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When Elephants Dance
One Michael Fraase has written an excellent piece on the battle between the entertainment industry and everyone else titled "When Elephants Dance." Well worth reading, and bookmarking, and referring newbies to in order to get them up to speed in the digital content wars. His solution is right on, too, IMHO.
do their ballsacks jiggle around like mine?
I'll certainly be giving this to family / friends. Nice, plain language. Perfect.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
First Homosexual Buttfucking Post (FHBFP). Enjoy.
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This early for Ida! w00t! I love you!
It seems that back in the late 1800's in America (I mention this for those /.ers who don't happen to live in the U.S.) there was this saloon in the
West that was kind of a run-down, ramshackle joint that was frequented by
a few loyal patrons and not too many others. I think it was California, but
it could have been Oregon or someplace similar -- well, the location isn't
really relevant to the story but if you're really interested you might
be able to dig a bit on Google to find out. Basically, while the saloon
didn't go out of its way to publicize itself to out-of-towners (not much
point given that it was in a fairly remote area) it managed to do a fairly
steady trade despite the occasional brawl that caused property damage and
the persistent requests from a particular fellow for free drinks.
More nights than not, the proprietor of the saloon would watch this drunk come wandering in through the doors, sit down, and lay a line on him about how he's trying to pull things together and how he'd just make enough to keep himself in beans and couldn't the bartender just pour him a shot or two to fuzz the edges and whatnot. And again, more nights than not, the bartender would take pity on the poor guy and pull out the whiskey.
Now, this went on for some time, and while the bartender was an easy mark even he had his limit. So one night, after the bartender already gave the fellow three shots on the house, he decides to cut the guy off.
"Look," he says, "while I'm really sorry to hear that things still aren't working out for you I don't think that I can keep giving you free drinks. I've got to make ends meet too, you know."
So the drunk says, "I don't suppose you've got anything I can do to get another drink tonight?"
The proprietor, not particularly wanting the fellow to hang around all night and certainly not expecting him to take him up on his proposition, says "Well, you see that spittoon over there? If you take a swig out of that I suppose I could give you a drink to wash it down."
No sooner did he finish his last sentence than the drunk walked over to the spittoon and hefted it off of the floor. Before the bartender could stop him, the fellow put the rim to his lips, tipped the bottom of the metal container up into the air, and began to swallow. To the bartender's dismayal, the guy continued to slowly chug the thick contents of the spittoon. When he had finally gulped the final remnants of the container, he threw it to the ground, wiped off his lips with his shirt cuff, and gagged, "So, do I get the drink?"
"You can have the bottle!" exclaimed the bartender, immediately pouring the first shot. "But tell me, why did you swallow the whole damn thing? You only needed to swig it to earn the drink."
The drunk replies: "It was all one long string."
I say let's not read. My goodness, if it were important, it'd be on TV. Or in a pr0n site. Anything worthwhile is in those two spots.
JoeLinux
"especially when authors get uppity, "
Uppity, Now there's a word I haven't heard since I played "Law of the West" on my old C64
What I don't get, from reading the article, is: who is the second elephant? The technology companies like Philips or MS?
Posted by Michael Fraase, 3/23/02 at 9:54:46 PM.
When elephants dance, its best to get out of the way. Thats exactly whats happening now as the entertainment industrythe recording, publishing, and motion picture industries, mainlyattempts a worldwide intellectual property power grab with two distinct targets. Think of it: a coup and a lock on all published content in the same year, amazing isnt it?
Target number 1 is the average customer: anyone who purchases software, an audio CD, an electronic book, or a movie on DVD. The entertainment industry sees customers as pirates, plain and simple. In their collective minds eye, we all have a wooden leg, eye patch, and a filthy talking parrot on our shoulder. While the Constitution grants customers certain rights with regard to copyrighted material, the entertainment industry very much wants to separate us from those rights.
Target number 2 in the sights of the entertainment industry are technology behemoths like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and Apple. These companies, in the perverse worldview of the entertainment industry, make the toolscomputers mostlythat allow customers to practice their piracy.
Let me point out that I am a copyright owner, as is everyone else who has ever created a work in tangible form. Thats all authors, for short. Authors are almost never members of the entertainment industry club. The entertainment industry hates authors almost as much as they hate customers. Sometimes, especially when authors get uppity, the entertainment industry hates authors much more than customers. Until recently, authors have always been seen to be at least a marginal threat while customers were seen as merely necessary annoyances.
To complicate matters by at least an order of magnitude, the consumer electronics manufacturersthe companies that make stereos, VCRs, and DVD playershave aligned with the entertainment industry. At least some of them, and at least to some extent.
Unfortunately for usboth authors and customerswere likely to get squished as these elephants dance. The intent of the entertainment industry, believe it or not, is to outlaw personal computers. As security and cryptography expert Bruce Schneier explains it to Mike Godwin: If you think about it, the entertainment industry does not want people to have computers; theyre too powerful, too flexible, and too extensible. They want people to have Internet Entertainment Platforms: televisions, VCRs, game consoles, etc.
Copy-protected CDs
The recording industry is selling shiny plastic discs that contain music that cant be copied to or even played on some customers equipment. Philips, the owner of the CD format says these discs cannot be called CDs because they do not meet the standard of what a CD is. Sony, one of those weird hybrid companies that, as a member in good standing of both the technology and entertainment industries, finds itself on both sides of this issue says it cant guarantee the audio quality of these discs. The technology used to protect these discs sometimes prevents the discs from playing on computer CD-ROM drives, DVD players, and other devices specifically designed to play standard audio CDs.
Sales of recorded music are down 10% in the United States over the last year. The recording industry blames this downturn not on the economic recession, not on the crappy music that theyve released in the past few years, but on Internet piracy.
And its only going to get worse. Hilary B. Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) told Congress on 28 February 2001 that the practice of copy-protecting audio CDs would expand in the United States. If technology can be used to pirate copyrighted content, Rosen wrote in her response to a Congressional query, shouldnt technology likewise be used to protect copyrighted content? Surely, no one can expect copyright owners to ignore what is happening in the marketplace and fail to protect their creative works because some people engage in copying just for their personal use. Her pal, Michael Eisner, head of Disney, said he was tired of being finessed by the technology industry, whatever that means.
Unfortunately for Eisner, Rosen, Disney, and the RIAA, personal useand more importantly the rights associated with that use of copyrighted materialis exactly why copying of copyrighted material is not just allowed, but mandated by the Constitution. That some individuals illegally sell copied CDs or distribute copies of the music on the Internet is immaterial. In fact, fairly casual observation indicates that if customers are treated like criminals they will indeed begin to behave like criminals.
It has become common practice for music-loving computer owners to legally transfer audio CDs they purchase to .mp3 format files on their computers. The copy protection technology employed by the recording industry prevents such transfers by adding distortions to the music of the recordings. The industry insists that these distortions are inaudible when the disc is played on a standard CD player but result in pops when the music is transferred to a computer. In any case, its usually impossible to tell whether or not a disc includes the copy protection technology; in general, the copy-protected discs are not labeled.
Ironically, or probably not, .mp3 player manufacturers could easily defeat the copy protection technology, but they fear doing so would risk prosecution under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which prohibits the bypassing of copy protection systems. In 1999, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that .mp3 players did not violate copyright law because customers have the right to space shift music they have purchased.
Moral rights
Interestingly, the act of using the copy protection technology is much more prevalent in Europe. Most European countries, unlike the United States, recognize an artists moral rights in the work they create.
Moral rights are a package of intellectual property rights granted to the original creator of a work, and include:
These moral rights are separate from the economic copyright that these days generally transfers from an author to a publisher and they can survive the author. The idea originated with the French, who believe that any creative work, by definition, includes the personality and character of the author. Where copyright is a property right that can be transferred, moral rights are part of the authors personality and character and non-transferable.
The first two moral rightsthe right of integrity and the right of attributionare especially important because they are codified as international law in the Berne Convention. The United States claims its intellectual property law complies with the Berne Convention, but this is just two instances where it doesnt.
The most important of these rights is the first, the right of integrity. Basically it prohibits an authors work from being distorted in any way that would harm the authors reputation and dates to the 1957 French law of droit au respect de l'oeuvre. Its a safe bet that a cross-reference over which the author had no control would be seen as a distortion of the work.
Seemingly, in Europe at least, an artist could make an argument against the production of a copy-protected version of her work on the sole basis of moral rights. Especially in the case of an audio CD to which distortion is intentionally added by the publisher.
In the United States, Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) appears to be taking the point position in questioning the behavior of the entertainment industry. He believes that instead of using copyright to obtain fair compensation for the works theyve licensed, the copyright owner industryincluding the recording industryis attempting to exercise complete dominance and total control of the copyrighted work.
And just how much money does an artist receive in the form of royalties? Use Moses Avalons royalty calculator to figure it out.
A DMCA rewrite?
Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) plans to introduce legislation that would regulateand maybe outright bancopy-protected compact discs. Boucher reportedly has concerns about customers buying copy-protected discs without knowing it and the compatibility problems inherent with the copy protection mechanism. In an interview with Wired News, Boucher said, The big problem initially is that consumers have no information that is complete and reliable about the disabilities which attend copy-protected CDs. These CDs will not play in DVD players, not play on personal computers (and) not even play on all CD players.
Boucher isnt talking about what kind of legislation he might introduce to accomplish his goal of protecting audio CD customers, and the possibilities are intriguing. At the simplest level, legislation may require copy-protected CDs to carry a warning label. At a more interesting level, Boucher may try to rewrite the DMCA. In fact, Boucher announced that he would introduce such legislation last July and reiterated his commitment to that approach in early March of this year.
Internet radio
Under the U.S. Copyright Offices interpretation of the DMCA, Internet radio may be a thing of the past. KFJC, KPIG, and RadioParadise may all be goners. Why is this tragic? Because any of these stations are orders of magnitude better than the sorry excuse for radio available on the traditional dial.
Internet radio is routing around an obsolete and unaccountable industrys safely padded environs and making a difference. Corporate radio sounds exactly the same from coast to coast because it is exactly the same. Sit and watch that website for a few minutes; if it doesnt nauseate you, itll damn sure hypnotize you.
Adding to the arsenal of tools deployed by big media is the Copyright Arbitration and Royalty Panel (CARP). CARP met secretly for the past several months and issued the CARP Report in late February. The keystone of this report is steep licensing fees for webcast music. Lets be clear: compulsory licensing is a good idea, consistent with the intent of copyright law. Usury licensing fees for small webcasters is not.
KPIG responded almost immediately with a plea to save the Pig from the digital slaughterhouse:
Independent webcasters such as KPIG are facing a grave threat to our existence. It may be an evil conspiracy on the part of the big record companies and corporate webcasters, ormore likelyits just a dumb mistake. In either case, KPIG could soon be liable for huge music usage fees ($5,000 - $10,000 per month) that would make it impossible for us to stay online. For background on the issue, see The Death of Web Radio? below and the SaveInternetRadio.org website.
Doc Searls, in his article Bizarre vs. Bazaar, eloquently sums up the combination of DMCA and CARP as the destruction of the Net as a commons and its replacement with a plumbing system for the distribution of content (a word hardly used in a shipping context before Big Media got all drooly over The Promise of The Net).
A brief history of copyright
Copyright, until this recent entertainment industry power-grab, has always been a delicatemaybe even precariousbalance between the rights of the author to benefit from his or her work for a short period of time and the rights of the rest of us to innovate and benefit from those works when they fall into the public domain.
The Constitution granted Congress the 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. Originally, the Copyright Act of 1790 established the limited times of copyright protection of 14 years with an option for the author to renew the copyright for an additional 14 years if he or she were still alive. That copyright term was good enough for the first 100 years of intellectual property in the United States. During the next 100 years, Congress extended the copyright term 11 times.
Certain uses of a protected work that would ordinarily be seen as infringing are specifically allowed for education, criticism, etc. These uses are allowed under the fair use provision. The core concept of fair use is that, in general, any use that does not exploit the commercial value of the original is permissible.
The fair use statute recognizes four criteria by which a use can be determined to be fair or unfair:
William S. Strong, in The Copyright Book: A Practical Guide , provides an interpretation for working writers:
The Net allows ordinary citizens to exercise their fair use rights in ways never imagined by the entertainment industry. Subsequently, the reaction is to pressure innovation by extending the copyright term for any given work. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case that will likely determine the legitimacy of the most recent copyright term extension, the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. This law extends the copyright term to the life of the author plus 70 years. In the case of works made for hire in which a corporation owns the copyright, the copyright term is now 95 years.
While one side of the entertainment industry was pushing, an activity that eventually became the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, the other side was pulling. That activity eventually resulted in the DMCA. Designed specifically to control the uses that can be made of published works, the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copyright-protection technology. The result: the entertainment industry controls not only what you see and hear but the methods and devices with which you see and hear it. Even if the copy-protection is circumvented to enable the fair use of a published work, it is prohibited and deemed to be a criminal act.
Digital TV
According to Mike Godwin, digital television is the tipping point in the war between the entertainment and technology industries. Never mind that every time the entertainment industry shoots itself in the foot, the technology industry comes to its rescue. Remember in the 1970s when the movie industry was in a deep funk and that vampire Jack Valenti said that VCRs would kill it for good? As it turns out, the VCR revived the film industry. The film industry was failing not because of customer VCR usage but because they were putting out epically craptacular films. Just like the recording industry todaywhen in doubt blame those dang customers.
Anyway, Godwin says digital television is the flashpoint because its quality (technical, not artistic) is way too good and unlike DVDs, its unencrypted and has to stay unencrypted to be useful. Oh, and the pesky FCC regulations say that broadcast television signals must be sent unencrypted.
The purveyors of digital television think they have the answer: digital watermarks. They think thats the answer for the online distribution of music, and any other digital content as well. Unfortunately for them, in order for a watermark to be used to restrict copying of digital content, consumer devices used to play the content will have to have technology included thats capable of receiving those watermarks. That would require the cooperation of the technology industry, and that cooperation has not been forthcoming.
Godwin cites the theory of Edward Felten, a computer scientist at Princeton, holding that any sort of tagging system that is undetectable by the user will likely be easy to remove.
Digital rights management
Perhaps the weirdest part of all of this is that the technology industry is just as enamored of protecting intellectual property. Theyre just going about it in a minimally different way. Digital rights management (DRM) is the battle cry of the techheads. And where they differ from their entertainment industry brethren is the question of government mandates. The technology industry wants to lock up published content just as badly as the entertainment industry; they just dont want the government (or anyone else) telling them that they have to. Remember that the entertainment and technology industries both lobbied heavily in favor of the DMCA.
And then there are the schizoids, the companieslike AOL Time Warner and Sonythat are so large that they find themselves on both sides of the fence depending which way the wind blows.
SSSCA > CBDTPA
The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), kept on a leash but regularly trotted out by Senator Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, can best be thought of as a sort of appendix to the DCMA. It is clearly designed to further extend legal protections for digital content owned or licensed by enormous media conglomerates.
According to the draft language of the bill, it would be illegal to create or distribute any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies approved by the Commerce Department. Even though MIT professor and RSA Data Security co-founder Ron Rivest has referred to the proposed legislation as the Digital Rectal Thermometer Security Act its really just mandatory corporate welfare for media conglomerates subsidized by the actual creators and consumers of intellectual property.
Felony penalties for distributing copyrighted material without the certified security technologies fully enabled or using a computer that circumvents those technologies are up to five years in prison and fines up to US$500,000.
Even worse, the proposed legislation calls for manufacturers of digital devices and the media conglomerates to collaboratively develop a copy protection system. If, after two years, they cant come up with a mechanism both industries can live with, the federal government will specify a standard. Hollings bill fails to include the actual creators or users of content in any of the machinations.
Should we be surprised that four of Hollings top campaign donors are media conglomerates?
Predictably, the politicians split along party lines over the SSSCA. Or, more accurately, the split is along the lines of entertainment industry campaign contributions. Democrats, who received US$24.2 million in contributions from the entertainment industry tend to support the idea of legislating the protection of copyrighted material in digital form. Republicans, who received a relatively paltry US$13.3 million in entertainment industry contributions usually oppose the SSSCA, claiming it is too interventionist.
In mid-March 2002, the other shoe dropped. Senator Hollings, better known as the Senator from Disney, transformed the SSSCA into the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) and ceased his tip-toeing around. The CBDTPA is real legislation, and enjoys the support of five other co-authors: Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), John Breaux (D-Louisiana), Bill Nelson (D-Florida) and Dianne Feinstein (D-California). Just think, one more author and they could have been the seven dwarves. The CBDTPA would require all digital deviceseverything from fax machines to MP3 players and computers (as well as the software that runs on them)to be equipped with embedded copy protection schemes, approved by the federal government.
Whats most disturbing about this is relatively paltry sum it took to buy this legislation. During the 2002 election cycle, only two of the dirty half-dozen were in the top 20 recipients of soft money from the entertainment industry. So far in the 2002 election cycle, Hollings has received only US$19,000 and Stevens has taken only US$39,621. To get the real story, we have to look back several election cycles:
Senator
2002
2000
1998
1996
Total
Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina)
$19,000
$32,750
$215,284
$43,300
$310,334
Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)
$39,621
$69,900
$109,521
Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)
$49,852
$49,852
John Breaux (D-Louisiana)
$120,920
$120,920
Bill Nelson (D-Florida)
$47,550
N/A
N/A
$47,550
Dianne Feinstein (D-California)
$211,638
$211,638
Total as of 20 March 2002$849,815
Theres no question why Fritz Hollings carried the water for this puppy, is there? But check those senatorial links in the table carefully because they tell the even bigger story of who the top contributing industries were for each politician. In every case, the entertainment industry scored big in the top 20 contributors for every Senator. And remember the 2002 campaign cycle isnt over yet. Not hardly.
So, how much does it cost to get your bill through the Senate? Looks to me like itll come in right around US$1 million.
Enter DigitalConsumer.org
The technology industry was quick to respond to the CBDTPA threat by launching DigitalConsumer.org and its attendant Consumer Technology Bill of Rights. Launched by two of the co-founders of Excite, DigitalConsumer.org is basically trying to protect the fair use rights of customers in digital media. The groups principles, outlined in the Bill of Rights are deceptively simple:
The depth and breadth of support this lobbying group will receive remains to be seen. Some of the precepts are in direct conflict with the interests of some of the largest technology industry members. Microsoft, for example, almost certainly wants to be the digital rights management company of record and is none too keen on, say, items 2, 3, 4, and 5.
A solution
The solution is actually quite simple and requires only three steps:
The basis of the problem is found in a single court ruling: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. In this 1886 dispute, the U.S. Supreme Court found that a private corporation was a natural person under the Constitution and enjoyed the same protections as a citizen under the Bill of Rights. Corporations from that point forward were granted all of the rights and freedoms of a private citizen, yet none of the responsibilities. We made a mistake; hey, shit happens. Its not too late to fix it.
Engage!
is that like an elephant walk?
....it's best to get out of the way.
Note: Call this a scoial experiment.
Of course it's slashdotted by now... Here's a copy out of google's cache...
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
but they did it too. I was reading an article for my silent film class at lunch today, and it described a court case where for the first time filmmakers were forced to pay an author of a book for putting it on screen (apparently a film company had made an adaptation of 'Ben Hur' without crediting or paying the author of the book). This quote from the article struck me: "There was no copyright law to protect authors and I could, and did, infringe on everything", that was Gene Gauntier, who wrote the unauthorized adaptation of Ben Hur. talk about the pot calling the kettle black in this whole distribution-of-content mess. as soon as the technology shows up, people will infringe on copyrights. it happened in 1912, and it'll happen now.
'nuff said
Looks like their server is having a little
trouble. If need be you can get it out of
Google's cache:
ARTS & FARCES internet : When elephants dance
I have a friend who is a drummer in a band just entering th professional scene. This is exactly what I was looking for to steer(sp?) him away from aiming at a big record contract toward alternative approaches to becoming a successful and widely heard musican.
--
What is the sound of this sentence?
*ring* *ring* *ring*
Taco: Hello? .....
Hemos: Hey man! I'm at the disco, you should come over!
Taco: Ahh, I can't...I've, uh... I'm kinda in the middle of something.
Hemos: Awwww, there's plenty of that here. Come on over, and grab Katz on the way, we'll have a lot of fun!
Taco: I don't think you understand.
Hemos: What is it man? What are you -
Taco: I've got a chick now you know, I'm gonna get some real sex for a change, not the usual anal crapfling with you guys down at the disco.
Hemos: But you promised!
Hemos: We were supposed to keep having our fun too, and slowly let Kathleen into the loop after a while. Come on man!
Taco: You know what it's like havin a girl. They get all jealous and shit, I haven't even been able to compile the new KDE release candidate yet! She's taking up a lot of time, I definitely can't come down there, she'll get pissed and I won't get any real sex!
Hemos: I can be all you need, Rob. Just you, me and Jon, we're more than just your buddies, you know
Taco: No buts, Hemos, pardon the pun. For once I don't have to wipe the shit off my dick after I blow a load. Do you know what that's like?
Hemos:
Taco: Do you?
Taco: Didn't think so.
Hemos: Uhm, so Katz just showed up, I think I'm gonna run.
Taco: Yeah, cya.
Hemos: Think we could just have ONE quickie, later?
Hemos: PLEASE!?!?!
Taco: Ehhh.......
Hemos: Come on, me love you looong time!
Taco: *click*
When elephants dance
.mp3 format files on their computers. The copy protection technology employed by the recording industry prevents such transfers by adding distortions to the music of the recordings. The industry insists that these distortions are inaudible when the disc is played on a standard CD player but result in pops when the music is transferred to a computer. In any case, it's usually impossible to tell whether or not a disc includes the copy protection technology; in general, the copy-protected discs are not labeled.
.mp3 player manufacturers could easily defeat the copy protection technology, but they fear doing so would risk prosecution under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which prohibits the bypassing of copy protection systems. In 1999, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that .mp3 players did not violate copyright law because customers have the right to "space shift" music they have purchased.
Posted by Michael Fraase, 3/23/02 at 9:54:46 PM.
When elephants dance, it's best to get out of the way. That's exactly what's happening now as the entertainment industry--the recording, publishing, and motion picture industries, mainly--attempts a worldwide intellectual property power grab with two distinct targets. Think of it: a coup and a lock on all published content in the same year, amazing isn't it?
Target number 1 is the average customer: anyone who purchases software, an audio CD, an electronic book, or a movie on DVD. The entertainment industry sees customers as pirates, plain and simple. In their collective mind's eye, we all have a wooden leg, eye patch, and a filthy talking parrot on our shoulder. While the Constitution grants customers certain rights with regard to copyrighted material, the entertainment industry very much wants to separate us from those rights.
Target number 2 in the sights of the entertainment industry are technology behemoths like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and Apple. These companies, in the perverse worldview of the entertainment industry, make the tools--computers mostly--that allow customers to practice their piracy.
Let me point out that I am a copyright owner, as is everyone else who has ever created a work in tangible form. That's all authors, for short. Authors are almost never members of the entertainment industry club. The entertainment industry hates authors almost as much as they hate customers. Sometimes, especially when authors get uppity, the entertainment industry hates authors much more than customers. Until recently, authors have always been seen to be at least a marginal threat while customers were seen as merely necessary annoyances.
To complicate matters by at least an order of magnitude, the consumer electronics manufacturers--the companies that make stereos, VCRs, and DVD players--have aligned with the entertainment industry. At least some of them, and at least to some extent.
Unfortunately for us--both authors and customers--we're likely to get squished as these elephants dance. The intent of the entertainment industry, believe it or not, is to outlaw personal computers. As security and cryptography expert Bruce Schneier explains it to Mike Godwin: "If you think about it, the entertainment industry does not want people to have computers; they're too powerful, too flexible, and too extensible. They want people to have Internet Entertainment Platforms: televisions, VCRs, game consoles, etc."
Copy-protected CDs
The recording industry is selling shiny plastic discs that contain music that can't be copied to or even played on some customers' equipment. Philips, the owner of the CD format says these discs cannot be called CDs because they do not meet the standard of what a CD is. Sony, one of those weird hybrid companies that, as a member in good standing of both the technology and entertainment industries, finds itself on both sides of this issue says it can't guarantee the audio quality of these discs. The technology used to protect these discs sometimes prevents the discs from playing on computer CD-ROM drives, DVD players, and other devices specifically designed to play standard audio CDs.
Sales of recorded music are down 10% in the United States over the last year. The recording industry blames this downturn not on the economic recession, not on the crappy music that they've released in the past few years, but on Internet piracy.
And it's only going to get worse. Hilary B. Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) told Congress on 28 February 2001 that the practice of copy-protecting audio CDs would expand in the United States. "If technology can be used to pirate copyrighted content," Rosen wrote in her response to a Congressional query, "shouldn't technology likewise be used to protect copyrighted content? Surely, no one can expect copyright owners to ignore what is happening in the marketplace and fail to protect their creative works because some people engage in copying just for their personal use." Her pal, Michael Eisner, head of Disney, said he was tired of being "finessed" by the technology industry, whatever that means.
Unfortunately for Eisner, Rosen, Disney, and the RIAA, personal use--and more importantly the rights associated with that use of copyrighted material--is exactly why copying of copyrighted material is not just allowed, but mandated by the Constitution. That some individuals illegally sell copied CDs or distribute copies of the music on the Internet is immaterial. In fact, fairly casual observation indicates that if customers are treated like criminals they will indeed begin to behave like criminals.
It has become common practice for music-loving computer owners to legally transfer audio CDs they purchase to
Ironically, or probably not,
Moral rights
Interestingly, the act of using the copy protection technology is much more prevalent in Europe. Most European countries, unlike the United States, recognize an artist's "moral rights" in the work they create.
Moral rights are a package of intellectual property rights granted to the original creator of a work, and include:
The right of integrity;
The right of attribution;
The right of disclosure;
The right to withdraw or retract; and
The right to reply to criticism.
These moral rights are separate from the economic copyright that these days generally transfers from an author to a publisher and they can survive the author. The idea originated with the French, who believe that any creative work, by definition, includes the personality and character of the author. Where copyright is a property right that can be transferred, moral rights are part of the author's personality and character and non-transferable.
The first two moral rights--the right of integrity and the right of attribution--are especially important because they are codified as international law in the Berne Convention. The United States claims its intellectual property law complies with the Berne Convention, but this is just two instances where it doesn't.
The most important of these rights is the first, the right of integrity. Basically it prohibits an author's work from being distorted in any way that would harm the author's reputation and dates to the 1957 French law of "droit au respect de l'oeuvre." It's a safe bet that a cross-reference over which the author had no control would be seen as a distortion of the work.
Seemingly, in Europe at least, an artist could make an argument against the production of a copy-protected version of her work on the sole basis of moral rights. Especially in the case of an audio CD to which distortion is intentionally added by the publisher.
In the United States, Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) appears to be taking the point position in questioning the behavior of the entertainment industry. He believes that instead of using copyright to obtain fair compensation for the works they've licensed, the copyright owner industry--including the recording industry--is attempting to "exercise complete dominance and total control of the copyrighted work."
And just how much money does an artist receive in the form of royalties? Use Moses Avalon's royalty calculator to figure it out.
A DMCA rewrite?
Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) plans to introduce legislation that would regulate--and maybe outright ban--copy-protected compact discs. Boucher reportedly has concerns about customers buying copy-protected discs without knowing it and the compatibility problems inherent with the copy protection mechanism. In an interview with Wired News, Boucher said, "The big problem initially is that consumers have no information that is complete and reliable about the disabilities which attend copy-protected CDs. These CDs will not play in DVD players, not play on personal computers (and) not even play on all CD players."
Boucher isn't talking about what kind of legislation he might introduce to accomplish his goal of protecting audio CD customers, and the possibilities are intriguing. At the simplest level, legislation may require copy-protected CDs to carry a warning label. At a more interesting level, Boucher may try to rewrite the DMCA. In fact, Boucher announced that he would introduce such legislation last July and reiterated his commitment to that approach in early March of this year.
Internet radio
Under the U.S. Copyright Office's interpretation of the DMCA, Internet radio may be a thing of the past. KFJC, KPIG, and RadioParadise may all be goners. Why is this tragic? Because any of these stations are orders of magnitude better than the sorry excuse for radio available on the traditional dial.
Internet radio is routing around an obsolete and unaccountable industry's safely padded environs and making a difference. Corporate radio sounds exactly the same from coast to coast because it is exactly the same. Sit and watch that website for a few minutes; if it doesn't nauseate you, it'll damn sure hypnotize you.
Adding to the arsenal of tools deployed by big media is the Copyright Arbitration and Royalty Panel (CARP). CARP met secretly for the past several months and issued the CARP Report in late February. The keystone of this report is steep licensing fees for webcast music. Let's be clear: compulsory licensing is a good idea, consistent with the intent of copyright law. Usury licensing fees for small webcasters is not.
KPIG responded almost immediately with a plea to "save the Pig from the digital slaughterhouse:"
"Independent webcasters such as KPIG are facing a grave threat to our existence. It may be an evil conspiracy on the part of the big record companies and corporate webcasters, or--more likely--it's just a dumb mistake. In either case, KPIG could soon be liable for huge music usage fees ($5,000 - $10,000 per month) that would make it impossible for us to stay online. For background on the issue, see The Death of Web Radio? below and the SaveInternetRadio.org website.
Doc Searls, in his article "Bizarre vs. Bazaar," eloquently sums up the combination of DMCA and CARP as "the destruction of the Net as a commons and its replacement with a plumbing system for the distribution of 'content' (a word hardly used in a shipping context before Big Media got all drooly over The Promise of The Net).
A brief history of copyright
Copyright, until this recent entertainment industry power-grab, has always been a delicate--maybe even precarious--balance between the rights of the author to benefit from his or her work for a short period of time and the rights of the rest of us to innovate and benefit from those works when they fall into the public domain.
The Constitution granted Congress the 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." Originally, the Copyright Act of 1790 established the "limited times" of copyright protection of 14 years with an option for the author to renew the copyright for an additional 14 years if he or she were still alive. That copyright term was good enough for the first 100 years of intellectual property in the United States. During the next 100 years, Congress extended the copyright term 11 times.
Certain uses of a protected work that would ordinarily be seen as infringing are specifically allowed for education, criticism, etc. These uses are allowed under the "fair use" provision. The core concept of fair use is that, in general, any use that does not exploit the commercial value of the original is permissible.
The fair use statute recognizes four criteria by which a use can be determined to be fair or unfair:
The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
The nature of the copyrighted work;
The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted wok as a whole; and
The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
William S. Strong, in The Copyright Book: A Practical Guide, provides an interpretation for working writers:
"As a general rule a critic or reporter should not quote at any one point more than two or three paragraphs of a book or journal article, a stanza of a poem, or a solitary chart or graph from a technical treatise."
The Net allows ordinary citizens to exercise their fair use rights in ways never imagined by the entertainment industry. Subsequently, the reaction is to pressure innovation by extending the copyright term for any given work. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case that will likely determine the legitimacy of the most recent copyright term extension, the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. This law extends the copyright term to the life of the author plus 70 years. In the case of works made for hire in which a corporation owns the copyright, the copyright term is now 95 years.
While one side of the entertainment industry was pushing, an activity that eventually became the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, the other side was pulling. That activity eventually resulted in the DMCA. Designed specifically to control the uses that can be made of published works, the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copyright-protection technology. The result: the entertainment industry controls not only what you see and hear but the methods and devices with which you see and hear it. Even if the copy-protection is circumvented to enable the fair use of a published work, it is prohibited and deemed to be a criminal act.
Digital TV
According to Mike Godwin, digital television is the tipping point in the war between the entertainment and technology industries. Never mind that every time the entertainment industry shoots itself in the foot, the technology industry comes to its rescue. Remember in the 1970s when the movie industry was in a deep funk and that vampire Jack Valenti said that VCRs would kill it for good? As it turns out, the VCR revived the film industry. The film industry was failing not because of customer VCR usage but because they were putting out epically craptacular films. Just like the recording industry today--when in doubt blame those dang customers.
Anyway, Godwin says digital television is the flashpoint because its quality (technical, not artistic) is way too good and unlike DVDs, it's unencrypted and has to stay unencrypted to be useful. Oh, and the pesky FCC regulations say that broadcast television signals must be sent unencrypted.
The purveyors of digital television think they have the answer: digital watermarks. They think that's the answer for the online distribution of music, and any other digital content as well. Unfortunately for them, in order for a watermark to be used to restrict copying of digital content, consumer devices used to play the content will have to have technology included that's capable of receiving those watermarks. That would require the cooperation of the technology industry, and that cooperation has not been forthcoming.
Godwin cites the theory of Edward Felten, a computer scientist at Princeton, holding that any sort of tagging system that is undetectable by the user will likely be easy to remove.
Digital rights management
Perhaps the weirdest part of all of this is that the technology industry is just as enamored of protecting intellectual property. They're just going about it in a minimally different way. Digital rights management (DRM) is the battle cry of the techheads. And where they differ from their entertainment industry brethren is the question of government mandates. The technology industry wants to lock up published content just as badly as the entertainment industry; they just don't want the government (or anyone else) telling them that they have to. Remember that the entertainment and technology industries both lobbied heavily in favor of the DMCA.
And then there are the schizoids, the companies--like AOL Time Warner and Sony--that are so large that they find themselves on both sides of the fence depending which way the wind blows.
SSSCA > CBDTPA
The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), kept on a leash but regularly trotted out by Senator Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, can best be thought of as a sort of appendix to the DCMA. It is clearly designed to further extend legal protections for digital content owned or licensed by enormous media conglomerates.
According to the draft language of the bill, it would be illegal to create or distribute "any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies" approved by the Commerce Department. Even though MIT professor and RSA Data Security co-founder Ron Rivest has referred to the proposed legislation as the "Digital Rectal Thermometer Security Act" it's really just mandatory corporate welfare for media conglomerates subsidized by the actual creators and consumers of intellectual property.
Felony penalties for distributing copyrighted material without the "certified security technologies" fully enabled or using a computer that circumvents those technologies are up to five years in prison and fines up to US$500,000.
Even worse, the proposed legislation calls for manufacturers of digital devices and the media conglomerates to collaboratively develop a copy protection system. If, after two years, they can't come up with a mechanism both industries can live with, the federal government will specify a standard. Hollings' bill fails to include the actual creators or users of content in any of the machinations.
Should we be surprised that four of Hollings' top campaign donors are media conglomerates?
Predictably, the politicians split along party lines over the SSSCA. Or, more accurately, the split is along the lines of entertainment industry campaign contributions. Democrats, who received US$24.2 million in contributions from the entertainment industry tend to support the idea of legislating the protection of copyrighted material in digital form. Republicans, who received a relatively paltry US$13.3 million in entertainment industry contributions usually oppose the SSSCA, claiming it is too interventionist.
In mid-March 2002, the other shoe dropped. Senator Hollings, better known as the Senator from Disney, transformed the SSSCA into the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) and ceased his tip-toeing around. The CBDTPA is real legislation, and enjoys the support of five other co-authors: Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), John Breaux (D-Louisiana), Bill Nelson (D-Florida) and Dianne Feinstein (D-California). Just think, one more author and they could have been the seven dwarves. The CBDTPA would require all digital devices--everything from fax machines to MP3 players and computers (as well as the software that runs on them)--to be equipped with embedded copy protection schemes, approved by the federal government.
What's most disturbing about this is relatively paltry sum it took to buy this legislation. During the 2002 election cycle, only two of the dirty half-dozen were in the top 20 recipients of soft money from the entertainment industry. So far in the 2002 election cycle, Hollings has received only US$19,000 and Stevens has taken only US$39,621. To get the real story, we have to look back several election cycles:
Senator
2002
2000
1998
1996
Total
Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina)
$19,000
$32,750
$215,284
$43,300
$310,334
Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)
$39,621
$69,900
$109,521
Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)
$49,852
$49,852
John Breaux (D-Louisiana)
$120,920
$120,920
Bill Nelson (D-Florida)
$47,550
N/A
N/A
$47,550
Dianne Feinstein (D-California)
$211,638
$211,638
Total as of 20 March 2002
$849,815
There's no question why Fritz Hollings carried the water for this puppy, is there? But check those senatorial links in the table carefully because they tell the even bigger story of who the top contributing industries were for each politician. In every case, the entertainment industry scored big in the top 20 contributors for every Senator. And remember the 2002 campaign cycle isn't over yet. Not hardly.
So, how much does it cost to get your bill through the Senate? Looks to me like it'll come in right around US$1 million.
Enter DigitalConsumer.org
The technology industry was quick to respond to the CBDTPA threat by launching DigitalConsumer.org and its attendant Consumer Technology Bill of Rights. Launched by two of the co-founders of Excite, DigitalConsumer.org is basically trying to protect the "fair use" rights of customers in digital media. The group's principles, outlined in the Bill of Rights are deceptively simple:
Users have the right to "time-shift" content that they have legally acquired.
Users have the right to "space-shift" content that they have legally acquired.
Users have the right to make backup copies of their content.
Users have the right to use legally acquired content on the platform of their choice.
Users have the right to translate legally acquired content into comparable formats.
Users have the right to use technology in order to achieve the rights previously mentioned.
The depth and breadth of support this lobbying group will receive remains to be seen. Some of the precepts are in direct conflict with the interests of some of the largest technology industry members. Microsoft, for example, almost certainly wants to be the digital rights management company of record and is none too keen on, say, items 2, 3, 4, and 5.
A solution
The solution is actually quite simple and requires only three steps:
Revert the term of copyright to 14 years, immediately and retroactive to all existing works.
Recognize moral rights in the works authors create, like every other civilized country on the planet. Make it immediate and retroactive to all existing works.
Prohibit any corporation from owning a copyright. Corporations create nothing; they're consensual hallucinations and exist at our pleasure. I don't know about you, but I'm not much pleased any more.
The basis of the problem is found in a single court ruling: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. In this 1886 dispute, the U.S. Supreme Court found that a private corporation was a "natural person" under the Constitution and enjoyed the same protections as a citizen under the Bill of Rights. Corporations from that point forward were granted all of the rights and freedoms of a private citizen, yet none of the responsibilities. We made a mistake; hey, shit happens. It's not too late to fix it.
YOU ARE A SLAVE
The first sentence of this article really turned me off.
When elephants dance, it's best to get out of the way.
I resent this. When elephants dance (or try to stomp on everybody), I say take them out with a tranquilizer gun. And if that's not possible, be sure that if you go down, you go down fighting.
We must not get out of the way as the media behemoths try to force law after law onto consumers. It's bad enough that they've had a monopoly on new music for the past ___ decades; now they're trying to control us even more.
I say use P2P and don't buy CDs at all. The artists only get a few cents from every CD purchase anyway; the rest goes to the fat paychecks of the moron blue-blooded executives at Sony Music, BMG, etc.
Instead, if you want to support your favorite artist, buy their concert tickets and fan merchandise from their online stores.
I Personally Recommend This Site For Linux Geeks
the arguments without the polemic; and perhaps my family
will understand better why I no longer go to the movies with them and why I'm making mp3s from my ancient jazz LPs.
Best quote: the RIAA/MPAA does not want you to have a computer.
Hello everyone. I have a terrible problem with elephants in my garden. They are dancing and eating everything and pooping everywhere. My neighbor out back has just gotten a permit for a dancing elephant and he doesn't have an adequate fence to keep them performing in his yard. All I have is one of those wooden fences which offers no protection at all. Have you ever seen what a hungry elephant can do to a wooden fence? Or in that matter, a Linux geek in heat?
First they ate the rest of my lettuce, then they ate my peas. Now I have no broccoli, cauliflowers or brussel sprouts. How am I supposed to eat a decent meal? Since they ate my habanero pepper plant that had 3 tiny peppers on it (they ate that with the eggplant, sort of like they were spicing a dish) I don't think pepper spray will slow them down. In fact, they keep dancing back and forth between the basil and the tomatoes now. Do you think these are Italian elephants?
Luckily, most of my soil is hardpan so I don't have giant footprints to contend with but have you ever seen elephant poop? Whoa! talk about your black hills! I tried to get them to go poop in the compost bin behind the shed but have you ever tried to bin train an elephant? Enough said!
Can any of your experienced gardeners help me with my problem? Can you at least tell me how to get them to lose the pink tutus they wear when dancing? Thanks.
--Metrollica
here is googles cached version
It would have been extra work for me to past the URL in the Google search box myself.
They've got no rythym, can cause a lot of damage and get scared by mice...
Eeek Eeek!
The demand to restrict the copyright to 14 years is pretty naive.
The Copyright Act of 1790 provided for a 14-year copyright term, renewable for 14 additional years. I remember reading that life expectancy for five-year-olds (a statistic that ignores infant mortality but does include child prodigies) has not increased significantly in the 200-odd years since that act was passed.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The corp is different, it doesn't create. It is just a very large self-perpetuating overhead. At the same time a corporation is a useful way that large projects get financed, allowing the risk and losses to be split. Companies started as ways of financing risky projects such as a ship of trade goods on a single return journey.
Keep the corporate rights holder, after all we want films like LOTR financed, don't we? However, I agree wholeheartedly with the idea of limiting the length of the rights to 14 years.
Ex post facto laws (making laws retroactive) are illegal as per the Constitution.
Although, given the reparations for slavery case, maybe I'm mistaken.
I support the solution that the original author cites, but making them retroactive is gonna be difficult.
Redhawk
"And Donkeys Might Fly Out Of My Butt"
thelikesofwhich.com
Damn good solution...damn good.
werd to yo motha, muh nizzle.
I didn't mean to be redundant. When I posted this, the original post's link didn't work, for whatever reason. Now, it's my link that doesn't work. Something fishy is going on with Google's cache linking scheme.
Since the link is /.-ed, you can see the page by using this link
enjoy
Hacker Media
What the fuck to the MPAA and RIAA member companies think they're going to do when all computers are encumbered with this new copy-protection technology?
Lucas wants to go 100% digital, from the lens to the screen.
Disney wants to eliminate celluloid from the animation process, most animated features are done largely on computer.
Tell me that all the digital toys the music industry has to play with could be dispensed with in the production of the latest BoyBand video?
So - you're going to take all your creative professionals, encumber the fuck out of their equipment, you'll be increasing your OWN production costs by an order of magnitude - and more since you wont be able to use cheap commodity hardware anymore, because economy of scale will not apply to things that mainstream consumers aren't going to buy zillions of. And who's going to support your encumbered technology? Certainly not the $10/hr MCSE who learned NT and Linux on his homebrew Athalon running pirated software playing pirated MP3s.
Eisner says he's tired of being finessed by the technology industry? I think he's too full of himself. Don't bite the hand that feeds you Mickey.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
You've never had a humble opinion in your life, you dickweed.
I propose a website that hosts selections. Artists pay a small fee to have their content available and listeners rate it. There would, of course, have to be mechanisms to avoid artists artificially raising their ratings, just like ebay does. This web site could even negotiate deals to sell cd collections for the artists.
Actually, this would be an awful lot like Atomfilms does for movies... (if only they used better formats!)
Theater owners have film projectors now which will work for 20 years and cost 1/50th the amount to maintain. Or they can shell out millions for technology that will cost 1/10th the current price in 3 years.
Any theater chain or owner buying digital today instead of 2005 is obviously floating in money.
End result - don't expect any growth in digital movie technology.
Exception - film company owned theaters who can save the money on film production and get a chance to give "their" theaters the film 10 days before everyone else.
[caveat - I'm a lifetime member of Cinema Seattle and have relatives and friends in the film industry]
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Keep the corporate rights holder, after all we want films like LOTR financed, don't we?
NO! Not if it means that I'll be shackeled to a MPAA/RIAA approved device to watch or listen to it. 14 years plus a 14 year extention that costs $'s to get that is all you need. The mega corps. don't have a "RIGHT" to exist, if they can fine, but "we don't need no stinkin' laws" to keep them in business.
Sorry about that... I just finished reading about that dummy in congress. I've faxed and e-mailed my congress-bozos and let them know what I think. You can bet when my local guy comes by to ask for my vote this will be Mentioned.
what if the "moral rights" holder -- who is now an individual rather than a corp -- wants to get compensated for his work? This purported solution has all the compensation problems Napster had but somehow makes us feel better that some corp isn't in the mix.
Despite what they would have you believe, the entertainment industry is remarkably un-diverse in its demographic make-up. Industry analysts have put together an eye-opening report documenting this shocking lack of diversity..
Florbleglomknptht.
Personally, I'm just sick and tired of the antics of the entertainment industry. They have convinced members of our government that we're all criminals and the obvious solution is to shackle all of our computers and electronic devices as a precautionary measure. We all must pay the price for the sins of a few.
The drivel being shoveled out by these corporations is by-and-large not worth my time. Gems in the rough occationally appear, but my disgust with the situation compels me to make some sacrifices. I've purchased my last CD produced by a major label. I've purchaced my last movie ticket and DVD for a major studio film. I'm not going to fuel the machine with my money.
I cannot, in good faith, support an industry that has such contempt for me.
I will continue to fight for the rebalancing of copyright laws.
Join me if you'd like, but I'm not going to scream "Boycott" at the top of my lungs to anyone who will listen. There's plenty of entertainment to be had elsewhere, and I will quietly consume that instead.
... A mandate for Fair Use.
IE something that reads along the lines of "Fair Use rights must be exercisable."
Right now, we have the rights, but the industry is making it so we can't exercise them.
But they are legal citizens.
Read half-way down.
Not that I don't agree with the intent of
your idea, or that of the article.
The problems is lawyers playing Mr. Orwell
with the language, so that the Constitution means
whatever they want it to mean, without changing
a single word. Then again, as always, IANAL.
(You know, with the increasingly large number of
lawyers in the US, you'd think I'd see less 'IANAL', not more)
-Slackergod
My copy says 14 years for copyright.
...
I never voted for a rewrite.
Maybe we should act like the founding fathers and revolt over this issue
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
One of the most immediate ways you can help is to stop perpeutating the linguistic fraud.
http://goatee.net/2002/03#_26tu
02.03.26.tu | propaganda (part 3)
Honestly! I had not intended to return to the frustrating
topic of copyright for some time but Michael Eisner's commentary in
the Financial Times has provided an opportune example of the
misleading usage of the "property".
Abe Lincoln and the internet pirates: The great Emancipator's
forthright defence of intellectual property rights holds true
today.
What was that forthright defense? The statement that the restriction
of speech and ideas, "secured to the inventor, for a limited time, the
exclusive use of his invention; and thereby added the fuel of interest
to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and
useful things." I do not disagree with Abe Lincoln, but I do disagree
with Eisner because while he may laud the principle he has distorted
and abused its application. And those of us that get fed-up with
Eisner and his ilk sometimes lash out at the whole artfully
constructed facade. This is a dangerous position for us to be in; as I
wrote two years ago, "... it's difficult to voice this opinion because
the small encroachments of copyright and patent that led to the
present system are largely unseen. It's a creeping heaviness, but to
complain of the invisible weight is thought to be unreasonable."
However, my own reason does begin to fray when presented with a
continued discrepancy between noble principles and unprincipled
action: the perpetual extension of the original 14 year copyright term
, the censoring of research, the theft of authors works via an
underhanded amendment making all recordings works-for-hire, the
acquisition of mp3.com by Universal which then slashed artist pay by
80%, the decreasing costs of producing CDs but the increasing price of
purchase, the debt many artists are saddled with when producing an
album, the likely destruction of small Internet radio feeds, and the
royalties we all pay to the recording industry when we buy a blank
CD-ROM (regardless of its use!). At times, in exasperation, I think
that the likes of Eisner are not capable of honest argument: they
mouth the words, "freedom, author, consumer, innovation", but their
actions call out, "money and power." (In an ironic twist of naming
duplicity, the law that I wrote my senator about a week ago was
introduced this week as the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television
Promotion Act!) But I digress, I've said all this before, it'll
probably get worse before it gets better, and my goal is to look at
how Eisner effects his spin.
In asserting the importance of physical and intellectual property
rights in a democracy, Lincoln echoed the views of 17th-century
thinkers such as John Locke, whose phrase "life, liberty and
property" inspired the Founding Fathers.
Sorry Mr. Eisner, our Founding Fathers did not equate these limited
monopolies on thought to "property." They approached this topic with
care and concern: a limited monopoly (a detriment) balanced against a
requirement to "promote the progress of Science and the useful Arts"
(a benefit). Evidence of that care can be found in our Declaration of
Independence in which Jefferson wrote of, "Life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness."
It is as American as the apple pie that one may not take off a
neighbour's kitchen ledge.
But ideas are not apple pies. They are more like recipes that can be
exchanged between friends and improved upon: "why fight over a slice
of pie when through cooperation we can double its size?!"
In sum, despite the article's cogent analysis of the problem (including the media companies' true goal of eliminating the personal computer, which I brought up a few weeks ago), none of the proposed solutions will do a thing about it, and I submit they would only make matters worse.
No, no, no. This is not a sig.
His solution is the whole problem. It does not see copyrights as the seed of a vine who'se growth will never stop nickeling and diming freedoms to death untill it is cut off at the root. That's what got us here to begin with. As long as our society accepts that it's morally OK to derive value by restricting the copying practices of others we have doomed ourselves to follow a flawed concept that will always threaten freedom - corporations or not.
I guess that the director can only go into business for himself. No company can own the copyright, so he has to use his personal budget for funding the film. If it flops, he has to declare personal bankruptcy, instead of letting some corporation absorb the hit. How is this supposed to make things better?
I agree with the rest of the article. It's the first time I've seen this stated so well. I'm just curious about how he expects this last point to work.
ps: He should run the Demoroniser over his MS-Word documents before publishing them to the web!
Free unix account: freeshell.org
And that's the honest truth!
If you left it up to the blood-sucking bean counters/executives, they're rather ignore all those uppity authors, and filmmakers, and actors, with their unions, and creative rights, and constant desire for new, expensive equipment, and just focus on milking every last penny from existing properties, and repackaged crap produced by what are essentially slaves, bound to personal service contracts.
I doubt that they care that they're going to raise the price for their own equipment, because that section of the market has traditionally been smaller anyways. They're probably clapping with glee at the thought that independent producers and artists, without the deep pockets that the congolmerates have, will be the ones that are really affected by encumbered, more expensive equipment.
Again, as with the RIAA and the DMCA, we see dinosaurs killing off the competition under the guise of defending copyright. Stupid, stupid, STUPID.
If the copyright period is set to 14 years, and only renewable by the original individual, what would this do to the treatment of artists?
IMHO artists would get a lot more money for their creations, and corps would have to 'court' them in order to keep them, and their art, as an asset. Of course this might lead to treating artists like professional athletes...hmmm.
Oh sure, corps would still go after copyright violators, but more to stay on the artist's good side, not just to keep their own pockets lined.
Yeah, I have a webcomic...
If you read this through you will see how history repeats itself ....
During the early 1800's the rich plantation masters were so close to the rich industrialists that many people wondered how in the heck could people who had so many financial ties become so divided and eventually financed opposite sides of a civil war.
The answer is this, in order for the plantation masters to get control of their slaves - they also had to control and regulate industries that relied on a mobile and skilled work force. (the industrialists) Those who didn't see this thought that the slave states could peacefully get along with the free states - they were idiots.
Today the copyright industries, in order to get control of their copyrights, must regulate the computer and information technology industries that are carrying the economy. Some people also think that the solution is some sort of compromise, but they just don't understand that deriving value by restricting the copying practices of others is immoral and will never go away till we cut the problem off at the root - copyrights. This belief is very harmfull, because the longer we wait, the more costly it's going to be to cut the problem off at the root.
[...]after all we want films like LOTR financed, don't we?
I loved LOTR. But if I have to trade it for my right to running my computer as I see fit, I will do without, thanks.
I say stop buying the tripe they try and force down our throats. What we need is a forum for independent publishers to be able to advertize their artists wares (maybe with a few free mp3's) then sell the CD's right there online. Its not like I will miss buying anything the majors labels have put out lately. Lets all shoot for 50% less sales for the major labels in 2002.
Sales of recorded music are down 10% in the United States over the last year. The recording industry blames this downturn not on the economic recession, not on the crappy music that they've released in the past few years, but on Internet piracy.
Let's face it, Disney wouldn't exist as anything more than a memory, a name for one style of old cartoons, if it wasn't for one thing:
Old enough material is no longer covered by copyright.
Damn near every Disney success in the past 15 years (and even further back really, Snow White was 1939) is not only based on a previous work to a large degree, they make absolutely no bones about the fact that they're 'adapting' someone else's work.
They want copyright extended indefinitely? They wouldn't f**king EXIST if copyrights didn't expire eventually!
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
what if the "moral rights" holder -- who is now an individual rather than a corp -- wants to get compensated for his work?
Tough shit. What European laws call "moral rights," as I understand the term, include primarily the right to be recognized as a contributor to the work. Material compensation is the domain of copyprivilege (©), which expires after life + 70 (under the current laws) or publication+14(+14) years (under ideal laws).
Will I retire or break 10K?
I wasn't sure about the Ben Hur case, so I looked it up (the article I was reading is actually the first chapter of a book called Script Girls: Women Screenwriters in Hollywood, and touches on the copyright issue very briefly). Lew Wallace, the author of Ben Hur was an American, he apparently fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. The case I mentioned is Kalem Co. v. Harper Bros (1911), and was taken all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was decided that current copyright laws also extended to motion pictures. here's the text of the ruling of the case.
From the article:
..."
..."
"Sales of recorded music are down 10% in the United States over the last year. The recording industry blames this downturn not on the economic recession, not on the crappy music that they've released in the past few years, but on Internet piracy."
It's funny, but Mr. Fraase just wrecked his whole bastardization of the music industry!
"... blames this downturn not on the economic recession
Yes, the economic downturn where the comsumption share of GDP only decreased by very negligable amounts.
"... not on the crappy music
It's a simple fact that no matter how crappy the music is, people are going to buy it. Just look at <insert whoever it's cool to make fun of nowadays>.
"but on Internet piracy."
This does seem like the logical end, doesn't it? I mean, nobody wants to be a criminal and so it's easy to justify our actions here, but I know I'm buying at LEAST 10% less CDs now than I was five years ago before I got my first CD-R.
We can't be pirates and then turn around and act all snippy when someone accuses us of being so.
Perhaps that last bit was a crass generalization, but you get my point...
Moral-based copyrights are an extraordinarily bad idea. Fortunately no one had been so stupid as to come up with them when the Copyright Clause was established. (in fact, virtually no one had copyrights then either -- the first law having been enacted less than a century prior)
The U.S. has a far superior utilitarian model. Essentially, it permits copyrights to be established if, and only to the extent that, they serve a public good. Moral rights are backwards, in that they promote the interests of the author as an end unto themselves. However, the genius of the framers was that authors should best be treated rather like cattle. (it's worth noting here that for several years I supported myself entirely as an artist)
A dairy farmer is not interested in the well-being of his animals. He doesn't care if they're happy. He cares about milk yield and quality. If pampering the cows will produce sufficient quantities of good milk that it is worthwhile to do so, he will. If not, he won't. Thus the lack of solid gold cowbells.
Likewise, where the public interest in having a body of works that is freely usable in all possible ways, and that concerns as many subjects as the human mind can imagine is served, copyright makes sense. Creating copyright to provide for artists is stupid -- it harms the public interest, and the public doesn't get anything out of it. Creating copyright to encourage artists so as to increase the number of distinct but comprehensible works, and limiting it so as to permit free use, is far better.
If your intentions are to help artists, you'll do the former. (unless you really think about it, and remember that artists are members of the public too, and rely on existing works constantly) If your intentions are to help the public, you'll do the latter.
Copyright's fine -- in moderation, and for the right aims. This is not a concept that meshes with the silly nonsense about moral rights, however. The author of the linked article is using about the worst means possible to try to serve a public interest, and it'll backfire spectacularly.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
This would be a terrible idea to enact. As soon as this law was enacted, we'd have massive suits by content holders that it was a "taking". Either the government would have to overturn the law or it would have to "justly compensate" each and every holder of any copyright of any value. Bleh.
On the other hand, saying that new copyrights last for only 14 years is not a taking, as a thing not yet created has no value. I think I could accept the tragic loss of public domain we've suffered, if I knew for sure it was a temporary aberration.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I don't see how shorter copyright terms help with any of the problems most people are complaining about.
The problem with this is easly explaned by going to www.cnn.com and doing a search for CBDTPA, guess what this "Big News" or as something that effects the world around you, get a "no matches found". and of course if you look up SSSCA you find one article and it's about Dmitry Sklyarov "ARRESTED HACKER". As you can clearly see the "Conetnt Owners" i.e. the "Big Media" don't want the average joe to find out what is going on... add to your mailing list of congress persons and senators ANY AND ALL media outlets that are not owned by AOL/TW or Disney.. some one has to let the masses know and you can bet your ass it's not going to be them....
Just Limin' Mon
I don't think this is an excellent piece at all. It is a one-sided view of the issue, with the author basically going off on a rant against everything that he doesn't like. Not only is the author extremely biased (an objective article would not have referred to "crappy music"), he is also plain wrong in some cases. For example, he says: "copying of copyrighted material is not just allowed, but mandated by the Constitution". What he says here is that it is mandatory (under the constitution, even!) to make copies of copyrighted material. Not optional, mandatory. As in: NOT making copies is unconstitutional. I have not made a copy of Windows XP yet. Am I violating the constitution? Clearly not.
I must say that when this "Dance" first started, I was somewhat sympathentic to the corporate copyright holders. They have a legal copyright on works, their copyright is being completely ignored, causing them (I thought) a great deal of financial loss. At first glance, they seemed to have a valid case...
.MP3s that I downloaded and ended up not buying the CD for, I no longer do. While I used to think that the giant Hollywood studios and uber-rich recording studios were a necessary evil to bring me quality entertainment, I now think that they are holding down the level of quality that we can expect from artists. While a few years ago a situation like that described in Bruce Sterling's Distraction (where China has destroyed the US economy by placing all English-language IP works in their public domain, available for free download), now I find myself perversely almost rooting for something like that happening.
However, the more that I've read up on the background of this issue, the more the RIAA et. al. have pushed their bone-headed, intrusive, and greedy "solutions" to this "problem", the more I learn about the relationship between distribution corporations and artists, the less and less I care about their plight.
I've actually come to the point where I hope that in the near future I see some of these companys jump into the giant grave they've been digging for themselves and start pulling the dirt in. While I used to have moral qualms about
Maybe it's time to cut Mickey Mouse and PrettyBoy bands out of our economic picture, and let art be done for art's sake?
CC-licensed translations of Japanese fiction: http://tonygonz.blogspot.com/
I thought this was highly appropriate for this article.
k wa ve.jsp?id=regurge01
http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/bin/content/shoc
MOD PARENT UP!
A very insightful comment for something posted on Slashdot. And totally right too.
Despite what thy would have you believe, the entertainment industry is remarkably un-diverse in its demographic make-up. Industry analysts have put together an eye-opening report documenting this shocking lck of diversity. Well worth the read.
is not very far from I (am) ANAL.
Then it's only fair that only Citizens be taxed on their income. There's a tit for tat here, that the Corporate sharks are sure to pounce on, and it may prove to be a Pandora's Box.
I'm no lover of Cpororate Greed^TM but one has to realize that the old addage of 'live by the sword, die by the sword' holds as true today as it ever did.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
And of course, some of them are both sides of the fence. Can you say Sony? AOL-Time Warner seems a likely candidate to follow along too.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
From Biohazard's latest album Uncivilization, track 10 - Domination, is a fearsome collarboration with Slipknot and Hatebreed - 3 of the meanest and hardest motherfucking bands out there, and one fucking mean album - there's also other tracks with Pantera, Type-O Negative, Cypress Hill, Agnostic Front, Skarhead and Sepultura. It's just another Biohazard album that you play like Evan (frontman, bass and vocals) tells ya to: "get off this computer shit, put it in your stereo, tell your parents to go fuck themselves, open the windows, turn up the volume and blow up your neighbourhood". By the time the album finishes you'll be a bloody pulp on the floor.
www.biohazard.com for more info and to get Down For Life motherfuckers.
You can also get a few tracks from Uncivilization at http://artists.mp3.com/artists/295/biohazard.html
Anyways, now you all know that Biohazard is the greatest fucking band in the world, here's the lyrics for Domination (which should be our anthem!):
"The confrontation was not created by the police, the confrontation was created by the people who charged the police. The policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder."
Chorus:
DOMINATION
You can't get me
DOMINATION
You'll never get me
Keep us thinking of how to pay our bills while "they" roam through our lives with flashlights
Keep our attention away from issues that "really" affect our society
While "they" are busy creating problems and offering solutions!
Keep us busy with our "simple" lives
While "they" make decisions in disguise of our benefit.
Chorus
Keep us in the dark about the system, keeps us confused and distracted
Turn your shoulder, I'll never give them total fucking control.
Keep us preoccupied with bullshit while our defenses are lowered
Tighten the reigns and gain control
Confusion, confusion brings profit
Chorus
Broken backs and bloody knuckles
Forgotten fathers and long lost uncles
Who fought for freedom through piles of lies
It was for our rights our ancestors died
War brings profit and profit breeds greed
For those who died in vain, god speed
And to those who rewrite the constitiution
Fuck off and die motherfucker, it's our revolution!
It's our revolution!
REVOLUTION
LOTR paid back the whole series in the first few weeks the first movie was out. Everything to do with DVDs, product licenses, and so forth, not to mention the other 2/3 of the movies, is profit. As far as whether bootlegs are concerned, they'd made back their investment nicely before the bootlegs were even available.
Having the copyright on the movies (and images from them) expire after 14 years is plenty long enough, provided that studios acquire a modicum of taste and try not to make movies that are obviously bad. Moving movies is a major risk only because they don't weed out movies which are not worth making, and because they sometimes throw a huge budget at a movie which has a limited appeal and should be done for what people will pay to see it (since the diehards who will see such a movie won't care much that the budget was low).
Prohibiting corporations from holding copyrights wouldn't be so big a problem; you just let the artists retain the copyright, but finance them (and provide camera teams and such) for a license, with terms depending on what they want. Corporations don't create anything, but it's not like a corporation is founded with pre-existing works, which it then makes all of its money by licensing.
The real issue, though, is what person gets the copyright for something collaborative like LOTR, if corporations can't hold copyrights. It would be like trying to get a non-GPL license to Linux: you contact every single person who did anything on the project and try to figure out what's going on. The editors own the particular cut, but the images in the cut are owned by the animators and camera crews (with the lighting owned by someone diffierent), but all of the acting in the images in the cut is owned by the actors, who also own the voices, except that the audio splicing is owned by the sound editors...
In any case, the ownership of copyrights by corporations isn't much of a problem, if the copyright term isn't related to the lifetime of the original owner. Make it 14 years for any work, regardless of whether it was created by an individual or by a group collectively assigning copyright to a corporation.
an old African proverb and it goes like this:
"when the elephants play, the grass gets trampled."
the elephants are, in this case, 'corporate interests'.
the grass is you and me.
All these fights over copyrights and laws are distracting us from the real problem, which is staring us in the face:
If information products can be shared for free via the net, it will be very difficult for the creators to make a profit. And that means that there won't be many people making new music, movies, books and other information goods.
I think most people, deep down inside, understand this, but they don't like the consequences. They try to think of ways that artists could make money, like selling T shirts, or by private donations, but these can produce only tiny revenues. Or people distract themselves by demonizing the record companies, or the MPAA, or Hilary Rosen. It's more fun to hiss at a villain than to try to do something about the train that's bearing down on you.
We are heading for a very bad situation. The tremendous production we have enjoyed of information goods is mortally threatened. I don't claim to know the solution, but I don't pretend the problem doesn't exist.
Please, pull your heads out of the sand, and face the issue squarely. The problem is not the Hollings bill or the DMCA or the record companies. The problem is that the net may make it impossible to make money producing information goods. That's going to have a huge impact on society in the next few years, probably a very bad one no matter what the outcome. Let's face this reality squarely.
I can't see them spending a lot more though.
The thing is I don't begrudge them the profit so much as with MIB 2 or whatever. With the LOTR, New-Line took a risk. There are far too many "just another action-flick" moview or part n of a proven theme.
Yup, I want a Morgan for my next car. Small numbers, outdated technology. It should be really cheap!
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
Althought the entertainment industry might like us to believe this, it is backwards. The Constitution grants certain privileges to copyright holders, not rights to customers. In fact "customers" (i.e. citizens) have inalienable rights. The are not granted by the Constitution, citizens own their rights.
The privilege granted to copyright holders is the exclusive use of their creations for a limited time. The reason the Constitution grants this privilege is to encourage people to invest the time creating useful or entertaining content. Ultimately this is for the benefit of everyone, copyright holder and consumer alike.
The Entertainment industry consistently distorts this fact for their own use. They like to argue that copyrighted material is Intellectual Property, thereby distorting its true nature to resemble real property. They then continue to argue that distributing copyrighted material is equivalent to stealing. It isn't. Distributing copyrighted material is equivalent to breaking a contract; the contract the Constitution established with the Copyright holder.
An important consequence of the fact that copyrights are a contract is that the contract can be re-negotiated. This is something the Entertainment Industry never addresses in their public arguments. They public agruments go something like "we own this material, we can do what we like with it, and you can't tell us what to do", when in fact the government signed a contract with the copyright holder, and the form of future contracts can be changed. In fact, recent changes to the contract have been in the copyright holder's favor, such as the "Sonny Bono" law, or whatever it was called.
What needs to happen now is for the government to re-negotiate future copyright contracts (i.e. copyright law) in light of recent technological developments, and to strike a balance between the content producers and content consumers.
I'm out of breath now.
I mean, her music sux big time, but her contribution in teaching countless undergrads the basics of semiconductor physics should not be forgotten!!
Britney's Guide to Semiconductor Physics
This pisses me off. A few big companies are buying politicians to transform the internet from a communications medium for everybody into a pipe for delivering the "content" of their choice. What they have already done to broadcast radio in this country, they want to do to the web. Moreover, anything that comes over the pipe we will have to pay for by the minute. Of course my favorite Co, Microsoft is enabling this takeover with their .net technology and their "passport" information "service". And Microsoft has been given a blank check by the current administration.
I don't know that there is anything that can be done about it. The vast majority of people don't understand the situation at all. Those who have an inkling tend to marginalize complaints such
as mine as "conspiracy theories." The thing is, there is no conspiracy. Money is like mass. If you compress enough of it into one small place you get an object that is so attractive that it sucks in all the surrounding money/mass. In the case of mass it's called a black hole. In the case of money it seems to be the fortune 50 plus the republican party (plus those democrats in the pocket of the entertainment industry).
I suspect that once the republicans establish them selves as the sole political party (in charge of all three branches of gov't and owning the media) in November, anything resembling freedom on the internet will rapidly disappear.
-LFL
[PS: the problems is not the republican party per se, the problem is one-party rule. Look what that did to Russia or to Mexico. We've got a stampede on our hands.]
So what about applying the "open source" approach to content?
I've think it would be interesting to release content (book, music, whatever), under something like the GPL, allowing people free use of it: they could copy it, extend it, etc, as long as their usage was not commercial. At that point, they'd have to negotiate a separate license, just like in software.
Has anyone ever tried something like this?
should i really worry if big corporations want to control their vapid product? do i really want to expend any energy to protect my right to copy crap? the answer, for me, is no.
anybody remember the cassette underground? different technology, same goal.
the promise of the net as culture transport isn't being able to steal mediocre mainstream muzak, it about getting out from under that shit altogether.
no, i don't want to pay for garbage... but i don't really want it for free, either.
I cannot believe that there is not more public outrage about this issue. It's likely that most people really don't know that this is going on. They basically passed the DMCA before the public at large could really get a handle on the situation.
It seems that the vast majority of "Net savvy" individuals are quite alarmed that the Senate is even discussing something like the CBDTPA. However, I don't think that the online community as a whole can do much other than stall for time by making noise.
I think if put to a vote, most Americans would vote to change the law to PROHIBIT COPY PROTECTION. There's no way we should let the big industries decide our digital rights.
Anyway, I put up a website soliciting comments at http://www.protectfairuse.com/ I hope to collect comments in bulk and send them to the boneheads considering the CBDTPA.
We ought to be informing everybody we know about the issue and encouraging them to send their comments to Congress.
Someone mentioned starting to hit the news media and try to get them to start running stories on the issue. I'm writing our local TV stations right now.
I'm watching a pirated copy of LOTR right now as I type this message. I've seen it three times in the theater and plan to buy the DVD when it comes out. Am I a theif?
I'm suprised that there isn't more of a public movement to re-examine the lengths of copyrights or what purchasing a work really is or should be. The Entertainment industry would rather have us not think about these things. They got the lengths of copyrights extended to 90 years (a patent lasts 17 yrs) back in '98. Probably the result of some closed-door meetings in smoke-filled rooms with the industry lobbies and their Congressmen.
Why should we put up with all this crap? We're basically letting them call us a bunch of theives. They have the gall to assume that their phylosophy on copyright law is the correct and true way.
We pay multiple times for the same media. We pay when listening to the radio, when watching TV. How often are we not bombarded with their advertising? How many previews did you sit through the last time you were in the theater?
I think the industries involved need to figure out a way that I can watch TV without advertisements if I happen to own the movie that they're showing. The radio should not play adds before or after the music that I already own. That's how rediculous the CBDTPA is.
They shouldn't be able to do this to us, but they will if we don't start talking to non-techie people out there and getting people informed about their dissapearing rights.
I'd call 20+ years' life expectancy increase rather significant...
Life span != life expectancy. The natural life span of an average person who has already entered puberty has remained roughly constant at around 80 years over the last couple centuries. Most of the increase in the "life expectancy" statistic is due to decreased infant mortality. If you can find real evidence of increase in life span (the difference being that span doesn't count infant mortality), please point me to the URL.
Besides, even if life span has increased by 20 years, how do you reconcile this with a copyright term extension of over triple that?
Will I retire or break 10K?