like a troll. IF someone MADE a viable commercial effort for DVD sotfware under linux then it MAY work.
you still have to BUY powersoft DVD, DVD PLus or anyone of the many windows dvd playing programs out there.
Exchanging MP3s via Napster is indeed free speech. But more than that, using Napster/Gnutella is a mode of freedom of association. Hindering that mode by putting restrictions on it that effectively make it useless, as the court has done, is violating our right to freedom fo assembly. Oh, and our rights to free speech definately have been abridged by the Napster decision: it is no longer possible to share parodies of copyrighted songs(songs that use the same background music, and twisted lyrics), nor is it possible to distribute files on Napster that are titled similarly to copyrighted music. These files we certainly do have a right to exchange, and preventing such is violating our right to freedom of speech.
Hence, as the Suprme Court decided such, we do have the right to privacy. The Suprme Court also ruled at one time that "all men" included women and black people. Now, as for your statement that privacy is not an essential rigth -- yes it is. Just because it is not explicitly stated in the US constitution/amendments, or not recognized adequately, does not mean it is not an essential right. The people in China being slaughtered like dogs for protesting against the Chinese government still have the right to life: just because the Chinese government does not recognize their right to life, does not mean that such a right does not exist.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm buying that CD, and the right to obtain maximum utility from that CD. Just because something is in a license which I supposedly agreed to does not mean it is valid. I may sign a contract that makes me a slave -- that isn't a valid contract, because it violates my rights. In the same sense, a contract on software that prevents me from doing what I will with it on my own private computer is void. The contract can not be enforced, and to enforce such a contract would be a violation of my rights to privacy(i.e., they would have to spy on me in my home to know if I violated the contract). And to enforce the contract would be a violation of my property rights, as they would have to either (1) come into MY house and prevent me from doing so or (2) steal MY CD which I had paid for. Furthermore, I would like to argue that all software license are void, as they can NOT be read until before one has ripped open the CD box, and you can not return a piece of software because you don't agree to the license. It is no different than a contract signed at gunpoint.
Nonsense, I was referring to my ability to modify a book so as to better suit my purposes(i.e., a USEFUL, not superficial modification; namely, a modification to the material of the book). In the same sense that I may rip out useless blank pages, copyright pages, remove the book cover, underline certain passages, and even modify others, in a book, so as to make it more useful to me, so should I have the right to do to a piece of software installed on my computer: modify it to make it more useful to me. I am talking about modifying the actual content, not the physical thing itself. In the case of a book, by modifying the content, I am actually modifying the physical book -- the two go hand in hand. Not so in the case of a CD. But the same modification of the content is still my right. Now, let me point out an inconsistency in your ridiculous argument. You state that "you have the right to do anything you want with the physical ojbect, but you are limited as to what you can do with the content". Well, that is an oxymoronic statement. If you modify the CD physically, you modify its content. For example, if I had the right equipment and expertice, I could directly modify the CD's data via only physical manipulations. This is a modifcation to the object itself. Now, if I can do this direct physical modification, it is idiotic to say that I can not do a more indirect modificatioin(i.e., reverse engineering/tweaking the program on my computer).
Before I move on, let me point out one more thing -- I OWN my computer's hard drive, hence have the right to do whatever the hell I want to with the data on that drive(locally; that is, this right is absolute so long as it is localized to my hard drive). You can not tell me what I can and can not do with my own data on my own hard drive -- that is a violation of my property rights.
I assume that you were joking, but in case you weren't, let me clarify. The old adage about fist swining is a metaphor, not meant to be taken literally. Let me translate it into something more philosophically clear: I have the right to do whatever the fuck I want so long as it does not significantly harm others. Now, in the case of me modifying software on my computer to make it more useful, and then maybe distributing it on the internet -- I believe this is known as a patch or tweak -- this does NOT cause any significant harm to the creators of that software. Certainly, what I do on my own private computer, confined to that computer, can not be construed to cause them ANY harm -- so they have NO right to stop me from doing it. As for distributing patches and whatnot, it can not cause them harm that is significant enough to justify eliminating my right to freedom of speech.
