Slashdot Mirror
The Crime of Sharing
John Perry Barlow has an editorial piece on recent developments in law and file-sharing networks. Most slashdot readers have read this sort of thing before, but sometimes it's nice to see how different people approach the same sort of persuasive argument, to bolster your own persuasive ability.
It's quite a stretch to equate the *voluntary* dissemination of HTTP, TCP, and other widely used technologies by their creators, with the *involuntary* sharing (theft) of the property of authors and musicians.
The sad part is that my kids are growing up in a time where the message is that it's ok to steal what you don't want to pay for, if you feel the price is too high.
I think the editorial is right now, but I don't see its anything different or detailed than what we've arguing about on here for years.
It seems to be a religious debate at this point. Either you support the idea that people should be able to share books, musics and other entertainment or you don't.
But please, lets stop calling it "intellectual property". The phrase is an oxymoron.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
"That's why I'm stunned that so many kinds of sharing have suddenly, without public debate, become criminal acts. For instance, lending a book to a friend is still all right, but letting him read the same book electronically is now a theft."
This kind of statement has always stunned me. The division between lending and copying is pretty clear. If I lend something, then I don't have it any more. The value of the object is preserved (or nearly). If I print copies of my favourite books, and give them to my friends, then I still have a copy, and the value of the object is divided by (some fraction of) the copies made. The justification of Napster is that people go out and buy more music because of it. Even assuming that's true, will it be true in 10 years? 50 years?
If you can't afford a car, because of collusion and price fixing, is it OK to steal a car from the dealer? Not liking price fixing is obvious. Not stealing is also obvious. I'm clear that when I copy music, I am doing something that is both legally and _morally_ wrong.
is there ever going to be another to rise to the status of napster again?
Well, let's say you have a train ticket, good for unlimited travel for a day on the London Underground. You finish with it, but it is still valid for several hours, is it stealing or sharing if you give it away to someone? If you sell it to someone? If you enter it into a turnstile and you and a friend squeeze through? If you buy a ticket most days, but not today, and climb over the turnstile?
These are all things to consider, because contrary to the article, the act of "sharing" is subjective, and not inherently good.
Shouldn't be a crime!
Why must these people be so greedy!
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Slashdot rocks! Keep up the good work guys!
You know, I've read so many different takes on this same issue, it makes my head spin.
Everyone keeps arguing about court decisions. Lets be a little more realistic here though. Regardless as any law decided by the courts, unless networking itself is outlawed (don't see that one coming), information sharing is here to stay. Ok, so we change how we do it every so often - I'm not using Napster anymore, but then again, I can't remember the last time I opened an ftp client - I've moved on to "newer" things. Who cares what the courts decide or how much money corporate interests put behind legislation (in any nation), or even if they throw a couple of people in jail for it, it won't change the reality of the fact that the concept of "intellectual property" is meaningless to a 13 year old who wants to listen to a song or watch a movie, and like it or not, even 13 year olds can figure out the tech good enough to get it. I don't see courts (at least in the US) trying to come up with the money to house every 13 year old in a prison system for listening to "Britney Spears" without paying for it - its just not economically feasable to enforce such crazy laws.
Because nobody has ever prosecuted a private-sharer. There is no practical difficulty in sharing. Only companies that seem to profit from the sharing are harassed. That's why the public isn't making a fuss, because nobody is treading on their toes. Not too much, at least.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
In the nerd world, they like to share everything for example CPU power and their favourite Operating system (Think Penguin). But sharing stuff like nuttella is illegal.
255.255.255.255 has really_cool_song.mp3
000.000.000.000 wants it
So 0.0.0.0 MAKES A COPY! A COPY! Copying is bad, thats why they wan't to shut it down, and they will make it harder for you to copy again! Wandering why the RIAA is evil, its all your fault!
Only share LEGAL FILES (such as linux_2.4.17.tar.gz)
The ISPs and telcos extract quite some fees. Without sharing they wouldn't get near as much money. The entertainment industry can turn to them.
Two overlapping graphs in the New York Times last April 1 (in an article called "Paperback Music") made the point vividly.
Unfortunately, April 1st is not the best date to be citing newspaper articles from.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
The opposites are true too: the Internet makes it possible for individuals to distribute other non-consenting individuals' creations directly to "consumers" (the most prevalent use of Napster). At the same time, the Internet could cause intermediaries to lose the ability to extract a fee from every single piece of content they used to sell (the death of the media giants).
Until someone can create a system that accurately models the way "real life" ownership works, we will have these kinds of "reality disconnect" problems, where you can loan a book to a friend, as long as it's not an e-book.
People take for granted the way physical ownership works, with all its limitations, and the unspoken rules of ownership that go along with it. When you transition to a wide-open medium like the internet that takes away the physical limitations but leaves the old rules of ownership unmodified, the old rules become insufficient. Big media is scrambling to come up with a way to re-implement the old physical limitations of ownership in this new medium, but the results are pretty weak. So in the meantime, it's legislate legislate legislate! However even that is harder to enforce in this new medium than it was in the old.
This is a very thorny problem, and I don't think it's going away any time soon.
... that, in my opinion, loads of people who downloaded Morpheus or Kazaa don't do it to be able to share music, but just to get stuff without paying for it. When they see their favourite freeloading tool under attack, they're screaming blue murder.
Don't get me wrong, I'd hate to see p2p go, and I'm ready to do something for it (EFF, here I come...). I just don't expect millions of other users to do so. Sad, innit?
I gave up sigs almost a year ago.
Yeah, the whole sharing-ideal is great. But if the rightful owner doesn't want to share it, that's it. The choice of sharing or not should still be his, not so?
I suppose it is ALSO greedy to want to have something without having to pay for it. Or force someone to share without him having a choice.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
No, the sad part is your children are growing up in a time when people think that knowledge can be "owned". If pythagoras were alive today and had patented "x^2 + y^2 = z^2 where would we be? If someone wants to make money off of "intellectual works", let them become a teacher.
What good would that do?
In the end, the price is always paid by the little guy.
Corporations buy our work, then sell us back the fruits of our labor (at a profit naturally).
Simply because the work a person do is the only source of wealth there is. A company may live on other company, but then that company has to make up for it by extracting more money from someone, and in the bottom of the food chain are always regular people.
Face it, we always pay!
I wish there was an obvious better solution, but this shitty system seems to be what works...
Human nature I guess...
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
This might seem a bit off-topic.
But with the ways things are going, it might come to the point that the only way that artists/record companies can make money is through appearance fees.
And that record companies will still produce CD's for those that are willing to pay for it. But also allow people to download tracks in mp3 or another format.
The way that record companies would make a buck through this is from taking a cut of appearance fees as well as from the CD's being sold.
You talk about "stealing" and "theft", when in fact you seem to mean copyright infringement. Please don't confuse these, they're totally unrelated. (I'm not saying that copyright infringement is okay, but it's not theft!)
Serious question though: How is "theft" defined in U.S. law? Im my country, it only applies if you take something away (sorry, link to German site), which is different from copying something.
Theft is wrong because it impoverishes the original owner or originator. If "sharing" does not result in loss to the originator, but in increased sales, as the essay claims, possibly "theft" is the wrong word for the act.
Oh, way to spread the FUD. Judge Garrett Brown dismissed the Felten case because there was no longer any case to answer. As he pointed out, he was obliged to restrict himself to the immediate and ongoing threat of prior restraint to Felten, and to consider larger and theoretical consitutional issues.
Don't get me wrong. Judge Brown appeared to be incapable of understanding the issue, and would possibly have ruled incorrecly if there was still a case to answer. But there wasn't, so the EFF's assertion that the Felten dismissal was a ruling against First Amendement is a bare faced lie. Their FUD disappointed me at the time, but the fact that they keep harping on and on about it is really starting to piss me off. The EFF are trying to paint what was actually a small victory as a crushing defeat to whip up sympathy and anger. That's the kind of crap I'd expect from the MPAA/RIAA, not from the white hats.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Actually, once one can save money by using Free Software, one should spend that to support what is important to them, was that good music or great movies.
Software should be free as in speech, but if we also get some free beer, all the better.
Cider and Special Brew shurely.
Why do discussions on this subject hardly ever discuss the possibility of a person copying songs from the RADIO into a computer and then making a CD?
Is one not allowed to tape a radio broadcast now?
If it is ok for me to tape off of the radio, is it then ok for me to let someone else hear my tape?
Keep asking honest questions?
The sad part is that my kids are growing up in a time where the message is that it's ok to steal what you don't want to pay for, if you feel the price is too high.
I assume that you are referring to software and music here. Why might your children think this way?
There is a fudamental difference between stealing, say, someone's TV, and downloading music from the Internet. In the first case, the owner no longer has a TV. The original owner loses something, you gain something. In the second case, the original owner (the artist) does not lose anything, but you gain something. Let's make this clear - when you download music from the internet, the artist does not lose anything. They don't gain anything either, but absence of gain is not a loss, a basic point that often confuses people debating this issue. You have not taken anything from the artist, nor have you given them anything.
So don't confuse your kids "stealing" music or software off the net with them shoplifting or pickpocketing. They are completely different. Your kids understand this difference, which is why they don't feel bad about doing it, and they are right to feel like that because from a moral viewpoint what they are doing is an extremely petty "sin" (for want of a better word - I'm not talking in a religious sense).
Your kids probably have sound moral judgement. Most kids do. Don't corrupt them with your own confused ideas about right and wrong.
The funny thing about copying is you can't predict the loss in sales. Who knows if the person would have bought that item if they couldn't get it for free!
Who wants to buy a whole album just because they like one song that's played on the radio 10 times a day. Or the Music is just not available on CD. ( I know I'm clouding the issue by making a specific example, but this is the only reason I have downloaded songs)
Napster existed for a long time with illegal sharring effectively stopped. Hey, isn't this what the whole Slashdot crowd claimed to want? It's a fileshare and there's no illegal swapping, so shouldn't you guys have loved it? Nope, you all moved on to Kazaa and Bearshare. I've yet to see anyone provide an actual reason for filesharing other than to pirate copyrighted material. Everything legitimate is already available on the web and ftp. It makes no sense to get all mad at the RCAA simply for trying to protect it's profits. If someone was cutting out 33% of your salary (if you have a salary, hah) would you be like "Well I can't infringe on his rights..." or would you do something about it? The record industry isn't trying to stop you from trading Linux binaries or whatever you claim to be using File Sharing for. They're just guys trying to watch their backs. Yes, I agree that most of them are overpaid whores, but that really doesn't matter. Ok label this as a troll. It's a different viewpoint! Ahh!!! I bet he even runs Windows!
What copying technology really means is a high probability that the focus of creative money-making will move to the uncopyable--which is, live personal appearances. If the industry uses advertising and other opinion-changing techniques to make seeing a singer IN PERSON even more desirable than it is now, suddenly music-sharing becomes free advertising and should be encouraged.
It seems to me that the live-performance effect will be a natural result of increased copying. When mass production of any kind moves in, suddenly people get to desiring authenticity and personalization.
We carry little metal disks and (mostly) green pieces of paper around. They don't have a whole lot of intrinsic value, but because they embody the concept "legal tender" we assign them a greater value depending on how they look. They are not the only way one can spend or transfer "money" as shown by EFTs and other such digital flows where nothing physical moves around, except bits in a computer get changed. These transfers are much harder for a criminal to intercept and modify than the practice of train transfer of gold or currencies was.
Likewise, the "original" medium for movies and music (video film reels and wax records, respectively) also had a physical/intellectual link where the value was the information and not the medium. If the RIAA and MPAA choose to keep themselves chained to the thought that the product they sell is physical (a CD, cassette, VHS tape or DVD) and not the information within, they will find themselves drowned in the swelling tide of digital transfers. And no legislation or fancy technology will be able to save them-- except to embrace the new model of business.
Do you like Japanese imports?
The funny thing about copying is you can't predict the loss in sales.
Indeed you can't even predict that the next effect will be a loss...
"I read this great story about an old fisherman, written by some Ernest dude, do you want to hear it?"
"Sure I do, but I don't have time now, could you type it up for me so I can read it later?"
"No problem, just get me a typewriter, or I could dictate it to a tape for you"
"That would be so cool, then I could listen to it when I go to Europe next week"
"Actually I have it here on my computer, I could burn it to a CDROM for you"
"Dang, my CD drive is kaput, could you give it to me later"
"Well, I could put it on my webpage for you, then you can read it anytime"
"Wow, that would be fantastic! Thanks, you are a real friend"
...
Now, tell me where does 'fair use' end and 'copyright infringing' start?
Publishers are just another communication channel. Before the internet, the only effective way to distribute large amounts of information was to stamp it on physical media and move it to the buyer. Back in college, a classmate calculated the effective bandwidth of a semi-truck delivering a truckload of books.
As with other communication channels, consumers pay for the information delivery service. No more, no less.
If you believe in market economics, the widespread communications capacity glut is going to depress the prices on all communication channels. Further, this is probably only the second time in human history that this has happened. As with the first time -- the invention of the printing press, it will take some time for prices to settle to an acceptable level for the public and the companies trying to serve them.
One might ask what am I getting at after all this babbling. Basically, as with the printing press, when enough content is created to fully utilize the communication capacity available prices should start to stabilize for all involved. A proactive measure of the publishers would be to increase the amount of content in their products to the point where the communications capacity is fully utilized.
For example, if CD's contained not only the 10 songs of so so material, but also maybe twenty or thirty hours of recording studio material/concerts. Many fans might not want just the 10 songs. To get the full CD, many might not be willing to upgrade to T1 lines just to get it.
Interesting artists with many interpretations of their songs might actually have a fighting chance in this scenario vs. one-hit wonders of the day. I think I would be more interested in what Sting really thinks about his songs or other approaches that he considered but couldn't get to work.
In a world of gigabyte/sec communications, giving the consumer less than 1 second of information for $20 seems pretty paltry.
Freenet is a distributed network with anonymity built in. In a nutshell here are the features:
It can't be monitored effectively
It can carry any kind of media
It is anonymous
It is written in Java
Napster style clients exist (also written in Java)
All OSS
It is crawling with all kinds of undesirables because of the above.
If the users of existing filesharing networks were to move to something like this the record industry would be screwed.
e4 e5
IANAL (or an American) so can't answer that specifically. However, I do remember hearing that historically Anglo-Saxon law classifies theft (or stealing) as permanently denying the owner of a physical item.
This is why, in the UK, if you are arrested for joy-riding you are charged with "Taking and Driving Away" rather than simply Car Theft, because a possible defence exists that you were intending to return the car. A "temporary" theft is not realy theft (in these terms). Hence the need for a new law to be made (TADA)
It seems to me that under the same criteria copyright infringement cannot be classified theft. You might argue that it's depriving the artist (or studio, or shop) of revenue, but certainly not the physical item (the CD) Whether it is right or not is another matter.
I don't like the infringement of fair use rights that the media companies are trying to force on us. However, I realize that unless people look at this as a moral issue and stop giving away someone else's work, the media corporations will do whatever it takes to prevent theft.
Theft is not copying music that you already own. If you ripped it from a CD, chances are good that the artist was compensated. You may not like the terms that the artist gets, but then again, you're not the artist, and you didn't sign the contract. The "moral" highground of not paying for CD's because you don't like the way companies rip off artists is not moral at all; in fact, you're contributing to the devaluation of the artists' career by refusing to pay for the music at all.
Theft is taking something that's not yours. Now the analogy about ideas does not apply here - an idea is something ethereal, spontaneous, and without significant form. Transforming that idea into music, movies, source code, or a book is work, and herein lies the crucial difference. Sure, I cannot own an idea - as soon as I divulge it to another, we both share the idea. However, you can reproduce that idea with no more effort than it takes to think. Reproducing music, or a book, is a little more difficult. I can't possibly remember all of the ideas represented in a book, so thus, I need a copy of the book as a reference when I forget. Same thing with music - I may learn a song, but I will never be able to sing as well as the original artist. This is what we pay for, folks. It is the effort that another went through to produce the music, the movie, the source code, or the book. It is not the idea .
Granted, in electronic form, the work can be reproduced for almost zero cost. However, this fact doesn't put food on the table for the artist or author. If you believe that you should be able to enjoy someone else's work without justly compensating them for it, then you are a thief. It is the right of the producer, not the consumer, to set price. If the artist or author wants to give away his work, that's their right. It is also their right to charge for their work. As a user of the Internet, you have a responsibility not to abuse the system; treat the work of others with the same respect you would expect yourself.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
The division between lending and copying is pretty clear. If I lend something, then I don't have it any more.
But - when you lend a book, are you just lending a physical object or are you allowing a friend to copy the information it has with his brain? If it's a Stephen King book doesn't he experience the same experience of a story as you? If it's a book that explains how to fix a sink, does he automatically lose that knowledge when he returns the book to you? Is it stealing if he continues to fix sinks without the book?
I'm clear that when I copy music, I am doing something that is both legally and _morally_ wrong.
I have the ability to reproduce music in my mind's ear perfectly if I concentrate enough. Is that stealing? If I play my guitar along with the CD, is that stealing? Or if I turn the CD off and continue to play and sing the song myself, am I a thief?
Brains copy. They do not make perfect copies, but neither do radios or MP3 rippers. If fact, any perception a brain has of any object or sound is only an approximation, dependent on attention paid and ability to percieve. In short, copying is unavoidable, and no copy made of something can be percieved as a perfect copy by any human.
So - which copies are permissable and which are thieving and how do you possibly tell the difference? It's legal for me to record a song off the radio and turn it into an MP3 - but it's illegal for me to download the same song from the net. Never mind that you won't be able to tell one from the other.
So - I have an MP3 of "Already Gone" by the Eagles on my hard drive. Is it legal? Is it moral? Why that depends on if I recorded it off my tape, off the radio, or copied it off the net - but how will anyone tell? And if no one can tell the difference, why does it make a difference? The anti-copying philosophy will eventually result in a situation where people cannot prove if what they have is legal or not, unless they save the reciepts - and even that's in question if you have a good enough printer.
The end result of all this will be a absurd state where just about anyone can be "guilty" of copyright violation.
Why isn't the public making a fuss? Why, at a time when the most basic principal of society-the right to know-is being turned into a criminal act, isn't there an army of outrage fighting to protect the free flow of human creativity?
A public outcry is useless if there is no one to hear it.
It has been demonstrated over and over again, especially in the last 5 years, that Congress and the courts hold the "rights" of corporations to continue doing business in higher regard than the Rights of the people. They do not care about us; and in fact, if we attempt to exercise our Rights in any visible way, we are arrested. Ask Jon Johansen. Ask Dmitry Sklyarov.
The battleground has changed. We can no longer fight our battles in the open, using the due process of Law, because the Law has been corrupted by money. So we fight in the darkness. Our file transfers are private and secret, just like their back-room deals, their bribes (they call it "lobbying"), and their good-ol'-boy networking.
Morpheus is one of the most popular downloads in the history of cyberspace. Users have retrieved more than 40 million copies since July.
If that isn't "the public making a fuss", then what is it?
The only law that matters is the law of God. It doesn't matter if file "sharing" is legal or illegal according to whatever country you choose to believe. Is it stealing in God's eyes? The prohibition against stealing is one of the 10 Commandments which means that it is a mortal sin. It isn't worth the risk of eternal damnation just to hear a song or get that app that you would have bought had you any money.
I must disagree. Artists that we are speaking of (the ones who care about "losing" money) have only agreed to preform thir music in exchange for your money. Otherwise, they would love to have their music shared.
According to your argument, it is ok to agree to have someone preform a service for you and refuse payment. Just because the artists can preform many services at once does not make it right.
I would agree that there are better ways to distribute music than the way we currently do, but I don't believe that your argument is correct. The absense of a gain CAN be a loss. We should raise our kids to pay for what they use, or do without. (Sometimes living without something is not a bad thing. Necessity it the mother of invention, or so I've heard.)
By law, aren't you required to mention that Barlow was a lyricist for the Grateful Dead whenever you decide to trot him out for the latest EFF-speak? Cause it gives him street cred or something.
