Slashdot Mirror
Ebert, Gillmor on the Music Industry
TTop writes "Roger Ebert has weighed in with a scathing critique of the Universal Music Group and its new copy-protection scheme which renders CDs unplayable in non-Windows operating systems, DVD players, and CD-compatible game consoles. It's nice to see the mainstream press start to come out against the idiotic copy-protection war the RIAA is declaring on their best customers, music lovers. Having to agree to a legal contract to hear a CD you've purchased on your own PC? Puh-leeze. Ebert compares these copy-protection schemes to Circuit City's failed DIVX DVD format." Columnist Dan Gillmor wrote a piece a few days ago about drawing a line in the sand.
:P.
But seriously, pirates hurt software companies just as bad, if not worse than the music industry. Why doesnt the RIAA, MPAA..etc recongonize this? Its not as if Adobe is giving away Photoshop. They only difference is that software companies have adapted to this changed their business model to surive.
I like how he finishes the piece:
...it would be the easiest thing in the world to buy a disc, rip it to your computer through your stereo, post it on the Web, and then return the CD for a refund. Did I just say that?
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
Me too.
But realize this-- the RIAA's spin will claim that any falloff in revenue is due to piracy, not a boycott-- hence their need for the copy protection.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
If you really want to spite the RIAA, involve yourself in open piracy for no profit. Send the artists money directly or go see them in concert (which they get a larger take from, anyhow). That's what I do, personally. Look at free alternatives like Emusic.com - but don't give them another penny.
Canadian law says that the RIAA give up the right to procecute you for piracy done for personal use by your own hand. Make full use of that. The current levy hike they propose is insane, but since the government has decided to transistion music into a public good, you're stupid not to take advantage of it. I know I'll be trumpeting this little factoid at the top of my lungs to anyone who will listen if the price of an iPod goes up by over $100 or $150 because of this!
However, maybe this will give emusic.com and others the ability to break the RIAA stranglehold on music. That's what they're really afraid of.
And for those of you interested in a cool slashdot article, how about someone with a little money and time go out and get one of these copy protected CDs. Then do an analog sample with a nice quality headphone adapter cable into a reasonably standard sound card and then do some comparisons online (although, I'm not even sure if you could put samples up as fair use anymore!). Show them the futility of this first hand.
What, are ADC chips going to get banned next?
..don't panic
Just wondering since Philips did complain that this sort of copy protection that fails to work on some systems violates Red Book. Thus, can these discs carry the Compact Disc logo?
Fortran programmer...oh yeah. Array math for life!
I used to think Ebert was some pompous windbag, who wouldn't know a good movie it it slapped him in the face. But the older he gets, and the more I read stuff he's written, the more I come to realize he's a guy who really "gets it".
It hurts when I pee.
For that to happen, the 12 year old girls will have to be convinced of the importance of the boycott, so that they will stop buying CDs by BoyBandOfTheWeek and J'Britney.
Maybe we could find a way to make buying CDs uncool.
Best Slashdot Co
Physical Commodities - Exchange or Access
What is the fundamental basis on which we deal with the customer?
One's a single-shot deal (mostly): say hello, exchange goods/money, say goodbye.
The other's a deal that lasts for a certain period. In the case of this conference, three days.
In both cases the physicality of the commodity wholly represents the product and the work that went into producing it. The property is clear, the deal is clear.
Non-Physical Commodities? (Digital Content)
An oxymoron surely?
Let's see. Here's some digital content I'd like to make available for you to download (in only twelve bytes of ASCII) - Write the following down on a piece of paper: "A, D, A, M, space, H, A, D, space, apostrophe, E, M". Thus: "Adam Had 'em."
Incidentally, I'm not the copyright holder of this work, Ogden Nash is. So all of you who've made digital copies by writing it down have just become criminals by copying the work in its entirety.
It's called 'Fleas', also known as the shortest poem in the world, and thus highly valuable. I understand that printed copies of this poem currently retail for up to £5,000 and that consequently the punitive damages for illicit copying may be quite substantial.
If literary works of art were this easy to copy a few hundred years ago, no-one would have invented copyright, let alone convinced themselves that digital content was a commodity.
Copying Physical Commodities is not inherently profitable, so it doesn't need to be controlled
There's nothing wrong with copying physical commodities, because in general the copies are just as much work to produce as the originals.