The same is true for tools like DeCSS. It is not clear that it will cause them harm, and even if it does, that harm would not be significant enough to justify violating MY rights to freedom of speech, or the DeCSS author's rights. Nor would it justify violating the rights of those who simply wanted DeCSS to exercise their fair use rights.
I would also like to make not of the fact that there is NO constitutional right to intellectual property, nor is their any amendments respecting intellectual property. I would also like to state that the constitution clearly states that IP laws established were to be ONLY so for the greater good of promoting progress. IP laws as they now exist hinder laws by hindering the free flow of ideas -- such as programming code DeCSS, or the "Advanced E-Book Processor" -- and are thus unconstitutional.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Um... I thought that one of the legitimate uses of DeCSS was to use it to play DVDs on a Linux or Unix machine... It doesn't mean people are using it to illegally reproduce DVDs. They legally bought the DVD and want to play it in Linux, which they have a legal right to do (under fair use we are allowed to use media in the form that we prefer, as long as we paid for the media).
You own the phsyical DVD, you DON'T OWN THE MOVIE TO DO WITH IT WHAT YOU WISH
"which has never really struck me as being an integral part of innovation..."
Almost all technology in use today is in part available because of reverse engineering.
Without reverse engineering there would be no interoperability between Windows, Macs, Unix, etc.
Without reverse engineering we wouldn't even have the current PC at all.
Without reverse engineering we wouldn't have the huge microwave oven market we have today.
Car manufacturers buy each other's cars and completely take them apart to see how competitors do things.
There is simply no end to how much technology is improved through reverse engineering. Reverse engineering has ALWAYS been a huge part of innovation.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Copying copyrighted information is not stealing. ... Copyright infringement is a more accurate term, though far less emotive.
If I see this mistake repeated even once more, I'll pop.
Copying copyrighted information is not always copyright infringement. Only illegally copying copyrighted information is copyright infringement.
Whatever one thinks the proper scope of fair use should be, room for fair use is always there, and fair use exceptions always limit the enforceability of the copyrightholder's monopoly on copy-making -- so that (under the copyright fair use statues, albeit not under the DMCA) some forms of copying not approved by the copyright holder can always be legal.
Out of the three cases mentioned, the one one that made me the most upset, and is still the one that makes my blood boil the most, was the DeCSS travesty.
I'm talking, particularly, about the case with 2600. I'm not a big backer of 2600 or Emmanuel but in this case I had to give the respect where it was deserved. This was the case, IMHO, that set the tone for all cases after it and because 2600.com made the hearing available on their site I, we, were given a first hand listen to just how badly lawyers could manipulate judges in technology cases.
After listening to this case, at least the whole of 2600 / Emmanuel's side, and finally finding out the judgement, I knew that it was only going to get worse was only going to get worse (I suggest doing a search here for 'Court' it's truly appalling). It wasn't as though the judgement and the judgement alone upset me. It wasn't that I was all "rah-rah" for 2600. It wasn't even that I thought DeCSS should be "legal." It's that the judge had no concept of technology and the justice system allowed a mac truck of a manipulative lawyer to run him over. Listen to the testimony.
I said it before and I will continue to say it, the judicial system needs better qualified people presiding in these cases. I say 'these' because, and IANAL but, this is an entirely different concept than, say, laws of the physical world and laws of the 'cyber one.' I've often thought and giggled about the idea that files are never stolen, because if you copy something it's still there. I truly feal that we need judges that know the facts of the technology before it's sppon fed to them by the attorney's on both sides.
Until that happens, and / or until the hearings on Dmitry, Napster, etc. are made public (if they have been could someone please link them) so we can know for sure if proper and fair judgements were passed.
Without that, and without the DMCA being either a) abolished, or b) re-written (I'd much prefer the latter) the companies that own the DMCA will continue to 0wn anyone they want.
That's my two cents. Mod it to hell.
"From of old, there are not lacking things that have attained Oneness." - Lao Tzu
No, it is not...
Fuck all of this artificial scarcity.
"The artist has to eat" - fuck the artist too, they were his ideas (intellectual property) until he aired them out (recorded, played, or in any way left his brain).
He cannot recall them, he cannot control them.
If he cannot deal with that, perhaps he should NOT be an artist.
