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The Customer is Always Wrong
McSpew writes "Hackers author Steven Levy so far is the only person in the mainstream press to pick up on the the travesty of the SSSCA hearings. He points out that only the media giants could be so stupid as to think treating their customers like criminals will increase sales." Steven's a very smart guy - and very well said on this issue.
... they can build their own!
The SSSCA is just the result of a lazy slob MPAA/RIAA executives who want the PC industry to build them tailor-made-to-order PC technology to their exacting specifications, without having to invest a single penny or lift a single finger of effort. Oh, the industry won't play along? Let's pass legislation REQUIRING them to.
The MPAA/RIAA are so used to having their way with consumers, that they now believe they can hand the jar of vaseline to the PC industry and have their way with them, too.
And the scary bit is that for the most part, they're right...
As always, its the "Music industry has head stuck up ass. People will be mad. News at 11."
Duh.
It's a shame people dont have the time or money to care until it actually happens.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Please! This is basically more of big, rich media companies convicting all their customers without a trial. Guilty because you own a piece of hardware. Yeah, file-sharing and copying is rampant...does it take away their profits? That's not clear...and in MY opinion, it doesn't since there's no guarantee that I would have purchased a CD containing a song I download...yet I know that many times, I've downloaded a song, liked it, then bought the CD.
As for the Apple campaign, nothing in it is promoting criminal behavior, only fair use...which is what these people would LOVE to stamp out.
"I'm not a procrastinator, I'm temporally challenged"
I think they're safe, especially since none of these are illegal activities. Violation of copyright is illegal. Unlimited distribution without permission of the copyright holder (not "owner") is illegal. But for music you've made, or music you've purchased, ripping, mixing, and burning are entirely legal for your personal use. Not only does common sense say so. So does the law and quite a number of federal courts.
Despite efforts to grab the mindspace, the Content Cartel is simply wrong when it claims that ripping, mixing, or burning are, prima facie, illegal. Don't yield that ground to them.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
What a fantastic piece!
Arguing against those who favor copy protection measures extreme as these can sometimes be difficult for people who arn't particularly technologically inclined; that's why we always see anologies to Ford making cars whose engines need updgrades like Windows does. This article does a good job of making the electronic freedom arguement without resorting to such sillyness by pointing to the underlying economic reality: treating your customers like theives will never increase sales.
Let's hope this is just the first in a long line of articles making a sensible arguments against Disney et al., and their handpicked legislators.
Specifically in the area of digital music, if this had been done right this would not be a problem. Music companies offering their catalogs for say .25 or .50 cents a song with a fat pipe and guaranteed quality would have been popular. I would have considered it myself. I would have download from them regardless of the availability of other sources such as the Gnutella network. I would have been happily legal, with clean, correct copies of my music. I think that many people would have also.
Sure, there would be quite a few people still pirating the content, but for audiophiles it would have been a no-brainer. Legal, fast, and clean would have been the watchwords. How many MP3s have you downloaded only to find out that it's a bad rip that took you an hour to get? Misnamed songs, misnamed authors, and things like that would have been things of the past. But no, we have to have paranoia, fear, and mistrust.
A company that would trust its customers a little bit could reap huge rewards. There will be piracy regardless of what they do. If it was created by man, it can be broken by man.
The first company to engender a little trust and lay on a little guilt "If one of your friends wants this song, send them to us so we can continue to offer you this premium service" would have made them money.
...Steven Levy so far is the only person in the mainstream press to pick up on the the travesty of the SSSCA hearings....
Uhmm...am I the only one who sees how obvious it is that mainstream media, controlled by the companies that are backing the sssca, wouldn't be reporting on it? Unless it wasn't going their way, that is.
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
The thing is that Copyright laws do allow you to make copies for your own use.
I have on my PC at work about 1500 mp3's that are perfectly legal and their purpose is to keep me from lugging CD's to and from work.
SSSCA would prevent that since the only purpose of mp3 is to steal music...
