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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. "
I think many people, like me, download music and then buy it. Artists like Moby are very positive about MP3's. Think about it, the artists themselves just want their music to be played and loved.. the money is just a bonus.
Ciryon
Of course piracy doesn't hurt book publishers. How many writers work in the sea? Pirates only rob ships, you know.
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
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.
Which is why I like shoplifting better than piracy, since I have a 56k and all..
"I feel it is my duty to look at the porn that kids download before I delete it, to be sure what it is."--School Admin
Although, I might not agree with the point that most everybody who likes an mp3 will go buy the album, I do believe it helps more than it hurts.
If you like a particular band, not only would you be in the market for the album, you might also want their t-shirt, stickers for your box or what not. The only parties that would suffer from piracy, would be the recording industry. It's their business model that is flawed, thanks to the internet. Most of the $ spent on a CD doesn't go to the artist anyway.
Would an artist rather have 1 million listeners, where 5% buy the cd, and maybe something else, or 10,000 loyal listeners, and no further audience.
The biggest benefit of filesharing, as I see it, is it promotes better works. If someone turns out to be a one hit wonder, do they deserve the same compensation, as a band that consistently turns out good work??
Although the percentage of the audience that purchases the album, might drop, if the listener base increases at a greater rate, isn't this better?
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I used to believe that piracy at the personal level did no harm at all - spread the word, people still spent just as much money etc
But I met up with a friend I hadn't seen for a while the other weekend and he told me he now *only* get his music off the net and doesn't pay for any of it.
And this is someone who would previously have been a heavy spender in this area.
I think that this attitude - which seems prevalent particularly amongst my work colleagues is a Bad Thing - I don't care if we change the method of distribution or if the record companies go bust but it is important that the artists receive payment for their work.
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
Customers want to do the right thing, if they can.
I'd say that this is completely true. I myself and many (if not most) of my friends "pirate" software, movies and music frequently. In fact, we've got several terabytes worth of pirated material between us just among me and my closest friends. Does that mean we never buy software, movies or music?
Definitely NOT, in fact I've never bought as much software, movies and music as I do now. I've got a couple of shelves filled with game boxes, many of those from producers that would normally be far too obscure for me to purchase otherwise, had I not tried out their software in advance. Our DVD collection is starting to rival our VHS collection, and we shouldn't mention how much I've been to the movies recently. As for music... well, I never listen much to music anyway but thanks to the net I've had the opportunity to find performers I'd never think of buying normally.
If I find something I like, feel I have a use for or just plain want to support, I do the right thing and buy a copy of my own. My friends do too, and I think so do most people.
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)
Pretty much right on the money. To sumerize for those who do not want to click and read (it is fairly long).
People for the most part are honest and will pay a resonable price for a product. When he says that P2P is a progressive taxation, he means that more music books and movies get exposure, which means that people will spend their money on more different things than just the Top 40 stuff they have access to. (Same thing most people have been saying since Napster).
On the other hand, actual selling of bootlegs is harmful because it dilutes the market for legitimate sales. However existing laws are enough to cover this. Finally, it ends in some options where possibly the media giants could come to some sort of agreement with ISPs to offer sort of like premium cable. Pay 60 a month for broadband and all the movies or music or whatever you can use off a local server.
Not a bad idea.
we've progressed where everyone regardless of race, color and creed are equal in the eyes of the law.
If you look through history you'll find this same retarded right-winger argument at every milestone. For one thing, homosexuals are NOT equal in the eyes of the law and even those who are "equal" are subject to the law's interpretation and enforcement, which is often less than ideal.
If people are poor (at least in America) it's their own damn fault. They should work harder and get educations, not look for government handouts.
So poor people should just go out and get a job? Are you hiring? wake up, our economy is far from perfect. Every time a manufacturing plant moves to Mexico, a city is destroyed. Thank god for NAFTA and unregulated trade, eh? You propose we don't need any progressive reforms? Tell that to the people writing software for FREE because there's no other way to compete with Microsoft.
Socialism just doesn't work, look at history.
Uh... you mean communism? Yeah, that didn't go so well, but communism isn't the ultimate goal of social reforms. If you look at history, you'll find that a simplistic black and white approach never works, whether it's to the left or the right.
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
Whatever this guy calls piracy, its still stealing and its still illegal. The 'fat cat bastards' are already being taxed progressively by the IRS.
It is simply not ethical to explain away one's criminal activity by claiming its fair because it hurts the rich and helps the poor.
I tend to disagree with this. I think it is safe to assume that a majority of the people in the US will always take the 'free' alternative if they can get away with it with ease. People says that "If the music industry let me pay $.50 per song to download in a unrestricted format, I would pay instead of steal" and while some would, most would still get their music from kazaa. The reason why we hear people on slashdot say this so much is that they know a system like this will never happen with the current RIAA. Instead they decide to use it as a poor moral justification to their illegal music swapping habit.
In conclusion: (1) People like stealing if it is anonymous, easy, and leaves no possibility of getting caught and (2) People need to stop trying to justify their actions as if it were some kind of morally justified duty bound civil disobedience
On a side note, I have gigs of downloaded mp3's but will not pretend that I have a good reason for breaking the law.
*hides from all the -1 flamebait mod points*
I still remember that about 10 years ago (before the majority of programs where released on CD-ROM, but I don't know if that has anything to do with it), nobody I knew bought their software. Everybody copied.
;)).
Nowadays, there is still a lot of copying going on (I have to agree on that), but almost everyone I know has tons of software they actually bought. So I guess that is going in the right direction.
About books, I know some people who downloaded some O'Reilly books from Kazaa but still most people buy their books (me too, because having a book in your hands is a way better feeling than reading it of your computer screen).
About movies, I think some gets lost there, but not a lot. If you have a good broadband connection downloading movies doesn't take a lot of time. After that you can create a VCD and use your DVD player to watch it (or you can watch it on your monitor, which I find not very comfortable, even if you have a 22"). The quality can be very, very good. So you might think a lot of money gets lost there, right? Wrong (I guess
People still want to see movies in a theatre. Nothing beats that atmosphere. And if you look at the amounts of money LOTR or Harry Potter raised (which is still way up there with blockbusters from the past), there can not be much loss there.
Maybe smaller (cult) movies suffer, but I guess not, because there is (and always has been) a select audience for them who still wants to see them in theatres.
Also, more people buy movies nowadays and we have DVD to thank for that.
About music, yes I think money gets lost there. It is really easy to download some MP3's of the Internet and burn them on CD. People will still buy albums, but only the once they really want to have (yes I know there are a lot of people who still buy tons and tons of CDs, but I'm talking about the majority here).