He can keep all of his wonderful Intellectual property stashed away in the bank of his mind.
He will be an intellectual millionaire.
He can share that wealth if he wishes, and guess what...
His bank in his mind will be no less rich!!
Produce goods or sell services, do not sell a good AS a service.
I've overclocked my brain!!!
>...public's right to fair use of copyright materials... [snip] ...from the shutdown of Napster...
I've talked with a great many people about their usage patterns and their Napster software. And you know what? Not one -- not a single one! -- was limiting their behavior to "fair use". They were all pirates, engaging in massive civil violations under Title 18 of the U.S. Copyright Code, shielded by one or two words of the English langugage in the code itself from actual criminal violations of the statute.
I'm getting sick and tired -- really sick and tired! -- of hearing all of this whining from people who have a genuine hidden agenda. They just love to exclaim about their "fair use rights" while at the same time massively violating the rights of others. Obviously, these folks are forgetting the other R:
With rgihts, come responsibilities. Perhaps I should spell it: R-E-S-P-O-N-S-I-B-I-L-I-T-Y. There. Is that so hard?
Grow up, child. The adults are getting really tired of wiping your ass, changing your diapers, and wiping snot off your nose. It's well past time to become a contributing member of our society and stop being a leech.
Mr. Manning new damned well what he was doing and deserved what he got.
Joe Kraska
San Diego
CA
I HIGHLY DOUBT you keep your "backups" on tape or on file to restore originals if you lost them, your probably watching the backups on your pc and sending them to your friends or sharing them on Morpheus.
If you do save your backups in a fireproof safe then more power to you. Until then YOU didn't loose anything.
Yes, there is a large amount of free and open material out there. However, this does not mean that Napster is either necessary or superior at delivering that material.
The point of free speech is that it is free. One cannot regulate free speech in all channels other than those necessary or superior to deliver it. This also used to be true of Copyright, at least before the Ninth Circuit hit with the Napster opinion.
Indeed, the Ninth Circuit came up with a similar standard to the one suggested above in the Sony Betmax case, and was amazingly completely dissed by the Supreme Court, which said that it isn't necessary that an instrumentality be either necessary or superior for fair uses to avoid contributory infringement for infringing uses, it sufficed that there COULD exist ANY substantial noninfringing use.
Now the Ninth Circuit, once more, protects Copyright holders with a test not very different from the Betamax case (ironically in a case where Sony is now a plaintiff). Perhaps the Supremes may reverse it someday, perhaps not. But don't pretend that the fact that there are other ways to distribute free subject matter doesn't mean that the public was not deprived of an important instrumentality for file-sharing.
More important, if there ever WAS another instrumentality that might be superior or necessary, the Ninth Circuit opinion assures that development of such technology would be chilled, lest those funding and using it be sued into oblivion by the big bad RIAA, right or wrong.
Fact is, Napster and DMCA have struck a blow to innovation, because they are permitting first entrants into a marketplace from competing with subsequent entrants, even where the instrumentality is not inherently infringing.
DMCA provides patent-like protection of unlimited term for unpatentable and unexamined inventions. Only the blessed unsued (read, licensed who pay the fees) can compete in that arena, and forever. First entrants win, for reasons entirely unrelated to any salutary intellectual property policies.
This is what we IP lawyers who don't work exclusively for such interests call, "a bad thing." Ultimately, its bad for those interests, but in any case, its bad for America.
At one time not too long ago, the information economy was just booming and CD sales were higher than ever. These interests went pleading to the Congress and the Courts claiming that they "needed" special protections to protect and enhance the economy.
Isn't it interesting that they got what they asked for, from both Courts and Congress, and almost immediately thereafter the information economy and record businesses tanked!
Kicking and screaming, the music and film industry has whined about EVERY new technology, from piano rolls to radio to television to audio tape to video tape to dat to streaming digital communications. Until recently, they lost every time and made much more money as a result. Now, they won and all they have done is to kill off a thriving and dynamic source of business.
"Hey, Gino, some guy's been copying that Lincoln out in the street."
..."
"Yeah, so?"
"We had the stiff in the trunk and now there's two of him
If I'm going to spend $30 for a movie, I'd like to know that it's not going to degrade steadily and rapidly, like VHS. Heck, if possible, I'd like to see video-CD (or video-CDRW?) recorders replace VHS, just so that I know that when I record "Shark Week" next week, I'll be able to watch it again a few years from now.
Excellent response. I agree with all of your points but one:
The hysteria surrounding 'viral' spreading of copyrighted works, is just that, hysteria. One need look no futher than the software industry to see that copy protection is not necessary. The software industry remains extremely profitable, even though people can, and do, pirate thousands of products.
Software is different from books, music, and other copyrightable forms of IP in a few ways. First, books and music tend to be much more compact (a few megs vs. hundreds), making music & books easier to "trade". Second, businesses are the main (paying) consumers of most software, whereas individuals consume most books and music (computer games being the exception here--note that they do have big piracy problems). Third, books and music don't require tech support, patches, updates, manuals or other services to be useful.
All in all, I think there are enough differences that you can't draw a direct analogy between software and music/books. I do think you're right that IP ultimately must rely on a social contract and public good will to work. Whether it will work is still up for debate.
Not discerning the difference between selling cocaine and smoking marajuana (most laws go by weight of item in posession.) is frightening.
Many drug users get high and dumb and rob, rape, fight and even kill. Most of the ones who get dumb are on a non-marajuana drug.
Voters get pissed when to many people are robbing raping, fighting and killing, so congress acting in self preservation is commited to the war on drugs. It doesn't seem to matter that these behaviors are no more common in pot smokers than in say alcohol drinkers. Do they care if a couple(of hundreds of thousands) pot smokers get locked up to? They don't seem to.
Marajuana is an introductory for drug dealers. They get started selling pot. see Dope wars for a tutorial. People say marjuana is an introductory drug for users, well that's because they meet dealers who can sell them other things. If pot was sold in Seven Elevens with 1/10 the THC at five times the price to people 21 or over, people would have no idea where to get crack, acid, or ecstecy. Steamroller action.
Now congresses revenue stream is being threatened by RIAA/MPAA. Now they must act in self preservation again. Do you think they diferentiate between a person who .mp3 of vital information to the chinese underground about the democracy movment?
*legally owns 2 copies of Genisis Invisible Touch and downloads the mp3s because it's saner than tring to burn them?
*a person who never contributes anything back to artist while downloading hundreds of songs?
*a person who distributes a
Why would they. Steamroller action is tolerated here.
Campain finance reform MUST go through so lack of support from the RIAA/MPAA is no longer a threat to these peoples careers. Congressmen in a panic seem to lose touch with the meaning of the word liberty.
This can get really ugly.
When they are done with us, any guesses who's next? What will they do when physical scarcity begins to end.
The way things are going, then next war will be fought over IP.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Q: Why are DVDs coded differently for different regions? Why shouldn't I be able to play a DVD that I bought in the U.S. on a player in France?
A: Regional DVD coding has nothing to do with encryption. Encryption is designed to protect a DVD from being copied. Regional coding only requires that the DVD be played on a DVD player made for one of the large international regions of the world in which that consumer lives. Regional DVD coding was devised to protect the theatrical distribution market for motion pictures in international markets. It is simply impossible with present technologies to supply film prints of a movie to all of the theaters around the world at the same time. Motion pictures released by the major studios are generally released first in the Untied States and subsequently overseas. For this reason, motion pictures are released to theaters in countries in a "staggered" sequence. After the theatrical exhibition of a motion picture in a particular country, it is then released to the pay-per-view, video and television markets. DVDs are regionally coded to prevent them from being imported into countries where the motion picture has not yet completed its theatrical release. Without such protections, motion picture theatrical distributors and exhibitors abroad could lose a significant portion of their audiences to advance DVD viewing. The lost theatrical revenues could result in theater closures, lost jobs, depriving consumers throughout the world from seeing motion pictures on the big screen. A similar impact has occurred in some worldwide markets where illegal imports are unchecked.
A line from T2 that makes a lot of sense. Remeber when British Telecom wanted to start licenseing hyper links ? Think about what that would have done to the internet. Software patents are getting crazy.
