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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...
It's not about piracy--its about destroying fair use and moving America to a pay-per-use business model. The whole piracy thing is arrant bullshit--content will still be created regardless of copying. After all, it's done pretty damned well even after 30 years of rampant analog copying.
The whole scare over "digital copying" is a red herring--what the RIAA and MPAA are trying to do is use this new-fangled technology thing to get rid of this profit-limiting concept of "buy once, play (or read) many times."
Get that message out there folks--its not about piracy, its about pay-per-view everywhere.
Remain calm! All is well!
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
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!
I hate to use Adult industry examples, but there is a very good example of taking advantage of a market instead of trying to shut it down.
Playboy Enterprises, Inc. was probably one of the most pirated companies in the history of media when it comes to original content. I don't know about you, but I've read hundreds of articles talking about Pamela Anderson or whoever being #1 on most search engines, etc etc.
So what did PEI do? They capitalized on the market. They didn't try to prevent you from copying JPG's and MOV's. They gave you a service so killer that it's not worth the time trying to pirate it. Most adult companies try and charge like $30 a month for a crap ass website with lousy content and slutty women.
Not Playboy. They charge like 6 bux a month. The price of a paper magazine. All of their playmates in an online archive. HUGE libraries of content. New features weekly if not daily.
Playboy recognized it could benefit from a potential source of huge revenue or it could be like the RIAA and MPAA and try to prevent it's content from being copied. By providing a service with such value at such a reasonable price point, I'm quite sure Playboy is making a killing.
I wish the RIAA and MPAA could pull their heads of out their respective a$$es and open their eyes to the REAL market they COULD capitalize on without screwing things for us: the consumers.
I know I'll get mod'd down for this but I just had to point it out.
/.'d and people purchase the movie (which is bound to happen), he will get a percentage from the sale! Talk about using the /. effect to one's advantage.
The guy who submitted this story included a link to purchase the movie 'Hackers' from Amazon.com (as opposed to the movie's website which would seem more logical) as part of the stories description.
I was curious about this for a minute until I released that he included a referer ID in the URL so as the URL gets
Capitalism is wonderful, isn't it? I'm amazed that the editors let that slip by. I think this is a whole new category of karma whoring...
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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"
the only mp3's I have on my harddrive that arent legal are ones that I wouldnt have bought anyway
But, BUT, BUT... the only reason you can say you would not have bought them is that you downloaded them, and realised that they were crap. If you hadn't downloaded them, you may have bought them because you would not have realised that they were crap.
And that is the point of all this. They don't really care about people people downloading music - they are more worried about people finding out the music is crap before they get a chance to buy it.
OK - that was tongue in cheek, but think about it for a minute: how many chances to hear a whole CD do you have before either you, or one of your friends, buys the thing? Radio? Nope - the record companies have this sewn up. A record store? You'd have to get lucky. Any others? So, if you want to hear a CD you have to buy it.
Or at least, that used to be the case. At the moment it isn't, and by God these guys are desparately trying to get the worms back in the can (or, more aptly, get the pig back in the poke).
We'll have to see what happens - my hope is that they will kill their goose, and music will become more diverse. My guess is that music will be two types - the bulk will be draconian corporate type (uncopyable, which is lucky as it'll be unlistenable), and the rest "underground", which will be more interesting but harder to find.
Remember one thing about music - and I can't recall who originally said it - "People don't know what they like, they like what they know".
...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!
Here's a business model for the **AA to kick around:
Get yourself a fat pipe and fast servers (and make sure you support resuming and are dl-client friendly). Trust me, it'll pay for itself. Get yourself a good login and automatic billing system that doesn't charge the user's account until the download is confirmed complete. Make the download catalog easy to use (workable in any browser and no damned javascript), searchable, and as complete as possible.
Offer MP3s as follows:
64 kbit mono -- no charge. Okay for previewing stuff to decide whether you want to buy it or not, but not really good enough for cuts you want to keep and play a lot. (And will prevent complaints and billing disputes about songs that suck too much to pay for.)
128 kbit stereo -- 25 cents each. Good enough for most people and not too much of a bandwidth hog.
360 kbit stereo -- 50 cents each. (Or, since this system obviously will have login and tracking of purchases, just 25 cents if you already downloaded the 128kbit version -- effectively a discounted upgrade price.) This satisfies the more-devoted audiophile's need for better sound quality.
If you want to make sure no one avoids billing by stopping the download with 2 seconds to go (since incomplete MP3s *do* play), ZIP 'em, since that will largely defeat people who try to cheat the system. NO ENCRYPTION or "phone home before it can be played" crap, tho.
Yeah, people will still trade MP3s, but why should I spend hours searching for and dragging home unreliable files from some slow cranky server, when I can cough up 25 cents and get the same material, in guaranteed quality and complete condition from a fast reliable server, at the very moment I decide I want it?? Hell, for that price it may beat the bother of ripping my own.
I'm sure a similar model could be developed for downloadable movies -- a highly-compressed 320x200 preview copy for little or nothing, and a top quality copy for a buck or two. Why spend all night dl'ing an AVI that proves to be someone's grainy screencam when for a couple bucks I can get the same thing in close to DVD quality?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?