I also think it should be emphasized that this law will affect more than just the entertainment cartel's content.
It could very well destroy the common person's ability to create their own content. Want to create a home movie? You'll have to buy a $10,000 device. Want to record your daughter's piano recital? You'll have to pay $100 in patent fees to some company.
Not only that, it will probably go beyond audio and video. Want a choice of OS? You get Microsoft bloated unstable unsecure ass-fisting Winders 2004 or Sun Microsystems really expensive server OS. Want to send an email with an attachment (such as a spreadsheet)? Sorry, unless it has the proper content codes, you're not allowed to do that. Want to edit an essay you wrote pre-SSSCA? Sorry, that isn't copy controlled.
All of the news media stories I've seen don't even seem to mention this. That and calling it "security" really confuses the issue, so that the average person doesn't understand the true implications.
Actually, it's perfectly valid to view this as slashdot charging for the service, not the content. They organize the servers, the software, maintain the archives, etc. Through their reputation (such as it is) and their userbase, they supply the eyeball.
Hey, sort of like open source.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
By making clear that your company opposes illegal use of your product, even going so far as to lobby for the enactment of laws restricting your product's use, you remove liability from yourself and transfer it to those who seek to use your product for illegal purposes.
Unfortunately, you transfer the liability to the hardware manufaturers, the courts, and the government. Its easy to implement crappy copy protection, and then rely on other people to protect you when somebody figures out how to circumvent it.
As a company, it makes a lot of sense to try to stop people from using your products illegally.
I agree. And I have no problem with any company trying to do this. If they want to, then there should be nothing trying to stop them. I, of course, am free to not use their products, and I am free to support any company that chooses not to use copy protection that interfers with my fair-use rights.
The problem is that they are trying to pass a law to remove these rights from me. They are taking the actions of a few illegal traders (who are outnumbered by legitimate CD buyers - Somebody must have made O-Town a #1 record) and turning them into legislation that will effectively, remove my ability to choose and to fairly use my media in a way that I see fit.
This scares the hell out of me.
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I guess ALL innovation comes from the halls of corporations. We don't need no steenking startups. If you *think* about what's really needed to implement the SSCA as currently envisioned that's what happens.
If our government thinks we're in a hi-tech slump now, just see what happens if SSCA passes. Just watch the US fall on the wrong side of the digital divide as innovation moves elsewhere.
As others have said, it's not just hardware, but software, too. You can add all the DRM hardware you want, but unless you've got a DRM OS with signatures, security, and verification everywhere, it's broken. An OSS kernel is dead in the DRM age, and userspace may well be in trouble, too. Imagine SSCA-certified compilers that guarantee the 'DRM Devices' are only used properly.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It could very well destroy the common person's ability to create their own content. Want to create a home movie? You'll have to buy a $10,000 device. Want to record your daughter's piano recital? You'll have to pay $100 in patent fees to some company.
Yes! Exactly! Bravo! ** applause **
This will prevent my neighbors garage band from creating and duplicating their CDs for distribution amongst their friends. And it will prevent their friends from duplicating and sending to *their* friends. Making a digital quality demo tape on the latest hardware will go from an easy to use program on a PC to thousands of dollars in equipment just to encode the right security codes.
If we were lucky, this would go back and bite the RIAA in the ass. Less garage bands distributing demo CDs means less bands for the RIAA members to sign and rip off. And that might also mean more independent labels playing some kick ass music and playing more than 30 days worth of concerts every 5 years.
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Maybe we should use the same scare tactics and tell people that this means they won't be able to keep more than one copy of all their pr0n, and you can't back it up either.
Believe nothing -- Buddha
Why is it that the software industry can have suffered from piracy for longer than most of you have been alive, but just a few years of Napster warrant stepping all over our freedom and forcing us to lose control of the hardware we purchase?
