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. "
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.
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?
This space intentionally left blank.
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.
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
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*
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.
Whoa! Big difference!
Insurance fraud means that the insurance company is actually PAYING OUT money where they shouldn't have to. There is, in other words, an actual cost to the insurance company.
Piracy on the other hand, means that someone makes a copy of something, an action that doesn't cost the producer of the original anything.
Now, if you had a painting for sale and I took it from you, that's theft. That's comparable to insurance fraud, because I actually take something of value from you. If I instead photograph that painting, I might be violating copyright law, but you still have the painting and you're still able to sell it, hence no theft. Of course, there might be the issue of indirect costs if I print large number of copies of your painting, so that people will buy those instead, but that's a completely different thing.
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.
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 think your analogy is slightly broken. Insurance fraud is just grift, i.e. taking money that will be missing elsewhere. There is money being moved, not copied or duplicated.
"Piracy" more closely resembles passing tapes or photocopying. It distributes the core content to a wider audience. Some people even argue that it helps boost sales as a form of free advertising.
As for the software industry, there is a working model called shareware. You'll never get rich by writing shareware, but the real purpose is to get a product out that would otherwise never reach its intended audience. Good shareware authors get noticed by bigger houses, and can even win jobs or contracts. Even Apple has bought out shareware applications and added them to their own software!
The other reason why people buy software in stores, even when a downloadable version is available, is the things like the install CD in case anything "goes South", the physical handbooks, and the simple feeling of holding the darn thing in your hands. It's the whole "added value" thingy.
So really, IMO the real victims of unauthorised copying are the artists and writers who make the packaging and internal goodis, since you never see their work.
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.
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
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.)
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.
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)
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."
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.
Plus, how about this argument.
The typical dude that can afford a computer, with high-speed connection to make File-Sharing easy would be considered fairly wealthy.
The poor can't really afford this.
File-sharing is more enjoyed buy upper-middle class that working class.
Heck, I have a very wealthy friend that uses file-sharing. We're always talking about it, and how he doesn't buy CD's anymore, why bother?
So, with that argument, the poor have to buy the more expensive CD's while the rich just download them.
Think.. A $45/month Cable Modem connectin pays for itself, if you download a few CD's worth of MP3's per month.
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...
First of all I want to point out the distinction between stealing and illegal copying. One of the two causes the owner to lose something. Please watch your language or we will misunderstand each other.
Furthermore, sharing music with friends is not illegal everywhere in the world. If I'm not mistaken, you can just give a copy of a CD to a friend in Norway (or was it one of the other scandinavian countries?). The fact that this practice happens to be illegal in the US today doesn't mean that we should all just agree. There are some very good reasons to allow this and I don't see it as particularly unethical. I believe that even with P2P there is enough money to be made, so why should we disallow sampling? Two arguments which are made by the RIAA are that:
- They might earn less and need that money to boost new artists.
- Artists will go broke when they P2P is not stopped.
Both arguments can be struck down by claiming that P2P is a very good way for (talented) artists to reach a larger audience and that it certainly doesn't hurt the financial status of the artists who aren't already rich and famous. The risk that it might perhaps, depending on whose figures you believe, have some small impact on the enormous income of popular artists seems to be a fairly small price to pay for the advantages that free (non-profit) file sharing brings. Remember that the protection of Intellectual Property is a man-made invention that is fairly young. The exchange of goods (later with the help of money) has been done since the dawn of time. At that time, nobody thought of protecting their drawings, words or inventions. The Bible was not protected by copyright and the wheel could be freely used. Only a few centuries ago the western world has created laws that give some extra rights to creators so they would create more works. The rights were never inalienable, our society grants them if we see them as being beneficial (assuming we have a well functioning democracy). There is no reason why society should spend it's resources to enforce a law which does more damage than good. IMHO the recent changes (DRM, DCMA, copyright extensions) are doing far more damage than good. Unfortunately it seems that most people are not educated well by the media (one requirement for a strong democracy), nor do most politicians listen to citizens (bribing politicians is legal in the US, strangely enough & there essentially is a weak two party system), so the laws are wrong and do substantial damage (and it is getting worse).
Going along with the RIAA/MPAA only means that my rights will be taken away. So, while it is sad for artists, I will not buy any of their stuff if the money will be used to oppress me. Call me a thief/pirate/terrorist if you want, but I _am_ willing to pay for a fair deal. A deal in which I am the consumer and the producer/distributor gives me what I want. Too bad that just doesn't happen. Most distributors want to treat me as a pirate. Ok, then I'll be one.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
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*.
WRT Microsoft, go find Bill Gates's "An Open Letter to Hobbyists", sent to the "Altair Users' Newsletter" about how people were stealing copies of his BASIC interpreter.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
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 |
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
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.