Record companies love to sum up the money they lost. They count each and every (illegal) copy. That is simply wrong and we all know it. If someone owns illegal copies, it doesn't mean that he would buy it if he had no possibility to get it for free. I'm pretty sure that most people wouldn't do so, simply because CDs are too expensive. For the record companies there's no difference: Whether he gets it for free or he doesn't get it at all; they get nothing. BUT there is ONE difference. If he copies it illegally, at least the manufacturers of CDRs earn some money. So in fact, sharing music helps the econonmy a little bit and does not hurt it. Perhaps the record companies should stop producing shit and yelling that the reason for nobody buying this shit are the sharing networks. Bring out better music and people WILL buy it.
And the funny thing about the "evil MPAA corporations" is that they're probably spinning the MP3 thing in their favor when they pitch to unsigned artists.
:)
I imagine it goes something like this: "We're the only ones with enough resources ($$$) to develop digital anti-theft technology to protect your recordings from unauthorized distribution. If you went out on your own you'd never make a dime because of all the file sharing."
I keep clinging to the dream of a site like mp3.com or Emusic that will eventually allow artists to publish themselves. Forget $15 CD's, think of PayPal minipayments. Even with minipayments I'll bet the artists could make more money in the long run. Yeah, they lose the promotion and up-front production money, but they retain some control and put their music at a price point where even Pentagram might pay for it.
Now if only they could filter out the total home-brew crap... sigh, now I'm getting into double-standards. Okay, at least set up the "Aspiring Amateur Musician" section.
Hey, when I was growing up I was taught to share.
If it won't boot, Fsck it!
If you believe that you should be able to enjoy someone else's work without justly compensating them for it, then you are a thief.
Firstly let me point out that I did not take any moral high ground that copying is ok. The jist of my argument is that copying digital works is a much lesser immoral act than stealing physical goods.
Let's pretend for a moment that there is a quantitative scale for immoral acts. Let's say murder scores 100. Acts of violence might score 50. Stealing someones TV on this scale might score, say 15. Personally I think that copying Madonna's greatest hits off the Internet would score about 0.01, if that.
We all have our own moral systems. All of us do things that would score tiny scores on our own personal immorality scales, every day. What annoys me is when I hear people talk about things like music copying as if it were a terrible immoral act. It is a immoral act, but it is a tiny little one. You are a thief on the same scale as a married man who admires another woman is an adulturer, or as someone who smokes in a public space is a murderer.
The same arguments get rehashed here over and over. I don't believe anything you said in the beginning and am not smart enough to argue the later part, and i am fairly certain you won't change your mind with anything i said, but still
"However, if that person who downloads music for free would have bought the CD had it not been available for download, then yes, the artist has lost something."
This is most certainly not true. Many have pointed a fact out here, though i can't find any today. This is that the artist will get more funds directly from a person if that person knows their songs and from knowing their songs wants to here them performed live, goes to the show, likes the music, buys the t-shirt, gets the 7" (not of industry cock), gets on the mailing list. The artist is more likely to see this cash direct, as opposed to shelling out $22 at the HMV (that is how much a random cd i picked up out of the racks at the HMV RnR Hall of Fall cost) and the artist getting their $1-$3.
"in fact, you're contributing to the devaluation of the artists' career by refusing to pay for the music at all."
No. In fact I am contributing to the devaluation of the segrams, vivendi, emi, whoever the hell stranglehold on music distribution , production and selection. Music is going to be there. It is not as if once the majors topple things are going to dry up and no one will put out records and no money will be made. All it will mean is that corporate radioband will not make millions off of haircuts, cliches and marketing.
Other points, duly taken.
The "moral" highground of not paying for CD's because you don't like the way companies rip off artists is not moral at all; in fact, you're contributing to the devaluation of the artists' career by refusing to pay for the music at all.
Yes, but in the absence of buying cds I am able to save more money and then spend it on live concerts and conert t-shirts where I know the artist will receive a bigger margin from than if I bought the cd and then wasn't able to attend the concert. And depending on the artist I will fork over more money to get better and better seats.
I am not spending money on a record company so they can compensate for their loses. I am spending money on the band which I feel has earned my money.
At a restaurant you tip the waiter/waitress according to the service you received. I have received no service from the record company and the goods that I have bought from the record company are tainted and are useless to me. Whereas the concert provides an outlet of emotion and energy for usually 3 hours including the intro band. This I will pay money for. I know what I am paying for when I go to a concert - I might not get to hear my favorite songs, but I went into it knowing full well I might not. With buying a cd I do not know if I'm going to be able to play it now.
I do not own a standard cd player. So the cd is useless to me and I paid $18 for the useless product, which in itself is a ripoff since it costs them $1 to make the cd.
So am I contributing to the devaluation of the band by not buying the cds but instead going to the concerts? I don't think so.
Maybe I don't value the one song I like on NewBigBand's Album at $20. After all, the $20 would make me a lot happier by going to the movies with my S.O. So, I go to the movies instead of buying the new Album.
OTOH, if I could get the one song for say, $2 bucks (the cost of my time to download it on a slow 56k connection), then, yes, I'll download it, because I want a copy.
I just don't want the copy when it costs $20. I do want a copy when it costs close to $0.
Simple economics.
There are a couple things here that need challenging:
In the end, this all comes down to the fact that we have allowed ourselves to conflate copyright with natural property rights. They are NOT the same, nor were they ever meant to be. Copyright requires an explicit tradeoff between access and ownership. Think about it: if I really want to protect my idea, I should never tell it to anyone!! If I want to protect my song, I should never perform it!! But, for certain kinds of businesses, if I want to make money on my idea, then I must reveal it, or its expression. So, a compromise has to be made: control over ideas and their expression versus the desire to make money. Governments step in and legislate a compromise. And, if they get it wrong, we ask for a new compromise.
The technology is here - the new compromise should be made - the fact that a new technology undermines a business model based on intellectual property should NOT be sufficient to outlaw the technology - maybe it's the business model that has to change!!!!
The buck stops with the artists.
An artist has the choice to sell out or be free.
Selling out means imposing a copyright on their work and then transferring the copyright to a large, monolithic, investment-driven organization that will surprise nobody in its mercilless drive to squeeze a buck out of the work.
Being free means playing music, writing prose, etc., without attaching any strings. Period.
If you're the Backstreet Boys, you sell out, because it'll take a huge branding campaign and monopolistic distribution to saturate tween minds to the point of addiction before anyone would listen to, much less pay for your music.
If you're actually a true force of creativity, you stay free, as selling out would hurt the health of your work. This used to (rightly) be called "Alternative" or "Underground". You give your work to the public domain and don't charge, except maybe for shows and equipment, and then only to cover costs and go out for a movie.
Us users, on the other end, should reward the artists and ignore the rest.
Vote with your Voice. Vote with your Feet. And Vote with your Wallet.
Somehow I think this guy would be whistling a different tune if some hacker got into his bank account and decided to share his live savings.
What *exactly* is someone else's work?
) ) { exit (-1); }
... if I read their code in a book at a PUBLIC LIBRARY ... and I start using their code ... did I STEAL their intellectual property?
... and I make a list of the features, ... and then I re-write my code so that my program acts EXACTLY like the original program, did I STEAL their intellectual property?
... in saying that you can not share, it is saying that YOU CAN NOT STORE A CERTAIN SET OF 0's and 1's ON YOUR COMPUTER ... does that not violate free speech? Do I not have the right to store whatever 0 and whatever 1 I want??
.... next thing we know, people are gonna copy right words, phrases, common day expressions.
... and we must exercise our rights, and store whatever bit whereever we want!
Suppose that someone writes the single line:
if(!somePtr=(someStruct*)malloc(sizeof(somePtr)
instead of checking for !=NULL on a different line
Now, if I see a good piece of software, and I play around with the different features that it has
Now, if I have this program that works EXACTLY like another program, and I'm distributing it to my friends, and I accidentatly sent the other copy, which for all necessary purposes, is indintinguishable from my own, am I STEALING property?
IMHO, you got this point wrong
I mean, what would life be like if you had to pay someone royalties to use certain words, to utter certain phrases
The time is now
It is certainly not considered fair use just because you are in physical contact with the person receiving your pirated warez! What does that have to do with anything?
You are allowed to make PERSONAL copies for YOUR OWN PERSONAL use. Not to give away or sell!
It is also NOT legal to pirate albums on cassette.
The issue really has little to do with theft. The issue is that big media companies are no longer needed to distribute the music.
The RIAA have been keeping our eyes and minds focused on this side issue, that of theft, and quite successfully keeping our attention off of the fact that they are simply no longer needed.
If we really want this issue to go away we need to do the following:
- Come up with a way to pay for recording studio time.
- Come up with a way to filter out artists that suck.
- Come up with a way to pay the artist.
- Distribute the music. (either via Napster or CDs)
The problem here is that the established media companies provide 1-3, and get paid at #4!-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Let's pretend for a moment that there is a quantitative scale for immoral acts. Let's say murder scores 100. Acts of violence might score 50. Stealing someones TV on this scale might score, say 15. Personally I think that copying Madonna's greatest hits off the Internet would score about 0.01, if that.
Agreed, but the problem with your mindset is that it leads directly to the "Tragedy of the Commons". For example, using your scale we might have 100,000 people x 0.01 = 1000.
The same logic (or lack thereof) applies to other "harmless" activities like littering, watering the lawn during a drought, etc.
-- Brian
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
The band, however, has the right to decide how to distribute its music, not the fan. If a band wants to let people copy and freely trade their songs, that fine. They have made a decision on how they can best market themselves and make a living. Some do that quite successfully - such as the Dead.
If you don't like the price of CDs, don't buy them. But to say it's OK to copy music without paying for it becasue you may go to concert or buy a T-shirt, ultimately giving the band more money is just a way to try to rationalize your actions.
Suppose I decide that the real value in music is added by the people that market and package it, and that the band is just some easily replaced random collection of musicians - is it ok for me to sneak into a concert? After all, the band plays the same wether or not 1 more person is in the room, and I might buy a CD, helping out the record company, as well as the band, who gets a cut?
In fact I am contributing to the devaluation of the segrams, vivendi, emi, whoever the hell stranglehold on music distribution , production and selection. Music is going to be there. It is not as if once the majors topple things are going to dry up and no one will put out records and no money will be made. All it will mean is that corporate radioband will not make millions off of haircuts, cliches and marketing.