When Enstein couldn't patent E=Mc2, it was for good reason. Think about what would have happened if he did ? The world would be a _MUCH_ different place. Things like nuclear power might not have been possiable.
I think it will only get worse before it gets better. A lot of the recent M$ comments show whats in store in the near future.
*sigh*
until (succeed) try { again(); }
What a great movie. And according to Salon it's being made into a musical.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
We were talking about information. Information is not property; property being defined as "something owned or possessed" (according to Merriam-Webster).
I own a CD. You take it, it is theft. You copy it, it isn't. One can not own sequences of bits and bytes. One can, however, pretend that they can be owned, and this is what we do in our present system of copyright. This is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. But it seems to me that the current implementation of copyright is flawed; cf. the DCMA, the DeCSS case, Sklyarov, etc.
The oddity is, courts have ruled that if you make a copy of a disc you own, it's OK, but if someone else makes a copy for you -- even of a disc you own! -- it's verbotten.
I'm just wondering, if someone else borrows my cd, copies it, but I get both the copy and the original back, is this legal? (Say, a company you send your cds to, they convert them to mp3s and either send you a cd with the mp3s on them, or you download them online?)
-HobophobE
Nothing laughs forever.
they didn't market them as being film quality, only better than VHS. ...and they are right. Having recited ideas that aren't mentioned much because they aren't popular make you no less a sheep.
There is clearly a conflict with public interest, but people agree to follow the rules, as there were no other way to stimulate creation and distribution of work of art. Only if we would have alternative "exclusive Right" to be secured by "Authors and Inventors" and/or other ways "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", than there will be no need for old restrictive mechanisms...
But why, there are alternatives:
... i just did a note on this here
... is that Sklyarov was arrested because his program infringed DMCA. But surely the vendor of the compiler he used to build the program which committed the infringement also violated DMCA by allowing Sklyarov to circumvent the Adobe copy protection.
Given an MS Windows platform, presumably the co-conspirator compiler vendor must be Microsoft.
So why aren't they in court as well?
The purpose of copyright laws is to provide authors property rights in their original works. Ideas and facts are not protected by copyright. Thus, the copyright law protects freedom of speech by allowing free dissemination of ideas and facts. For example, the book Ishmael is protected by copyright. The author, Daniel Quinn, has property rights in his book through which he can prevent you and I from publishing it, reprinting it, or excerpting it without his permission. However, he could never prevent me from writing an essay about the rise and fall of civilizations (a central concept in the book). He couldn't prevent me from making a speech about this idea, or discussing the idea in an online chat room. My ability to discuss that idea freely is protected by the freedom speech guaranteed in the Constitution, and copyright respects that right. Exchanging mp3s via Napster (assuming that both parties don't already own a non-infringing copy of the work) is not free speech. The exchange in that situation is of a copyright-protected work. The technology used by Napster has not been outlawed. Napster has been prevented from continuing to infringe the copyrights of thousands of artists. Your right of free speech has not been abridged, because you can still exchange all the facts and ideas via peer-to-peer sharing that you like.
The only rights to privacy that actually appear in the Constitution are not even directly related to the concept of privacy. The Fourth Amendment prohibits searches and seizures absent a warrant showing probable cause and specifying the persons and places to be searched (there's also the prohibition on quartering troops in private homes, but no one ever talks about that anymore). The Fifth Amendment provides that one need not testify to information that might be self-incriminating. The Supreme Court has found that these amendments create a penumbra of privacy rights. Included in that penumbra is consensual, unmarried sex (but not with someone of the same sex as you, see Bowers v. Hardwick), use of contraceptives, interracial marriage, and abortion. Privacy is not an essential right--we don't really have any privacy rights at all.
I'm sure that you are aware that when you buy a software program, you are actually buying the license to use that program. If that license prevents you from reengineering that program, then if you do, the licensee can sue you for breach of contract. You do own your CDs and DVDs in the same sense as you own a book. You can write on them, scratch them, sell them (but not copies of them) to other people, take baths with them. However, you might not have the right to decode your DVDs because the process of decoding those DVDs is (was) a trade secret, and protected by a different part of our property rights system. Owning a CD or DVD or book means simply that: you own the physical object. You don't own its content. You can do anything you want with the physical object, but you are limited as to what you can do with the content, because someone else owns the rights to that content.
Final, you're right to swing your fist does not end at my face. If you take a swing at me, even if you don't hit me and even if you only intend to scare me, I can sue you for assault and you can be prosecuted for criminal assault (note that assault, in legal terms, refers to threatened or creating an apprhension of harmful physical contact, but battery means actual harmful phsyical contact). I am afraid to tell you that you can't go around taking swings at people and deliberately missing them with impunity.
Also, if you were going to make drugs legal, the idea is to make them less harmful than when they are illegal. You don't do that by forcing people to smoke ten times as much (and damage their lungs).
I'd rather be lucky than good.
The problem with the computer industry is that that wasn't happening, so companies had to turn to the courts to force it to happen. As for the dot coms, I think that was Wall Street's way of saying, "party's over, nerds, now get to work". I just hope things don't end the way I think they will (no more individual innovation in the computer industry, death of open source from IP lawsuits, etc.).
On another note, I'm going to play devil's (lawyer's?) advocate and defend the DMCA (sort of):
Seeing as I haven't seen a realistic, workable alternative economic system for what we now call Intellectual Property, I figure we should probably stick with the current concept of IP, and try to patch it up so it can survive the "digital age" without being too broken or stupid.
Napster may have made it easy to trade copyrighted music files, but don't forget that it could just as easily be used for swapping free music and personal recordings.
The Internet can be used for wholesale piracy of music, videos, commercial software, you name it. Is the Internet being shut down? No, because it has many redeeming qualities.
I'm not trying to justify keeping Napster alive - I recognise that the number of people using it legally was somewhere between zero and zero - but nevertheless, I believe that shutting Napster down is not all that different to shutting down Hard Disk manufacturers because their media can be used for piracy.
Just my 0.02 Euro...
http://www.themeparks.ie
Silicon Valley has been technically boring the
past four years as people were rushing to bring
startups to IPO. Most people doing this were in
for the money, not the technology. And the tech
guys had worked 80 hour weeks developing boring,
me-too apps. Now there is time to be creative
again.
Never has the foundation been stronger-
2 GHZ, 1 GB computers for a grand, decent OS'es
with a maturing Linux and MS XP, decent development
language like Java and C#, and so on.
Lessig beat me to it. I've been considering this vary topic for some time now.
.com economic bouble. Venture capitalists threw money at anything with the word internet in it, not because the company's proposed service was needed, or wanted by the market, just because it could be done. We need to stop and consider when making use of technology, weather the particular use's benefits are real or imagined, and stop pursuing things because we can, focusing on things because they're needed and add value.
Consider for a moment, not the corporate manipulation of copyright, and IP, bur rather, the academic and research fields. I maintain that the Internet has done tremendous damage to scientific study, and that it has the potential to slow down discovery of new technologies. The internet has facilitated massive colaboration in research and development, both in academic an corporate enviroments.Such colaboration, while vary positive one one level, is quite negitive on another. Suppose 3 seperate academic groups scattered throughout the world, envevour to develop , say, Cold Fusion. In earlier decades, scientists would work only with theor closest coligues who were in physical proximity. In that case, there might be tree seperate tracks of research undertaken, to reach the same goal. Suppose then, that after 5 years of work, it turns out that one track is completely fruitless and it is decided to abandon it. There are still two other groups who have worked the last 5 years on alternate tracks of research tward the same goal.
In the internet age, massive colaboration would take place and the three schientific groups would decide on a common approach and undertake that approach together. Now, all pursuing one research track, 5 years later they discover that this approach s fruitless. In this case, there weren't two other groups working tward similar goals along different lines. As such, the target discovery is delayed by 300% due to the evils of colaboration. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against colaboration per-se. I'm against massive colaboration for just for the sake of colaboration, which has been fostered by the web economy in recent years.
Not all scientific doscivery has been the product of colaboration. Consider the invention of the telephone. Both Bell, and anpther scientist in Germany (who's name escapes me at the moment) developed a similar technology at almost exactly the same time, with no colaboration at all.