The music/movie/software/everythingelse industry is not interested in spending a lot of money to completely eradicate piracy. What they want to do is to prevent casual copying (ie napster) and distribution. If they put out crippled CD's that can't be copied by the common person, then the volume of piracy will go down. Similarly, if they go after the major file sharing networks then they make it harder for the _average_ person to pirate their goods then the volume of piracy will go down. People like me (and most of slashdot) will always have the skills to get things for free, but if most of the rest of the population doesn't know how then the losses due to piracy are far lower.
Some people equate digital copying with analog copying, but the primary difference is the volume of piracy, and that's what they're scared of.
...especially if you just happen to be purveyor of old, unencrypted hardware (just like the stuff I'm using now). For these people, all the MPAA/RIAA bullshit will be a godsend as the market for old used equipment skyrockets. So, don't throw out that old PC or Mac folks, they might be the only way you can keep your freedom.
Seriously.. i was a macworld subscriber back when they were GOOD, and i consider steven levy to be one of if not the biggest badasses in computer journalism. And this article is just about perfect-- i would have emphasized the anti-competitive nature of the RIAA middlemen, and maybe put in something noting that the sssca effectively illegalizes computer engineering research (the copyright protection-in-everything rule does not have an exception for test models, last i checked.. no?), but i can forgive that.
But the question comes up of how much help his support is. This is being printed on msnbc.com.. which is a step removed from, say, slashdot, true, but not a huge step. If someone is reading msnbc.com, there's an excellent chance they're aware of the SSSCA. These are not the people who we need to reach. The people we need to reach are the random uninformed trailer trash and soccer moms.
My question is this: this piece is copyrighted by newsweek. Is it being printed *in* Newsweek? If it is, i'm overjoyed, because that gives this issue the kind of public exposure it so violently needs. People read newsweek. Like, mass numbers of people who are not already relatively in touch with the slashdot groupthink.
We don't need a scattered collection of geeks with excellent philosophical, moral, and constitutional arguments against the SSSCA. We need a large body of uninformed persons who, while they may not be able to understand what "DeCSS" is even if you explained it to them, understand vaguely what the SSSCA is saying and understand *EXACTLY* what its repercussions would be. The congresscritters aren't afraid of lone gunmen with weblogs. They're afraid of herd behavior-- afraid of anything that the uninformed voter mass begins to do en masse that they aren't either in total control of or able to escape blame for. If a lot of people start asking questions about the SSSCA and have begun to realize an answer like "Congressman R. J. Theonomist has a tough anti-piracy stance and is pushing new digital encryption technology to help e-commerce and fight copyright theft" is just dodging the question, the congresscritters will spook and skitter away from the SSSCA like roaches when you turn on the kitchen light, trying to make sure they're not identifiably supporting the SSSCA in any way when the common voter figures out the people supporting the SSSCA are trying to take away consumer rights.
Again, it takes a lot for people to understand what DeCSS is, it takes a lot for people to understand what the DMCA does, and it seems to take a hell of a lot for people to begin to consider source code as "speech". It takes a lot to get people to the point that they understand that napster workalikes do less hurting of the revenues of the music industry than guns do killing people, much less to decide considering the first illegal and the second legal is absurd.. so there may not be hope for the DMCA anytime soon. But the SSSCA is simple to describe-- It makes it illegal for your teenage son to wire together circuitry in your garage because of the possibility your teenage son could potentially be making devices that have the effect of enabling people to listen to music without paying!-- and so there may be hope in stomping it down forever, if the steven levys of the world can bring it up to enough people..
In the meantime, i'm wondering if there's anything we can do to help that process along. Maybe starting a mass movement for computer-savvy geeks to start emailing to their less computer-savvy relatives URLs to news articles explaining what the SSSCA does would be a good idea?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Yes, laws being put forth are indeed unconsitutional. However, they have nothing to do with the 'size' of government, and everything to do with the 'size' of companies who can bribe the government. Reduce the amount of money any particular group of private interests can make, and you reduce the likelyhood of 'purchasing' laws. Of course, Disney has been doing this for years, but we're really approaching some sort of 'make-or-break' point here. I've never really been interested in living in the US, but these days, the very thought sends shivers down my spine. I don't think its your government, I think it's the size of your companies, the size of the pot of gold to be won (tho I think that the pot of gold is largely imaginary, part of the mystic prize of unmitigated free-markets), and the complete lack of any kind of regulations banning private influence on government.
....
Incidentally, you might be interested to know that the closest thing to total-free-market libertarianism that has occurred so far in western society (UK, 18th century) resulted in MASS poverty, and the price of bread rising above levels the vast majority of the population could afford. Under totally free markets, people 'compete' until there is no time/money left over after production to inject back into the economy or use to enjoy said fruits of the system.
Most countries that have seen their GDP rise over the last 10 years (India, Japan) have done so using decidedly anti-free-market tactics (choosing and awarding development to oganizations that are more likely to help the economy in the long run than provide the 'cheapest and best' in the short run), and of all the countries in the EU that have been placed under WTO sactioned IMF reforms, where everything has gone free-market, only Poland has seen their GDP rise slightly. All other 12 countries have seen their GDP fall under true freemarket reforms; even the WTO admits nothing has worked out as planned in their 2000 annual report
So where does that leave you? With a decent system, some things to fix, and a immediate need to cleanse your political system of big business brown nosers. Life wasn't so bad in the mom'and'pop days, no matter what these huge corperations want you to believe. If you can find a non-violent way to restore your government to being more pro-people than pro-business, and temper your fears of market regulation (you dont want total regulation, of course, that doesn't work, but 'checks and balances' when things (read: MS, or RIAA) get out of hand, much like the checks and balances that supposedly prevent any one political body from owning all political decisions), you might have the greatest chance of stabilizing the situation.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I think its even worse for the record companies than you say. People are gradually coming to the realization that musicians don't really need the record companies in order to get their record (CD) recorded. If many bands don't make their money off CD's, but off touring, the important thing for them is to get their CD's out there so that a lot of people will want to see them in concert. It is not the case now, but it may be in the future that the internet is just as effective as radio stations at getting a band well known, and it may be easier for unknown bands to get known, since they don't have to get discovered by a record producer first. THIS scares the record companies because it endangers the sweet deal they've got going. They may actually have to work for a living!
I was watching meet the press this past Sunday, Sens. Tom Daschle and Trent Lott were on and there were discussions about how to eliminate US dependency on Iraqi oil.Daschele apparently wants to force auto manufacturers to change the average fuel efficiency for automobiles (which I think is a good thing) in order to reduce importing "about two million barrels of oil per week."
Interestingly, or not, Trent Lott, said, rather predictably I suppose, "I guess there's some people that think we ought to all be driving Honda Civics." His point, and he went on to say, as part of the Republican creedo, we don't need government in our lives to dictate how and what we should drive.
The point being, it is very interesting that people who would be on the side of government installing some sort of copy protection are the Dem's and it follows almost from their ideology, it would seem. I would be interested if Lott, and his ilk, would stick to their ideology in saying that govt shouldn't meddle in this. In fact, it is other people like Bob Barr (and let me say I find Lott and Barr as a particularly vile strain of politician) who speak out against surveillance cameras.
It would be interesting to know, or to hear some of the "keep govt out of my life," "let the market rule" Repub's speak out on this issue. Especially if Hollings keeps this up. Maybe it is just in my mind that I still imagine Dem's as being progessive, but the truth is that people like John Perry Barlow and Lawrence Lessig are more Liberterian than anything. The dem's are poised to lose a lot of consumers/citizens on this one, via pissing off the voter. I wonder if any of the other party's are poised to pick it up and run with it?
...only outlaws will have CD burners.
And the funny thing is the record industry will STILL have CD burners. I wonder how they'll get around that little problem. If all CD burners have to be crippled so that they can't copy protected content, how the fuck is the record or movie industry going to produce its product?
Answer: They will have CD burners that aren't crippled. But won't that be illegal?