This is except for novel, patentable devices which enjoy a dispensation to retain a legal monopoly on production for a certain period (to enable the development costs to be recouped). This is to foster economic and technological progress, not to create a human right.
If a non-physical commodity doesn't represent the labour that went into it, then either we assign a right to copy it, or we stop treating it like a commodity. If the latter, then the original work represents the work.
Art is slightly different to a commodity, it's an idea given form
Art, whether written, pictorial, or sculpted is a little different though.
Once upon a time (and today if you've got the money) you could commission art, or you could buy art from artists who'd produced it for sale.
Then, forging art didn't so much hurt the artist as hurt the purchaser. Overt copying was fine, it enabled the art to be enjoyed by more people, e.g. the Bible.
In the case of popular but painstakingly original art the economics were difficult, i.e. it's difficult for an artist or author say, to communicate en masse to their potential readership and encourage them to club together in funding a new work (unlike royalty, aristocrats, etc.). So with the advent of the performance of plays and the printing of books designed for a larger audience, we see in retrospect a new revenue mechanism arise: price each performance or copy as though it were a share in funding the original work. This also requires some ability to prevent anyone else producing copies.
Copyright is Artificial, not 'self-evident'
So we see that copyright is also not a human right, it's just another expedient mechanism to enable the copy to act as the share certificate. You bought a book? You're a paid up shareholder.
The thing is though, copyright's a magic purse. It need never stop bringing in revenue (well beyond the original development costs). And in some fortunate cases, for particularly popular art, a few artists and much of the publishing industry can enjoy great wealth.
It's a brave government that would recall all these magic purses from the rich, powerful and popular. However, there is one organization more powerful than both combined.
Widespread Copying is Endemic
What happens, when there are half a billion people online (out of a planet of 6 billion), each of whom can make a copy of any art they fancy in a moment's thought?
We're talking on a scale of mankind. If people, globally, en masse, copy art, it's possible that it's not really wrong. Rather it's that the law, created to enable a revenue mechanism that requires exclusive copy privileges, is now ineffective, irrelevant and redundant. You cannot prosecute the world. It's the revenue mechanisms that must adapt or die.
Loss of Physical Media
We've lost the physical media upon which art was distributed. This served to reinforce general acceptance of the underlying revenue mechanism in people's minds. However, online, the Emperor is now wearing the finest of sheer silks (fully naked if you ask me). There's no scrap of clothing, no wodge of paper, magnetic tape, plastic box, not even an acrylic disc. It's now just a memory. The only thing that reminds us we've paid our share for the pure information that now comprises art, is the click of the I Agree button on the license page.
So what's the answer?
Don't sell the horse after you've let it out of the stable. Or in other words, don't release the digital content and then try to sell it (relying on copyright). You can't sue 5 billion people. Nor can you place a compensating levy on computers (madness!).
And of course the classic: don't try to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted. Here, I'm obviously talking of encryption and digital rights management. If the art can get into people's eyes or ears, it can be copied by a computer. Encryption is fine for keeping things exclusive when the parties concerned wish to. If you're communicating with someone who doesn't care for exclusivity, encryption won't really work, it just hinders.
Deal En Masse
So what should we do?
Sell the horse before you let it out of the stable. Go back a few hundred years and pick up the old revenue mechanisms that weren't quite so good, because it was difficult to do deals en masse.
And this is because something has changed. For the same reason that copyright is becoming ineffectual, so the public commissioning revenue mechanisms are now becoming feasible.
The biggest mental block facing business today, both online and even with interactive TV companies, is to be unable to think of dealing with the market except as a collection of individuals.
The only deal we're particularly familiar with en masse is voting, e.g. democracy, etc. We dabble with this in TV shows, even with online polls, but that's about it.
Who has dared to let people vote with their money? In the same transaction?
The new value chain
Bypass the agents, the publishers, the marketers, the advertisers, the distributors, the retailers, the packagers, etc. The new value chain is the artist and the audience. We're right back at the craftsman and the customer. Except this time, there's nothing stopping the artist doing a deal with a million people at once. Though no one's thought to create the necessary de facto e-commerce web site for such a deal. Still too busy selling to punters one by one...
The Emperor is Naked
Of course, it's very difficult to believe an emperor could possibly be naked.