Again, I'm not against colaboration, I'm just against moving blindly to colaborate when such colaboration is not nessecery. It can be related directly to the
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
So, I guess you're willing to defend the "artist's right" to a living by arguing against file copying, but if the artist actually WANTS to promote his music by allowing people to copy files, somehow that right magically disappears. And don't tell me that he can put it up on a web page of his own and get a lot of attention for it - services like Napster are ideal for promoting independant artists and that's the real reason the RIAA has sued Napster and MP3.com - they want to eliminate competition from artists who want to distribute their own work without having to pay their souls to the current music industry to do so. The small record companies of the world are using alternative systems to get heard and the RIAA is trying to stop them. Distributors to music stores are notorious for screwing the little guy in the record business by not paying for product, while majors get their money quickly. Radio stations take bribes to play RIAA music while the little guy has no money to get played. In the 80's the majors even went as far as trying to get zoning ordinances against home businesses passed for the purpose of eliminating people with home studios making records at home.
Did you see the story in Rolling Stone about the guy who wrote the song that "The Lions Sleeps Tonight" is based upon? He didn't get hardly a dime for making a song that's sold millions of records - in fact, the reporter who met his daughters discovered they were so poor, that he had to BUY them something to play his father's music on before they could hear it again.
How's THAT for corporate support of artists?
"Intellectual property is to property as fool's gold is to gold." -- multiple, anonymous, unattributable (and wonderful) internet quote
"The value of a thing is what the thing will bring." -- ancient maxim of law and economics.
When you create a piece of "intellectual" property, it can only be of any use to you if you share it with someone. It's fundamentally an idea. If you lock it in a box and keep someone from knowing about it, it will be silent and useless. Once you allow someone to read it, see it, or hear it, the idea escapes. It now is part of a conversation you have initiated with your audience. Copyright was originally granted by royal fiat, and later encoded in law, as a means of keeping printing presses in line. Around the 17th and 18th centuries, it became a legal protection for printers. When copies were limited and difficult to produce, it worked. The value of the copy could be expressed as partially the value of the intellectual effort of its creator, and partly the material investment of the publisher, printer, film studio, whoever. Now that copies are trivially easy to create digitally, this paradigm no longer applies, and people are trying to restrict copy rights based solely on the intellectual value of the property, and they're doing so by treating their customers as criminals, guilty until proven innocent, bunch of thieving bastards, all of them.
Release an album under a major label and watch as people download your material, without your permission, off of AudioGalaxy
I don't know if you've done this Vilk. I really don't care. When I was playing with up-and-coming bands in the late 1980's, I remember a hilarious scene with one of the many, dreary "battle of the bands" gigs I played. One of the acts in the seemingly endless lineup tried to get some sort of agreement or something that no one would attempt to steal "their" songs. It was funny because their music sucked, but it revealed generally how absurd and paranoid people have become about granting ideas the status of property. Anyone at the event could have "stolen" their songs. It was simply a matter of watching and listening, and about half the bands there had already demonstrated via their ability to play covers, that they could ape another's songs. The only way they could have avoided "song theft," to me, was to take the obvious precaution of not playing their material aloud.
Digital media has only excaberated this already precarious status. The cat is no longer in the bag, if ever it was. Songs and music were routinely copied back in the days of the cassette tape. It's just that the activity was not happening in an open, trackable public forum. What gives your "intellectual property" any value is that people are willing to pay for, not only the material, but the packaging and officialese that go along with a legitimized sale. If they aren't willing to do that, you won't ever have a career as an artist, or author, or otherwise.
I have yet to see any data showing how artists are starving on their feet because of napsterized "piracy." Being purely honest, I have to say that I have never, ever, not once in my life, logged on to or downloaded from Napster. I have on occasion been provided with some pirated mp3's by friends. I have retained only one of the cd's thus pirated, the Barenaked Ladies' debut "Gordon." And in all honesty I can say that I believe I've fairly compensated BNL for that CD, even though I have yet to buy a legit copy, because after hearing the songs on Gordon I went on to buy copies of "Born on a Pirate Ship," "Maroon," and "Stunt," all of which I have enjoyed immensely. I will, at some point in the future, make good on my however miniscule debt and buy a legitimate copy of "Gordon," if only because I want to see the packaging, and get back some of the loss from the mp3 compression. But I feel that if I had never been given a rip of "Gordon," I would probably have gone the rest of my life without putting $50 or so into the purchase of other BNL cd's. So whether or not it's paid for as a physical object, as an idea, it has paid for itself because the open circulation of a non-legitimate copy resulted in a willing fan who expended the effort and cash on other material from the group.
