Slashdot Mirror
Tech Industry Versus Content Industry
gambit3 writes "Business 2.0's Cover Story this month asks whether Andy Grove is a Pirate. Interesting read on the mainstream media about the battle between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Read about in Business 2.0"
To wit: "pirates" use some technological device to "steal" copyrighted material, which leads to an intrusive technological "solution" to the problem (i.e., CD's that break your computer and damage your speakers), which leads to some ingenious workaround, which in turn leads to an even more cumbersome technological countermeasure...
What the Content folks need to realize is that eventually, this fedback mechanism will hit a point of diminishing returns, and the anti-"piracy" measures will make the media more trouble than it's worth to purchase and use, and consumers will simply stop buying, and seek out some other form of entertainment, like going outside and playing softball...
You know, maybe the Tech v. Content struggle isn't so bad after all... :D Seriously, though, it would probably behoove the Content industry to try rethinking the idea of intellectual property as it is presently understood, before their frantic efforts to protect their "property" end up wiping out their source of profit.
It would be awfully tempting for a low-paid movie theatre projectionist to accept a few bucks from some quick-thinking pirate, and sneak a high-quality digital video camera into the projection booth for some quick-n-dirty pirated videos of first-run movies!
How long before DMCA-types start mandating surveillance of projection booths in all theaters, and a national licensing/registration system for projectionsts? Laugh now if you will, but check back in 6 months...
Disney's Michael Eisner and others say Hollywood will defend its intellectual property at all costs
It's obvious that he will do whatever it takes: he is already going as far as bribing our politicians, giving free speech rights only to the wealthiest, and destroying our democracy.
And what for? Disney rarely if ever produces anything other than useless fluff. The company is optimizing the same thing the drug industry is optimizing: a quick, addictive product that gets our children hooked early and lacks intellectual content or social merit. Disney shouldn't be censored, but we certainly don't need to make any special effort to protect their trashy content beyond the minimum.
I almost cried tears of joy when I read the transcript of W. Brian Arthur (economist), Andy Grove (Intel chairman), and Lawrence Lessig's (law professor) discussion about these issues. A lot of the same points are made that you see daily here on /., and a lot of comparisons to the nineteenth century railroad industry and various information revolutions of the past 200 years.
A very interesting read that helps put current events in an historical context...
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
... then this could hurt the US tech industry in more ways than one. Groves is right when he says in the article "Suppose I use my personal computer now to create a playlist and burn music onto a CD. Suppose in three years, the only PCs on the market won't allow me to do that? What is my incentive to buy a new computer?" And what's the incentive then for companies to invest in R+D for new consumer devices, if they can't be used because of zealous copyright laws?
Someone should point out an example to Sen. Hollings: the eurobond market. In the 60s and 70s some too-stringent US regulations meant that it was difficult for foreigners to use the US capital markets to sell bonds in US dollars. So the market grew up in Europe instead, where the trade remains enormous today. Overbearing copyright legislation could do the same thing: the innovation in creative industries could easily move abroad to a more relaxed regulatory environment.
(BTW, this was a very good article - although the number of cookies the site tried to place on my machine was ridiculous - about 20, just for reading one article, sheesh. How about some legislation against that?)
Let the tech producers that enable such products as Toy Story, or whatever else CGI driven film, or even, say, a CD that exploits a sonic effect, or a book that utilises a typesetting tool charge these media bozos a per-frame, or per-second, or per-page royalty.. enforceable via the very hardware protections that they are clamoring for.
Even better.. how about a CGI actor's union that charges a per-actor fee for all of the 'extras' in the background of scenes in films like The Mummy, or Star wars?
If we choose to strike back along these lines, the Eisners of the world will be begging for mercy by the time we're done with them. Just go crazy with licensing terms, and let 'em bend over.
Fire with fire, I say.
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
"Piracy is the killer app."
This is interesting; the other two killer apps, pr0n and games, were NOT so terrified about piracy - or they didn't have so much power.
Come to think of, we're talking about the *entertainment* industry here. Stop reading for a second and think "entertainment"... ok, now how does this fit with all the big words/phrases like "intellectual property", "innovation", "loses of billions of dollars"...? If Disney goes bankrupt tomorrow, how will the life of the average American change? Will millions of people starve, or freeze to death? Extend to African, Asian etc.
I think all this has gone way out of proportions.
if you use a good enough junk-filter, slashdot.org will display a single, *blank*, page
20 years would be better. Some kinds of works take 3-5 years to develop.
My favorite part:
And it won't have to be pirate-proof. Copyright, after all, has always been a leaky vessel. Publishers have managed to tolerate the sharing, swapping, reselling, and lending of books. The software industry figures it loses $12 billion a year to piracy, but it hasn't called for anything like the sweeping controls Hollywood seeks. The recording industry, on the other hand, tried to develop an elaborate technological security regime; it proved unenforceable. "We lost two years," says Eric Alben, chief lobbyist for RealNetworks, which supplies streaming software to the recording industry. "And in the interim, pirated music proliferated." When the major record labels finally launched their own online services, MusicNet and Pressplay, they imposed so many restrictions that few customers have signed up.
I agree with the media industry in some areas: Yes, I believe in purchasing the CDs that I listen to (although I promptly rip them and then never use the CDs again). Yes, even the middle-man between the artist and the consumer deserves to make a buck or two. But just because some people are stealing doesn't mean they have the right to invade everyone's life. Every other industry seems to be able to come up with adequate (not perfect, but good enough) methods of reducing the impact of theft. But the recording industry goes crying to Congress when they start seeing a bit of piracy.
There are changes coming, and I really hope the recording industry figures out a good way to take advantage of it without screwing up everyone else.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
The US entertainment industry treats the average criminal as a consumer.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
On several occasions I've witnessed people blatantly downloading songs into local storage. They claimed the copy was of poor quality, but they clearly were humming the melody and remebered the words. Sometimes other people would hear and start humming too, thus proliferating the illegal copies to other pirates.
This must be stamped out. The recording industry is working with goverment to mandate mind control devices to eliminate people enjoying music without fair and equitable payments to the rightful copyright holders. Maybe then we can stop the tradgedy of the children of record company executives going hungry.
We must always be vigilant and stop commiting these henious crimes against the companies who created music and merriment.
One of the earlier posts mentioned that Time needs to cover a story like this - and then it dawned on me how very true that is. The mainstream media have covered very little of the consumers' side of issues such as Fair Use, DCMA, or any other "us vs. them" issues, especially those involving their advertisers ... We will never see our side of the story covered by Time or on CNN because their paychecks are by the media/recording industry/producing industry. Unless we (the users/consumers) start making all kinds of noise about our rights and how we want to use music and digital media, nobody will hear a damn word except for the blather from politicians like Hollings or whats-her-name from the RIAA... mainstream media only reports what is important to their parent companies...
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
This part of the article I found rather interesting, as far as the possible potential of using the new wording in the 95 year copyright act. This could really cost Disney a lot of money if we could find the right people (descendants of the original authors) to sue them.
What am I talking about? Notice the words I bolded in the bottom section - "and applied retroactively". If this 95 year extension is applied retroactively, then aren't quite a few Disney movies now based on works that had fallen into the public domain, but now possibly (due to the retroactive wording) would be considered to now actually be under retroactive copyright at the time they were 'pirated' by Disney? Thus making Disney's claims to things like The Jungle Book, Pinocchio and others, completely void, as they were stolen from people who are now protected by this retroactive copyright? How far back does this retroactive thing go?
"Since 1960 the term of copyright -- originally 28 years -- has been extended 11 times, most recently from 75 to 95 years, and applied retroactively. It is ironic -- and deeply pertinent -- that when motion pictures themselves were fairly new, Hollywood dipped liberally into the public treasury it has since done so much to reduce. Many of Disney's classic children's movies were based on stories, like Pinocchio , on which any copyright claims had lapsed. Had the current law been in effect in 1939, David O. Selznick would have required permission from Emily Bronte's heirs to make his film of Wuthering Heights, a book written in 1847."
While reading this article, I stopped at one point and thought:
If I go and buy a washing machine- pay all of the cost up front and it is 100% mine, once I've left the store (assuming the vendor isn't going to install it for me) they don't care what I do with it. I could never use it to wash clothes, just as a big drinking fountain, and nobody (except maybe those who saw me do so) would care.
If I walk into a car dealership and buy a brand new Porche (or whatever)- again pay all of the cost upfront- the dealer doesn't care what I do with it. If I drive it home and disassemble it for parts, there's no issue someone else will take up with me (except the police when I try to drive said car on the roads after its' no longer street legal, ofcourse).
So what does Hollywood really want? They can do the "we care" controls: as the article stated, streamed content alone could handle that. As of today, the technology exists to prevent consumers from working their will on Big Media's content even after it has arrived in the home. So why did the have the CBDPTA introduced? What has them so scared of even their own shadow they want DRM in every device, including handhelds too small for media and camcorders? What is the real point of the restrictive legislation?
The only answer I can think of is very, very frightening. They realize that their billion-dolar studio lots could very easily be turned into housing subdivisions right now, because computer technology has advanced so far that anyone with a decent new machine and some rather easily obtained software & hardware can make movies to the same quality as they do, but at a far lesser cost. And no doubt, this keeps Eisner (& co) awake at night: I'm sure he knows the difference between Disney's Peter Pan and his Peter Pan 2 leave poor Walt doing 1 million RPMs in his cryogenic chamber.
What the big Hollywood studios fear the most from technology isn't piracy (or at least, that isn't their main concern right now); I am rather certain they wake up each morning, wondering what they're going to do to keep their trust alive when everyone with a camera and a PC can be a movie studio. I think they believe they've gone this far by buying up all of the big talent in both producers and actors, and I don't see why they're so worried that some amatuers might up stage them (after all, Blair Witch didn't do all that well, did it? Only grossed a few millions, not the hundred millions of the blockbusters.)
Do you like Japanese imports?
(To the moderators - no shite, it's offtopic. I can't help but think these are the same people who bitch that Taco controls the content of the site. It's news, and the threadsize is pretty good indication that it's interesting news to a sizable group here on Slashdot).
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Now I'm hard pressed to find anything worth my time to watch or hear. All the big Networks seem to rush to make copies of the crap that the one of their competitors made. The recoding industry keeps pushing crap out onto the market. The Movie industry keeps pushing out crap.
For the past five or six years I've just about completely stopped watching TV or buying CD's. I rarely even go to see a movie in theaters now.
As far as I'm concerned the only thing that will hurt me is the crippling of technology that will come from the Disney bill.
I can live with out the media companies. Can they live with out the consumer?
Now let's see an article like this in TIME magazine. Something more mainstream.
:P
Not gonna happen. TIME is part of AOL/Time/Warner, a giant MEDIA company that makes its money by generating copyrights. Err generating stuff that's protected by copyright.
This is the biggest problem we face when fighting this. There aren't any giant media corporations that are independent of the content industry.
FOX likes the law and makes TV shows and movies. Vivendi owns CBS (I think) and makes records and movies (Universal). Disney owns ABC, and GE owns NBC. Finally AOLTW owns CNN. The only possibility I could see is NBC owned by GE which makes machines, not strings of bits.
So, the problem is that the government has let the media concentrate itself into a few giant corporations and they are filtering this news. This is something that most people would hate if they knew about it, but most people don't read and if they do, it's one of the major magazines or websites that are already owned by the giant media conglomerates. That means that most people will not be able to find out about this. I wonder if people here paid for a PSA about this whether the networks would even run it.
To me this is proof that there isn't the major media companies aren't watching out for the "little guy" because if they were, this would have been page-1, top-of-the-hour news in every corner of the media world. Especially since this kind of law will cause loss of privacy and give corporations an extreme amount of control over peoples' lives.
So, don't ever expect the "media" to take our side in this and actually report this stuff. The "media" is just another arm of the "content industry". Also, it isn't even that I want them to take our side in this. All they have to do is accurately report it, and even if they're putting a positive spin on the bill, people will figure out how bad it is. So, the only option they have is to never report on this at all. Hence, it will not happen. Remember that, and spread the word yourself.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
According to a disclaimer in the story in that magazine, Business 2 is owned by AOLTW...
AOL bought Time Warner, and it shows in the corporate strategy. Business 2.0 is owned by Warner Bros., part of AOL Time Warner. This article could appear in Time, ALSO owned by AOL Time Warner.
Realize that AOL is a content and bandwidth player. They sell things online. They acquired Time Warner since their problem FOR YEARS had been a lack of content. Even Compuserve and Prodigy had internal content. Time Warner provides a wealth of content that AOL can sell through to their members.
AOL wants to drive people onto their network and have them buy Time Warner content. MPAA/RIAA garbage that causes people to lose interest in doing so is not in their interest.
Remember, AOL Time Warner has a great Internet distribution mechanism in place, AOL.
AOL's unique position as a tech/content company puts them in the position of OFTEN being on our side. Nevermind that their network isn't for users like us, they are putting money into Linux servers (with likely Redhat support contracts), Mozilla (and AOL's use of Mozilla is going to force everyone into standards compliance), etc.
We have a strange friend here...
Alex
my favorite is when artists who support the stuff START gettting big because they're doing it.
John Mayer is this posterboy of this phenomenon. he started off locally and posting mp3s on mp3.com, and the next thing he knows, he's on conan obrien, leno, vh1 mtv, etc...
check him out if you get a chance. his 2 cds are the only one's I've bought in the last 4 years- I mainly listen to hippie music from the 60's and blues.
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
Looking for a political alternative ? Maybe we, the "knowledgeable few" should start acting responsibly, and above all in a united manner against the corporate enemies of progress. By progress I'm talking about the free exchange of cultural "goods" worldwide so that even the poorest can - enjoy/learn from - all these massive resources that come from those of us who have access to permanent links to the Net. It doesn't mean that new content will disappear, it means that those who can afford it, share it! The middleman has to go and that is why he is fighting tooth and nail to keep his privileges through legislation that he is trying to get passed thanks to money-based lobbying. I am no commie retard but it is about time that we, the tech heads, took over some of the power whose abuses we are always complaining about! Of course they wield big bucks and, as they say, money talks. The only way around this is to encourage (inform!) artists to refuse any arrangement with the middleman, and make sure they are appropriately rewarded. Rewards nearly always come in the form of royalties on sales. What are we waiting for to create an independant paypal-like micro-payment system based on what people actually "consume" ? You can bet the major pigs are busy trying to make sure they set it up first and then lock us into it. Nothing can change if you don't start by BOYCOTTING these companies. For me, this doesn't mean punishing yourself and your friends by not going to see the latest movie in a theatre, but getting more out of what is already spreading through alternative networks (and which is what you really want, not what some marketing asshole has decided to let us see). Not starving the creators of content, but pushing them to realise their own responsibility in the current situation. Digital Rights Management ! HAH ! How many times do I have to pay for something before I have the right to download a copy of it in a different format because the medium has changed ?
Look, the content industry is doing some disasterous things to copyright, granted, but it really isn't something that should be front and center right now. In case you forget, we're fighting a war in Afghanistan because we believe that the coordinators of some Kamikaze attacks on us happened there.
It's precisely because of that fact that we should be paying attention to this kind of stuff... it's my opinion that our government is now *deep* into the "opportunism" phase of post September 11, where our government can get all sorts of crap laws they wanted to get passed anyway, all in the name of "fighting terrorists". From oil drilling in "ANWAR" to funding Columbian shadow governments to new provisions in attorney/client privileges, it's all shady fucking bullshit and I'm kinda ashamed to be an American right now.
~jeff
:)
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
the article actually mentions that point but presumably Disney would refuse to comment, even though most of their success seems to of been as a result of other peoples work and "IP".
Many of Disney's classic children's movies were based on stories, like Pinocchio, on which any copyright claims had lapsed. Had the current law been in effect in 1939, David O. Selznick would have required permission from Emily Bronte's heirs to make his film of Wuthering Heights, a book written in 1847.
funny how times change
For a moment, I thought Sheila Copps had an orgasm.
Thank you for that mental image. I was worried I was going to be able to sleep tonight, but you cured me of that.
TIME is part of AOL/Time/Warner, a giant MEDIA company that makes its money by generating copyrights.
Business 2.0 is owned by AOL-TW as well..
Yup, felt it strongly in Toronto. I woke up to find my air mattress sliding around, and looked up to see the hanging light swaying much more than normal. It came in a couple of waves 5-10 seconds apart if I'm not mistaken.
However I'm on the 30th floor of an apartment building, and the building is always swaying a bit, the machine room right above me puts some funky resonances into the building every so often.
So I concluded that there was simply a 70 mile per hour wind gust outside, and that my air-mattress was perfectly resonant with it and thus shaking more than normal. I fell right back to sleep. I only gave the thought of an EarthQuake a few seconds consideration, and until I saw these posts here, didn't even realize it was one!!!
Reminds me of the time I was in SF and a 5.x happened. I was in the shower/bathtub, and I heard a rumbling from above. I simply thought it was some big football player or fat guy running around like a madman in the apartment above me!! LOL. It wasn't until later in the day that I found out it was an earthquake.
Maybe next time I'll be able to recognize it for what it is.
Europeans are throwing a tempertantrum that Israel is defending itself.
Up until 18 months ago the kill ratio of Palistine to Israel was 20 to 1, it has only recently come down to 3 to 1. This is not self defense, it is slaughter.
Europe is joining the fray by attacking Jews in their own country.
Judging Europe based on the actions of a few idiots, is like judging the US based on the actions of Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh.
Your world view is very narrow and only serves the purpose of spreading fear, uncertainy and doubt. This is the exact response Bin Laden is looking for. He wants us to live in fear, he wants us to distrust our nieghbors, he wants us to overeact so our nieghbors will distrust us, we have done exactly that and you are perfect example.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power - Benito Mussoli
20:1 is not terribly surprising given the disparity in training, unity and material, no? It's not like there is one Palestinian resistance movement; there are multiple rival organizations, and there's probably a fair bit of duplication of effort. I suspect that the various Colonial wars (Brits. vs Zulus and Sudanese -- think Khartoum) were pretty one-sided in loss ratios, as well.
It also doesn't take a genius to realize that standing in a street, lobbing rocks with a slingshot at troops, is not a terribly great military tactic. Nor, for that matter, is standing in a a street and firing an assault rifle at a buttoned-up Merkava(*). Of course, both may be useful POLITICALLY. Notice, for instance, that Palestinian funerals tend to be political rallies and propaganda events...
(*) Given the questionable Israeli habit of sending tanks through hostile cities mere scores of feet from enemies, and the amount of explosives in the West Bank -- TNT-laden mortar shells and improvised explosive compounds -- it's surprising that they've not lost more. The PA has tried to import RPGs through Iranian channels, but apparently hasn't been too successful.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Hollywood (the studios) don't produce content, they control it. A few "content people" like to think they're on top but people like Spielberg are small time next to the likes of Eisner and Valenti.
Right up there with "Capitalism's worst enemies are successful capitalists."
Dyolf Knip
Cops kill more criminals than vice versa. Does that mean the criminals are the good guys and the cops are engaged in "slaughter"?
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
I'll agree on the second and third points, but drilling in ANWR was a good idea before 9/11 and is even more important now. Depending on the Middle East for our energy needs is insane, and if using 2000 acres out of 15 million acres of essentially frozen wasteland can reduce that dependency, I'm all for it. Long term, we need to shift to renewable energy sources, but until that happens we need to minimize the economic harm that can be inflicted by nations filled with millions of people who hate us (arguably for legitimate reasons, but that's not relevant).
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Forgetting for the moment that no evidence exists to show that the current levels of piracy are actually hurting the industry's bottom line, I still can't believe some of the FUD they sling:
Boston-based Internet research firm Viant puts the daily worldwide number of unauthorized movie downloads at 350,000.
Where the hell does that come from? Even a highly compressed divix rip is about 500mb. I've never downloaded one for that reason. If this statistic is to be believed, there are hundereds of thousands of broadband users doing nothing but downloading rips 24/7.
Really, this is just unbelievable. Reminds me of the "research" the plaintiffs did in the original DeCSS case. IIRC they wrote in the brief how it was "simple and easy" to pirate a DVD with divx and that the average home-user could turn to piracy with no headache. Under cross-examination, it came out that they actually had to hire two consultants for their case study and it took them 2 days.
These people are dispicable. Collectively they are the microsoft of culture: a corpulent oligarcy pumping out mediocre to poor products and fighting like mad to keep their control over the creation and distribution of content.
Howard Dean for president
Hmm..Ok you got me there. I wonder if it will show up in the "major" shows and magazines sometime.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
It should be mentioned. When you consider how much money people spend on "interactive digital devices" every year (which is almost anything that gets plugged in or runs on batteries) and how important they are it is a big deal. When an industry wants to slow down technological progress and take control of huge numbers of things you interact with every day, it is a big deal. I also think that these kinds of controls are what the government would like to have to fight its war on terrorism. The same control you use to stop people from copying things illegal is the control you use to stop people from conspiring to commit terrorism.
Also, to everyone who pointed out that B2.0 is ownd by AOLTW, you got me. My bad. I missed that.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Cops kill more criminals than vice versa. Does that mean the criminals are the good guys and the cops are engaged in "slaughter"?
There is a big difference between fighting crime in the streets and an occupation force attempting to suppress ressistance to an oppressive government.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power - Benito Mussoli