If free distribution of music creates enough demand to support musicians, then it will happen. Stealing to strike a blow against a company you hate doesn't help the musicians on bit, it just cost them money.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Isnt there some way where i can pay the artists directly for the music i download? I would send cash to the artists of the music that i download. why should i pay those ridiclous prices for cd's, cases, booklets and other useless things that i dont need. the artists should set up a system in which i can do that, and screw the giant media companies. and downloading music from artists that no longer benefit from them (ie dead artists). who does that hurt? Im talking about classical like bach and mozart.
Sun is Warm, Grass is Green
So, how about if I did something even more cruel: didn't listen to or watch her art at all? (as I usually do)
Wouldn't the artist lose even more that way and make me even worse thief?
In a balanced economic environment the producer DOES NOT and CANNOT determine price by fiat if they have any expectation of selling their product. Price is set by negotiation with the purchaser (more or less). The current music system is run by a monopolistic group of companies that are actively seeking to choke supply to extort money out of customers. The counterpoint that we can choose to not buy their music is empty because we cannot participate in modern society without buying from monopolists (MS, Time-Warner, etc).
Quite frankly, I don't being extorted. I feel badly that some artists will lose money on their music*, but I do have issues with paying ridiculous sums of money for a product that has a negligible production cost.
* I do feel bad that artists don't get paid for their music, but I also have no problem paying for a live performance either. And, perhaps we shouldn't be looking for revenue from broadcasting/distribution per se where its unreasonable to collect fees (think about the use of unenforceable laws in general).
This is a true story, which I was reminded of by the post pointing out the difference between *real profits* and *potential profits*:
There was once a hard-goods store that I bought lots of stuff at. The store was sold, and the new owner raised all the prices, then walked around admiring "how much money I'm making".
Naturally sales plummetted due to the newly-increased prices. The store shortly went out of business -- apparently I wasn't the only one who quit shopping there.
I've been told that the new owner blamed his "lost profits" on light-fingered employees.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Agreed, but the problem with your mindset is that it leads directly to the "Tragedy of the Commons". For example, using your scale we might have 100,000 people x 0.01 = 1000.
The same logic (or lack thereof) applies to other "harmless" activities like littering, watering the lawn during a drought, etc.
I was talking about a scale of morality for the individual. It does not make sense to do maths with it, just as it doesn't make sense to say ten force-ten earthquakes are equivalent to 100 on the Richter Scale. Obviously it is nonsensical to compare 100,000 people copying Madonna's Greatest Hits with ten murders!
So, your counter to the weak argument is... er... "well, so what, it's not as bad as murder!"?
Well, duh. If we had murders at the rate we get copyright infringement, we'd depopulate the planet in a matter of hours.
"Over the last several years, the entertainment industry has railroaded a number of laws and treaties through Washington and Geneva that are driving us rapidly toward a future in which the fruits of the mind cannot be shared."
What burns me about this kind of "sky is falling" statement is that it is completely rooted in the same false assumption that is driving the policies of the industry: that corporations have some kind of monopoly on content, that, like the diamond cartels, they can keep the market all locked up.
As the technologies of creating words, music, and film become more and more accessible this idea becomes more and more obsolete. As long as this argument is defined by the idea of THEIR restrictions on how we get to utilize THEIR intellectual property, we've lost the argument before we've started. Because in the end, despite being misguided and fundamentally flawed, recent legislation like the DMCA really just attempts to make the existing notion of copyright enforceable in the digital age. The basic notion of the copyright owner's rights are unchanged.
One of the big flaws in the middle of all these arguments is the notion that there is a strong, clearly stated principle of Fair Use in copyright law. There isn't. Fair use is a concept, in its literal presentation in the law, mainly geared at institutional uses and extended to a limited range of personal applications by precedents. And while recent legislation and trends are attempting to restrict even those limited definitions, it only weakens the case of fair use to try to argue that it extends to things like the widespread distribution of someone else's intellectual property over a P2P network.
The arguments of information freedom advocates are also not helped by outright falsehood. The article gives an unqualified interpretation of the Felten DMCA case that is simply untrue.
Creators have the right to produce and distribute their work any way they want. What is needed far more than revisions in legislation is for enlightened consumers to seek out creators offering their work in a rational, unencombered way. As the content kings spend more and more to make their products les and less versatile in the face of increasingly versatile technologies, individual creators and collectives have the opportunity to offer a more and more valuable product at a lower and lower cost. If we focus on this opportunity, then there is a rational, constitutionally defensible wedge to drive between the need to protect creators' rights to profit by their work, and the industry trend to control and define the individuals experience of consuming the product of that work.
As long as the focus of this dialog is the consumer's "right" to infringe copyright (which is not the same as "stealing" incidentally - that's why it has its own legal name and definition) neither the rights of creators nor of individuals will be protected Find something legal to protect and a lot more progress will be made.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Yes there is, its called Fairtunes
And in the latest from slashdot, we bring you news from the "not yet".
;)
I dunno 'bout you, but I think I am still in February
Most of the "intellectual property" arguments we see sound like variations of a free rider problem, so-called because an early version of it concerned what damage might be done to a railroad system if riders could freely take unsold seats. Then why would anyone buy a ticket? Few people would, there would be little incentive to build trains, and society's need for transportation would be underserved. Someone (gov or the railroad bull)has to control the free riders.
Now, what social needs are unmet if "too many" people don't pay for their CD/mp3/copyrighted music? Would there be less music? At what level? Would fewer musicians create, or would fewer CDs (or other royalty-producing copies in whatever medium) be cut. The threat we hear is that musicians would stop making music if they couldn't be paid (inplicitly by the corporations whose valuable servcice is the risky one of promoting and marketing them).
And of course the threat that the distributors see is the threat to the channel. They would be happier selling 10 million COPIES of one song than a half million each of twenty (even if it takes 175 years to do so, since the "Bono Bill" gives them that opportunity). More music = more copies, not more songs. So they naturally want to lock out the free riders at the copying level.
Ironically, one of their favorite tools is a prohibition against people distributing there OWN creations. Dmitry Sklyarov, Edward Felten, and Jon Johanson are in trouble for sharing their own creations.
Mod this meandering, redundant.
What is this "would have"? How can we argue about realities, as if you or I could say what someone would do if the world were different.
Under the "They would have bought the CD, so I lost money" argument, you could also sue say, Ford Motors, for laying off someone who -- if he hadn't lost his job -- "would have" bought the CD. Hey, that's a lost sale; and it's Ford's fault. So pay up!
The argument shouldn't be framed in terms of property being "stolen", because no property is stolen, because intellectual output is not property. The debate should be framed in terms of "How can we offer sufficient incentive to an artist to continue to do art, if they cannot derive revenue from controlling the publication?"
Article 1, Section 8 says (paraphrased) "Congress shall have power... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". It doesn't say Congress must. It doesn't say this is the only way to achieve that aim. For goodness sakes, six billion people on this planet, can't someone come up with a mechanism that rewards artists and breaks the stranglehood of artificial distribution monopolies?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
It doesn't matter how much data you can put into a disk--people will just compress it to something managable. When people rip DVD's for P2P sharing, they end up with 600-1200 MB of data in DIVX format, not 5-11 GB of data in MPEG-2 format. CD's are shared in mp3 format, not linear PCM format. On the bandwidth side, there are some very cheap alternatives to T1 available now.
Speaking of cheap alternatives to T1, there is enough bandwidth in many people's homes now to be able to pipe music directly from performer to listener, without going through any third parties or even long-term data storage. In this model, the performer is paid by the hour, not by the track--so even if the data is shared by the listener, the artist still gets compensated.
Umm, no. The price of something is set by the interplay of what the producer wants for it and what the consumer is will to pay for it. The producer can set his/her "asking price", but all they are doing is that, asking. The consumer sets his/her buying price. Until these agree, the sale does not occur and the thing in question is essentially without value.
We act as if only one side or the other is important here. Although I see slashdotters go whole hog for their way, the trend started on the other side: The Content Cartel wants you to believe that there is no copyright bargain; that copyright means only the rights and powers held by the producer and that the recipient is a powerless and valueless pawn, good only to consume. It ain't so.
There is a dialog between the two. Right now it's mostly drowned out by cries of havoc and disaster, but behind the scenes, the two sides will reach some accommodation through the dead hand of Adam Smith, should we fail to excercise our intellects.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Your numbers may be off (as you suggested yourself), but I don't see anything wrong in principle with doing math using this "quantitative" scale. That is, after all, what quantities are for.
In any case, the point remains that your focus on the individual alone nearly guarantees that the tragedy of the commons will occur.
-- Brian
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Taking this argument another course, maybe a sale of a cd didn't happen because someone downloaded an album off the net. The artist was robbed of his money right? I mean this argument all comes down to money. But what if the person never had an intention of buying the cd to begin with. Was there money lost? No loss means not stealing as far as i can tell.
Here's another problem i see. Many well known artists are complaining that people share their music. But when you have contracts to allow stations to play your music people can record it off the radio and listen to it for free too, right? I mean before we had mp3s, that's what people did with cassetts. Was this a big problem then? Unknown artists should be happy to have their music distributed. It's called free advertisements. More of a fan base means more money. Metallica started this way, so i'm sure there were other bands that also got it's roots from free distribution.
Another fact, and yes i do call it a fact, is that mostly all the artists aren't talking out against free distribution. Only a hand picked bunch of sellouts which were paid one way or another thought this was a bad idea and protested. Other sellouts joined the napster side. It comes down to some artists being money whores and others who are in it for the music and the fun. The only ones who are fighting this for their lives are the record companies. Their whole livelyhood is the raping of musicians and selling their music. Now the artist recieves compensation from distributed music because of the extra fan base or maybe a purchased cd down the line which would not of been purchased, but distributing music cuts the record company's profits. Should this industry really exist the way it does now? How many musicians do you hear on popular radio stations that don't have a record contract? Of course this all comes down to money as radio stations need advertisements to make money.
Of course the argument that i haven't heard is how does the internet make sharing illegal? It was designed for sharing. If a friend makes a copy of a cd he has for you, gives it to you physically, how is that any different than doing it over the internet? If the copy was for personal use only, i don't see any legal ramifications from doing that. Under the home recording act of 1978 you can do this legally. Somehow the judges and lawyers think that doing so over the internet makes it different. I disagree.