So money gets lost. And what does the music industry do? They try to sue people. Wrong, wrong, wrong. They *can't* stop this by trying to scare people. They have to find other ways for people to stop copying and buy their music again (or maybe they have to live with piracy but still find ways to convince people to buy their music). They have to find something that will do for music that DVD does for film. Don't ask me for a solution, but I think legal action is the wrong path.
So, in summary, the only market where money really gets lost is in music (or at least that is what I think).
A number of times I have attempted to subscribe to book publishers email list to get early warning of the release of books I may want to buy. If we eliminate all those publishers whose web sites plain didn't work, we are left all the rest that never sent out anything to their list. That's correct, not one of the publishers have ever announced anything on the lists I signed up for (and my email does work.)
I can't help but notice that more and more companies are losing the ability to sell to anything but a captive audience. Amazon sends me emails about Pratcett and Tolkein but nothing about the 10,000 other SciFi/Fantasy writers I may wish to read.
I'm here, I've got some cash, for Ghod's sake someone please try and sell me something new!!
The importance of this point cannot be overstated. Honestly, how many of us would burn far fewer CDs if they cost only $3 or $4? It's not even a matter having the CD cover or avoiding the trouble of downloading. I think most people feel more comfortable using the proper means. However, at $17 a CD and $25 a DVD many of us cannot afford the level of entertainment being thrown at us. So we pirate.
Publishers have the ability to reduce, perhaps eliminate, piracy by lowing the price to the point the majority of consumers are willing to pay. If Photoshop were $25 or could be used on a charge per time basis how many people would sit for hours trying to download it?
The prices are kept high for the obvious reason that publishers make more money with an expensive product and some pirating than they would with an affordable product and no pirating. Thus, since the publishers themselves choose to encourage piracy with overpriced products I have little sympathy for their whining.
Which is why I like shoplifting better than piracy, since I have a 56k and all..
Never underestimate the bandwidth of Raiders jacket stuffed full of CDs.
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
I've been working with computer book publishing in one capacity or another over the past 9 years: as a technical editor, author, and computer tech.
It used to be that you could go into your local chain bookstore such as Barnes & Noble and find at least 1 full back-to-back aisle of computer books of all kinds: self-help, programming, graphic arts, certification. Today, the whole book industry is depressed, but the computer book publishers have been hit hardest in my opinion.
No need for self-help books--the advances of both Windows and Mac OS, as well as their ubiquity among the public, means that fewer users need them. Geeks like us are never a large community and sometimes would rather slit our wrists than buy a book, so programming and administration books have dipped sharply in sales (I personally know--I co-wrote one of them).
So today, you'll find a few certification books along with a slightly larger group of programming books, and a very tiny amount of self-help books. If it weren't for Amazon, my book wouldn't be around.
In my opinion, part of the problem comes from the lack of true creativity or innovation in the industry. The Microsoft juggernaut and its "embrace and extend" philosophy (read: assimilate, compromise, or condemn) is partly to blame for this. The lack for computer industry members to consider something new or different is another part.
Not to toot Apple's horn (I do primarily work with Apple products and comment on them a lot here, so I might sound like a shrill), but they are among a handful of companies that are resisting the fears and dropping out new ideas--not anything necessarily innovative, but perhaps core application ideas that spur new ideas that sell products. Examples: "The digital hub," "multimedia," "desktop publishing," movie making, the use of USB, etc.
As I said, Apple and said companies didn't invent or design these ideas, but should be credited with its popularization in the industry, which forms the basis for a spurt of PC sales.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
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.
No shit this was a troll, but the fact is that there are enough people on this site that believe such tripe that a reply is warranted.
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
has some interesting stuff to say, but he says it from the Publisher's point of view. I wonder, to what depth, has OReilly actually explored digital media , that he can make such authoritative comments. As of now, I'm very sure that record/movie houses are losing much more money than our man Tim. Anyhow, it's much easier to read a book printed on media, rather than an e-book. That's another reason why tablet pcs haven't become too popular.
Probably, movie/music houses make more money than publishers. And no amount of money can EVER, EVER be enough. Recently, one of these young pop guys was interviewed regarding the P2P situation. He was happy abt it.. when asked about money, he replied - he has enough. That made me think - Imagine, if you have made $10million of your album, why not put it up for free d/l, one year down the lane ?? It can be additional publicity for that artist's newer albums.......
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
Yeah, but you know, it only works to illustrate Tim's points. I mean, who would get his books from a /. AC, anyway...?
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Don't let the term 'New Labour' fool you - with a few exceptions (Brown at the treasury is the most significant, and unfortunately is showing signs both of reverting to the traditional 'throw tax revenues at state-provided services' mindset of earlier Labour governments, and of preparing a bid to supercede Blair) few of the current bunch would recognise socialism even if it came up to them and bit them on the knee.
In "The Hacker Crackdown" he said (or may have been quoting a police detective) "10% of the population will steal anything not nailed down, 10% will never steal anything, the battle is for the hearts and minds of the rest."
Best Slashdot Co
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.
Reading books on screen is typically much less pleasent than reading in dead tree form.
I have tonnes of eBooks, including many from O'Reilly -- I haven't bothered reading them, because it's simply not a nice way to read large quantities of text.
Yeh, the price of videos dropped to something reasonanble, thanks to DVD's i have a large video collection.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
What if you cannot buy a disk?
I don't mean "You cannot afford to buy a disk", or "You are unwilling to budget the money to buy a disk", I mean "I have money, but no-one is selling the disk I want"?
Consider this: I got into The KLF some years after they were hot. While you can fairly easily purchase The White Room, Doctoring The Tardis, and Chill Out, you cannot find any of the older KLF albums new. Period. The KLF burned all their older albums as a result of some copyright problems.
OK, so how can I buy that which no longer exists? Now, while I would happily purchase the albums if I could, now I would pretty much be reduced to getting them via a file sharing service (the true irony here would be if The KLF (Kopyright Liberation Front) objected to being traded over a file sharing network.).
Or consider "Song of the South" - You will NEVER see that movie again, because The Mouse is so Politically Correct that they would never air that movie (and I don't see why not - Uncle Remus's tales were NOT racist!) Since there is no profit in keeping the movie preserved, it will in all probability rot away in a vault next to Walt.
Sorry, but I begin to think that copyright should have a clause forcing it to expire if the material is not distributed in a reasonable and non-discriminatory fashion.
Just a little thought-grenade I thought I'd lob into the conversation.
www.eFax.com are spammers
- "..."Free" is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service..."