I know the intellectual-property hard-liners will have a problem with this kind of argument. To them a copy of a CD is as good as the original, and every copy represents money that the owners could make. However if I had been chased down by some sort of campus cop or "pirate hunter" and forced to relinquish my ripped mp3's of that CD, I probably would have gone on to avoid any further trouble from that area altogether.
There is a middle ground for all of this, I firmly believe, that allows artists and authors to be compensated for their efforts, as much as is possible. It will probably involve re-gaining the trust of audiences (do NOT call us consumers, please!), which could start with not chasing down kids in college dorms, confiscating people's equipment, slapping them with lawsuits, etcetera. Not that I expect that to happen.
But fundamentally, the rules have changed. There's a great song by the Presidents of the USA that I think is about this kind of thing. It's on their latest CD and it's called Blank Baby. "You might see somone taking pictures. You can't put them back and I'll tell you why . . ." And later on "You might see a painting in a studio / might test the paint to see if it is wet / might start scraping down as far as you can go / till the canvas is as blank as it can get / even though the paint is dry / you can just erase it all by rolling back your eyes." Art exists between an artist and an audience. It is a dialogue. You have to give your end of the dialogue to your audience, or you're not going to be able to carry on the conversation. If you restrict that conversation, it ends because the audience can always find other people to talk to. They will be for the most part unwilling to give up their rights just to accomodate your profit motive, which is where we're headed with draconian copyright laws and the DMCA. A law which is absurd and trivially easy to violate is a law which is not respected, and when the law is not respected, it doesn't mean much anymore. If the law makes innocuous harmless activity criminal, as we have obviously seen with Napster, a large segment of the population has no problem being innocuous, harmless criminals. Certainly they've been primed for this role with invasive and idiotic drug laws. Laws keep honest people honest, and when they make criminals out of formerly honest people, they and their makers lose their credibility.
It may be that it is not practical to make money as an artist in the digital era. It may be that you have to go back to making money off of live performance, or find yourself a patron. It does not seem "natural" or inevitable that society will bend itself to accomodate that profit motive.
The horse and buggy companies, before they all but vanished in the early part of the 1900's, were able to get all kinds of aggressive and draconian laws applied to automobile drivers, requiring (as I recall) what probably timed out as a 10-minute ritual on the part of an automobile driver at a stop sign, of standing, jumping around, waving, honking, firing a pistol, and the like. No small part of that was probably on behalf of horse-and-buggy proprietors to make the use of automobiles less convenient, and so they probably hoped, kill what was certainly a stupid fad before it got out of control. But for all the protestations, all the fiddling, the technology was there, it was in demand, and they were unable to stop it.
Digital music isn't quite an apples-and-oranges comparison, but it similarily makes trivially easy what was monstrously difficult before, and threatens to put a lot of people out of work. I don't know where it's written in the Constitution that anyone has a natural inalienable right to a job, nor to a guaranteed protection of their "revenue stream." Certainly music and art existed long before profit could be made thereby, and the fundamental urge to create is not driven by profit, but by need. Songwriters write songs because they need to, first, before they discover they can make money at it. I can easily see, if heavens forfend, the RIAA and all their members go out of business, that culture will somehow survive. Whether individual artists survive depends on how smart they are, and how willing to accomodate to a new reality they are. Browbeating their audience, I predict, will be a career-limiting move. You can see how much credibility Metallica pissed away with their Napster suit (please remember, Metallica gained their original legion of fans through the open trading of their bootlegged demos). Accomodating them, respecting them, treating them as participants in your conversation -- that will be a winning strategy.
If the DMCA and other absurd extensions to copyright laws aren't struck down, I suspect the general level of civil disobedience will rise, and the credibility of our lawmaking and corporate institutions will take another major hit. How low can they go?
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on