/rant
In the US and many other countries, you are allowed to make copies for acquaintances, as long as you have no expectation of compensation for doing so. This may not apply to filesharing, because the expectation of compensation comes in the form of getting other material in return, but in the case cited, it certainly is legal to do so, regardless of what the recording industry would lead you to believe.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
If you believe that you should be able to enjoy someone else's work without justly compensating them for it, then you are a thief
Damn! I better stop listening to the radio, then.
IANAL, but the intent part is very crucial here. When most people download a song or movie, their intent is probably not to screw the copyright owner but to get the media for the least possible price (though I'm sure some do it just to screw the RIAA/MPAA).
Of course, this isn't that useful since copyright infringement is also a crime, and would probably be the charge and not some form of theft.
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
I think it is fiarly obvious that once you let an idea of expression out of you brain where others can be exposed to it you have Forfitted any rights to control what happens with that Idea.
Maybe if we are a courteous society we will look to give recognition to said person for credit.
If your only goal is to make money, Go to hell
O.K, it's not that bad, but...
/. that you prefer to take things that are not yours and you feel better about it because the person wronged is a faceless corporation. You feel better about it because there is no physical object being taken. You feel better about it because _________.
(Please read my comments before modding me as a troll. Just because I have an opinion that is different than you doesn't mean I haven't thought about this.)
Disclaimer: I do work in the music industry.
I did not read every one of the last 175+ comments, but the ones I did read seem to echo the posts of every music sharing thread over the last year or so. Lots and lots of theoretical arguments about how this will help the artist or sell more CDs or has no effect at all.
Very few posters (and I applaud those that do) have the courage of their convictions. The ones who say that they DO NOT buy CDs any more (or the product formally know as a music CD, whatever) AND they DO NOT download the music using sharing products thereby deriving value for no recompense. People who say they now save their CD money and go to more concerts because they wish to provide direct benefit to the artists. Listening to the radio, even borrowing friends CDs (and not copying them) are both alternatives I've seen people mention.
The majority appear to be trying to justify a moral dilemma - receiving value for no associated cost. It's one thing to accept a gift or donation from someone. It's quite another to go out specifically searching for a product or products in a genre you desire and take those products simple because you can. In physical terms this is called looting (when a whole group of people perform the act.) With electronic copies of items we call it sharing. This makes us feel better.
If you have to make an argument, as one poster has, that this is a "0.1" on the scale of moral/ethical problems as opposed to murder which is a "100" then you already know it's wrong.
Either do what you say and go to the concerts, stop downloading music, stop buying cds and put the record companies out of business, or at least admit that what you're doing is wrong (in every sense of the term.)
I won't make cute analogies with stealing bread or breathing air or all the bullshit arguments that people make so they can sleep at night, just to try and prove my point.
A product is being sold (not given away) and people have found a way to get that same product without paying.
That is wrong.
If you don't like the way the product is packaged, the method it is distributed, who sells it, who produces it, where you have to go to get, the shipping charges, or the gaudy graphics of on the disc - the don't buy it.
But please don't steal it either.
If everyone who complains about this subject would stop downloading music (illegally) and stop buying ANY music discs the silence would be deafening (pun intended don't waste your time.)
Please don't lower yourself by trying to justify your moral, ethical and legal inconsistencies. Just admit it to yourself and your friends and everyone here on
The market does set the price for luxury items (music) and if you can't pay the price you can always go to school and then get a better job. If you don't want to pay the price the market will listen. If you steal the product the market will respond also, and I guarantee you that you will not like the response.
Have you ever thought what is going to happen when the record companies discover that they CANNOT secure CDs and DVDs? There will be a point where they'll just stop selling them and then you will be able to download all the music and video you want - but not for free.
Cool, so if you go on a 3 week vacation, I can use your house for my own puposes, as long as I move out before you get back? You didn't lose anything (you were gone), but I gained something, because I was homeless, in need of a place to party, or whatever. No need for to ask permission, right?
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
However, if that person who downloads music for free would have bought the CD had it not been available for download, then yes, the artist has lost something.
WRONG! Market share isn't a moral right. Maybe Ford has no incentive to make cars unless they can lock out the Japs. Maybe letting in the Japs deprives Ford of sales. Welcome to the real world
WRONG again. Mozart was paid for that too, but somehow that didn't mean a eternal monopoly on downstream copying. This is not about compensation for what anyone did, but a percieved right to controll peoples copying behavior after the cat's already out of the bag. Sorry, but you don't have that right even if you think you do.
If you believe that you should be able to enjoy someone else's work without justly compensating them for it, then you are a thief.
DEAD WRONG. I enjoyed looking at those two gilrs in scant cloths on the beach the other day. Sorry, I did not force them to reveal themselves, they chose to do so by their own free will. I owe them nothing. Maybe someone told them they were entitled to compensation for my pleasure. Sorry they're not. Maybe someone told them it was their right, sorry it is not. Dam, maybe I would even like to, but it is not a right. It just goes to show how such derivations of just value are delusional if not socially psychotic.
Cool, so if you go on a 3 week vacation, I can use your house for my own puposes, as long as I move out before you get back? You didn't lose anything (you were gone), but I gained something, because I was homeless, in need of a place to party, or whatever. No need for to ask permission, right?
That's a crap comparison.
If I could duplicate my house at zero cost, then I would be happy for you to live in one of the copies. In fact, I would house the homeless of the world.
No, the sad part is your children are growing up in a time when people think that knowledge can be "owned". If pythagoras were alive today and had patented "x^2 + y^2 = z^2 where would we be? If someone wants to make money off of "intellectual works", let them become a teacher.
I totally agree, the fact is that copying is not coercive or fradulent. It never ceases to amaze me that someone could think they're being violated when they're not. (Sorta like the days where plantation masters thought they were being stolen from and violated by the underground railroad) It is really a sick attitude about property. The problem isn't file sharing, the problem is individuals who think that they have some type of moral right to derive value by restricting the copying practices of others. It is like a vine that has been growing more and more intrusive for 200 years, and will not relent in choking off our freedoms untill we attack it at the root. In fact, I would argue that defiance and civil disobedience are not just OK, they are a duty because this threat is so imment to the personal liberties of us and those we love.
It seems to me that the point of intellectual property is that people think that if you "steal" an artist's work, then they won't get paid. However, let us consider:
Let's say that the average person buys 10 CDs a year and has a computer. Pretty reasonable, right?
10 CDs X $15 per CD = $150 (of which maybe $15 goes to the artist)
OK, now let's consider what goes into File sharing:
$800 basic computer and monitor
$200 CD-burner
$200 Lots of Storage Space (Hard Drives)
$50 Lots of CDs to burn songs, make mixes, etc.
$480 $40/month * 12 months = $480
-----
$1730
OK, that suggests to me that there is MUCH more profit to be made in selling people computers and internet access, and then letting them "take" as much music, movies, etc. that they want. The $40/month bandwidth more than covers the amount of money the consumer would normally spend on CDs and movies, and can then be tied into other events or merchandising.
The basic idea here being that by allowing the natural flow of information, companies can still get all of the money they need from consumers. instead of extracting it through CD sales and Movie tickets, though, it will come by other means.
AOL has it right, in that they are a content company that also sells bandwidth. yes, they are foolishly protecting their "IP" because they CAN, but even if IP law were to vaish today, their business model woudl still thrive.
Capitalism and Freedom of information can coexist here. It is only the futile clinging to an old concept of property that keeps people from seeing that this can actually be achieved.
Oh yeah, and I'm sure that companies do make MORE money with this whole IP thing, but what I am saying is that it is very possible to make a lot of money without it.
Say, for example, that for every person willing to pay $20, there were six who would buy the CD if the price was only $10. Then, the record company would be smart to sell at $10, because they would be making more money ($60 as opposed to $20). But it is my suspicion that those who claim $20 is too much to spend on a CD are in the minority, and would probably not purchase CD's unless the price dropped dramatically, say below the $5 mark. I can still remember when I thought that $10 was too much to pay for a cassette tape (still is...). Like any other corporation, the record companies will set the price where they can make the most money.
Assume the following:
1. Regardless of any attempts by anyone to prevent it, reproduction of data will occur. No matter how good your copy protection, if I can play it, I can copy it. I can even reproduce it with an arbitrary fidelity approaching perfection by sampling it many times.
2. Once copied, the data will proliferate in the wild. No law is going to make everyone agree on the ethics of the issue or behave with restraint. There will always be some people who want and will copy and share.
If you assume these two items, the only way it seems artists will be able to gaurantee a certain amount of compensation for their efforts (something almost everyone unanimously agrees is necessary for w/out it we would see a great deal less effort invested in creating good art) is the ransom model.
This will require most artists to "pay their dues" by producing some amount of good quality free music so that they become known as good artists. At some point, they will be able to propose a ransom for their next work.
The ransom can be paid in any combination/way you like, 100 people willing to pay $10, 100,000 people willing to pay $1 and 200,000 people willing to pay a dime. Anyone can up their contribution anytime they like to speed release, but once the ransom is reached, the item is released into the wild.
This also provides a direct means of observing the compensation and will allow a sense of fair play to enter the equation of compensation, whereas now compensation is sort of open ended and indeterminable. Sometimes inordinately large, and other times non-existant. Also, a reputation for honesty becomes important. If an artist stiffs the public with a POS, they'll remember.
Chances are that if you can think of a problem with this system, with a little more thought you can think of a fix for that problem.
The sad part is that my kids are growing up in a time where the message is that it's ok to steal what you don't want to pay for, if you feel the price is too high.
No, the sad part is that your kids are growing up in a time where the message is that imaginary and intangible things are as important, or even considerably more important than real things.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Yeah I'm your enemy. I'm a guy working for your worst nightmare - a big record company. Unfortunately I have to post anonymously so that I don't get my mod points crippled by whiners who want to continue to steal music.
d .html
Please check around on the net before you post your opinions as fact. There is no such thing as the "Home Recording Act of 1978." Try 1992.
From this page: http://www.cdpage.com/Audio_Compact_Disc/goinggol
"Recording from an audio CD to a CD-R disc for personal use does not violate copyright law, assuming that you bought or otherwise legally acquired the CD from which you are recording, and that the CD is a legitimate one in the first place. However, if you give the copy to a friend or if you sell it to a third party, then you are in violation of the copyright law."
Doesn't that seem obvious though? Don't you feel like you're getting something for nothing if your friend makes you a copy of a CD?
If you don't mind ripping off giant companies just say so, but please don't try to find a quasi-legal basis for your theft.
There is no "what was your intent?" argument here. The law is clear. If you find the money that dropped out the back of an armoured car and keep it you will still be prosecuted and should be imprisoned because you knew it was wrong to keep it. If you need analogies that one is better than anything you have come up with.
You dare to ask questions like "Should this industry really exist the way it does now?" Where you imply you would like to limit the freedom of a legal corporation so that you may profit. While you talk about rights, you would try to question the existence of a record company?
None of your theoretical arguments hold any valid concept that applies to bootlegging cds and music.
What if I wasn't going to buy it anyway?
Please...
Just admit that you like to steal things and be done with it, but don't try to justify what you do as morally correct. The artist may have sold their soul to some deamon of a record company, but that has nothing to do with you.
You are attempting to get a product through means other than purchasing or having it given to you. You are stealing.
Leave the U.S. and move to Canada where this practice is perfectly legal. If you choose to stay in the U.S. please abide by the laws, or don't complain when someone steals from you.
So, are all you "copying isn't stealing" folks ok with this, and with the situation that it will lead to?
Your example makes no sense. You obliterate any distinction between actively causing an event and passively causing one.
Also, you seem to be confused about the definition of the word 'if.' Nowhere was the poster suggesting that all downloads would be purchases. But there are some that would be. Those downloads that replace a purchase do deprive the artist of something, and are thus wrong.
However, if that person who downloads music for free would have bought the CD had it not been available for download, then yes, the artist has lost something.
This is child logic, and it's sadly becoming more popular these days. "Could have" is not valid, especially in the face of new technology. Elton John would have died at age 15 due to pnumonia if it weren't for antibiotics, so does that mean he should be executed? Madonna would have been a penniless Burger King manager if it weren't for the recording companies, so should we take away her money? Acme Buggy Whips would have gotten a lot of business if it weren't for the invention of the automobile, so by your logic, the profits from GM and Toyota should all be funneled to them.
Theft is not copying music that you already own. If you ripped it from a CD, chances are good that the artist was compensated. You may not like the terms that the artist gets, but then again, you're not the artist, and you didn't sign the contract. The "moral" highground of not paying for CD's because you don't like the way companies rip off artists is not moral at all; in fact, you're contributing to the devaluation of the artists' career by refusing to pay for the music at all.
Wrong and wrong. Chances are the artist ISN'T getting paid. Chances are he's being ripped a new one, and he probably doesn't even understand what is happening to him. In the long run, by HURTING the record companies, you are doing the artists all ove rthe world a huge favor, becuase you'll be giving them less leverage (i.e. money) for passing laws that work in thier favor and making them less attractive to new artists who may decide to distribute thier work without the record companies and make some real money.
Reproducing music, or a book, is a little more difficult. I can't possibly remember all of the ideas represented in a book, so thus, I need a copy of the book as a reference when I forget. Same thing with music - I may learn a song, but I will never be able to sing as well as the original artist. This is what we pay for, folks. It is the effort that another went through to produce the music, the movie, the source code, or the book. It is not the idea.
Again you are wrong. We don't pay for the music, we pay for the distribution. If we actually paid for the music itself, we would be paying directly to the artists.
Granted, in electronic form, the work can be reproduced for almost zero cost. However, this fact doesn't put food on the table for the artist or author. If you believe that you should be able to enjoy someone else's work without justly compensating them for it, then you are a thief.
If I take a picture of a beautiful woman on the street, your logic says that I am a thief. She worked hard to look that good, and all that hard work is being "stolen" by me for free. Just because an artist feels the need to make money from his work doesn't mean that he should automatically get it. If an artist wants to sell his work, he needs to do just that, sell it! OTown has yet to send a sales representative to my office...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Your analogy is interesting, because of all of the postings above it that address replication vs. transfer. Although I don't need to use the green paper and metal disks to transfer "money", I'm still transferring it (the value, that is), not replicating it. If instead I copy my "money" (even digitally) so that when I'm done both I and my beneficiary have it, I'll go to jail as a counterfeiter, or a fraud.
Virg
ok, so if N days (maybe N=14) after you download some cracked software or copied music, an RIAA or SPA bot comes along and cleans them off your hard drive, do you mind? After all, you weren't really interested in that stuff -- certainly you yourself said that it's not worth paying for.
I'm consistently amazed by the tenacity with which the "information is free" types defend their "right" to download and copy things that they claim are crap that's not worth paying for.
Are musicians really being hurt by filesharing?
A few minutes of watching MTV Cribs says otherwise.
> Copyright infringing' starts with the line: "Actually I have it here on my compuyter, I could ..."
...assuming that friend #1 didn't password-protect the page. At this point, he's made the work readily available to the world at large, which is outside the bounds of fair use.
Most fair use cases have allowed for copies distributed only to acquaintances without expectation of recompense, so this isn't literally where the infringement begins. Where it begins is...
"Well, I could put it on my webpage for you, then you can read it anytime"
Virg
It's quite a stretch to equate the *voluntary* dissemination of HTTP, TCP, and other widely used technologies by their creators, with the *involuntary* sharing (theft) of the property of authors and musicians.
The point of the argument is that what you call theft is the foundation upon which evolving societies are built. Art and science evolve because people build upon the ideas and works of those who came before them. Today, the intellectual contributions of even the greatest artists and visionaries are insignificant compared to the pool of past ideas and insights from which they draw their knowledge and inspiration. Yet in many cases we allow them, through ownership of one small piece, to hold the entire puzzle for ransom for decades or even centuries. Disney can adapt the works of Shakespeare, without paying his estate a penny, even for a project he would never have approved of, but we cannot in turn adapt the resulting Disney-copyrighted product.
The whole notion of one's intellectual output as private property rather than contributions to a public resource is part of the recent shift in the view of society from a mechanism to work together for a greater common good to a mechanism allowing individuals to more effectively pursue their own selfish interests (with assurances to skeptics that a million people behaving selfishly usually somehow results in optimal outcomes for each of them).
Naomi Klein's book No Logo discusses this phenomenon in some detail. The most noteworthy point is that intellectual property rights changes the whole meaning of culture from something that is a participatory dialogue into something that is packaged and sold by rights owners and passively consumed by consumers, who are innundated with privately owned messages and images everywhere they go, but who are not allowed to build on or respond to these messages or images.
There's no such thing as Scotchtoberfest!
Which law notwithstanding, you've touched on the heart of the argument. On one side are the "intellectual property" people and on the other are the "no intellectual property" people, and the debate is whether sharing information is stealing or not in the first place. Since God hasn't yet publicised His stance on intellectual property, we are left to decide for ourselves.
Virg
if both parties can independantly make use of the "shared" substance at once it's not sharing, its copying.
>However, if that person who downloads music for free
>would have bought the CD had it not been available for
>download, then yes, the artist has lost something.
However, if that person who reads a bad review would have bought the CD had it not been available for review, then yes, the artist has lost something. Thus, the reviewer is guilty of "stealing".
However, if that person whose car has broken down would have bought the CD had be been able to get to the store, then yes, the artist has lost something. Thus, the car manufacturer is guilty of "stealing".
However, if that person who checked the CD out of the library would have bought the CD had it not been available for lending, then yes, the artist has lost something. Thus, the entire library system is guilty of "stealing".
We live in a (supposedly) capitalist society. When your business model fails due to an advancement in technology, you change your business model. Put the blame where you want to, then adapt or die. But you don't buy laws to enforce the continued existence of your business model in the face of its obsolescence. That creates what's called a "command economy", and the former Soviet states lived in one. If you compare their economies and that portion of ours that revolves around "intangible goods", especially the growth of their respective black markets, the similarities are getting scary.
>Granted, in electronic form, the work can be reproduced
>for almost zero cost. However, this fact doesn't put food
>on the table for the artist or author.
In any field that doesn't involve imaginary property, demanding favors from the government because you were making a lot of money but now can't "put food on the table" is called corporate welfare at best, graft at worst. It may keep things going for a short time... until some developing country who isn't afraid of getting blown up finds a way to make billions of dollars by commoditizing American "intangible goods". It may even be one of those former Soviet states.
This is *not* theft. It's copyright violation. The two are completely different articles legally.
Copyright violation is *not* theft.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
By this definition, the word theft has not been used correctly in this discussion. By the way, the bottom of the dict definition for stealing says "See THEFT".
One of the things that struck me the other day was how much two apparently disparate issues are going to converge shortly.
What I'm talking about is this:
- Issue One: Freedom to Share Digital Data (MPAA, DRM, DMCA, etc.)
- Issue Two: Right to Individual Privacy (doubleclick, direct marketing, etc.)
I see where those advocating strict controls on how copyrighted material is distributed over the net can share an interest with those who advocate that commercial entities not have unrestricted ability to exchange data about individuals, the kind of data that makes up profiles in the direct marketers' databases.In one case you might be talking about Metallica MP3's being traded by individuals and the other case you might be talking about YourBuyingProfile being traded by corporate entities. In either case, you could argue about who the data really belongs to and what fair use of that data constitutes.
If complete digital freedom to exchange data exists, then will you ever have any hope to restrict the data that is being gathered about you every day from being exchanged? Maybe you don't need or care to restrict the data flow, but you have to admit that restricting or liberating it for one purpose makes it fair for another purpose.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Benjamin,
Wow, you may be right!
Music is just like water. It flows free from the ground, the various kinds of music are nearly indistinguishable from each other, and music is necessary to sustain life.
I totally see how your water analogy fits into the sharing music argument.
That was my sarcasm rant, but I can understand where you're coming from. We all want our music free and easy. Even I do, but I see the harm to the owners that comes from taking music.
The analogy to water would only work if you looked at the Morpheus listings and all they said were "Universal Music song", "BMI song", "Sony Music song" and didn't tell you the specific artist. Just like looking at water on the store shelves you only see "Arrowhead", "Sparkletts", etc. You don't get to know or decide what mineral content you want in your water, you take what you are given by a big, faceless, company and you either like it or you go somewhere else. But you don't steal Arrowhead water later once you decide that's the one you like. There is no free music that substitutes for the music you want, just like there is no free water that substitutes for the Arrowhead water you want. Therefore you decide to take what you want because there are few, if any, legal ramifications. Lack of enforcement does not make something legal.
While nobody is entitled to a business model (by nature) they are entitled to do business (by law.) In some cases they are entitled to a business model by law (your cable company, some oil companies, steel factories, water and power companies, etc.)
You said:
"It's no more mine than it is anyone elses'. Information 'products' I produce are mine as long as I keep them confidential; once they get out into public circulation, I'm not foolish enough to believe I can control two other people who wish to transfer it between them. Why would they?"
You are correct - if you live a society that is in total anarchy. If you live in a society that recognizes any type of copyright and trademark rights then you're wrong - legally wrong. You actually have a right to expect protection if you live in the U.S. and you copyright your work and you put it out on the Internet. This what patent, trademark, and copyright laws are all about - protecting the rights holders while still allowing them to promote and sell products, or give them away if they choose.
Unfortunately the machine of technology works faster than monolithic record companies, but that does not negate their product rights and allow the consumer to change the model at their whim. Your legal recourses are few and the best of them is stop consuming the product.
The fact that you are depriving someone of an income is the only point worth discussing, because that person (and a corporation is a legal person) is being wronged each time you take their product and do not compensate them for it.
Your main problem is that you wish to derive the benefits of living in a society you chose to live in, but do not wish to be bound by the rigid tenants (laws)of that society. This is a common problem among humans. I know people who live in Mexico because they can't stand the oppression of the government in the U.S. I know Mexicans who put up with the oppressive government in the U.S. solely for the purpose of earning more money than they can at home. You made the choice to live where you do. Please abide by the laws and constraints of your society.
Start talking about filesharing technology and the folks obsessed with yesterdays news start ripping into each other over whether it's a good thing or a bad thing.
Fact is, folks, this argument is already over with, and file sharing won. It won a long time ago. You can whine all you like, throw a tantrum, scream "illegal!" or "theft!" and it doesn't make a goddamn bit of difference. Your opinion on a done deal is completely and utterly irrelevant.
Dying media giants will continue to pass, and succeed at passing, laws trying to bolster their 20th century monopoly, but it's rather clear that these laws don't mean jack to most of the folks inclined to copy. And nobody - nobody - can convince me that the 45 million or so people in the U.S. *alone* who occasionally copy music are all evil, morally-bereft pirates. If you honestly think that's the case you need to get off your moral high ground and have your head examined. Only a loon could make a claim like that and actually believe it.
Copying is here to stay. That's just the way it is, laws or no laws, slashdot whiners or no slashdot whiners. So rather than trying to roll things back to the 20th century - an effort utterly doomed to failure - perhaps you might think of ways that the artists could still be compensated while copying continues.
The old system is creaking along on failing legs, and anyone with half a brain can see that it's about to collapse; no amount of handwringing, no stack of useless laws, is going to change this fact. So, if those of you who worry about the 'poor artist' are serious about your concerns, rather than just mouthing meaningless platitudes to support your inane position, perhaps you could come up with an alternative system for artist compensation that might survive the early years of the 21st century. That is, do something constructive for once.
Oh, and I did say 'artist compensation', not 'RIAA compensation'. The RIAA are part of the dinosaur and fated to die, thank the gods. Supporters of the RIAA would be worthy only of pity, if they weren't so deserving of contempt.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
That's not really true. They don't have the right to say "the distributor can't sell it to record stores owned by non-whites." They can't say "This CD cannot be transferred. Opening this CD signifies agreement to the following license stipulation; this CD may not be resold."
Clearly you don't understand copyright. It is a limited right that means "You are encouraged to create music by being given the exclusive opportunity to make money off your creation by granting you the exclusive right to make new copies; you may assign that right to others in any way you wish. But once you sell a copy, it is not yours; you abandon all rights to that particular copy."
What Barlow properly laments is that the public has willingly abandoned their freedom in exchange for nothing, all because their feeble understanding of "intellectual property" equates a limited set of rights designed to encourage useful commerce in ideas and expressions with some kind of ownership of a thing. Frankly, it means to me that most people are now incapable of reason and willingly abandon their love of freedom for their love of property and defend their claims of property with arguments that the average fourth-grader sees as spurious, greedy, and stupid, such as when the relatives of a dead victim of terrorism attempt to COPYRIGHT the phrase "Let's roll!", an act that has approximately the same meaning to the defense of freedom that the guillotine had to the promulgation of fraternité, that is, a sad and cynical mockery of human ideals.
Barlow succinctly says that it's sad how these tendencies have wormed their rotten way into our legal system without any public pause, and with the majority of the public nodding their heads in addle-pated consent. But the way I say it is a lot more fun, because if the sensless iceberg is winning the battle, I'd rather be making farting noises on the tuba than rearranging the deck chairs.
Sneaking in to a concert is a weak analogy; if you are in, then you are occupying the room that someone else would have taken. Unless, of course, you advocate ignoring fire safety rules. You don't, do you? And no, you can't touch my monkey.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
The artist does gain from the sharing (illegal or legal) of his music. If one's music is spread, they will reach a wider group of people and hopefully become more popular. This is the whole point of advertising. Share the music, and hope for people to buy the rest of it. This is the main purpose of radio stations. The only two differences between the illegal and legal sharing of music are the permission of the copyright holder (Many times not even the artist.), and whether royalties are paid (Many times not even to the artist). Either way, the record company is benefiting more from the sharing of music than the artists. So don;t complain that the artist is losing this or that; we should complain that the record companies are robbing us. But wait, we are complaining- just in a not quite so legal way.
You never studied economics, didn't you?
In economics, the absence of gain when you should have gotten a gain is considered a loss and is called an "opportunity loss". This is standard Econ 101 stuff.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
I pay some of my bills through playing bassoon for the Spokane, WA Symphony.
As soon as people want to "share" their homes, food and livelihoods with me I'll begin freely "sharing" whatever recordings I make. Heck if we get enough people maybe the whole orchestra will start giving it's hard work away.
I give my complimentary concert tickets to friends so that they may experience art music for free with the hope that they will become regular attendees. This isn't the same as stealing music since these tickets are mine to **freely** give away. I would never copy a CD hoping that someone would go out and buy the same CD - rather I'd encourage them to attend a live performance of the work as a "trial", or just go ahead and buy the CD. They'll most likely end up liking the music anyway.
PS - I do write software and give it away (LPRng for Cygwin), and participate in the OpenBSD project through hardware donations and bug fixes.
When you buy a CD today you are actually paying for services provided to you by the music industry:
a) value created by composer/performer (add here orchestra/sound engineeris etc.).
b) value created by maker of the medium (actual cost of CD plastic, manufacturing process and CD technology licensing fees).
c) value created by distributor, including wholesaler and the actual record shop where you bought the CD. (transport, inventory costs and shop electricity bills).
d) value create by a marketer (the guys who pay for MTV clips, promo tours, posters, A&D of new bands etc. etc.). If not for marketer you wouldn't know that piece of nice music even existed.
Now, it is clear due to technological change, price of "b" and "c" is falling like a rock. Nobody questions value of misic itself, and nobody should question value that marketers ("d") provide for us, because without them we would have no MTV etc.
My point is that industry wants to make its problem our problem.
As a consumer all I care is to hear the music I like. I don't need *a CD* of Frank Zappa. I would like to invite him over, get a beer and listen him play his guitar. Unfortunately, the guy doesn't want to play for me (because he is dead), so I am prepared to seek a substitute for live music. This is gonna be some digital medium like CD, MP3 etc.
The sad fact is that CDs from the record shop are becoming inferior medium. They are inferior because cheaper alternatives exist - MP3s, digital copying etc. Another sad fact is that marketers and authors from the music industry (who provide valuable service) can get paid only by controlling distribution channel of CDs.
But it is not my problem as a consumer. I am seeking a medium through wich get access to a music, and if technology offers me cheaper alternatives to CDs in a shop - I am taking it. Let music industry devise a way to charge me today. It was easy with CDs - you won't get is unless you pay in the shop. Let them invent how to stop me copying CDs on my 100GB hard disk... And my girlfriend's hard disk... And my friends' disk at Morpheus... what was that guy's name...
You get the point? I am not afraid to be caught, it's just one side of a business transaction with the music industry: "Hey, Mr Sony! I just got delivery of your song through MP3 file. Wanna send me a bill? Don't know how to do it? You don't even hear me? Sorry. You may take your song back any time if you want!".
Just stop that moral agonizing and calling it "stealing"! An average consumer is still prepared to pay for the music, but much less than industry used to. And now he wants to pay to other people (like paying directly to authors, or to some alternative musical cirtic who runs a website). If the industry has not come up with the solution how to collect the payments (and to downsize itself) - why some people are making it *our* problem and pushing us towards inferior technology and inferiority complex?
--
If only peopl were willing to analyse economics more.
--
If you actually want to complain, do it the legal way.
The only difference between the legal and illegal firing of a paintball gun is location. Still makes a big difference, and part of the reason is how much control the shooter has over the act.
The industry controls their publicity to get maximum effect for their target audience. They know what they're doing. The music does not need further distribution, which is more likely to harm sales. Really, was 90% of the music on Napster introducing people to artists they'd never heard of? Or was it just more Britney and Metallica? Now some of it may have encouraged people to try these artists out where they hadn't before... but still, it's not like they were in desperate need of publicity.
I agree that the existence of "IP" is an interesting and often amusing debate. But that's not relevant to why certain laws are passed. I think that if you carefully review many of the different facets of IP laws, you'll find that in some cases, the dissemination of information+"creative works" is strictly protected, while in other cases it's almost completely unregulated. Plot that on a graph and realize that the big business interests are the ones who decide when something is property and when it's not.