Answer: Obviously not. So, the SSSCA is even worse than these bastards wanting to cripple all of the electronics in the country...they want to cripple all of the electronics in the country EXCEPT FOR THEIRS BECAUSE THEY NEED FUNCTIONAL ELECTRONICS TO MAKE THEIR PRODUCTS!!!
In fact, I might support the SSSCA if it would apply to everyone, since that would fuck the content industries, and I could live without CDs or movies for a few years before things get straightened out.
When you're writing about the SSSCA to your congressmen, please point out this little piece of hypocrisy. The fact that the industry will keep for itself functional devices and deny these same devices to everyone else. If they can't trust us, why the fuck should we trust them?
Or, maybe I could declare myself to be a record or movie company and get the "privilege" of obtaining the uncrippled devices.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
The RIAA and MPAA better be careful in what they pray for. Most households only have so much money left over for entertainment (and even less during a resession). If entertainment gets to the point where everything is pay-per-view, then for most people, viewing/listening for the month will end when the budget runs out. Perhaps people will go out to clubs and see live entertainment. People will actually go outside again -- once you own a basketball, there's no charge for a pickup game...
The Media Cartels may find that their profits are continuing to fall, and of course they will still blame "piracy" for their ills...
Beware of Sleestak
Join the Columbia CD club. Get a bunch of CDs for pennies.
Refuse delivery of any future mailings from them, until they stop mailing you.
Rejoin. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Continue until record companies go out of business.
Take the money you would have spent for those CDs at cover price, and send it to the artists directly to support their work.
The last part is what makes this civil disobedience, as opposed to just being a cheapskate stealing CDs.
One thing that is wildly irksome about the whole music copyprotection debate is how seldom we go past the two-part question of whether or not the latest intervention by the music industry is a fair try at protecting their business from thieves, or if it is an attempt to cheat the consumer out of his right to duplicate for private use. By limiting the debate to these terms, we miss the key point: the media industry has everything that it wants.
As a business, the big media companies have created music as a commodity and they have driven the price of it as high as they can without losing substantial customers. All you have to do to prove this, is to walk into Tower Records and look at the casette tapes instead of at the CD's which have replaced them and vinyl as the main musical storage media: the casettes cost one third of what the CD's do.
The physical media are different, but the songs are the same. The only difference is what the market will bear, the price, and with the only source of the material being a very small number of media providers, the fix is in with regard to pricing.
Essentially, the media industry has used the invention of the compact disc to do what Microsoft's harshest critics say that it does, by creating a way of doing business where in order to enjoy the benefits of a technology, you have to pay a price that is set by a seller whose business model is not touched by the moderating influences of competition--monopolistic price-gouging.
People like the original poster either fail to see or hide the key fact that copyright law--a concept put in place to allow creators to enjoy a market value for their works--is not being used the way it was originally intended.
Copyright law is there in order to provide insentive to create and invent; insuring the creator that he or she will be able to derive some profit from his work. Instead of this, copyright law is being used as the basis for price fixing; putting a noose around the neck of every consumer and offering the choice of either paying a price that gives the industry the money to consider copyright-law, and copyright protection schemes as a commodity for sale by the government, or walking through life in silence.
This brings us to an the unpleasant impasse between the passive consumer and the too active producer. The media companies have the money, lawyers and lobbyists necessary to make ridiculous changes in the law of the land and they will continue to use those resources because to do otherwise would be to forego billions of dollars of profits that they have secured by the power of a frighteningly well-funded oligopoly.
With this in mind, the original poster's trumpeting the media industy's just cause with regard to Apple is a ridiculous argument. The truth of the matter is that the media industry is protecting and will continue to protect its "natural right" to define price-gouging as pricing itself even if it means writing laws that reach into every electronic device on earth to do it.
In a better world than the one that businessmen make, the solution would be a very simple reaction to the market itself: if the price of CD's were the cost of tapes, more people would be able to afford larger music collections and the time and trouble needed to rip and burn MP3's would be more of a burden by comparison.
The problem would solved: fewer people would bother to steal.
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