If you're selling digital art, digital content, digital whatever, reserve a tiny piece of your long term strategy for the inconceivably possibility that King Canute's bottomless purse of copyright will be overrun by a tide of countless tiny infractions.
Even so, the end of copyright is not the end of commercial viability for digital content, it's the end of a particular revenue mechanism.
Consider Revenue Mechanisms that don't need Copyright
Your audience is your market - deal with it!
Check out this site for more info:
The Digital Art Auction
A couple of weeks ago, Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal did the same thing in his article, "Digital Consumer Takes Up the Fight Against Copyright Plans in Congress".
In the article, he proposes a whole new digital copyright law that gives the user back their priveleges to make copies of the content they have legally obtained.
He proposed the following rights:
- The right to "time-shift" audio or video content; that is, to record it for later playback.
- The right to "space-shift" music or videos; that is, to copy material to blank CDs, multiple PCs, or portable players in different locations.
- The right to make backup copies.
- The right to use the content on any platform they choose: a Windows PC, a Macintosh, a DVD player, whatever.
- The right to translate content into different formats.
I think this, along with Roger Ebert's comments should hopefully catch the eye of Congress and the RIAA and actually get something done. Kudos to the two of them for realizing that our rights are being infringed upon.
I'm tired of the *AA trying to take away our rights in a misguided attempt to protect their profits!
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to put up with it anymore!
So I filled my ears with caulk, and gouged my eyes out with a spoon.
I suggest you all do the same.
That'll show them!
This was an intentionally ludicrious inflammitory post.
Money makes the world go round
It's that very fact that will shape future events.
People aren't going to want New Locks and Chains forced down their throats by congressional legislation based on the premise the most of the citizenry are thieves depriving RIAA and MPAA of hard earned dollars.
Let the marketplace decide without legislation. Let RIAA and MPAA start to release media only in encrypted form that is playable on one device at one time after the wireless connection is made to verify the users valid VISA card number.
See how many consumers buy those devices and let the market decide.
I think we all know what would happen if we let the market decide. It's too bad RIAA and MPAA aren't willing to do that.
It's simple. Let the existing data processing and communication equipment be. If someone uses their equipment to violate a copyright, that's a separate issue; let that violation be prosecuted on its own merits under the law.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Used to let their listeners bring recorders into their concerts and "bootleg" them. While JG was alive, the dead had a following you would not belive.
Their reason for allowing this was the band felt that they had "made thier money" Each member had enough to keep their families set for life.
So despite this lesson, why does the RIAA continue to hurt both the artists and listeners that underwrite their business? Lars isn't selling a BILLION copies of your record enough?
A true artist likes money, but that is never their motivation. Most artists starve until they are discovered (if that happens) and are more than happy to let people MP3 their songs just to "get the word out"
Someone somewhere will write some cool little app to circumvent this little bit of copy protection i'm sure. If people are really fed up with the RIAA don't buy any more big label records then. Check out your local hip-hop, grunge, punk scene and buy music from those guys, they ARE starving and are more than happy to let you copy their stuff.
Quantity does not equal quality RIAA, i'm not buying this noise shit crap you try and schleff off as music anymore. Fuck off!
Think it's idiotic the way the labels go about their copy-protected CD strategy?
Now I don't mean the specific technology used, or the fact that it's stupid in general. I'm referring to their choices of *which* CDs to use the copy-protection on.
So far, they've all been big releases that they're going to sell a million or more copies of (N'Sync, Natalie Imbruglia). They don't do it at all to the smaller releases, which basically ensures a lack of success.
All the copy protection does is make it harder for someone to make an illegal copy. It doesn't make it anywhere near impossible. If you want a copy in mp3 bad enough, you just find a CD player that can play the disk (if you can, of course), run a line into the back of your PC, record it to wave files, then encode to mp3. I ripped a record this way, it'll certainly work for CDs. At that point the guy doing it is probably pissed off at the labels enough to make his freshly made mp3's available on a P2P network of his choice, at which time they get copied over and over again, and the whole "copy-protected" CD is all over the net. Thus all you can really accomplish by putting that crap on a blockbluster CD release is a lot of bad press and a few weeks in delay before everyone has a copy on their hard drive.