Thought experiment: Suppose we are all imbued with a fanatical belief that information is property. However, we decide that moral rights could never be sold -- that would be akin to slavery. Suppose, further, that ownership could only reside with the direct creator -- no corporate ownership and no works for hire. Note that this just applies the same rules that many companies impose on end-users (you can rent but not own) to the companies themselves. Or, suppose that we applied the sherman act and other anti-monopolist legislation automatically to all "major" owners of patents/copyrights. Or that we taxed IP assets in the same way that we tax property.
I think that suddenly you'd find IP laws becoming much less important, and much of USC 17 slipping into obscurity. And this discussion wouldn't even be taking place here, but in some obscure german philosophical quarterly. The real debate is about protecting consumer rights, limiting competition, and controlling the distribution/sale price of goods. IP is just philosophical cover.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Firstly, does the music industry really know what its doing? They may be profession salespeople and market analysts, but look at the way they approached the problem. Just as any parent, dictatorship or record company in this case learns, forbidding something just makes it more desirable.
Secondly, firing a paintball is a much different situation. Someone's personal safety and property is threatened by the paintball gun. It could break a window, hit you in the eye, whatever. Never has the free sharing of music taken the paint off of your car. Pardon my philsophy, but John Locke said everyone should be guaranteed life, liberty, and property. Sharing music doesn't infringe on any of these rights. You may claim that it interferes with the right to property, but the music companies are still making tons of money. Record sales may have decreased twenty-some percent in the last few years, but these must be considered in context with the state of the current economy.
Firing a paintball gun could injure me in some way, or in a more remote chance even kill me. While this may be an abstract interprepation of Locke's natural rights philosphy, almost everyone will agree that I have an implied right to safety(including the right to walk outside my house without fear of projectiles.)
Well, I guess that part of my argument sucked ... Why'd I pick them? I don't really have that MP3. But I've already got some Aphex Twin, thanks.
It perplexes me why there is always the assumption that the files being shared are propietary. As if everything being shared over Napster, Morpheus and Gnutella is propietary, and thus p2p only exists for a black market.
"Well, a lot of copyright violations go on". Well guess what the top 3 words on search engines like Google are - sex, mp3 and warez. Sounds like plenty of "copyright violations" are going on over the web, should the web be shut down as well? There is too much tacit acceptance that p2p is somehow criminal. The first major p2p application I can recall, the distributed.net rc5 cracker, had a flap over whether it was exporting encryption or not. It seems you can barely stand up and take a leak without some corporation or army telling you what you're doing is illegal. I've used Morpheus and Gnutella to download many speeches. I've used MojoNation to download (and publish) Gutenberg texts. Freenet (and Frost) allows web page publication and chatting over it's p2p network.
I spend a lot of time developing p2p apps. I am not doing so so that 2 kids can trade the latest Britney Spears mp3. I see networks in two forms - authoritarian and democratic. In an authoritarian network, you pay a web hosting outfit money to host your stuff, and the more popular it is, the more you pay. If this is the situation, you have no choice but to commercialize whatever you created in order to distribute it. In a democratic network, there is no authoritarian middleman between you and others. Most of the network is authoritarian, and large, powerful corporations are trying to shut down networks where people deal with each other directly. Note - they are trying to shut down the networks, not go after people who deal with each other directly. I guess American corporations have sold this mentality to it's citizens through good PR, but now they are using their muscle to shut down P2P networks based in other countries like FastTrack. It's quite a shame, if they win it will just be back to where only those with money can publish, and any small person who wants to publish will have to go through an authority and be charged a lot of money. People who want to deal with each other directly are accused and tainted with criminality. This is an old story, far older than the rise of p2p networks.
I learned from kindergarden (oh, and slashdot), like how you should share... oh wait... I guess they fine you for doing that now. Wow, if only they'd teach us what we 'should' do right in the first place...
Question everything that you've accepted without thinking.
The part that is overlooked most commonly is that the majority of people are actualy much more willing to abide by the laws than "steal" the music.
Right now, Morpheus has about 560 users connected. At it's peak, I believe napster had 15 million. That's only a fraction of the world population, even when you actor out people in poverty.
What the actual battle is revolves arround a bunch of old record companies suddenly realizing that their old business model isn't working any more. Instead of restructuring however, they prefer to restrict the access to the medium. Consider, if the RIAA sold "Audio CD-Rs" at say even $1 a piece, and those CD-Rs had licencing or royalty fees built into their unit price, the RIAA could sell a considerable amount of licenced CD-Rs for napster users to use. The new market revolves arround the technology. People are no longer willing to pay $16+ for 8 songs which often times are just filler for a single song CD. CDs originaly cost somwheres arround $9 or $10 a piece, and the consumers were promised that the prices will fall as CDs caught on. Well they've caught on, where are the lower prices?
I personaly would buy music CDs even at $7 a pop. Sure that means that funds have to be distributed differently, but heaven forbid a music star should have to live like a normal human being with a $60,000 a year salary instead of a million a year salary.
Businesses change, we heard this same argument when recordable audio cassettes came out, but guess what, no dead industry yet.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
The whole concept of "intellectual property" in general is an arbitrary construct, originally implemented to maintain royal monopolies and keep the peasants in their place at the bottom of the pecking order. Through good fortune and great courage the version enshrined in the US Constitution (article 1, section 8, "to promote the progress of science and useful arts") helped create much of our modern way of life, but if anyone thinks the tyranny of the old guard is dead and defeated they're sadly mistaken.
If the pendulum swings back to medieval greed, you may well find yourself kowtowing to a new and vastly more dangerous royalty - the corporate elite, kings in all but the name.
Did someone do the unthinkable....and remove a comment?
You're absolutely right in your assertion. I only want to mention that I'm trying to stay out of the IP debate, and the reason I brought it up here is that it's the delimiter for the original poster's comment. He comments that we shouldn't use the law to decide if we're doing wrong, but to avoid sin. My reply was to demonstrate that whether copying is a sin is the crux of the argument.
Still, thank you for adding your insight to my comment. Although it's a bit tangential to my post, it's still important that it gets said, and you said it well.
Virg
The ticket isn't what is being stolen here. What's being stolen is the use of the train. You are helping yourself to part of the cost of fuel, the cost of employing those who operate the train, insurance, etc.
Copying digital material, by contrast, doesn't cost anyone anything. An alien could set down on earth, copy all of the CDs in a record store, go back home and copy the CDs for all his friends.
Bob the Universal Records accountant would never be able to divine the existence of the alien by going over the companies books. There would be no unexplained loss somewhere, as far as Bob knows there are no aliens.
Fred, the accountant working for Really Big Rail, would see a loss.
Artificial scarcity has its uses, but the "Intellectual Property" concept as presented DOESN'T SCALE optimally.
The reason why sharing _could_be_ wrong isn't because there's such a thing as "Intellectual Property".
It's a wrong because some people believe things should be a certain way and are hurt when other people don't act as they wish.
However what I am trying to point out is there could be a GREATER WRONG - more people hurt because of this concept which limits greatly what people can do.
Why it doesn't scale:
The sad and scary part is that in one of the likely futures, your kids or their kids will be growing up in a time where they can't communicate with each other as fully as technology would allow. They may not even be allowed to remember what they see. Some may not even be allowed to have children without permission.
Say there is a way for many to have photographic memory - e.g. stored multimedia indexed by brain pattern, genetic engineering or some other treatment/training.
Then say there's a way for people to communicate most of their thoughts wirelessly - telepathy or cybertelepathy.
But then all those people preaching "Intellectual Property" won't like any of that. Even though I believe most people would still like to experience things with their own physical senses and be willing to pay for it.
Say in the future some people get DNA treatments. Then because of "intellectual property" considerations they may not be allowed to have their own children without permission - unauthorised reproduction of "intellectual property".
You sure that this won't happen? My fear is it will happen if this IP concept continues to grow in strength.
There are already ways to reward the creators directly without resorting to very lossy methods. E.g. the ox treading the grain gets some grain without the asses owning the whole farm.
Hmm things might get interesting if someone makes machines that can cheaply copy/create food given some cheap and plentiful raw material and energy and starts giving the machines away.
Maybe things would be a lot better if everyone believed that we don't own anything - God is just letting us enjoy his blessings for a while.
until somebody else uses you music to sell out.
Interesting view of sell out, though.
I always defined sell out as somebody who changes there creativity for a buck. meaning, you play a song, and some company says, if you change thist this this and thism will pay you BIG BUCKS! you've sold out, but if a company says, we wantr to distribute oyur music, as is, heres some BIG BUCKS you have not slod out.
thats one of the problems with vague terms like sellout, there..so...vague...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I find this article incredibly naive. The home computer industry has been plagued since its inception by people who had no scruples. Because it was possible to copy code , they did just that. Soon, anyone who protested at this practice was denying them a fundamental right. If these people could copy books they would. The notion of intellectual property escapes them entirely. The author of a work expects a fair reward. This is provided in the last analysis by the people who buy the work.
I am mighty sorry but that is the way our society has progressed so far. Were it not because of "sharing" and "appropriation" we would not have today an oral tradition as the basis for the culture of many societies. It is not theft.
copyright is a very recent development, less than 400 years old which came into consideration when
1. it became possible to mass duplicate ideas and
2. only a few had the means for duplicating them (printing presses, recording studios, whatever you want to name it)
Internet and Digitalization has changed the whole equation, to the better of the society at large because the means for mass duplication of ideas now are very cheap and to the worsement of that small group who made a living out of duplicating ideas for us (music dealers, printers, etc.). The question now is, where will the balance be? and what kind of shape will it have?
Your artificial distintion of ideas and their physical expression does not hold water.
It is not knowledge that is being owned, it is novel applications that are being patented. The Pythagorean Formula would not be patentable as it is not a directly applicable method or algorithm; it is simply a fact. Facts cannot be owned even under modern laws, and even if they could, Pythagorus's patent would have expired 17 years after it was approved.
I am constantly shocked by the inanity and the sheer number of misconceptions that people have regarding itellectual property (especially when it relates to what exactly is patentable). If somebody where to find a general solution to the Navier-Stokes equation, this would not be patentable (though an oil company would probably pay him to give them the solution and not to publish it). However, if somebody devises a new algorithm to solve the N-S Equation faster, that algorithm, being an innovation and not just a fact, would be patentable.
Opinions are not Informative, though they may be Insightful or Interesting.