Yup, they're called CDs.It's possible to purchase MP3s these days, at prices comparable to the per-track cost of a CD. But why? Most people can't discern the difference, but with bloody expensive equipment it is noticable.
Take my recent experience:
- My home theater receiver died recently, and I just got around to shopping for a new one -- the contenders started out with a Sony ES unit, a couple Denon THX-Ultra certified models, and a Pioneer Elite THX receiver.
It was a very profound reminder of why I shouldn't put money straight into MP3s without getting the source material on CD... you're not getting the whole sound. (Heck, even with CDs you aren't... but it's better than MP3.) It's even making me think about SACD (Super Audio CD) and DVD-Audio... and I don't have perfect hearing.Then I made a mistake.
I listened to a mid-level, non-THX McIntosh. (The MHT-100, if you must know. "A/V Receiver" on the drop-down menu.)
Oh. My. God.
I heard things on a CD I didn't know were there -- and yes, the only part of the equation that changed was the receiver. Same speakers, same source, same volume level and EQ (none), same room.
It's a $5000 (US), 92-pound behemoth that looks like it was designed by the same guy who designed the McIntosh 1700 back in the 60s. It's twice the size of anything else, looks ugly... and sounds incredible. I could buy 5 Sonys at that price, yet I'm still having a really hard time justifying the Sony after hearing it.
In my perfect world, the recording industry encourages trading of mid-quality MP3s because they realize it's free advertising, and people will go out and buy CDs knowing they get a higher-quality product and better sound.
But it's not a perfect world, things don't work that way, and we're busy making the lawyers rich.
Lovely.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
I think Tim makes some great points and is a step in the right direction of the publishing mindset but it is not the complete picture, especially when it comes to subscriptions. I currently use p2p because my musical appetite is so much larger than my financial capability to sustain it by buying the all the CD's I listen to, especially when it comes to exploring. An all you can eat subscription services will fix this one particular segment of my consumer habit, however, there are only so many subscriptions that I can afford. ISP, Cable TV, assume a music service will exist, dvd/video store, book club, subscription websites, online games, virus scanning updates, other software, upgrades, etc etc etc etc. And that is excluding all the normal bills we all pay. There are only so many subscriptions we can financially contribute to. So it will end up in the same situation, saturation of possibilities to explore, to many subscriptions to afford. I will seek other ways of sustaining my exploration whilst still enjoying the sheer pleasure of owning something I treasure. In my case that may mean I will treasure my "all I can eat" music subscription (if it ever happens) more than something else, but I will still make the same decisions I do now, just focused on something else. Left intentionally blank
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.
Then why was Robin Hood a hero? That story illustrates the moral idea of "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor" beautifully. Morals are set by the population that has them, and there are a hell of a lot more poor people than rich people. Besides, I don't see how stealing from rich people is any different than taxing them more, and nearly everyone agrees that rich people should pay more taxes than poor people. (Notice I didn't say a higher percentage, just more.)
Definitely agree - we do the exact same thing here.
My fiancee and I are *huge* RPG junkies. Is there a new game out that we're not sure we'll enjoy, with no demo? Chances are it can be snagged off Kazaa. We try it out, and if we like it, we buy a copy. If not, it gets deleted.
A great example of this was Morrowind. There's no demo available, and the game is hell on system resources. Some setups have *huge* problems with crashing, while others are fine. It's also not the kind of RPG that all RPG fans will enjoy. Rather slow and plodding, especially at the beginning, with a heavy emphasis on dialogue as opposed to combat. So, we downloaded it. Absolutely gorgeous in the eyecandy department. Openended quests. Lots of fun. Very few crashes on our setup. So, we bought a copy. Bethesda impressed us, so they got our money. In return, we got a great game, the construction set, and update patches (that seem to have fixed the few crashes we did have). Good deal. They've also had at least 2 more purchases from friends we recommended the game to, and most likely at least 2 more in the future.
So, one user "pirating" the game turned into 3 sales for them (possibly 5 over the next few weeks). In addition, we'll most likely be picking up the expansion as well - which is more money in Bethesda's pocket.
Had we hated the game, they wouldn't have got any money. But, had we purchased the game initially, instead of "pirating" it, then the store would have had a return. AFAIK a return is considered worse than no sale at all (at least it was a few years ago when I worked retail - things may have changed).
A publisher publishes something that P2P advocates like, and the comments are filles with "see we're right" comments.
To me it's still a matter of not liking some copyright owner's way of selling the rights and bluntly ignoring it.
I wonder how people here would feel if this amount of people started to ignore GPL/BSD licence (insert your own favourite).
I agree. Just look at all the text on slashdot...very unpleasant reading.
Could I interest you in a copy of Slashdot in dead tree form? $19.95 + 4.95 S&H.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
No. I assure you it is YOU who are quite desperately wrong. Completely, on the wrong side of history and an offence under the eyes of all that is holy.
Communism really does seem to be an unworkable and inefficient system - it relies on an oversimplified 19th century view of economics (just like pure free-market corporate anarchists do as well). Nobody is even arguing in favour of that nonsense anymore, so just drop it.
Socialism is not wrong, it is profoundly right (and is not the same as communism, this is merely a lie the Powers That Be want you to believe), and will even try to save yours and your children's ignorant asses when the rich&powerful come to take away everything you have.
Homosexuality is only wrong if you are a True Believer in bronze age mythology, which (sad to say) many people still are.
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.
Taking something that doesn't belong to you is theft, regardless of the wealth of your target.
Your post is just a rationalization for your own moral weakness.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
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)
Sigh...
Robin Hood wasn't real; it's a legend.
Morals are not "set by the population".
Taxes have nothing to do with theft.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I'm sorry, I accidently inserted that last sentence before the italics... didn't mean to misquote you
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
The article was absolutely brilliant. So brilliant, in fact, that it made me wonder why the music industry is being so reactionary about all of this when many print publishers are doing their best to embrace the new technology.
The difference, I think, lies in O'Reilly's description of the mathematical necessity for go-betweens to facilitate interaction between millions of buyers and sellers. If that really was the basis of the recording industry, then everything else he said would immediately apply and we could justly accuse the recording companies of a deplorable lack of vision. However, in the case of the music industry, I don't think that is the whole story.
When I buy a book, I either go to Amazon and look at the customer reviews (for technical books) or wander into a shop and look around until I see something interesting (for novels). My decision is therefore based either on my own, (relatively un-manipulated) opinions, or those of other consumers. Despite the existence of poster and tv adverts for books, the role of a book seller is therefore primarily to present me with a wide selection of books and let me make my own decision.
The music industry is in a very different position. Through radio and TV, people are continually hearing music which is currently available. Liking a piece of music is an odd psychological phenomenon which depends heavily on repetition of the tune and perceptions of what your peer-group likes. Since the music industry has a lot of control over what you and your friends hear day in, day out, they have a remarkable amount of control over what you like, and therefore what you will buy.
The truth of this can easily be seen by the fact that it is possible for the music industry to make vast wads of cash out of such utter crap as Will Young covering Light My Fire (and, oh, I still tremble with rage at thought of that sacrilege) and the Cheeky Girls rambling on about their bums.
That level of control over the minds of customers far outstrips anything the print publishers can exert. It's a license to print money, and I believe the recording industry is scared of losing it. A well implemented peer-to-peer service in which it is possible not only to download music you know you want, but to be exposed to new music in a way the music industry cannot control could be their worst nightmare.
I don't want the music industry to disappear and, as the article pointed out, it never will. I just want it to be reduced from its current role as the definer of popular culture to to its proper place as a facilitator of popular culture. If that can happen, one way or another, we will all be better off
"The Milliard Gargantubrain? A mere abacus - mention it not."
Pirating music deprives the artist of revenue. Just look at all of the Tupac Shakur songs that can be downloaded. How can he get paid if no one buys his albums?
No data, no cry
Anyway in the current copyright laws copying is defined like stealing
well, kinda. in the UK a cort case in the 70's explicitly defined copyright infringement wasn't theft and threw a case out of court for it yet all the big companies keep saying it "copyright infringement is theft" "NO, IT's NOT"
I actually complained to the UK radio advertising authority once about a BSA ad saying that computer piracy is theft. the radio advertising authority completely didn;t want to know. they didn't give a shit
dave
PS. the case in questoin was oxford vs moss (iirc) a case where an oxford university student walked into the staffroom when it was quiet, photocopied an exam paper and walked out with the copy. oxford university accused hi oftheft and took him to court. the judges asked OU what they had actually lost, what was actually missing. when OU had to concede that nothing had actually been stolen the judge threw it out
I always buy CD's after downloading and listening to mp3's.
Blank CD's.
Add in paper:
Movie ABC XYZ
$18 DVD
$10 VHS Tape
Album ABC XYZ
$15 CD
$9 Tape
Yes it is cheaper for them to product the CD and DVD. And don't throw me a line about start-up costs and crap like that. They have been charging more for CD than tape since they came out with no justification. IF anything tapes should be more expensive than CD's.
We're all distracted by the side issue, here. It's not piracy vs shoplifting, or anything like that.
The simple fact is that the Internet has made the current business model of music publishing and distribution obsolete.
That's not to say that we don't need music stores, or that we don't need the RIAA. (Snicker if you like, but they do have a role to play, and it may well be more then the pre/de-emphasis curve for vinyl recording.) It's the business model, plain and simple. They have three prime roles: studio work (recording/mixing, etc), promotion, and distribution.
Studio work is diminishing, because the declining cost of technology brings it to an ever-increasing number of people. Basement and garage studios abound, and it goes uphill from there. Sure there's a lot of drek, but there's some good stuff, too. But this isn't the big issue.
Promotion is one big issue. The big labels really work on the STAR. For the most part, they are able to pick a random artist, shove them into airtime with music and videos, and make them a STAR. Then they sit back and harvest cash. The rest of those people who want to make music are a 'cost of doing business' to be minimized, albeit a potential source for the next STAR.
This role is under jeapordy from the Internet and file sharing, because they allow us to make up our own minds. The real effect here would be the diminution of the STAR. Not that we won't have them, but they'll be less significant, and under less control, AND probably more talented.
The other big issue is distribution. Once upon a time, their role was to get music out there. Now their role appears to be preventing music from getting out there. They manufacture scarcity. But that's also not to say that CD stores are obsolete, because they're not. But we/they need to understand the difference between mp3 and CD, and quit pricing the things like platinum.
In a technology-adjusted business model, the RIAA and the major labels still exist. Ironically, they may still make the same profit levels. But they shed most of their control over STARs and airtime, and they have to work harder for a larger range of artists.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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.
The effect of P2P has on a record company is:
#1 Revenue gained from CD sales from consumers who bought CD after sampling and wouldn't have bought it previously
minus
#2 Revenue lost from consumers who would have bought CD not buying it after sampling it.
minus
#3 Revenue lost from consumers who would have bought the CD and after sampling it decided not to.
If this was a positive value then the record company would be happy, if negative then they will oppose P2P.
Usually the RIAA pushes #2 as their argument and then it's countered with #1 by P2P representatives. I'm pretty sure it's actually #3 that's scaring the industry.
The relationship between their protest therefore directly relates to the number of people disliking their music - louder you hear the artist or label whining the worse their music.
I am very much in favor of progressive taxation. How many houses can one make use of? How many cars can one drive? How much food can one eat?
Progessive taxation is allegedly written in law here in the U.S., but it doesn't actually work.
The loopholes in tax law allow the wealthy to avoid any actual progressive effect of taxation. Dollar for dollar, individuals making millions per year pay less than middle class families as they are able to manipulate the rules for their benefit. The gap between rich and poor has only grown in the last 30 years.
And how have the wealthy been able to do this? They bought the legislators and therby the necessary loopholes in the law.
Some fundamental rules still apply:
"He who has the gold makes the rules."
"They that gots, gets more."
"Greed is a powerful thing."
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
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 got Napster pretty late... I more or less stopped listening to music when I left for school 6 years ago. I had listened to manufactured pop on my commute to high school, and left it at that.
:)
A few friends tossed me MP3s that were interesting, and I downloaded Napster and grabbed other MP3s of those bands and/or similar bands. Someone would mention someone that I would like, and I'd grab a few MP3s.
I'd then go to Amazon.com (at 3 AM) and order a bunch of CDs from those artists that interested me to have in the car.
Now I have a home stereo w/ a CD Jukebox, and I just got an iPod for my Tibook, and got XM Radio for my car 6 months ago. When I hear a band I like on Internet radio or XM Radio, I order the CD. Unfortunately, I hear a lot less new music because easy access to MP3s is gone.
Oh well, saves me a few bucks.
Extra fun, copying all my old CDs to CD-R to add CD-Text so the on screen display works nicely.
Sure I've copied a few CDs from friends that have interested me, but that's a request to expose me to new music. A friend is a BIG fan of Saliva, tossed me a CD. Now I have a copy and MP3s of it. Will I buy that CD? No... will I buy everything that they put out in the future? Yes... Had he not given me the CD to copy, I'd have never listened them at all... it's all relative.
Alex
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.
- "Until you can hear the difference on cheap gear, your argument doesn't apply to 99% of the music-listening market."
You are absolutely correct. Not everyone can afford -- or even cares -- about high end gear. I have no argument there.However...
There is a market for perceived quality. These are the people who buy "microcircuit cellphone boosters" (or whatever they're called today), "cellphone radiation shields," and are swayed by late-night infomercials. THIS is your market.
So, allow all MP3s of, say, 96 (64?) Kbit or less to be freely traded; in fact, flood the P2P networks with 'em! People will more readily redistribute them because they aren't a trick (like the repeating loops), and then (instead of spending all the money on lawyers), you advertise how much better the CDs sound.
Alternatively, without the willingness to embrace free distribution, it would behoove the music cartels to emphasize the quality point; perhaps from the angle of "make sure you get the best sound -- rip your own MP3s!" Make people not trust one another (they set a damn good (bad?)example), and make people want to have a 'trusted chain' -- know the source (CD), know the encoder, and then believe your MP3s sound (warmer | sweeter | more... whatever) than bootleg ones.
It's the Microsoft approach -- Fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It preys on basic and well established human nature... it has worked before, why not bend it to a new use?
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
I wonder how much of the observed decline in sales of CDs and DVDs and other such media is not due to piracy, but simply the fact that it is now quite simple to exchange old records via eBay and similar places? I know also of DVD swapping circles, where you essentially buy one DVD with another DVD, you both go and watch them, and trade on. Those sales and "sales" are never recorded by recording companies. And they're almost certainly more common now than what they were a few years ago...
Robin Hood is fiction. Not real. Not reality. Didn't happen. Sure, the stories paint him as a populist hero, but the myth itself is rooted in a common understanding that he was engaged in theft. Only the fact that his opposition was painted as thoroughly evil pawns of an illegal usurper distinguished his theft. He wouldn't be seen as a hero if readers didn't also see his activity as theft.
In almost all cases, morality is perceived to be based on the teachings of some sort of highter, external, authority, not by consensual alignment of the majority's preferences or interests. (Whether or not those teachings are literally true is irrelevant. Morality cannot be proven to be right or wrong.)
You give your consent to be taxed by continuing residence in that entity. The state doesn't need to ask you for permission to tax you; they already have it.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I'd love to see the figure for sales of ALL CD's broken down by year, artist, and volume. I suspect that since the introduction of P2P the sales of a lot of older CD's has actually gone up.
Of course, getting the information is probably next to impossible because of all the various channels, accounting differences, etc...
Whether or not he was real has nothing to do with the fact that he is considered a hero. The vast majority of heros are mythical. It is their actions and philosophies that matter, not their reality. And as for only some people thinking he is a hero, obviously the majority of the population think of him as a hero and have for quite a while, otherwise the story wouldn't have gotten repeated and preserved in the societal consciousness.
Most thinking people can look at what he did and say that stealing from the rich and giving to the poor was the wrong (unethical) way to go about it (even though he was fighting against a morally incorrect oppressive governing entity and it was just for him to fight and eventually defeat him).
It was the wrong way to go about what? Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor wasn't a means to an end, it was the end. The government wasn't "morally incorrect" in the story, it was simply taxing the poor more than they could afford. Robin Hood wasn't fighting against the Sheriff of Nottingham because he was racist or sexist, he was fighting because the peasants weren't able to survive, pure and simple.
Anytime you are redistributing income from one group of individuals and giving it to the other it is ethically wrong.
Really? I guess you shouldn't accept your next paycheck then because redistributing money from your employer to you is unethical.
And? Most heros are mythical, so what? The fact that they are considered heros can still tell you a lot about a population's moral values.
Morals are not "set by the population".
Really? So everyone everywhere has the exact same moral values? Wow, what an amazing discovery!</sarcasm>
There are a few values that all populations have, such as it is wrong to kill without sufficient reason, but thats just because they couldn't survive without those. Other than that, populations range widely on the values they hold.
Taxes have nothing to do with theft.
They sure look similar to me. Both are forcible losses of wealth, and in the case of the poor stealing from the rich, both are redistributions of wealth from the rich to the poor, which helps the good of the majority.
If we are already paying for it, why more anti-piracy legislation?
Get the people who are SELLING copies!
I think the RIAA owes ME money for the CD-Rs that turned into coasters, backups, and frisbees.
Ironically, the RIAA assumes they have the copyright on everything. So if I buy CD-Rs to burn my own music on, I'm still paying them for the *privilege*.
I'm going to scan in and OCR all of the OReilly books and put them online so that people don't have to go through all the hassle of going to a bookstore and paying the exhorbitant cost of the books. And they can swap books with their friends.
Let's see how Tim feels about that.
Why is it that with all of their resources, the RIAA is unable to figure out a way to make the amazingly technology that is decentralized filesharing work for them (at least in a way that they acknowledge)? I tend to think the fact that they can't is evidence of their stifled creativity.
He stole from the corrupt and depraved that's why -- nobility who took and kept by force, and gave practically nothing in exchange.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Wow. Every single government in human history since the time we first emerged from caves has without exception been guilty of theft!
It's funny how many people seem to be shocked and surprised that taxes exist.
I bet Microsoft wishes that they lived in this magical, fantastic world that O'Reilly finds himself him. Then life would be easier for them. Fortunately, "free" usually becomes much better then paid for, marketing driven products.
I nominate this for the Obfuscated Headline Contest.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
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 |
Honestly, how many of us would burn far fewer CDs if they cost only $3 or $4?
CDs at $3.99 new... That won't happen. A typical CD contains 12 songs, and federal law mandates a royalty to the songwriter of eight cents per song.
However, at $17 a CD and $25 a DVD many of us cannot afford the level of entertainment being thrown at us.
Even without considering the bandwidth issue, movie piracy isn't as big as music piracy because unlike music CDs, movies can be rented inexpensively through Blockbuster or Netflix.
If Photoshop were $25 or could be used on a charge per time basis how many people would sit for hours trying to download it?
I'd guess that most of the people who pirate Photoshop plan to use it for web graphics. But I can get you a legitimate copy of most of the retail version of Photoshop for $99.95. It's called Photoshop Elements, and it has everything its big $600 brother has except support for some high-end operations used only in print publishing.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Piracy IS good, and the nice people at Autodesk (now a child company of Discreet), creators of the (at least, in my day) industry standard CADD software AutoCAD, know this.
You can use a serial number from AutoCAD 2.0 to register and use AutoCAD 13. Why? Because the more kids that copy and learn their software, the more demand for site-licenses there will be in the future.
The same philosophy works in the favor of Microsoft who will sell you their MSDN library for $2,000 that includes easily $50,000 to $100,000 worth of software (depending on which level you choose) for use in development. They know that this seeds the growth of companies that then require production licenses for expensive software such as Windows 2000 Server or SQL Server.
Everyone in this thread seems to be agreed that illicit distribution of resources can, in the long run, increase exposure, increase desire, and stir up future business. You can't sell something that nobody knows about.
--
The Bailiwick - DESIGNHUB2005
Uh, copyright does expire. Albeit after something like 75 years.
The basic copyright term in the United States for works made for hire and works published before 1978 was extended to 95 years four years ago. And Congress reserves the right to add twenty more years every twenty years. Sick.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Even though he got the quote a bit wrong (even the attribution!) the Wookie quote at the end was the best part of the article and a perfect summary of the situation.
All of the companies striving now to lock down content are going to find in the end that all they get out of the effort is business limbs torn off by angry wookies.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In short, if a company deliberately distributes its stuff, or a version thereof, for free, that's one thing. If people pirate programs that the author/publisher wants sold, that's theft and any good effect from this is entirely coincidental to the pirates' main goal, which is to get stuff free.
What happened to honor? Isn't anyone ashamed anymore?
However, on a different note, it's amazing that in a democracy with 1 person 1 vote, we don't have a more socialist person elected, but rather someone who gives out tax breaks for the rich.
Perhaps because the majority feel that the same laws that give breaks to the rich also tend to create jobs?
Why exactly should a rich person pay more taxes than a poor one anyway? Would it be fair if you went into a music store for the clerk to ask you for your income, and then charge you a percentage thereof for your music? In the same way, a rich person really doesn't get anything for his tax dollar that a poor person does not - and indeed many of the social programs he is paying for are not available to him in the first place.
As far as the 5% owning 95% argument goes - I'd argue that the 95% of the population that only owns 5% of the wealth is still better off than nearly 100% of the rest of the world. All the 5% vs 95% argument demonstrates is that some people are better at investing money than others are. The tax-the-rich mentality therefore amounts to taking money from those who invest it well and giving it to those who do not. It also tends to imply that if you have money and somebody else doesn't you must have done something wrong...
The problem with socialism is that it removes the incentive for people to fend for themselves.
You will never find a social order under which everyone is considered an equal. This is largely because when it comes down to it, not everyone is either equally willing or equally capable of getting ahead in the world. Communism in the USSR just changed the rules - instead of getting ahead in a company boardroom you had to get ahead in the political structure. The game was still the same, but the rules made it such that most of the population didn't bother to play, and their economy came crashing down around them... If life is just going to end up being a game, let's at least try to get rid of the all-powerful-government that dictates who gets what and make the rules a little more likley to get folks to play...
I would agree that DVD's many times add stuff on that would be worth the extra cost. But looking at my experience with CD's I don't think that is that case.
Just a side note, I don't own a DVD player my vcr was given to me and rarely buy CD's. And don't pirate movies or music. But I hate the music and movie industry and the above is one big reason why.
Ok, i collect. As probably many of you do out there. I buy cd cases that hold 200+ cd's whenever i find them at a reasonable price and i have more than a few completely filled. Ok, i know, a lot. I get the point. But here is another.
Most of the divx movies i enjoyed i purchased on DVD
I NEVER bought music when i was young, i'd listen to the radio, or tape it from a cd. Now that i download MP3s i have a small collection of music i love, cd's where i enjoy the whole cd. As the point has been made many times i have found music i'd never heard of nor listened to that i buy.
Also i am an anime fan. I'm not an extremist of any sort, i watch certain animes when i feel like it. I usually download them first (in divx format on a filesharing network) and then watch them. As many anime viewers know (as i'm sure many of you are) it's quite difficult to find a variety of anime at your local blockbuster. I dont live in a huge city or even know anyone that likes anime where i live. I can't borrow what someone else has to view it. Once i have previewed the anime i often (in most cases) will buy it. I've spent more moeny buying DVD's because i was able to watch them than i have or ever thought i would spend.
It's understandable that people think p2p is only used to pirate music and videos and such. It is, but then it does lead to more sales. Now, i may purchase a lot but i do have much more that i dont own personally. I also burn compilation cd's for my brother and some of his friends, mostly just singles of stuff that they have, but also mp3s i've downloaded on the net. Songs they can't get as singles.
It's a double edged sword, and though more people make money because their band is heard at the same time more popular groups loose some of their profits. Personally i wouldnt have bought any of the things i have purchased without pre-viewing it somewhere.
I would be willing to pay for a good file sharing service, nothing that just 'rivals' KazaA, i need something that's worth paying for. Napster was the begining, and quite good and if it was still working would be my favorite for music.
The question is, if it was out there, a good filesharing service, something completely legit that offered service for a reasonable fee would you use it. Would you? I would.
Confucius Say "The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell."
~eQuasarus~
Started, predictably enough, at slashdot. Found the article Tim O'Reilly Says Piracy is Progressive Taxation. Well, I had to check that out.
After Lesson 1: Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy. he goes on to Lesson 2: Tim O'Reilly is a great example of a guy who doesn't go on the record until he's got it right. Maybe he's always right, or maybe he doesn't open his mouth if he's wrong. I respect that a lot.
So I tried to find more of his pieces online. First, went to his oreillynet author page. The next piece I hadn't read was the Switcher Stories Follow-Up, but as I had not yet read the original, I thought I'd do that first. At this point, it became obvious that I was going to have to dig up to get anywhere. So, I read that one. It's about a comment attributed to Kevin Browne, along the lines of "Apple - Work harder to accelerate Mac OS X sales or Microsoft will exit the Mac market forever." Tim's take: So when Tim was in Seattle, he was invited to sit down with Tim McDonough, the Director of Marketing for the MBU. He was able to clarify Kevin's comments a bit. Tim: "And he was intrigued by my report that my customers (Unix power users, Java developers, perl hackers, wireless community activists, and other "alpha geeks" of all stripes) are adopting OS X in droves."
I've heard rumors about OS X on x86, and if I find it, I'll definitely give it a whirl. Hearing about it a lot on slashdot, and having a real purty layer on top of BSD could be slightly more useful than cygwin, a slightly-useful Linux layer on top of XP. So let's see what Tim says about these alpha geeks. Well, duh. But the rest of it is slightly more informative. Ok that's too cool to pass up. Definitely rigging this up on my system, and finally I'll be able to have my technical documentation read to me in a Sean Connery accent. So, finally, on to Switcher Stories Follow Up. Aha! More evidence of this Mac-on-x86 conspiracy. That link is "What Hollywood can learn from Microsoft", by Paul Boutin I assure you, the rest of the piece is just as insightful.