With smaller releases, however, it could work. There aren't as many people who want a copy of the music, which means less who have the knowledge and desire to rip the stuff correctly. If the labels put protection on the under-500k-sales category, they might make a serious dent in the amount of pirated music out there because it would be a pain in the ass for all the hackers to get it into the mp3 format, so fewer would bother with smaller releases and the copies would never get made that crucial first time.
It astounds me that the record companies are to stupid to even use the technology they undoubtedly paid a mint for in the correct way. I suppose I should just expect any implementation of technology by them to be exactly backwards by now.
This tagline is umop apisdn.
I like Ebert's plan to take that protected CD and play it from your stereo to your computer in jack. However, I own not a single stereo system.
In the car, I listen to NPR. At home, I sometimes listen to music, from CDs that I have bought and subsequently stored in a safe place after turning them into MP3s. If I wish to listen to a radio station, again it is NPR and streamed off of the internet.
I normally never buy music. When Napster was out, I checked it out. Downloaded a few songs, used the chat feature and was turned on to a few more bands and groups. I downloaded their songs and later found myself buying them at the local music store.
Now that Napster is gone. I am back to listening to the music that my friends listen to. Sometimes, I pick up something that they listen. My listening circle has greatly shrunk these days.
All I can say is way to go RIAA! They get less of my money these days. Which works for me as it is always nice to save a few bucks.
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If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Actually by making the creation of an MP3 slightly painful, I think they will actually decrease sales. Before, if you wanted an MP3, you could buy the CD and then rip it, or you could search on the net for it and download it. Guess what option they have eliminated? They have eliminated the option where they make money! Idiots.
Oh, all "they" have to do is call the new tech the "consumer protection act" or "the patriotic music industry saving plan" or some similar crap, then put up some TV ads about how people who don't give up all their fair use rights must hate babies and america. Then, people will be confused and forget all about how "logic" works. No one will bother to ask "who's being protected" or "what do babies have to do with copy protection shemes".
:)
People are stupid, in general. If the new copy protection tech isn't *way* more expensive than the old stuff, people will just give in and buy it, because they saw a commercial with some copy-protected player and a bunch of bikini-clad women.
Not that I'm bitter...
Back when I worked for House of Blues a couple years ago they started doing Yahoo chats with artists. To test the system and ensure that there were at least a few questions ready to be asked, we always submitted a few questions ourselves. I couldn't tell you if this is still the case, and I couldn't find any of the chat transcripts, but I remember my one standard question was what the artists thought of mp3s and people downloading their music off the internet. All the artists who I asked this to were on a major label, and none of them had any problems with people downloading mp3s. I specifically remember the Indigo Girls had the best answer. They were totally cool with it, but wanted those same people to go to their shows. If only these artists would all stand up together like the Offspring tried to do and try and bring about some change from the inside.
Like a coked-out rock star being led around by the nose by his manager, the RIAA members are being led around the nose by greedy asswipe lawyers.
Think of it, the lawyers are probably pressing the hardest for these measures, because without a hard-edge stance, there isn't much for them to do. They are trying to justify their own existence.
Does that mean that RIAA members are innocents? Hell no!
What would be cool is if there was a "competing" record company(s) that weren't members of the RIAA that sold CD's at a decent price ($8-$10), didn't do jackass stunts like copy-protection, and actually did something to promote smaller bands instead of the megastars.
I am so surprised that the U.S. government hasn't disbanded the RIAA on the grounds that it's a monopolistic cartel. Get with it, dammit!
Apparently macs can read and burn everything but the first track. Not exactly effective copy protection.
Okay, say I'm a mac user. It's clear that I can't go out and buy the music. Damnit.
But I have an iPod and a Mac, and I REALLY (for some bizarre reason) want to listen to the music from The Fast and the Furious.
Well, if I can't buy it LEGALLY, better turn to the help of my friend the internet, so I CAN get the music. And in the end I won't go out and buy the CD because I sampled it and I liked it. I'll leave it in the store because it's COMPLETELY USELESS to me. Why waste $20?
Actually, I write for a local music magazine.
I've watched many talented artist that should have gone somewhere in this
industry sit and idle because to the top players in the industry it's all about
the Benjamin's.
Music, not money should be the motivation for forming a band. The people
that do it for the money will never sit around experimenting with new sounds
because they fear it might hurt the sale of a record.
A true artist doesn't care about if they make money or not, they have a song
in their heart and they want it to be heard. They won't sit there singing
"Oops I did it again" a million times over because it's popular.
