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Universal, Sony Cutting Prices on Downloaded Music
Don Symes writes "Sony Music and Universal appear to be getting ready to allow downloads of singles for $.99 and albums for $9.99 without crippleware or restrictions on personal copying/burning." Another semi-interesting piece submitted by several people is this propaganda from the recording industry. 2.8 million copyright-infringing CD-R's were seized in the U.S. last year (9 million world-wide); from that the IFPI extrapolates that 950 million copyright-infringing CD-R's were actually sold, world-wide. How do you get from 9 million to 950 million? Mostly hand-waving .
You're right. From the article:
"The downloads contain watermarks that are designed to stay with any digital copies made of the song, enabling authorities to identify the original buyer."
2.8 million copyright-infringing CD-R's were seized in the U.S. last year (9 million world-wide); from that the IFPI extrapolates that 950 million copyright-infringing CD-R's were actually sold, world-wide. How do you get from 9 million to 950 million? Mostly hand-waving.
I can only assume that Michael doesn't actually understand what the numbers he's quoting mean. Hard to believe, I know. 9 million == number actually seized. 950 million == estimate of how many actually produced and illegally sold.
Obviously it's difficult to have hard numbers about what CDs were NOT seized, but who thinks that it's unreasonable to claim that only 1 out of every 100 illegally produced CDs sold are actually found and confiscated?
In fact, it surprises be that it's as high as 1/100.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Liquid Audio.
These aren't MP3s. They use the Liquid Audio format, which means I won't be buying them any time soon.
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
It should be noted that the files are NOT released in a open format, but in Liquid Audio.. For which, to my knownledge, there is no Linux player. So its still a Windows-only format..
Actually, I am familiar with what they are doing and know for a fact this statement is inaccurate. They are authoring the files once and making the same tracks available to all of the various retailers. The authored content is not unique for each retailer, much less unique for each user, which would be required to embed a watermark of this type.
The liquid system did this in the past, but when you're serving thousands of mult-megabyte files, uniquely IDing the track for each consumer is not feasible.
This is an old problem in research that has already been solved by the "Rhino problem". I'm not saying this is the method they used, but it might be of interest to some of you.
The problem is how to count the number of Rhinos in the wilderness when you know you can't find them all and count them.
The solution is to capture 100 Rhinos. Tag all of the Rhinos and then release them. After a period, you go back out and capture another 100 Rhinos.
Let's say that out of the one's you've captured, 10 have your tags on them and 90 don't. From this you can extrapolate that you have 10 times the number of Rhinos in the wild than you originally tagged, or 1,000 Rhinos.
Don't know if they used the method or not, but its normally accepted as good research methodology.
In the pirate report (the last link to a pdf file) IFPI says that amount of pirate CDR recording increased in Denmark during the year of 2001.
However, it was recently made legal to make digital copies of CDs and it has been so for the entire year 2001. You can even borrow CDs at the library and copy them at home legally.
It is still illegal to sell such copies, so it is possible IFPI is right and danes are too stupid to just borrow from the library and friends, and instead buy copies of real pirates. But it doesn't seem likely.
I've been a happy EMusic subscriber for months now and I can't see getting rid of it.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
That's not how watermarking works. A good example is the DigiMarc stuff for images. You can crop the image, move hunks of it around, print it out and rescan it and you can still derive the watermark.
Watermarking schemes are not foolproof, but it takes a much larger fool than changing formats to trick em.
No really, I'm curious.
They are (apparently/somehow) protected against computer-to-computer copying, but
So wherein lies the problem exactly?
Well first of all, its convenient that you left out definition a from www.m-w.com which is exactly the same as the first one from dictionary.com. Secondly, from a legal standpoint, copyrighted materials aren't even property. They are works for which the government has granted someone an exclusive liscense to control the distribution of the work for a limited period of time. Insisting that copyright infringment is "theft" is just a convenient way to distract people from the real nature of the crime.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
128kbps Liquid Audio sounds better than 128kbps mp3. Just like 700kbps mpeg4 is watchable at 640x288 while 700kbps mpeg2 looks like CRAP at 640x288.
>You don't have to deprive someone of something to be guilty of stealing.
So, if I, as a parent, stopped my child's allowace because they misbehave, I've stolen it?
Does a murderer steal lives?
Does someone who is greedy and buys all the CDRs in the city (this happened where I live) steal them?
Does someone who makes a profit steal it? I mean, there is no law saying you are entitled to make a profit on anything whatsoever.
Does someone who decides not to give a dollar to the bum on the street in fact steal the dollar from the bum?
No. You are confused on the issue and I reccomend you consult the dictionary on this matter. Perhaps a synonym might help.
This is the definition of piracy. Notice no mention of theft, or its synonyms, unless your name is BlackBeard or Bin Laden.
Dictionaries were very careful to clear this up in the past because people were beginning the confuse the issues. I am happy they've done so. Notice how dictionary.com went out of their way to use the verbose sentence "The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material" rather than "Stealing Intellectual Property". That's because they saw the difference.
If you read the Berne Convention, the international foundation of modern copyright law, you'll never see the words steal or theft. The world's lawyers were careful to separate the meanings even though they have the most to gain. If english teachers, lawyers, judges, and many other respected people around the world firmly agree on this issue, why don't you?
I think you'll be very interested to know that in my country we are allowed to buy CDRs from America (bypassing a special media tax) and burn a copy of any album we like at a friends house and take it home. This is a law agreed to by the people, the lawyers, the artists, and the media companies, even when this loophole was explicitly pointed out once (we've all agreed to the law a second time, even after the rush on the border for CDRs). If any of these people considered that stealing (which, by your definition, it is) they would have most certainly not have agreed to allow this to happen.
Put simply, piracy is (for example) copying a song when you shouldn't, plain and simple. Stealing is when you take a car for a joyride. The difference is remarkable.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC