Slashdot Mirror
Tim O'Reilly Says Piracy is Progressive Taxation
Idmat writes "In Tim's latest opus, he reflects on the lessons of his experience as a publisher: (1) Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy, (2) Piracy is progressive taxation; (3) Customers want to do the right thing, if they can; (4)Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy; (5) File sharing networks don't threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing publishers; (6)"Free" is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service; and finally, courtesy of Larry Wall, (7)There's more than one way to do it. "
But I agree with your comment.
Here's a quote from David Bowie
Trolling using another account since 2005.
You can find several O'Reilly books in PDF and HTML on Kazaa. Is it not a similar "loss in possible sell" for them just like software?
kedi
Someone who actually understands that other causes, like shoplifting, cost the MPAA/RIAA more money than pirating.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
The National Insurance Crime Bureau reports that insurance fraud costs the insurance industry an estimated $30 billion each year. Insurance fraud and accident staging costs the average American household approximately $300 each year in extra insurance premiums.
Now I don't KNOW if the same thing may happen in the software industry, but it occurred to me that there has to be SOME reason why these companies still make a huge profit despite rampant piracy. It only makes sense that the difference is being made up by the honest folks who actually pay for the software.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Maybe the ideas he develop aren't earthshaking in themselves (rather more like trying to burst through an opened door ^_-), but at least it's nice to see those arguments in an ordered & clearly presented way !
As many here i sometimes grab stuff from the net, but when i really enjoy i usually buy...
Tsuyoikoto ha taisetsu da ne, dakedo namida mo hitsuyousa (Strength is an important thing, but tears too are necessary)
It's not black or white, it's RIGHT OR WRONG! As in, communism, socialism, homosexuality, etc. are all just wrong.
The morals you been indoctrinated with work great for comfortably numb masses... people who understand how this world works base their decisions on risk-benefit analysis.
screw those music companies if they are going to rip someone off for another cd with only one good song on it. simularly another cd with just a different cover or maybe a 'bonus' song on it. how many $15 disks did i buy that i didnt want once i listened to the damn thing? are there tracks i never finished? sure. nothing i can do about it either
... a nice box or animation on tv isnt enough to make me happy if the game is lame or behind by five years. especially in this world where nobody takes back returned games.
same thing with games as well
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
Huh? Wha? Piracy = Progressive Tax?
As in, denile is a great thing. And some people (slightly less than 50%) think Progressive taxation is a great thing.
So, mix a little denile with something else (Progressive Taxation) and try and pin it on breaking the law.
"Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury.... It all comes down to this... Am I making any sense? Does this make any sense?
If Chubaka lives on Endor, then it's okay to Pirate."
--- On a side note, to say Progressive - Good, Regressive - Bad??????
Here are a couple good Regressives:
1. Gas Tax. A regressive tax. Helps encourage fuel economy, discourages frivolous travel.
2. Cigareete Tax. A regressive tax. Helps discourage smoking, less lung cancer and second hand smoke. Smoking is really for the rich actors and actresses so they can appear debonair on the silver screen.
I have watched my 19 year-old daughter and her friends sample countless bands on Napster and Kazaa and, enthusiastic for their music, go out to purchase CDs.
What about MP3 players? Surely piracy ensures one never has to spend a dime on their favorite music. Just because they haven't caught on as much doesn't mean eventually they won't. When was the last time you bought a record or an 8 track cassette?
To truly supplant the existing music distribution system, any replacement must develop its own mechanisms for marketing and recommendation of new music. ... File sharing services rely heavily on that most effective of marketing techniques: word of mouth.
Last I checked, pirates can hear what songs they like on the radio, and the TV, via MTV and VH1, then download them for free. Despite what this article claims, pirates really can get away with music for free and it's only through advertising to those ignorant of how to pirate music, and to honest people, that the industry is, for now, not be seriously hurt.
The current experience of online file sharing services is mediocre at best. Students and others with time on their hands may find them adequate. But they leave much to be desired, with redundant copies of uneven quality, intermittent availability of some works, incorrect identification of artist or song, and many other quality problems.
As the industry improves, so will the solutions of the underground. I remember when you would have to connect every day for a month to a 2400 BBS to download a 4 meg file via Zmodem. Now you're able to go to Kazaa and type in a keyword or two for your favorite song and artist, and even select the bit rate you want, almost every time able to get a high quality copy of every song on a CD. Might have to let the thing download for a bit, but all the MP3's are piled onto your hard drive in an easy, automated process. Especially with broadband. It's going to get even easier in time. Soon we'll have high enough speed connections where instead of a song by song distribution, you just download the entire collection of songs from an artist off Kazaa in one ZIP file.
I'm not proposing solutions. I'm just trying to be more realistic.
Have you ever seen someone making xerox copies of a newspaper and reselling them?
Answer to this question and you'll find why piracy does exist and how to fight it.
Every time a product price is overcharged because its producer wants to get the highest possible profit from it, someone, somewhere, will start to think on ways to copy that product or to sell fakes.
Things sold at fair prices will never get pirated, period.
Oh, how I hate that fucking line.
Let me elaborate on that. How exactly is being a musician any different from being a firefighter or a teacher? Well, lets take the entertainment factor out of it and put them side to side.
There is a very bad precedent set, which says you will make bajilions of dollars if you become a famous musician. Musicians and actors are 2 of the most overrated bullshit professions in America. I don't buy this argument about how Britney Spears has to pay bills which total 20 million dollars a year, or how Dr Dre has to have 5 mansions in Bahamas (and they still bitch about piracy). That's a simple case of overvaluation.
I "pirate" lots of music. In fact, I have over 600 Gigs of high quality music ripped and encoded to VBR via LAME encoder. I also own some 300 CDs. Do I still pay for music? The answer is Yes. From small independent labels. I don't feel like supporting Sony exec's crack habit or contributing more money to already fat purse of some of these musicians. I'll be damned if Sony, Universal or BMG ever see another dime from me.
Buy your music from Projekt, Kranky, Saddle Creek, or Polyvinyl Records to name a few EXCELLENT labels.
Fuck the mainstream bullshit.
You're listening RIAA? I AM STEALING YOUR MUSIC, AND THERE ISN'T ANYTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT.
Does your friend tip when he goes to a restaurant?
If there were a reasonable channel of distribution social pressure would guarantee that artists get paid. We're in the worst of all possible worlds right now because the content companies have a stranglehold on legal distribution and want to do everything they can to make sure the artists don't get any of the middleman's cut.
Your friend is being rude, no doubt. But who can blame him? It's tough to be conscientious when the record companies are screwing everybody in sight.
Support (O)penmusic- check out openmusicregistry.org. Share these files, provide another substantial, non-infringing use for the gnutella network.
For now, I'll support local and independent musicians, and those artists who do business with record companies will just have to suffer since I refuse to overpay the middle man.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
I also haven't bought a single CD in a very long time (like on the order of 5 years now!) in lieu of downloading it for free. I will continue to do so becuase I, like many people, have come to realize that it is simply wrong to ask that you be paid over and over again (ad nauseum) for the same 1 hour of work. The system is broke. I go to concerts, where artists get paid for the work they do on the spot. CD are and have always been a form of advertising to get people to their concerts (whehther they want to admit it or not!). Musicians can make a good living as long as they are willing to perform their works. That is /why/ we call music a performance art.
I see absolutely no reason why I should pay anyone for work that they have already done and for which they will be amply rewarded by driving ticket sales. It's overkill. Noone goes back to a dishwasher years later to give him royalties for a job well done, nor to a doctor (to whom you'd arguably own a greater long term, ongoing debt of gratitude for his services). Why do artists get this special (and relatively new, let's not forget how new this idea of Intellectual property is in terms of the history of the world) treatment? If that means polished studio CD's go the way of the DoDo, so be it. Hell, more live music isn't such a bad thing, is it?
-Tom
-Tom
If I was a music publisher I would employ a group of people to upload large quantities of variable quality versions of my music onto the file sharing networks.
That way if you wanted to download a copy of a song you could get a low quality version quickly and easily - good advertising, but if you wanted to get a decent quality version you would have to take an hour or so searching or you could go to my website pay a dollar and get it easily.
This way I get a really cheap form of advertising, poor people with lots of time can get the music for free and rich people will pay me for it, the best of all worlds.
The Grateful Dead let fans copy and swap recordings as much as they like. In terms of both popularity and money, they were quite successful. Being heard is the essence of music performace and builds your fan base. The larger the better/profitable.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
As an author I know the problems with distribution. I wrote a few chapters for a book on .Net software development that has made little in the way of revenue. The issue is not with the quality of the book but with the glut in the market of other books out there that have similar, if not the same, target audience. Brick and mortar stores like B&N and Borders can't afford to put more than one copy on the shelf of many of these books and as a result sales are down.
Online subscription services like Safari keep such publications alive, as developers can browse the selection and see if the book that they want is of any use to them, and keep looking for the help they need until they find the right resource.
I am fully in support of subscription services like safari as a better distribution medium, especially in the tech industry, as a means providing the content and help needed to the development community.
(p.s. the book is Inside ASP.Net, if you're curious)
Robin Hood wasn't real; it's a legend.
Right, the legend of a character we view as being "heroic". What's your point?
Morals are not "set by the population".
Then, how are they set? Why do different nations, states, cities and communities have differing morals? Sounds to me that while it isn't necessarily spoken, the morality is set by the community (or, the population).
Taxes have nothing to do with theft.
They're taking my money without my consent. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.
So I can freely copy the Perl library-on-CD that O'Reilly publishes? And the Unix Powertools CD? This is great news. The money I save on technical references will enable me to "upgrade" my music collection to actual CD's!
I was having a party and wanted to get some new
.25 to .50 per song. I wanted them right away, I wanted a big selection, I didn't want to have CD's to change and purchase and discard the packaging.
music for it the day before. I used Kazaa to
search and download some christmas songs by
Louis Armstrong, other older Jazz and Barrelhouse artists, and some contemporary ones.
I would have been happy to pay around
I would love to put money in the hands of the artists directly. I contribute to web sites such as dyndns.org , eff, granitecanyon, etc, that provide services, even though it is not required.
I think the music publishing industry are a bunch of thugs and parasites, by and large, and they have been crushing the smaller and independent
studios and artists, while calling the public thieves and pirates. They are now petitioning congress to install monitoring in all of our computing equipment.
People, this HAS TO STOP. Right now we fight back
through the EFF, and other public interest groups. Give them money and take the time to write to your congress people, before you are thrown in jail by the record companies.
AND THEN you put it in your music directory which is shared on Kazaa and then
Everyone else spends a few minutes searching P2P networks for all the songs that make up a new CD release. They find them all easily, they have been purchased by a few people from the same source, and shared. You get a perfect quality album in 10 mins.
You're whole assumption is based on the fact that the majority of people on P2P are buying new albums, ripping them in high quality, and sharing them.
I would contend, based on my experience on P2P, that it's mostly people getting a few songs from a CD and sharing it with all their friends. I am basing this on how hard it was to find several complete CD's worth of music on P2P. I tried Kazaa Lite, Gnutella, etc. It's a pain in the ass. If your theory was true, it should have taken me 10 minutes.
And I'm not talking about obscure shit either. On example is I when wanted to hear the entire Eminem CD a week or so after it was released in stores.
Even if some guy has the whole album, all laid out nicely and easy to find, his connection is nowhere near as fast as downloading it from big, fat pipe that the music labels could afford. Even if he's on a cable modem and you're the only one downloading, and he's your next door neighbor... you're looking at download speeds of 25-30KBps, if you're lucky, because most cable connection upload speed are capped that low.
I don't see how it significantly changes from the current distribution system - someone still pays for the original music somehow, then shares it. The only change is that it may be easier for that original person to buy the whole MP3 album than it is to rip a new CD you bought from the store.
Here's how it'd be different:
1. It's easier. Go to your favorite band's website, and they'll most likely link you directly to the label's page to buy the MP3 album. Or go to the label's site and search for the artist. Assuming they make it as easy as Amazon.com, you're in and out in no time.
2. It's faster to locate an album. No searches of poorly organized music over P2P, trying to figure out which MP3's are the good ones, which are not complete, which are accurately named, etc. All the songs would be there, guaranteed, unlike P2P.
3. It's faster to download. You'd be downloading over a big, fat pipe, not joeblow's cable modem shared with 5 other people downloading from him. Less chance of your download getting cut off prematurely.
4. It's clearly legal. You won't feel like you're stealing the music. No guilt.
"And like that
Back when I first ventured into font design, I was a poor, starving college student and couldn't afford Fontographer. (Then, the only real choice for doing good font design work.) Hell, I wasn't even sure I wanted to do font design fulltime, but I didn't want to shell out $300+ for the program. So I downloaded a copy, found that yes, indeed, I did enjoy font design.
:-)
So I scraped, scrounged, begged, and borrowed, and bought a legitimate copy of the program. It would have been just as easy to keep the hacked copy, but why bother? When I purchased the package, I got the manuals, the knowledge that I'd get a decent price on upgrades (there have been no major upgrades since before I bought the software -- Macromedia seems to have let the software die on the vine).
In the end, though...I did the right thing because...well, it was the right thing to do. Macromedia provided me with a tool that I could use to make some money, and it was only fair that I repaid them for that.
This article is one of the most insightful that I've read on the subject. It's definitely made me think quite a bit...I have a B.A. in creative writing and I know that the stuff that I write is quality material. Like any other writer, I'm having a hard time breaking in... I think I'll take a few of my better works that don't seem to be going anywhere and publish them in PDF and e-Book formats for all to enjoy. And hopefully this will build a little bit of recognition for my work so I can actually start selling to the real publishers out there and then someone else will come along and do the right thing by me as an artist and buy my works off a bookshelf somewhere.
Maybe it's better to have a network of faith than a network of enforced trust.
blog |
How exactly is being a musician any different from being a firefighter or a teacher?
They are the same thing. A firefighter makes what people are willing to pay him, just like a musician does.
There is a very bad precedent set, which says you will make bajilions of dollars if you become a famous musician.
Why is that a bad precedent? If famous musicians are making that much, then obviously that's what the free market has determined. Of course, for every famous musician, there are thousands and thousands of unsuccessful musicians, so you could hardly argue that musicians as a whole are overpaid.
I don't buy this argument about how Britney Spears has to pay bills which total 20 million dollars a year, or how Dr Dre has to have 5 mansions in Bahamas (and they still bitch about piracy).
Oh! I didn't realize that people are only allowed to make the minimum amount necessary to pay their bills. When did that law go into effect?
That's a simple case of overvaluation.
It's called a free market. It's called supply and demand. What you're talking about is the simple class envy that is permeating the country. Oh no, some people make more money than you do, and you think they're "overvalued"? Get over it. They're providing a service, and people are willing to pay more for that service. They deserve whatever they can get, just like everybody else.