Of course Homosexuals are equals in the eyes of the law.
They have the same right to marry a person of the opposite sex as the rest of us.
They have the same right to express physical love to a member of the opposite sex as the rest of us.
The conservative philosophical sticking point is, these horrible gays *choose* to exhibit illegal, deviant behavior, and giving them the rights to do such behavior is tantamount to giving them rights above and beyond ordinary people.
I'm not supporting or justifying this philosophy, just explaining it for those who haven't heard an explanation of it yet. Try listening to Rush, he'll set you straight. Though I often wonder where his anal cysts came from. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
If morality is set by the community, then I suppose you have no problem with people getting their hands cut off for stealing, or women getting stoned to death because they were *accused* of adultery (whether or not they're actually guilty of the act) because in some community - THOSE are the standards.
Such reasoning also supports wonderful things like child rape, slavery, and alcohol prohibition.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Oh yeah, and Robin Hood wasn't a legend;
r ob inhood/
http://www.nottinghamshiretourism.co.uk/themes/
There's some historical evidence of him being a real person. While some of his deeds may be mythological. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I would agree that DVD's many times add stuff on that would be worth the extra cost.
In the early days of Compact Disc Digital Audio, CDs had extras that one could almost call "deleted songs" by analogy with DVD Video's "deleted scenes". For instance, Bad by Michael Jackson contained an extra track called "Leave Me Alone" that wasn't available on the vinyl, cassette, or 8-track version of the album. (Yes, Bad was one of the last albums on 8-track.) They could put extras on a CD because a 74-minute CD could hold as much as 3 24-minute sides of an LP. However, with CD becoming the dominant format, the typical album went from being 48 minutes long to being 60 to 72 minutes long, and they had to be pressed on four 18-minute sides of an LP. Cassettes, on the other hand, could be expanded to 40 minutes a side to hold the whole CD. The increased capacity of the medium could have quite a bit to do with why new albums have more filler than old albums.
But looking at my experience with CD's I don't think that is that case.
It isn't that the price of CDs hasn't dropped; it has. $15 in 2002 dollars is much cheaper than $15 in 1983 dollars. It's that the price of cassettes has dropped even further, due to reduced demand.
Will I retire or break 10K?
There's no side here to be on, and you're engaging in a bit of histrionics to compare the American Revolution with the corporations selling music. The former was important, the latter is of no consequence.
To respond to one of your assertions, when musicians sign contracts with corporations, they give away some of their rights to that music. That's what contracts are all about: I give you something and you agree to give me something else in return. If musicians want to keep those rights, they shouldn't sign the contracts.
In the end, though, it's all about throw-away pop entertainment with a half-life of about 5 minutes that appeals to a narrow minority of the population. Not worth all the fuss.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
i spend most of the day in front of a computer and i listen to music with headphones. unlike some, i really cannot tell the difference between mp3's and the original. i've even spoken with blind people who could not tell the difference between the two on decent sound equipment.
-- john
Piracy still is wrong. O'Reilley, in his essay, makes a clear distiction between piracy ( making an illegal copy of content for profit ) and sharing ( giving someone a copy for free ). Making copys of a CD and selling them in eBay is piracy, and already able to be prosecuted. Sharing files over kazaa is more like copying a tape for your friend, not illegal and not immoral. Piracy = bad, Sharing = good. Got it? He also states that there are real business opportunities for music publishers to participate in online sharing and make money from it. Wherever there is gobs of supply and gobs of demand someone has to bring the two together, regulate quality, etc. Sharing means free publicity and free distribution, which are costs usually incurred to reach the consumer. Plus people have consistently paid extra for the newer, prettier, hyped-up version of anything. Listen, we are consumers in a capitalist economy. We are not supposed to consume 'nicely' or 'morally' ( although that can be strong form of protest when enough people act together ) we are supposed to consume 'rationally' and coorporations are supposed to take advantage of that by offering us good products at a fair price at a convenient location. Consumers are using new channels to obtain music because the music industry is not offering them those things. Just because the music publishers are not acting quickly enough to gain my business online does not mean I should forsake my music listening. I spend a lot of time online and enjoy listening to new bands ive heard about. I dont feel morally obligated to buy the CD, but I often do because its still easier than spending time hunting down songs and ripping one myself. 'Morality' and 'major labels' do not even belong in the same sentence.
They have the same right to marry a person of the opposite sex as the rest of us.
They have the same right to express physical love to a member of the opposite sex as the rest of us.
nope, you missed one very very important point. Heterosexuals are free to choose their prefered sexual partner. Homosexuals are not free to choose their prefered sexual partner. By definition, a homosexual prefers a sexual partner of the same sex, so by definition homosexuals are denied rights that heterosexuals have. You failed to look at the relative issue. A law against homosexual marrages is discriminatory against homosexuals. I can't believe I even have to make that argument...
I've listened to rush, he commits errors like this all the time.
The conservative philosophical sticking point is, these horrible gays *choose* to exhibit illegal, deviant behavior, and giving them the rights to do such behavior is tantamount to giving them rights above and beyond ordinary people
Like those horrible blacks who *chose* to exhibit illegal, deviant behavoir on buses in the 60's? Yup, believe it or not, thats how conservatives used to view that. Time's are a'changin.
I used to believe baseless arguments like this in... oh... 6th grade, when I still looked to other people for opinions. Luckily I've matured since then.
No, giving them the right would be giving EVERYONE the right, we're not limiting rights to homosexuals only. We shouldn't be limiting rights to ANY group of people. If you make gay marrages legal, you won't have to show an "official gay person" licsense at the altar. If the laws were repealed, anyone would be allowed to perform this, as you say, "deviant" behavoir.
Horrible, deviant? These are relavent terms, my friend. I think it's pretty horrible and deviant that people feel they can have control over other peoples love lives, or that they even care to invade the lives of people who have nothing to do with them. Why are they so threatened? Would it hurt to leave the issue alone? No, and that's why they call it "homophobia".
So why is it deviant? Oh, let me guess... the bible said so, right? One thing that amazes me about bible thumping homophobes is that they haven't even read the bible. Or at least, they don't know how to organize their priorities. For every "homosexuality is a sin" reference there is in the bible, there's about 500 "don't be a hypocrite" (you know, the whole thing about the splinter in your brother's eye and the plank in yours?) or "love thy neighbor as thyself" references. You think jesus was just kidding about that stuff? No, he wants you to love sinners, and that includes homosexuals, and everyone else for that matter. There's also about a million references to having faith in crhist, so as long as we're writing the bible into law, should we make a law against being Jewish? Atheist? Let me remind you of something:
doh.
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
Hey, at least I'm honest. But here's my responses to the points made in the summary:
(1) Obscurity is a far greater threat to
authors and creative artists than piracy,
Agreed.
(2) Piracy is progressive taxation;
I don't understand what this is supposed to mean.
(3) Customers want to do the right thing, if they can;
Disagree. Customers only want to do the right thing if they face potential repercussions for doing the thing that benefits them the most instead.
(4)Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy;
Probably true. In the case of media that can exist without a physical form, such as music and software, both are relatively inconsequential.
(5) File sharing networks don't threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing
publishers;
Until a workable new paradigm for publishing exists, this statement is self-contradictory. How do you publish if you're not a publisher?
(6)"Free" is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service;
Absolutely disagree. This is the principle that the entire Dot-com New Economy was based on, and we all saw how well that worked out.
Consumers do grudgingly agree to price hikes, but if you've given them something for free and then take that away, they'd rather find someone else that still offers it for free than pony up any dough.
(7)There's more than one way to do it. "
Agreed. It's yet to be proven whether any of them will be to everyone's satisfaction though.
This is the most staggeringly ridiculous thing I've ever seen on Slashdot.
Just joined, eh? Don't worry, you'll see a bunch of things that are even more staggeringly ridiculous by bedtime.
A bunch of kids in their basement spouting how the world could be free because to justify whatever it is they do.
I have a third floor apartment. But anyway, it's clear to me that artificial protections on something as easy to duplicate as digital media are the Custer's last stand of the industries involved. To me, it's not about whether it's right or wrong, it's about the unsustainable business model.
I don't use P2P myself, and I don't really have an opinion on the ethics of it all; but it's reality. Whining about it won't change anything.
I was pestering my brother-in-law to read Cryptonomicon for years, and left a hardcover at his home. He started reading, got hooked, but the hardcover was too inconvenient for him to lug around on the bus, etc.
;)
So he hops on Kazaa and finds an eBook copy that will install on his Palm. Now, no legitimate electronic copy of Crypto exists (to the best of my knowledge), so this is probably a copy that some dedicated hackers scanned and OCR'ed page-by-page.
Now he AND my sister have become heavy readers again, but there's a catch -- they only want to read books they can download to their Palm. So they're basically stuck reading dedicated-geek crap like AD&D Dragonspear shit that fanboys go through the trouble of making their own digital copies of.
Let's hold a fund raiser to buy out Random House or Ballantine and hand it over to O'Reilly. Whaddayasay?
sigh
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
Ayn Rand saw Robin Hood as a villian. Your attitude is essentially communist. That is you feel your own needs justify enslaving those who are able to produce. This tends to destroy the desire to produce, and you end up in a situation like that found in the USSR, where the whole country went bankrupt because people weren't rewarded for their work, but instead given what the govt felt they needed.
Vote for Pedro
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
If morality is set by the community, then I suppose you have no problem with people getting their hands cut off for stealing, or women getting stoned to death because they were *accused* of adultery (whether or not they're actually guilty of the act) because in some community - THOSE are the standards.
And in those communities, they ARE acceptable and the right and MORAL thing to do. It sounds as if those morals conflict with yours.
The poster was trying to get this point across: some people have morals that conflict with others. Not everyone will agree with whats right and wrong.
Having been above the top tax bracket many years running, i must inform you that taxes for the very wealthy are different from the norm in that all loopholes are closed. You dont even get the same deductions others get.
No my friend, the rich pay more than their fair of taxes. Is it just to hard to accept?
Unmanipulated book buying is a myth.
As much as we'd all like to not judge a book by its cover, it's virtually the only recommendation that people have to go by when buying something. This isn't necessarily true of all cases, but for most fiction and hobby style books, is all that matters.
I worked in a bookstore for years before my current life, and spent some of that time interacting with publishers and reps. Any-time you run across an author you don't know, you trust 2 things, the rep (who has a vested interest in making you purchase the books) and the cover.
Why not judge books by their covers? It's way easier than reading the entire thing!
Stealing: you have a thing, and I take it away.
Copying: I have this one thing, and I make anothing thing just like it.
These are totally unrelated acts. Copyright forbids certain kinds of copying in hopes of encouraging the act of original creation, and copying may violate the law as a result, but there isn't even a hint of stealing involved. Get a grip.
Well, laws have been changed before. Prohibition in the US (correct me if I'm wrong) was ended just to destroy the bussiness plans of the mob. In fact, I'll think you'll find many parallels between prohibition and file sharing if you look at it. If enough people do it anyway, it cannot be the law, or at least not enforced as such. (It's interesting to note though that the tables are turned, prohibition was about illegaly gaining advantage of the double standards between prohibition, and people drinking anyway).
Laws that "artificially" regulate supply and demand situations such as these only really work when there is an underlying sense of ethics in the population on which to build them. If your bussiness plan depend on selling child pornography, then you have to watch out, you're not going to find a lot of public support for that (even though it's interesting to note that the internet has had a profound impact on that as well). When it comes to sharing music OTOH, there really isn't that much of an outcry, people in general treat that about the same as driving to fast; on balance, not a big deal.
If you're a SONY exec, that's what you should be afraid of. Technology is only really the enabler here, and as long as people view copyright infringement the way they do, there's fundamentally no way to change that. Given sufficiently unsophisticated technology, you can keep up an artificial supply shortage for a while, but people will find a way around that eventually. Shakespeare said it better: "The tide waits for no man." Not even a SONY exec. Whether you believe it is funtamentally right or wrong from an ethical perspective, if you're on the wrong side, they you either join them, or lose.
Stefan Axelsson
I've got the hardcover of that book. Interesting to re-read it and see how much, and how little, has changed.
Best Slashdot Co
But heterosexuals don't have sex with a "preferred" partner. They have sex to procreate. Are you crazy? Sex is yucky, and sinful. You're not supposed to prefer anything about it.
Your points about admonishments in scripture regarding hypocrisy are not lost on me, they're just lost on about 99% of other Christians out there. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
heh - I wouldn't kick Mick Jagger out of bed for eating crackers. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I agree. The US tax system is socialist in nature. I've been in favor of a flat tax system for some time now. Not sure what that has to do with record labels and how they treat musicians. Record contracts are voluntary. Taxes are not.
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