Sad truth is most of the stuff that comes out of the RIAA camp falls into this
category of cookie cutter artists that make sales based on their image or the
power of their label to promote them. A good artist does not need these things,
they will sell their music on the basis that it is good music that people like
to listen to over and over again. Some of the best artists give the
listener something to relate to, an emotion, a story, that keeps you captivated
till you just want to hear that song over and over..
understand now? Good.
Here's something that struck me. Here's a quote from the legal site on the Universal Music Group's site (see the link in the submitted story)
"IF YOU DO NOT OR CANNOT AGREE TO THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS, YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO USE THE PLAYER OR CONTENT."
They are saying that this is a legal contract. They are saying that if you cannot agree then you are not allowed to use the content (listen to the music). Minors cannot agree to legal contracts. Tell me if my logic fails me, but does that mean that minors can't listen to copyprotected CD's? Shouldn't they be, therefore, prohibited from buying them?
It sounds ultra stupid, but it's the RIAA.
Napster and all the other music sharing schemes allowed one to sample music from all over the place: independent stuff as well as from the companies that make up the RIAA and friends. Could it be the real reason that Napster was such a threat was it did just that? People all over the world were exploring their musical interests freely and widely and it wasn't just confined to what got pumped out of (most) radio and MTV.
What the RIAA is afraid of is NOT music piracy, per se, but the threat of the general public's musical tastes growing bigger than the set of bands they happen to be promoting.
So, now we're talking about copy protection. If the RIAA and friends get their way, we will only be able to buy CD players, etc, that will play CDs with their proprietary copy-protection/encryption scheme.
Think about it, if you wanted to listen to music on digital media, you'd have to buy THEIR music. I only hope this is a paraniod fantasy, but I can see where this is going.
If you don't believe me, ask that guy over there.
As I wrote earlier today, I discovered three new bands this week alone through the magic of downloading MP3s from bands I'd never heard of.
What's good for musicians and bad for RIAA - one of those bands will be seeing some money the next time I'm in their area. They appear to perform frequently, and I'll check 'em out live.
What RIAA fears most - two of those bands are now defunct. The only way I could buy their stuff is to buy at a used record store - in which case neither the artist nor RIAA see any money.
RIAA are the puritans of our age: A cartel of people desperately afraid that someone, somewhere, might be enjoying music without regard for whether it's a "hit".
Political action can have results - even with the money.
Here's a little story. It might seem off-topic at first, but keep reading. After September 11th, despite the fact that general aviation had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks, GA (specifically, the smallest and least harmful aircraft involved in aviation) were grounded for a LONG time (on the order of two months).
The airlines and many politicians have always wanted to get rid of light planes. They are considered a "nuisance" - and this was a way to take our freedoms away (despite the fact the FAA wanted to have GA flying again two days after Sept. 11 since the FAA knows that an aircraft weighing less than a compact car isn't a big threat).
What's this got to do with encryption, the RIAA, MPAA, SSSCA (or whatever they renamed it to this week?)
Political action worked for GA. There are only about 300,000 active GA pilots in the entire country - i.e. about the same as the total number of Slashdot readers. AOPA organized a day where all pilots would call up their local congresscritters - all on the same day.
Every representitive's office in the country got HUNDREDS of calls on the issue of VFR pilots still remaining grounded. They were still getting calls the next day. And the next day.
Very quickly, the issue was a hot topic. Not long after that, the restrictions were pretty much totally dropped.
Slashdot has at least as many regular readers as aopa.org - and this issue has MANY more than 300,000 people interested in the SSSCA (or whatever it's now called) being passed as law.
So it's time for political action. Slashdot should do the same as AOPA did - organize a single day where everyone calls their local representitive and spells out this issue. A few hundred thousand phone calls from voters and they WILL listen. It worked for AOPA and GA pilots - it should also work for us!
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Record company executives always find something to blame a decline in sales on. And any increase in sales they attribute to their own brilliance. Back in the 1980s, they were blaming cassettes with the "Home Taping In Killing Music" nonsense, with it's pathetic "cassette & crossbones" stickers. In the 1990s, they were blaming used CD sales, and trotted out Garth Brooks to clame that the legal "right of first resale" was taking food from his children's mouths. And before that it was:
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb