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NARAS vs. the RIAA
sdbrian writes "An all around excellent paper concerning the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) and their position with regard to the RIAA has been published on Salon.com. The author (John Snyder) quotes from many articles that have been discussed on here on Slashdot. One of Snyder's conclusions, "NARAS should take the lead in this matter. Those who are taking it now are leading us over a cliff. The RIAA has staked out an untenable position that is as unrealistic as it is anti-consumer and anti-artist.""
The phrase "Those who are taking it now are leading us over a cliff", gives a new meaning to the "Drag and Drop File Sharing"
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
The more this appears, the more I think about it as "lent" now "owned". Or can "owning" expire without any exchange? Damn immaterial things and lawyer speak.
-Mark
The RIAA has staked out an untenable position that is as unrealistic as it is anti-consumer and anti-artist.
And the sky is blue... That conclusion is obvious. What I want to know is why the government hasn't stepped in against the RIAA... Microsoft had anti-trust against them... The RIAA has got to have something... Isn't having more than half the US population hating you enough? Any lawyers out there care to elaborate... Is there some legal thing I'm missing that we could use to finally hurt the RIAA?
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
...is money. They have never once cared about the artists, or the consumers. Copyrighting songs was about protecting their intellectual property, not protecting the artists themselves, and their work. Whether it was suing Napster, or price fixing, they've proved that ALL they care about is the almighty buck. No other group or organization has ever been this greedy. The very fact that they seem to lump every human being on earth, into a single category of people that steal music for free, is proof they have no idea what is going on in the real world, and will be going extinct very soon. They just are afraid to let go, even though they know it's going to be over for them eventually.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
It goes to figure that the artists themselves would have to take the official stance against the facist ways that the RIAA tends to take. Consumers, while holding the majority of the power, take very little action. The artists (whom started this in the first place, btw) need to take the proactive stance to create a fairer system.
I think there is some validity to this position, because there is no possible way to get rid of filesharing, since people will always find ways around blocks...That is the nature of the internet. I've seen many posts on slashdot, and I know that many people would prefer to buy very high quality (i.e. lossless, or 320kbits ogg or mp3) for a small fee. The transition period, as has been noted, is very difficult. Change is always difficult, and the shortsightedness of the RIAA has not helped them. They are obviously either opportunists or vagrants out to steal people's money. If they truly were real business managers, they would find a way to make the current reality work. You can't change reality to fit what you want. This has been shown throughout history (which is also why wars have been fought, ahem, French Revolution). I think it is very good that we don't have to resort to violence to solve this conflict anymore; it shows how far our society has evolved. Anyways, I hope they can figure something out, because I'm tired of 128kbits mp3s off p2p networks =P
If they keep pushing anticopy systems, they're locking, or better "setting a time bomb". Like Alexandria library, but centuries latter and with delayed fire. I hope in 200 years people will not point to us as the persons that left them unreadable culture. If it keeps going on, I know what new career will appear, Digital Art Restoration, with lots of classes about math, cryptography, and electronics, with the purpose of removing the "white paint that was put over the wall to hide the picture".
Makes a great point, as you give the public more options to choose from, you get more of the publics cash....
Maybe one day MPAA/RIAA will learn this...
NAAAAA it's easier to have congress protect them.
This is not pro-capitalist, it is pro-mercantilist.
Capitalists (free market thinkers) are anti-government subsidies and regulations. Mercantilists are pro-subsidies and regulations. Do not get them confused!
I am a business owner, and I love competition -- it drives me harder to work to better meet my customers needs.
If I was the best in my business, I'd prove it by providing the best service possible at the price that my customers can afford. That is capitalism!
I don't want the government to subsidize my business and regulate my competitors' businesses. The RIAA is mercantilist. Do not allow these anti-business greenies steer you wrong. Capitalism = GOOD, Mercantilism = BAD.
The Inquirer has another interesting article on the same topic.
The dogcow says "Moof!"
It sure looks like a 40-weekday season of fasting and penitence.
This news seems to be in keeping with the gathering tedency of reactions I've seen -- it does put Hillary Rosen's announce retirement into an interesting light. I think now would be a great time for a serious, concerted and public stand from a united group of civil and cyber liberties groups. At the very least everyone who is on the consumer side of the issues should be making common-cause together. I think the momentum is with us, and not the RIAA.
http://www.mises.org/fullarticle.asp?record=152&mo nth=5
There's a great article that speaks about mercantilism in an easy to read way. The entire time you'll be thinking "THIS is what the RIAA is about."
Wait one gosh darn minute there ... Don't the people who run the RIAA/MPAA own the copyrights to the stuff ... they're just looking to make sure they get every last sent out of someone elses work. Damn it and I thought they were trying to protect my intelectual property with all these strict copyright laws.
I think the artists (and no I don't mean britney) should take a stand ... and forget their old stuff and the souls they sold ... and move on and make some great new music they own the rights to ... I think the music industry needs to follow the book industry and be publishers, ONLY.
I'm tired of the MPAA/RIAA throwing billions of dollars to buy their laws, if they want to impress me they'd just shut the fuck up and lower the price of their shit.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
NARAS is a more technical organization than RIAA, right? (More audio engineers, etc., than executives.) And regarding executives...
Record companies are not logical, righteous entities. They are ramshackle, profit-driven enterprises. They act in their perceived best interests, and they act ruthlessly and, in many cases, irrationally. The people who run them still have their e-mail printed out by their secretaries.
Did anyone else visualize Dilbert's PHB sitting at the desk of President of the RIAA? Scary and yet strangely compelling.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Salon's Technology & Business content is brought to you by Infiniti FX45.
... MTV is playing fewer music videos, and in general, there is a record industry style to push a narrower range of musicians. You can imagine that the death of Internet radio will also cut down on the ways to find out about new music."
... Revenue was $413.9 million in the quarter, up 89 percent from a year earlier ... For the full year, eBay earned $249.9 million, up from $90.4 million a year ago. Sales increased 62 percent to $1.21 billion ... Last year, a total of $14.9 billion worth of merchandise was sold on eBay. This is just shy of the $15.5 billion in sales analysts expect this year from Federated Department Stores, the parent of Macy's."
... We believe in our product."
... I believe word of mouth is just gonna generate more sales. Consistency is the key to all success. If I consistently put out good music, if they buy the bootleg this go-around, it'll guarantee that they purchase the real CD when my next album comes out. I'm in a good space financially so I'm not worked up about the few dollars the bootleggers are gonna get."
... yet fewer than 10,000 of these new books have any significant sales." And like recording artists and the music business, "Authors think that getting a publisher will be the realization of their dreams, but for so many, it's just the start of a long disappointment."
... are expected to collect about $107 million next year." The Times continues:
... It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial ... you're actually stealing the programming." Viewers might find that reasoning less than persuasive, but they'll probably be very persuaded by the threatening, accusatory tone, and dismiss Mr. Kellner and his concerns. This is another example of an old media being unable to adjust to technology. Yes, Jamie, your business is threatened. You will have to change your way of thinking to save it. Abandon failing tactics.
art Embrace file-sharing, or die
A record executive and his son make a formal case for freely downloading music. The gist: 50 million Americans can't be wrong.
Editor's note: John Snyder is president of Artist House Records, a board member of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), and a 32-time Grammy nominee. On Thursday night, he submitted the following paper to NARAS.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By John Snyder and Ben Snyder
printe-mail
Feb. 1, 2003 | The following was written in response to a discussion by the board of governors of the New York chapter of National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) regarding the position NARAS should take with respect to a new public relations campaign proposed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) condemning those who download music from the Internet.
The subject of digital rights, and the position NARAS should take with respect to it, is near and dear to me. I've read a great deal about it. If I may, I would like to offer a few thoughts:
I. Intellectual Property
Irrespective of what we think should be done, it is still currently illegal to download copyrighted music that you didn't buy. This is a problem that needs to be addressed. The statistic discussed in the December meeting that there were 3 billion downloads the previous month shows that the law is going to have to be changed, unless you take the position that downloaded music is stealing and thereby criminalize the society. But how can 50 million people (over 200 million worldwide) be wrong? How do we reconcile the reality of downloaded music with the idea of intellectual property?
Intellectual property has not always been defined and protected as it is today. Thomas Jefferson wrote about the philosophical considerations:
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
The above quote appeared in John Perry Barlow's excellent essay, "The Economy of Ideas," published first in the March 1994 issue of Wired magazine. Barlow writes:
"If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?
"Since we don't have a solution to what is a profoundly new kind of challenge, and are apparently unable to delay the galloping digitization of everything not obstinately physical, we are sailing into the future on a sinking ship.
"This vessel, the accumulated canon of copyright and patent law, was developed to convey forms and methods of expression entirely different from the vaporous cargo it is now being asked to carry. It is leaking as much from within as from without.
"Legal efforts to keep the old boat floating are taking three forms: a frenzy of deck chair rearrangement, stern warnings to the passengers that if she goes down, they will face harsh criminal penalties, and serene, glassy-eyed denial.
"Intellectual property law cannot be patched, retrofitted, or expanded to contain digitized expression any more than real estate law might be revised to cover the allocation of broadcasting spectrum..."
The entire concept of intellectual property needs to be reexamined, and ways of protecting it need to reconsidered. Unfortunately, the entertainment industry has, by legislative crook and judicial hook, obtained a 20-year copyright extension. The Supreme Court recently upheld the "Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA)" that extended the life of existing copyrights an additional 20 years. This, in the face of Justice Steven G. Breyer's estimation that only 2 percent of works copyrighted between 1923 and 1942 are available to the general public. The Supreme Court case pitted the public against Disney, whose early Mickey Mouse cartoons were to enter into the public domain in 2003, and for whom Congress drafted the legislation in the first place.
This is a clear case of a multinational conglomerate using its political muscle to the disadvantage of everyone but itself. So, instead of creating new content and allowing long-standing laws to work, the entertainment business frantically seeks to manipulate the process to its own ends. And it does this with the obsequiousness of penurious politicians and a supinely acquiescent Supreme Court. That is the best the establishment has to offer, and it has nothing to do with progress or the good of the society.
II. Competition for the CD
The current argument over intellectual property is the result of the sharing of music files encoded as MP3s, Windows Media files, RealAudio files or other formats currently available. The music business blames these downloads, which it perceives as piracy, for the 10 percent decline in sales for the year 2002. This raises several questions, among them: How and why do people listen to music? What other products compete with CDs? And what is the role of radio?
Why is it that record companies pay dearly for radio play and fight Internet play? What is the real difference between radio and the Internet? Perfect copies? If we look at the Internet as analogous to radio, the problem becomes one of performance rights, not the unlawful exploitation of intellectual property. People are creating their own "radio" on their hard drives, and they are constantly changing it. Would this have anything to do with the "McDonaldization" of radio by Clear Channel and others? Would the fact that almost every song on commercial radio is bought and paid for have anything to do with the narrow focus and homogeneous nature of radio? What drives radio is advertising and money, not music. A lot of music gets left behind thanks to the current state of radio; that consumers are rejecting it shouldn't be surprising. They're creating their own MP3 playlists, and if the labels were smart, they'd be doing everything in their power to be on those playlists, just like they do everything in their power to be on the playlists of radio stations. Instead, they scream copyright infringement and call their lawyers.
There are other reasons for CD sales to be down.
Dan Bricklin and Forrester Research list reasons for the drop in CD sales:
"... the economy, competition from other forms of entertainment (including the yearly $6 billion of video games and the rush to the new DVD video format), and finally the shorter playlists on radio (partially a result of Clear Channel's control of 60 percent of rock radio listening and their style) that leads to fewer new musicians becoming well known
Price is a major reason for the decline in CD sales. On Bricklin's Web site there's a chart that shows that between the years 1991 and 2001, the average price of a CD went from $13.01 to $14.64, which is a 12.53 percent increase in price. The record companies raised prices precisely at the time costs were coming down. When a DVD costs $19.99 and includes the movie in multiple formats with bonus material and no hassle, and a CD costs $18.99 and comes with potential legal hassles, limits on fair use, and all the finger waving the RIAA can muster, the choice of which product to buy becomes clear. To put it simply, consumers feel that out of all their entertainment options, CDs provide the least bang for the buck.
There are five or six new and growing ways for people to spend their entertainment dollar. The video games market is one place the consumers went, and music followed suit. VH1 News recently reported that the new place to break an artist in is a video game. Some companies, such as Island Records, know this. They have a great track record of getting music on video game soundtracks. But unlike Island, most don't. There are other distractions that draw business away from the record companies: DVD, the fastest-growing home electronics development in the history of the world, the Internet itself, e-mail, cable TV, movies, and even mobile phones. In addition to that, the product marketed by record labels is narrow and significantly overpriced in comparison to the other available entertainment options. Portable CD players are being replaced by iPods. Instead of the 12 songs on a CD, there are 1,500 songs on an iPod. Why shouldn't CD sales be down? Truth be told, the record business is lucky to be alive.
Ananova.com reported that 3.8 million DVD players were sold last year, double that of the previous 12 months. DVD sales reached 80 million last year, representing a 111 percent increase over 2001. Twenty million DVDs and 1.2 million DVD players were sold in December 2002 alone. The movie industry sold 1.6 billion tickets, taking in $9.3 billion in gross box office receipts in 2002, up 11 percent from the previous year, despite President and CEO of the MPAA Jack Valenti's recent statements that the future is bleak. Not since the 1950s have so many movie tickets been sold. Meanwhile, movie sharing on the Internet is at an all-time high. The movie business isn't suffering because of activity on the Internet. Quite the opposite -- the industry is making more money than ever! This is happening at a time when consumers are being offered more choices to view movies than ever before. This supports the view that people spend more money when they have more choices.
Advances in hardware and software have propelled the movie business ever since the VCR, which at the time was decried as the death of the movie business, just as the cassette was to be the death of the music business. In both cases, these "copying" devices enhanced their respective businesses. Whether it's the MPAA or the RIAA, there is no reason to trust those who have cried wolf in the past about new technology, especially when history has shown that advances in technology increase consumer spending.
Then there is the reality that the Internet is changing many businesses. EBay, the fastest-growing and most profitable of the major Internet companies, is selling everything in entertainment (and everything else) to scores of millions of people every week, including music and musical instruments. As a result, they have put many music and instrument stores out of business. In an era of rapidly evolving technology, businesses that adapt will survive, those who don't, won't. As reported by the New York Times on Jan. 17, 2003:
"EBay reported a profit of $87 million for the fourth quarter, more than triple the $25.9 million posted a year earlier
These are startling numbers, and they reveal the way of the future. According to the Times, sales at Amazon increased 28 percent, to $1.43 billion, and this in the face of one of the toughest retail markets in years. They did this by expanding their product lines (to include clothing) and offering free shipping to consumers whose orders exceed $25. They did it by providing greater service for less money. Perhaps the music business will take note.
It is true that downloading music is a very popular entertainment option for many people. The number one P2P application, KaZaA, was downloaded 3,145,095 times during the week of Jan. 6-12, 2003. The number two P2P application, iMesh, was downloaded 440,877 times during the same period. KaZaA estimates that it had 140 million users by the end of 2002, twice as many as Napster at its peak. These fantastic numbers indicate a desire among consumers for music that the music companies traditionally satisfied but increasingly no longer do. This raises another question. Why don't the record labels have P2P networks? They have proven to be wildly popular. They don't require expensive investments in technology to start and maintain, and most importantly, the online community has embraced them wholeheartedly. The reason is, they can't agree with their "partners" -- publishers and artists -- on how to share the money. The same greed that got them into their current problem prevents them from extricating themselves from it.
Let's suppose I'm a kid. I have a fixed allowance or a minimum wage job. I have $100 a month to spend on entertainment, if I'm lucky. With that cash, I can rent or buy DVDs, pay for my Internet connection, go to a concert, a movie, or a sporting event (at which I might buy some merchandise), buy a video game, pay my mobile phone bill, drive through the drive-thru, or buy a CD. From that list of options, what's the least likely thing I'm going to spend money on? I think the answer would be the CD, even if downloaded music didn't exist. I would argue that it's not the presence of a "free" alternative that has caused the decline in CD sales, it's the presence of competing choices offering more value and fewer hassles.
III. An Argument for Downloaded Music
It could be argued that MP3s are the greatest marketing tool ever to come along for the music industry. If your music is not being downloaded, then you're in trouble. If you can't give it away, you certainly can't sell it. Daniel Bedingfield recently had a top 3 song on the radio, with "Gotta Get Thru This." However, his music was hardly available through any of the P2P networks. His record lasted on the Billboard Top 200 for less than a month, even though the single had been on radio playlists all over the country for several months. It's also been widely reported that the most downloaded album of all time was "The Eminem Show," by Eminem. It was downloaded so heavily that Interscope took the unusual step of releasing the album a week early due to the rampant online sharing of tracks from the album. Fast-forward to the end of 2002, and "The Eminem Show" is the best-selling album of the year. This seems to indicate the opposite of what the RIAA would have you believe. When people share MP3s, more music is sold, not less.
As VH1.com recently reported, at least one company believes that file-sharing is good for business, and that it's a "promotional tool and boosts the sales of albums that deserve it." M.S.C. Music & Entertainment is encouraging listeners to download 20 tracks from rapper Tech N9ne's new album, for free. "The major labels can no longer fool the consumer. They don't want you to sample their music because they know that if the fans realize there are only two good songs on a record, you will not buy it
50 Cent, Eminem's newest talent and rap's current street king, sees an advantage to having his debut album, "Get Rich or Die Trying," available before the release date:
"The bootleggers are gonna go crazy with this record. They understand how much of a presence I have in the streets. They'll probably get the record two weeks before the album actually drops and it'll be all over the place
# There's a provocative piece on P2P.com regarding piracy and on-line distribution titled "Piracy Is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution," by Tim O'Reilly. His article discusses a number of subjects, including: Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.
# Piracy is progressive taxation.
# Customers want to do the right thing, if they can.
# Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy.
# File-sharing networks don't threaten book, music, or film publishing, they threaten existing publishers.
# "Free" is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service.
Tim O'Reilly is the founder and president of O'Reilly & Associates, thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. He has been a pioneer in the popularization of the Internet. His Global Network Navigator site (GNN, sold to AOL in September 1995) was the first Web portal and the first true commercial site on the World Wide Web. O'Reilly takes a long-term view of the intellectual property problem, as opposed to the short-term view that is characterized by the "sky is falling" rhetoric of both the music (RIAA) and movie (MPAA) business.
O'Reilly's observations about the book business apply to the music business. As with the record industry, the publishing world enjoys only a 10 percent success rate. "More than 100,000 books are published each year
O'Reilly continues:
"For all of these creative artists, most laboring in obscurity, being well-enough known to be pirated would be a crowning achievement. Piracy is a kind of progressive taxation, which may shave a few percentage points off the sales of well-known artists (and I say "may" because even that point is not proven), in exchange for massive benefits.
"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. My daughter now owns more CDs than I have collected in a lifetime of less exploratory listening. What's more, she has introduced me to her favorite music, and I too have bought CDs as a result. And no, she isn't downloading Britney Spears, but forgotten bands from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, as well as their musical forebears in other genres. This is music that's difficult to find -- except online -- but, once found, leads to a focused search for CDs, records, and other artifacts. eBay is doing a nice business with much of this material, even if the RIAA fails to see the opportunity."
O'Reilly makes other persuasive observations:
"Piracy is a loaded word, which we used to reserve for wholesale copying and resale of illegitimate product. The music and film industry usage, applying it to peer-to-peer file sharing, is a disservice to honest discussion...
"The simplest way to get customers to stop trading illicit digital copies of music and movies is to give those customers a legitimate alternative, at a fair price...
"The question before us is not whether technologies such as peer-to-peer file sharing will undermine the role of the creative artist or the publisher, but how creative artists can leverage new technologies to increase the visibility of their work. For publishers, the question is whether they will understand how to perform their role in the new medium before someone else does. Publishing is an ecological niche; new publishers will rush in to fill it if the old ones fail to do so...
"New media have historically not replaced but rather augmented and expanded existing media marketplaces, at least in the short term. Opportunities exist to arbitrage between the new distribution medium and the old."
O'Reilly compares an on-line music subscription service to people paying $19.95 a month for an ISP when "free" Internet is available, or $20 to $60 a month for TV programming when there is "free" TV programming:
"Why would you pay for a song that you could get for free? For the same reason that you will buy a book that you could borrow from the public library or buy a DVD of a movie that you could watch on television or rent for the weekend. Convenience, ease-of-use, selection, ability to find what you want, and for enthusiasts, the sheer pleasure of owning something you treasure."
Comparing TV to music, O'Reilly says a lesson that can be learned from television "is that people prefer subscriptions to pay-per-view, except for very special events. What's more, they prefer subscriptions to larger collections of content, rather that single channels. So, people subscribe to 'the movie package,' 'the sports package,' and so on. The recording industry's 'per song' trial balloons may work, but I predict that in the long term, an 'all-you-can-eat' monthly subscription service (perhaps segmented by musical genre) will prevail in the marketplace."
People want what they want and they have made their choices. They will still buy CDs, but they want to download music. The failure of the music business to provide a comparable alternative to peer-to-peer networks is the most logical explanation for the "illegal" downloading of music. And rather than address the problem by examining their own behavior, the music companies declare the consumer to be their enemy, support intrusive, overreaching legislation, and act precisely against their best interests. This remains true even in the face of the recent truce the RIAA agreed to with several technology groups. Rather than realize the profit potential of that about which they complain, they try to kill it, then they try to control it. Now they're trying to control the consumer. As O'Reilly points out in his final paragraph:
"And that's the ultimate lesson. 'Give the wookie what he wants!' as Han Solo said so memorably in the first 'Star Wars' movie. Give it to him in as many ways as you can find, at a fair price, and let him choose which works best for him."
The RIAA tries to "give the wookie what he wants" by giving him what they want. Their newest attempt is with a handful of half-baked music subscription services. The New York Times recently reported that "Jupiter Research expects consumers to pay about $79 million for downloaded songs and CDs in 2003. Subscription services
"The brewing battles among these services will be over how they package songs, what kind of exclusive access they can offer subscribers to particular artists and whether they can be used for portable devices, stereos and cars."
If subscription services offer a broad range of music and no digital rights management schemes, and properly labeled high-quality files, at a reasonable price with fast downloads, they will have a chance to compete against "free." Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the music business will avoid copy protection issues. Instead, copy protection remains the No. 1 priority for both the music and movie industries. The future of digital media will have movies or songs offered in various ways for various prices. If you want to just play it once, or for a 24-hour period, it will be cheaper than if you want to download it to your hard drive and copy it. If you want it to play on all of your players, you will pay more than if you just want to hear it or see it over the Internet. 2003 will be a crucial year for industry online music subscription services PressPlay (Universal/Sony), MusicNet (BMG/Warners/EMI), and Rhapsody. They will have to develop an approach to these issues that satisfies the demand currently being met by the P2P networks if they hope to compete in this emerging market. Consumers are reluctant to accept limitations on use, so it is unlikely that copy protection will lead to a cure for what ails the music business.
The music business isn't like the movie business, even though both are involved in the digital dissemination of intellectual property. A song is not the same as a movie. Listening to a song on the Internet isn't the same as watching a movie for free on the Internet. It is arguable that downloading a song functions as a substitute for radio, a first step in the process of consumption, while watching a movie is, arguably, the last step in the process of consumption. Consumers may accept limitations on the use of a movie, making it more akin to the licensing of software, but they find it more difficult to accept limitations on the use of a CD they buy or music that they acquire by way of a subscription service. Consumers are used to renting movies; they're used to buying and owning music.
Music companies are more egregious in their abuse of consumers than the movie companies. Consumers don't hate movie companies, but they do hate record companies. The question is, why is this happening and what is going to be done about it? Digital copy protection (known as digital rights management or DRM) will only add fuel to this fire, so expect a very big blaze in 2003. In the end, it will be the music companies that run the risk of being consumed by it. Music companies have the opportunity to adjust to the new realities of digital distribution but instead they cling to their existing business models where they control as much of the distribution channel as possible. It is doubtful that this behavior will be rewarded with increased sales.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed by Congress in 1998 to address how technological innovation would affect intellectual property. In drawing up the document, Congress looked to the RIAA and similar groups for guidance as to what the law should contain. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently released a study titled "Unintended Consequences: Four Years Under the DMCA" which goes on to detail how the "anti-circumvention" clauses of the DMCA have been used to stifle innovation, censor free speech, and threaten academic/scientific research. These chilling effects of the DMCA contradict and limit the "fair use" doctrine that is an important part of copyright law. Additionally, the digital rights management (DRM) initiatives that the RIAA and MPAA propose to protect their copyrights do nothing to protect the "fair use" rights of consumers.
Record labels are confused and contradictory. They use MP3s in private while they deride them in public. If they're promoting a new band, they'll post the band's songs on P2P networks (often in a covert manner) with the hopes that they'll be traded and talked about in chat rooms. If it's an established act with a history of sales, they'll "spoof" the P2P networks with fake files (also in a covert manner). It's just another way of using MP3s, albeit a subversive and anti-customer way. The RIAA has apparently engaged in "poisoning" P2P networks.
The biggest damage done by downloaded music is the paralysis it has inflicted upon the traditionalists in the music industry. The path to profitability does not include a long and drawn-out legal battle with consumers, yet this is exactly what the RIAA is doing. The choice for NARAS is whether to lead the fight for what's best for the artists or whether to endorse the self-serving positions of the music industry's congressional lobbying group, the RIAA.
There is a convincing piece by Damien Cave on Salon.com titled "File Sharing: Innocent Until Proven Guilty," which argues that there is no proven correlation between downloaded music and the decline in CD sales. He continues to argue in "File Sharing: Guilty As Charged?" that a good deal of the "sky is falling" rhetoric created by the record companies and the RIAA is based on supposition and self-interest. In addition, the article "RIAA's Statistics Don't Add Up to Piracy" analyzes the RIAA's own statistics and argues that they do not support the RIAA's conclusion that downloaded music is the cause for the decline in CD sales. In this detailed analysis, George Ziemann argues that the record industry released 11,900 fewer titles in 2000 than it released in 1999, a 25 percent decrease, yet the total number of units shipped decreased only 10.3 percent and the dollar value of these units fell by only 4.1 percent. It seems that the RIAA is misinterpreting its own statistics.
IV. Record Company Complicity
It could be argued that the record companies are responsible for their current predicament. Again, how did they turn themselves into one of the most hated corporate sectors, and what are they going to do about it? Five years ago nobody gave a second thought about record companies; now they are reviled. Record companies need to realize that music is now viewed as a commodity with a shelf-life of 90 days, and that they made it so. As Prince recently put it:
"So are most citizens really being completely disrespectful of the value of art and the need 2 provide appropriate compensation 2 the artists 4 their works? We've said it b4 and we'll say it again: the rise of digital technology and peer-2-peer file sharing has little 2 do with people's intrinsic respect 4 art and artists, and everything 2 do with the cynical attitude of big industry conglomerates, which have consistently pushed 4 more and more commercial, highly profitable products at the xpense of authentic art and respect 4 artists.
"If people do not feel enough guilt 2 prevent them from making digital copies of the latest episode of a popular TV show or hit pop song, it is precisely because the industry giants have succeeded in making these works purely commercial products, with little or no consideration 4 their actual artistic value. It is precisely because these companies have been consistently promoting commercial products at the xpense of artistic works.
"The fact that actual works of art still manage 2 seep thru the cracks of this huge profit-driven industry does not change anything about the fundamental equations that have been driving and still drive the industry, 2day more than ever -- i.e. that art = money, artists = money-makers, and art lovers = consumers.
"As a simple xample of how little music is valued as an art 4m by the industry, it is estimated that only about 20 percent of music ever recorded is currently available -- and, of this 20 percent, what proportion is actually readily available 2 music lovers? What proportion is not the current 100 top albums on the SoundScan charts?
"It simply appears that the instinctive reaction of the lover of art (b it music, TV shows, movies, or other 4ms of art) is such that, if the industry has no respect 4 his or her identity as an appreciator of art, then he or she has no reason 2 have any respect 4 the industry as a purveyor of art. By making digital copies of so-called cultural products, many people r not demonstrating their lack of respect 4 art and 4 artists, but r xpressing -- consciously or not -- their frustration with the way the entertainment industry profits from art at the xpense of both art makers and art lovers.
"The consumers of the commercial products of the entertainment industry r only as cynical as the industry has deliberately made them, by dumbing down their products, by xploiting artists, by making profit-driven choices and decisions, and by providing their own kind with obscene compensations and legal impunity that r completely out of touch with the real world of ordinary people."
There is good reason for consumer cynicism. AOL Time Warner owns Warner Bros. Records (along with America Online, Time, Life, Fortune, Elektra, Sports Illustrated, HBO, Turner Broadcasting, CNN, Cinemax, Entertainment Weekly, New Line Cinema, Warner Bros. Studios, In Style, Warner/Chappell Music, Time Warner Cable, WBN, ICQ, Warner Music Group, Netscape, People, Reprise, Rhino, Atlantic, WEA, TNT, MapQuest, WinAmp, In Demand, Erato, Moviefone, and Road Runner). AOL makes a lot of money as an Internet service provider. There is no question that a large portion of the people using AOL's service are downloading the very music that Warner Bros. Records claims as being stolen. There is no question that the executives at AOL Time Warner know this. Also, let's not forget that it was AOL that bought Time Warner. Service trumped content.
The conglomerates are reeling from the impact the Internet and digital downloads are having in changing how the consumer thinks. But it is not the downloads that are wrecking the music business, it is the inability of the conglomerates to adjust to the Internet and the new ways consumers want to consume music. AOL Time Warner just posted a year-end loss for 2002 of $98.7 billion. Sony, the only multinational corporation to have interests in both the music and consumer electronics worlds, has relinquished its leadership in the portable market to Apple's iPod due to Sony's conflicting interests in music copyrights (Sony Music) and in hardware. Sony hardware comes with anti-copying features, making it cumbersome and inflexible. For example, as reported in the Wired magazine article "The Year the Music Dies," the five major music companies sold $20 billion worth of music last year, but Sony alone had $42 billion in electronics and computer sales, making their music business much less significant. "If Sony wants to sell MP3-capable cell phones -- a big thing in Japan and potentially worldwide -- how much attention will it pay to Sony Music's protests?"
In another recent article in Wired magazine Frank Rose writes:
"As a member of the Consumer Electronics Association, Sony joined the chorus of support for Napster against the legal onslaught from Sony and the other music giants seeking to shut it down. As a member of the RIAA, Sony railed against companies like Sony that manufacture CD burners. And it isn't just through trade associations that Sony is acting out its schizophrenia. Sony shipped a Celine Dion CD with a copy-protection mechanism that kept it from being played on Sony PCs. Sony even joined the music industry's suit against Launch Media, an Internet radio service that was part-owned by -- you guessed it -- Sony. Two other labels have since resolved their differences with Launch, but Sony Music continues the fight, even though Sony Electronics has been one of Launch's biggest advertisers and Launch is now part of Yahoo!, with which Sony has formed a major online partnership. It's as if hardware and entertainment have lashed two legs together and set off on a three-legged race, stumbling headlong into the future."
Sony is also the largest manufacturer of writeable CD drives. It, along with Philips, co-developed the CD and collects royalties from various CD patents. All CDs, whether used by commercial replicators or bought by the general public, are subject to these royalties, which currently stand at $0.033 per disc. There were over 500 million blank CDs sold last year. The advantage of being a multinational corporation is the ability to use one asset to create another asset. Sony may make less money on music but is using it to make money elsewhere.
Similar internal conflicts exist within AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal, and the Bertelsmann polygon. Nevertheless, they continue to engage in businesses that infringe on their own copyrights. They are trying to have it both ways, in all ways. Instead of dealing with their own inconsistencies, they direct and fund the RIAA to lobby politicians to support legislation like the "Peer to Peer Piracy Protection Act." This act gives record companies the right to invade your hard drive (an otherwise illegal activity) if they suspect that you have illegally obtained their copyrights, their music. This anti-piracy law is actually an anti-privacy law, and it also limits fair use and threatens academic freedom. The RIAA and the music business are trying to legislate profitability. NARAS needs to take a position with respect to the copyright issue, but it should be an independent position. NARAS should come up with its own ideas. The RIAA is acting irrationally.
Also, the record companies recently settled a price-fixing suit in which they admitted they were overcharging consumers. This point seems to be overlooked by the RIAA in its attempt to place all blame for the woes of the music business at the feet of file-sharing. Is it possible that the decrease in CD sales is related to the conspiracy by the major record labels to fix inflated prices?
V. Opportunity and the Future
One other word about the 3 billion music downloads each month: That's a lot of music. There aren't 3 billion songs. Music has become fungible. People are going through it faster than toilet paper. Never in the history of the world has there been more music in the air and never have more people listened to music. Out of this incredible desire and need for music, surely some good must come. I think more opportunity than ever is available to the musician and songwriter, and the record company too. They just have to create new ways to deal with this opportunity, and it won't be by the old rules. Janis Ian is a good example. Downloaded music has resurrected her career. She's actually making money because of downloads. I think that if it weren't for all of this activity on the Internet and all of this downloaded music, the CD market would be suffering more than it is. MP3s are lessening the decline of the music business, not creating it.
Record companies are not logical, righteous entities. They are ramshackle, profit-driven enterprises. They act in their perceived best interests, and they act ruthlessly and, in many cases, irrationally. The people who run them still have their e-mail printed out by their secretaries. We have to wait for the next generation to take over, the "software" generation, the generation of people who don't remember growing up without a computer around. I would argue that the future of music is multimedia, the future of multimedia is DVD, and the future of music companies is software. In five years, record labels will be software companies and I don't think they know that yet. The music business will be saved by someone from the software business who can impose a new business model on music assets.
In the future there will be no record stores as we know them, no tangible product as we know it. The CD is going the way of the 8-track and the cassette. Soon there will be no need for the tangible thing. Consumers have made their choice. They want to listen to music while they're working at their computers, on a portable device like an iPod or MiniDisc player, or on a home theater jukebox (similar to a feature of Microsoft's Xbox). Digitally available music has given the consumer choices, and they like those choices. They don't want music just from commercial radio. They also want it from their hard drives and from the Internet. Yet record companies still want to force tangible, overpriced media on consumers who want to obtain data files and temporarily store them on their hard drives or on cheap, disposable discs (CD-Rs). If record labels don't start trying to be part of the future they will be bought up and converted to it by someone who is.
People have always listened to music while they were doing something else. That's almost the essence of "American music." Record companies guessed right on the "something else" for a long time, but that was before the myriad of other choices became available to consumers. At one time in this country, listening to music on the radio was a miracle. It's no longer a miracle, and when you look at the technological developments in the last 70 years, there's little wonder why. It's been one miracle after another. And yet even to this day, radio is the sine qua non of a hit record. This is especially true in the era of radio consolidation, where corporate Goliaths like Clear Channel are allowed to exist. Maybe that's the only way radio can remain relevant: It has to become one big punch. In a world where diversity is an evolutionary step, radio moves furiously towards consolidation, aided and abetted by the FCC. Someone should ask the question, why is this allowed?
The way things are going, a few corporations are going to control access to all digital information, and if the current administration has its way, these activities will be monitored. The reason why the RIAA is screaming bloody murder about little ol' MP3 is because it means that they are losing control. People are making their own individual choices, and they aren't going along with the program of manipulation that has always limited those choices. Now that they're making choices, industry executives and politicians are shocked.
The same argument extends to the television industry with respect to TiVo and other personal video recorders (PVRs). Jamie Kellner, chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting, which encompasses everything from CNN to TNT and is a part of AOL Time Warner, was asked in an interview why PVRs were bad for his industry. He responded that it's "because of the ad skips
VI. The Role of NARAS
In order for the record industry to remain relevant it will have to determine how to get people to buy something they can get for free. In addition to the cable television business, print publications, and ISPs, there is an industry that has found a solution to this problem, and the music industry should take notice. That industry is the bottled water industry. Bottled water is a growth market. But common sense would indicate that when water is virtually free (i.e., tap water) that people wouldn't want to pay $1 for 16 oz. of water. Yet, most of us frequently do just that. Why? Because it is convenient and because we have been persuaded that it is safer, more pure, that it is "better" water. Convenience becomes necessity, belief becomes profit.
The bottled water industry is built on customer service. If the music business were to take this approach and ally themselves with consumers rather than fight them, it's quite possible that their profits would still be growing. But record companies distrust their customers even more than their customers distrust them. The circle is unlikely to be broken, which in turn creates wide open spaces for the entrepreneur, for a "new" way. NARAS has to appeal to the new, not the old. NARAS supersedes the short-term interests of the record companies. NARAS has an obligation to art and to the artists who create it, to creative excellence in its presentation, and it is those obligations, above all, that should define its actions. The relevance of NARAS exists in direct proportion to its independence.
Charlie Feldman suggested that the board undertake a "study" of the matter. He's right, only we should go further. I think we need a symposium, a gathering of eagles. NARAS should take the lead in this matter. Those who are taking it now are leading us over a cliff. The RIAA has staked out an untenable position that is as unrealistic as it is anti-consumer and anti-artist. Their interests and the interests of NARAS are not the same. Their solutions are not good solutions. They cling unsuccessfully to the past rather than embrace the stunning opportunities offered by the future. They will be unsuccessful in their attempts to criminalize the society, and in their attempts to stretch the drum head of old laws onto the drum of new technology. It is one thing to be unsuccessful, it's one thing to argue a bad position, but it's quite another to be silly and laughed at, and that's where the RIAA has ended up. They appear to be totally irrelevant except as bagmen. It's more than just bad P.R., it's bad science. The RIAA reached its conclusions, then looked for supporting arguments, all the while ignoring reality, opportunity and fact. They overstate their position, misinterpret their own data, and make dubious claims for artists' rights when the biggest abusers of artists' rights are their benefactors, the record companies themselves.
ZDNet reported that the sale of illegal CDs increased 50 percent from 2000 to 2001. This translates into $4.3 billion dollars in sales from 950 million illegally sold CDs. This strikes me as a much more serious and obvious problem than downloaded music. So serious in fact that the problem of MP3s pales by comparison. This is where the record companies and RIAA should be putting their moral outrage, their money and energy. Those bad guys really are bad guys, profiting from the mass counterfeiting of someone else's property, unlike 14-year-old kids, who download music because they can't afford $18 for two songs that are going to be replaced in a couple of weeks anyway. Equating the downloading of music with counterfeiting for profit brings disrepute to the RIAA's more important and necessary efforts to stop counterfeiting. Then again, it's ironic that if the RIAA is successful in shoving everyone back into the CD market, almost half of the CDs they buy will be counterfeits.
With respect to the question of downloaded music, NARAS should embrace new technologies, be the voice of reasoned analysis, and act as an arbiter to reconcile the conflicting views of the various parties involved. In the past, NARAS aligned itself with the RIAA and the record companies. This is a mistake, in my opinion, and I hope that the opinions expressed in this paper will at least give us reason to pause and to thoroughly examine our position, as well as the position, claims and statistics of the RIAA and their corporate backers. Above all else, NARAS must not rubber-stamp what is quite clearly a self-serving position (as happened on last year's Grammy broadcast when Mike Greene berated and branded music consumers as thieves and shoplifters). NARAS must be the independent voice, a voice of objectivity. NARAS should be the "think tank" of the music business, not an enforcer or a PAC. What we have here is the potential to become a leader in the new frontier of intellectual property rights, artists' rights, consumers' rights, the future of music, and the power of the art itself. I say let's seize the day. In my opinion, there is a vacuum of leadership with respect to these pivotal and crucial issues and NARAS should step in and fill that vacuum. It is a golden opportunity.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
John Snyder is president of Artist House Records, a board member of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences, and a 32-time Grammy nominee.
Ben Snyder, John's son, works for It's a Gas Marketing/Management, a grassroots marketing company that serves the music industry.
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Courtney Love does the math
The controversial singer takes on record label profits, Napster and "sucka VCs."
By Courtney Love
06/14/00
Not exactly the showdown of the century..
.. or is it?
The meat of the argument is much better. Thomas Jefferson's belief in the free exchange of information (or ideas) to promote intellectual growth is what I have believed in since day one. Stifling the education process by prohibiting the utility of someone's ideas is not only detrimental to those who can't use the ideas, but also to those who hold claim to the ideas.
But at the same time, plagiarism is wrong. But why should utilizing others' discoveries be illegal if proper credit is given? I can't conceive any principle or moral factor that justifies that.
The problem with ideas, words, and anything related to the thought process is that they are intangible. They can not be proven to be the property of someone else, yet the patent office or whoever is in charge simply takes the first person to show up. Further more, any human mind is capable of innovative ideas that can benefit us all. What if it was my great-grandfather who originally came up with the Dr Pepper formula, but he didn't like the way it tasted so he discarded it, only for his neighbor to pick it up and start a company on it? Bad example, but it proves the point for me: it can not be proven that you're the one who worked to develop this idea or product, and it can not be morally justifiable to grant anyone the rights to prohibit the usage of such ideas simply based on the fact that they are the first to go public with it.
Information, ideas, innovation... All should be public and free to exchange. Prohibiting such exchange is prohibiting the advancement of the human mind and of the human race. We would be in much better shape if we did not have legal institutions in place for restricting our rights to apply our own thoughts.
It's a shame we can't moderate Salon articles... the author seriously deserves a +1 Insightful...
"For every right, an equal responsibility..."
It's not this free hand-out thing that the government gives the NEA.
But copyright in the United States is just that: a free handout given by the U.S. Congress to authors "to promote the Progress of Science".
Will I retire or break 10K?
This article appeared on Fortune website, or businessweek, or an avenue where the people who actually matter in this debate (businessmen, politicians) frequent. If that happened, it might actually DO something, other than ignite the pirating passion of /.ers
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
"The RIAA has staked out an untenable position that is as unrealistic as it is anti-consumer and anti-artist."
:)
My tiny mind told me what RIAA does on CD price-setting is anti-customer; and when it comes to squeezing the creativeness of minority artists who just want to let people listen to their music, they are anti-artist.
RIAA is in position similar to Satan accusing others anti-christ.
I'm tired of people (on both sides of the music sharing issue) trotting out the same rhetorical arguments all the time. There's nothing new here. Snyder's arguments about growth in other media don't prove his point; rather they show that the decline in record sales can't be blamed on the slowing economy. I believe I bought fewer CDs from major labels this year, not because I was downloading them from the internet, but because I wasn't interested in them. My money instead goes to new, independant artists (via CD Baby a fantastic way to buy music that doesn't make you feel like a criminal.)
I for one don't believe that we're going to (or that we should) do away with copyright. I just believe that the current music industry is going to be end-runned. I hope that we don't end up legislating it's continued existence. By that I don't mean that we should permit illegal file sharing, but that we shouldn't mandate a technological solution which only allows big media to create content.
-c
"If you are an idealist it doesn't matter what you do or what goes on around you, because it isn't real anyway."-R.P.W.
the movie business will be around as long as teenagers want to get away from their parents. that's the way it's been since tv.
At http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7555 a lengthy report on the same subject, just released today.
Similar in some respects but different in others - like it has some stuff about copyright expiry scaring the crap out of the RIAA. Certainly worth a read. Very nice synchronicity!
You're linking to an ad.
Salon.com changes links to the story into links to an ad unless the Referer: points to Salon.com. This allows Salon to add an interstitial advertisement. Yahoo! Groups does the same thing.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Capitalist is the entity with the best product makes a bunch of money.
RIAA is trying to make it so those currently making a bunch of money continue to do so.
If capitalistic forces do reign supreme in the end, either RIAA members will change their means of doing business, or they will cease to do business at all.
paintball
The war on drugs boosted the prison population to 2 million + and counting, but that's OK because they're mostly black.
Now, the war on piracy threatens to put all those white kids in the slammer, and you get upset.
Gotta luv American judges, though. Always up to the task.
On of the features of property is its protectability. The RIAA has been failing to protect that which they consider property. Thus, it seems more likely that what they consider property is not property.
Like books that one 'must read,' the body of good music is vast. And the array of lesser music perhaps even larger. It's not surprising really that out of sheer defense, if not more educated musical pallettes, that people consult music info sites, trade music (and maybe quite frequently delete them) and make more targeted purchases.
If anything, the recording industry should examine trends in shared music and find out what the consumer really wants. And why this isn't being fulfilled by the current state of affairs.
when I first saw the title I thought I said "NRA vs RIAA". Now that's a matchup I want to see....
But I couldn't help but be a little put off by Prince's disrespect 4 the English languange as a means of xpression. I think I know why he hasn't released an album lately. He's been too busy hanging out in chat rooms.
I read through the article, and it seems pretty clear that NARAS has decided to embrace P2P, file-sharing, and subscription models without DRM as the primary form of music distribution. One of the arguments he made was that it turned out to actually profit many artists, and among those he cited was Janis Ian.
/.ers are going to think "Yay, NARAS! Boo, RIAA!" after reading this. Are we looking at a power struggle?
So I found it very interesting that the link off the article to Janis Ian's Internet Debacle quotes NARAS as follows:
The NARAS people were a bit more pushy. They told me downloads were "destroying sales", "ruining the music industry", and "costing you money".
Looks like NARAS has done a 180. But if they previously didn't believe in what this article is arguing for, why do they believe it now? Is it really just because they think they have to adapt to the new model? Or are there other motives which we don't know about? After all, I bet a huge load of
Indeed. I believe that the recording industry has completely confused cause with effect and refuses to accept the consequnces of its actions.
While I do not download copyrighted material, many years ago my music budget and I completely abandoned the regular commercial stream in favor of independent artists and recordings. The top 4 reasons were:
1) Quality
2) Choice and variety
3) Value for money
4) Contempt for an industry that would be as at home selling hamburgers - a soulless marketing machine that didn't have a clue what real music was, treated it as a commodity and treated its customers and artists with equal levels of contempt while continuing down a path towards providing less of items 1-3. I wasn't alone with my feelings and options arose - we took them. I'm not going back - I'm much happier where I am now.
Sigs are bad for your health.
For a time, perhaps they would. But just as in the old days if my CD broke or my tape melted in the back seat of a car, it's not the record company's fault.
But really, make a backup! We're talking about downloading an ogg or mp3 anyway.
creation science book
the thing that has always bothered me about these type of articles is that it never talks about what the artists want. It is always focused on what the RIAA wants. I don't f'in care what the *AA wants, i do care about what the artists wants.
./ reader http://slashdot.org/~BenSnyder
i know i am naive, but i would like to believe artists care more about the music they create than the money it generates. After all music is an artform.
the article is correct that the riaa should reap what it has sown. when you lie continually to your potential consumers in opposition of easily verifiable facts you have less credibility. everytime i read something the riaa has published i lose more respect. how can the ever be taken seriously when they have betrayed the same people they want as consumers. i really don't condone the use of p2p, but i use it to find music that is no longer published that i still want to listen to. i would much rather have the cd though.
you can be sure that at least ben snyder will be reading he is a regualar
According to this, it appears that some members of the RIAA have also embraced file sharing - but only as a tool for gathering marketing data.
Sigs are bad for your health.
I wouldn't say it is pro capitalist. The RIAA has a sanctioned monopoly in their business. The business model has more in common with prostitution, the "artists" are promised the world but forced into debt by their publishers, and are forced into more agreements and debts. It would be similar to an office worker becoming instantly in debt to his employer because he needs supplies (like a computer) to do the job you just hired him for, but why not charge him for the marketing of the product you're going to sell, and also make him responsible for the shipping of your product- after all they all cut into the bottom line... In a true capitalistic economy competition would allow artists to find better publishers (which does happen) and if the RIAA had competition we would see new business models that would force the RIAA to compete and change the way it treats consumers. Monopolies go against the idea of capitalism, where it is in the best interest of a company, or trade association to look out for the "well-being" of the consumer-- and obviously keep him/her happy enough to buy your product.
Here's an idea I just had for anyone who still cares about good music. Go download some top-100 crap, open it up in whatever sound-editing software you like best, and voice-over it.
Rant about music you like, mention a few unsigned bands that record a similar genre the the RIAA track you're spoiling. Talk about fair use, payola, price fixing, whatever. Mention a few good URL's about the issues such as the one in this story.
Repeat for as much of the top-100 as you can stand, then share it around. If the RIAA wants P2P networks polluted, let's do it RIGHT!
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Somewhere USA, Feb 2 2003: In a dramatic raid today, FBI agents stormed the home of John Snyder, apprently after being tipped off by a patriotic watchdog group representing all that's good about America. The group is helping to hunt down the disloyal communistic and unfreeistic citizens who sap the strength of this nation by having a rather lax attitude toward (intellectual) property laws. The unnamed group let the FBI know that there were some "terroristical activities" going on out there at Mr. Snyder's home. In a speech today promoting his "making surety no children is left behind" school reform proposal, President Bush eloquently expressed his thoughts on this sad day: "It's a saddifying daytime in Amuricuh when one be taking up causes against the many of those United States. We will not buy over to these extortional threats and pirates and start to change things. We will stop material breach of weapons of mass IP destruction. Axis of Evil Bad. John Snyder Bad. Axis of Evil Bad."
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
... that would be unlicensed derivative work which i would be sued for and thrown to jail ...
... i'm glad i stayed in the software business
It sucks being an artist these days
This article does not represent an official NARAS position. It is the opinion of one member. As the prologue to the article states, this is a paper he submitted to NARAS only a couple of days ago. Perhaps it will have some effect, but at the moment I'm quite certain that the official position of NARAS remains aligned with the RIAA's position.
It ain't necessarily so.
If the author allows the download for people who haven't bought copies otherwise, or if the copy rights expired, then it is legal.
There are probably other legal cases, but those were the ones I got out of the top of my head.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Uh, next time you're trying to build a persuasive argument to industry executives, you may want to think about quoting someone other than The Artist Currently Known As Prince. He may make some salient points, but he sure sounds like an idiot with his phonetical writing style.
take it from someone who really knows...
"the music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. there's also a negative side." ~ hunter s. thompson
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
The summary that appears on slashdot makes this seem like it's the opinion of NARAS, it's not, it's one board member's paper trying to convince NARAS of what it's position SHOULD be. That is a far cry from this actually being the position of NARAS.
If even one member of Congress got thrown out because of his anti-consumer pro business stand (IE: corporations over constituants), you'd see things change 180 degrees. FEAR is what drives all this. The RIAA wants us to FEAR using P2P programs and uses the Congress and courts as their henchmen. Congressmen and senators have FEAR of not having a well oiled campaign machine to spread their lies about how much they do for the voters in TV ads. If the voters got together as a group and threw out just one person, the FEAR that went through Congress would be monumental! It's not as hard as it seems: just look at the 2002 election. The anti abortionists and religious righters were able to successfully change control of the Senate. All it took was a few carefully chosen contests. If these clowns can figure it out, it should be a snap for smart people like ourselves...or we all a bunch of armchair whiners?
"Quality" is such a loaded word; what exactly do you mean? I doubt that either of you meant recording quality; if that's the deciding factor, then noone would listen to MP3s, most of which sound no better than an analog tape. You clearly can not be talking about the technicality of the music; if that determined "quality", the top 40 would be covers of paganini, coltrane and lizt.
I suspect that marketability - not "quality" (whatever that may be)- is the dominant factor in music sales. If the public likes it, and they are exposed to it, they will buy it. The things that the majority like are what will sell the most copies. Labels do extensive research into listener preference and try to release albums that will appeal to the most people possible. That's no surprise. 0x0d0a also expressed doubt as to the validity of Snork Asaurus's claim that indie music offered more "Choice and variety".
I definitely side with SA here; indie music has more choices. Anyone can do it, so by default there are more choices to wade through. Don't even try to convince me that a major label would offer you the choice of Gregorian Chant covers of black sabbath songs. The primary complaint that mainstream listeners have is that there are too many musicians to listen to and find the good ones from the bad ones. (the solution to this, of course, is to use word of mouth. If someone with the same tastes as you says it is good, you should give it a look.) There are plenty of indie artists who are great musicians.Amazon listed MoFro's album blackwater as one of the top 10 R&B albums of the year, and it is minor label. Atom and his package is one of the funniest synth-punk musicians out there. Kraig Kenningis an unsigned slide guitar player who can play circles around signed artists, as his song Sonic Blues clearly demonstrates.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/02/01/file_ trading_manifesto/print.html
First off, you provide no evidence that your correlation is direct evidence of causation.
Secondly, and more importantly, history is replete with DIRECT counterexamples of the assertion that IP laws stimulate innovation.
Innovations in airplanes did not occur until the US invalidated them soon after the onset of WWI
Innovations in the gun did not occur until Colt's revolver patent expired, even though Browning (and many others) had almost immediately improved on the original revolver design significantly. Patent law prevented any such advances from seeing the light of day for decades.
These are just two examples of the most obvious (and famous) patents stifling innovation; an even CURSORY look at the history of "successful" patents will give you example after example of innovation coming to an almost complete halt during the life of a patent, only to resume again after it had lapsed. To further illustrate this, in endeavors where the patent holder was succesfully able to extend his patent, innovation similarly died off again.
Note also that this effect of patents is ENTIRELY intentional; all competition is supposed to be stifled until the patent holder has "recouped" his investment. This is a "functioning" government enforced monopoly.
Also, note that "intentional" does NOT imply constitutionality either. That has more to do with the lobbying activities of rent-seeking corporations...
One of the points made by this article is that these companies aren't just trying to keep people from stealing from them like they say they are.
"The RIAA and the music business are trying to legislate profitability."
Essentially, what they're doing is creating a structured economy that pays tribute to them. They're trying to legislate away all the things that it thinks are causing it to lose money. This is made ever more clear by how Canada's government has dealt with the issue: charge a tax on all blank recordable media to be paid to a large, amorphous blob called "The music industry," regardless of whether or not they're selling products that we even *want* to buy.
Perhaps communism isn't the best term for it, since after all, under a communist government there's a social contract between the people and the government that directly controls the entire econonomy. That contract basically says that the people gives up their free will in return for benefits such as a guaranteed job, and guaranteed health care, and other such. Instead, this contract with the RIAA says basically we've given up the right to free choice about what products we buy and we pay for them anyway.
What the RIAA wants is a total dictatorship over music and music consumers. That's not pro-capitalism, that's Evil.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
http://www.ekahn.com/~runaway/protest.htm
You're right - it was a poorly chosen word on my part without at least qualifying it. Perhaps "Artistic Quality", or "Quality of Composition" would be better choices, but those still seem subjective and ambiguous. In the context that I (wished to) convey the sentiment, it certainly has nothing to do with manufacturing or marketing values. I had hoped to get away with the word for the purposes of succinctness, but that was not to be. Fair enough, here goes.
I view music, however crude, as an expression of human spirit and by extension, as art. To me, in order for it to fulfill the quality requirement, an art form must satisfy a group of criteria, some of which are subjective and some almost intangible. I think that artistic quality coveys something of the artist - that the work is indeed a labor of effort and honesty and contains originality; coveys a message and emotion yet challenges the viewer or listener to seek their own interpretation and connect with their own emotions; is not an intentional copy of elements of another work, although it may me subtlety derivative of other works; has structure and flow; follows certain guidelines yet is not bound by rules(sheesh) and has something original to say. The foregoing is a highly subjective, off-the-cuff definition and does not sit well with engineer in me, but since this is not a thesis paper, I'll go with it for now. I guess that part of the nature of art is that it is somewhat antithetical to engineering, yet contains some common elements.
(Now please don't pick the above apart, it's not woth the effort. Even I'm not totally happy with it, but I don't want to spend a month on it.)
Despite the vague definition, I do know (albeit subjectively) quality music from crap and what I hear on the radio and from big labels is more the latter than the former.
Sigs are bad for your health.
That is a terrific idea!
--Joey
With apologies to Apple Computer for borrowing their style. This is the entire "thing" in a nutshell.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
"This, in the face of Justice Steven G. Breyer's estimation that only 2 percent of works copyrighted between 1923 and 1942 are available to the general public."
If there is one good reason to stop the "endless copyright", it would allow many excellent prior works to end up in the public domain, since many of today's publishers seem unwilling to reproduce them, an end to insanity would give people the opportunity to see works from a past that is currently being hid from today's current IP/publishing system. Thank God for Scanners and Freenet!
--hmm, is there a reason our government wants certain IP/Publishing outfits to dictate our Intellectual Diet?
As I've said before, I don't currently buy any CD's, or so few it isn't worth discussing, not only because of the choices I have in my life now, but because the CD's just cost too much.
LET ME SAY THAT AGAIN...CDs COST TOO MUCH!
I have an inability to take advantage of a market because I am being priced out of it. Every day the number of purchasable items in that market increase. The number of potential purchasers increase. The cost of the industry to create those purchasable items decreases. Yet, always in the end the price is just too high.
If the cost of the average CD was lowered 1/2 to 1/3, I would not only start purchasing CDs in large quantities, I would actually purchase more than enough to offset the perceived losses due to the cost drop. The industry would actually begin to make money off of me, where currently they are not. I could actually take advantage of the large ever growing selection available at the super stores. I would be able to buy if'y selections just to try them out. I would be able to buy promotional stuff too. Read "I would be able to...", please please empower me to buy music. Heck, I might even have enough left over cash to actually entertain the notion of going into an FYI or Virgin store!
The point is that I currently simply cannot afford to spend money like it is growing on trees to make the music companies happy.
It's time to lower the price or all hell's going to break lose.
$.02 contributed.
Well that article was one of the bigger crocks of shit I've read in a while. It just goes to show that your logic doesn't need to make sense when you're telling people what you want to hear.
/. readers are supposed to be geeks. (Actually, only the third one really needs statistical reasoning; the other two should be obvious to anyone.)
A prize to anyone who can spot the logical fallacies & deliberate distortions in the following excerpts:
1. "between the years 1991 and 2001, the average price of a CD went from $13.01 to $14.64, which is a 12.53 percent increase in price. The record companies raised prices precisely at the time costs were coming down. When a DVD costs $19.99 and includes the movie in multiple formats with bonus material and no hassle, and a CD costs $18.99 and comes with potential legal hassles, limits on fair use, and all the finger waving the RIAA can muster, the choice of which product to buy becomes clear."
2. "despite President and CEO of the MPAA Jack Valenti's recent statements that the future is bleak. Not since the 1950s have so many movie tickets been sold. Meanwhile, movie sharing on the Internet is at an all-time high. The movie business isn't suffering because of activity on the Internet."
3. " It's also been widely reported that the most downloaded album of all time was "The Eminem Show," by Eminem. It was downloaded so heavily that Interscope took the unusual step of releasing the album a week early due to the rampant online sharing of tracks from the album. Fast-forward to the end of 2002, and "The Eminem Show" is the best-selling album of the year. This seems to indicate the opposite of what the RIAA would have you believe. When people share MP3s, more music is sold, not less."
And that's just from the first third of the article (cuz I'm getting sick of this). Come on, people. These 3 paragraphs may seem convincing to people who don't have training in logic and statistics, but
My daily karma burn...
-a
There are a lot more than 50,000,000 people in China who think that Communism rocks, despite the fact that they're being oppressed because of it.
I've seen many posts on slashdot, and I know that many people would prefer to buy very high quality (i.e. lossless, or 320kbits ogg or mp3) for a small fee.
Not really. Only because P2P is full of crap, and ten thousand different encodings. Imagine P2P advertizing with "100% original format MP3s - CRC verified" Probably even with client-side CRC whitelist & verification for the most popular songs. No crappy encodings. No fakes/renames or corrupt downloads. Complete ID3 tags (or auto-supplied by CRC list or something like freedb using CRC instead of track length). How many do you think would *really* put their money where their mouth is? Some, I guess. But not even close to as many as say they will on slashdot...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
fogetabouit
Just like every other massive scam operation, from garbage collection to vending machines to the ATM industry to "paramedic" companies, anything that makes it really easy to make a lot of money, has to be controlled by a strong arm of force to prevent competition that would quickly put it out of business. Think about ATM's. They just sit there and make 2.50 everytime someone draws from it. I'm not saying they are mob activities or something, but don't try to open an ATM company anytime soon. You will find your business sabotaged.
Let me begin by stating that I read the ENTIRE article and that in my opinion this is the broadest and most satisfying explanation that I have ever heard concerning the state of the entertainment industry, the economics of digital distribution, freedom of choice, the rights of the consumer, and the role of intellectual property in our society. If you care the least bit about intellectual property, copyright, and the economics of the information society then this article is a must read.
everywhere one looks these days, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association
of America), and its counterparts in other countries, are busy blustering
their way around and demanding that those who do not commit a crime should
be held responsible for it.
They are busy with their demands that Verizon
provide the name of a user who may have downloaded some music which may be
copyright and they are busy with their allegations about KaZaA music service,
a company which has the good sense to challenge the operation of the RIAA.
In the same manner it used in the Napster trial,
the RIAA is making wild assertions that gullible media, public and even legal
authorities appear to be accepting as fact. So far at least, it has managed
to give the impression that everyone apart from its members are to blame
for a slump in music sales. It can't be them - it must be those evil people
using the Internet.
No doubt the RIAA was emboldened by the judgment
against Napster and this gives it the feeling it can flex its muscles at
the world at large.
There is little doubt that Napster was guilty
of copyright infringement but only directly in so far as they themselves
copied music; that Napster had knowledge that users were infringing copyright
but only in so far as they could ascertain that copyright applied to certain
tracks; that they were guilty of contributory copyright infringement but
only in so far as they encouraged users to infringe copyright, and that they
were guilty of vicarious copyright only in so far as their income was dependent
on the use of copyrighted material.
That they themselves copied music from CD into
digital form is not clear. That they knew users were making illegal copies
is true, but the means of policing such action was beyond them if they had
no list of copyrighted works or any other means of checking. That they encouraged
others to infringe copyright is also probably true, but again the exact extent
of this and its influence on users is impossible to gauge. That its income
was dependent on copyright infringement is an accepted fact but again the
exact extent of this is impossible to determine.
For the record, Napster did not store music
on its own servers - it simply held the databases of music tracks that could
be accessed from users' own systems. The software they offered for peer-to-peer
copying between systems was also standard, although some minor enhancements
were made to improve the copying of large MP3 files. Providing something
as a legitimate use means it cannot be banned on the basis of possible
illegal use.
Findlaw.com has an archive of documents related to the trial and they
make very interesting reading. Time and time again, there are assertions
that Napster caused a slump in record sales but none of the many witnesses
- and there were many because the RIAA has deep pockets - presented any more
than circumstantial evidence.
How bad were the lies and distortions? The
response by Peter S Fader of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
provides an interesting rebuff to many of the witnesses. (You can find it
here.)
For example, one music storeowner near Syracuse
University in New York attributed a steep decline in music sales to the use
of Napster. He forgot to mention that in the time period to which he referred,
he had changed his emphasis from CDs to vinyl records and had moved to a
new store which was outside the main local shopping area. He later reluctantly
agreed that perhaps these were significant factors in his drop in income
and that perhaps he was making an assumption about Napster.
In a survey commissioned by the RIAA, the results
to open-ended questions (i.e. those with no specific choices) were interpreted
with a strong bias towards that association. This survey also concentrated
on college and university students then attempted to generalise the results
and paint a grim picture. More thorough surveys by other researchers indicated
that these "financially challenged" students were not typical Napster users
because more than 50% of users were over 30. Scattered through the various
submissions are all kinds of assertions that Napster was taking large numbers
of customers away from legitimate enterprises. Not one of these submissions
produced any incontrovertible evidence that showed a direct connection between
the use of Napster and a decline in music sales.
Several musicians who had been either ignored
or badly treated by record companies saw Napster as highly beneficial. Some
submissions are included in the Findlaw archive but other such as Janis Ian,
with 25-years in the recording business, chose to make their own public statements.
Janis's two postings can be found here.
She notes that Napster created a lot of interest in her work, far more than
before Napster arrived on the scene.
Other artists also commented on this phenomenon,
a point that dovetails nicely with numerous surveys - including some from
the RIAA itself - that showed consumers used Napster for sampling different
music. A shock horror tale in one pro-RIAA trial submission was that only
25% of the surveyed users went out and bought the CDs for at least 1 in 4
of the tracks they downloaded. Oddly enough, that corresponds well to the
idea of sampling. What a pity the same survey did not ask about deletions
of downloaded music too, because a large number of deletions within a few
days of downloading would further confirm this sampling.
Various surveys also supported these claims.
A survey by Jupiter Communications in July 2000 concluded that Napster users
were 45% more likely to have spent more buying music than non-users. This
survey was of 2200 online music fans and it found that the only people who
were not likely to increase their music purchases were 18 to 24 year old
"cash-strapped, computer-savvy users".
Jupiter Communications was certainly not alone
in these findings. The consensus was that Napster let people listen to music
that they would not otherwise made the effort to consider. As a result, musical
tastes spread. Another report mentioned that it made it easy to rediscover
artists or to find additional material by them. Both cases meant an increase
in sales of CDs and of vinyl records. There were several comments - of course
from people outside the RIAA - that Napster looked far more likely to increase
music sales than diminish them.
Another reason that students used Napster was
that it let them access one or two good tracks on an otherwise forgettable
CD. I am sure that we all have CDs that fall into that category. The attitude
of the RIAA seems to be that consumers must buy the rubbish in order to get
the few small jewels.
The fact that music sales were declining just
as the use of Napster was increasing presented the RIAA with the perfect
scapegoat, so absolving the music industry of blame and saving it the effort
to think there might be other reasons behind the slump.
After Napster died, the RIAA spouted the same
assertions about online music, whether or not such opinions were false, ill-founded
or unrepresentative.
Here's a typical pronouncement published by DC.Internet during February 2002. "The ... Coinciding with the increase
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is blaming online piracy
and CD burning as the major culprits for a 10.3 percent slide in 2001 music
sales. According to RIAA data, total U.S. shipments dropped from 1.08 billion
units shipped in 2000 to 968.58 million in 2001.
in copying music, the study found that ownership of CD burners has nearly
tripled since 1999: in 2001, two in five music consumers owned a CD burner
compared to 14 percent who owned one in 1999."
At the same time the RIAA declared the rise
in sales of blank CDs was further proof of music piracy, and that blank CD
sales should be curtailed.
Let's dispose of this whole nonsense about CD
burners and blank CD sales quickly and then move back to the more important
issues.
Computer security is not something that the
RIAA is very familiar with, judging by the number of times its own Web site
has been hacked.
Blank CDs are used to back-up computer data.
When one blank CD costs about the same price as one diskette but stores
about 460 times the amount of data, is faster to record and takes far less
space than the equivalent thousands of diskettes, it would be stupid not
to use CDs for backups. The RIAA was quite adamant that the 10% drop in
CD sales in the USA in 2001 as compared to sales in 2000 was purely due to
music piracy but this assertion has to be very seriously questioned.
Firstly, if the RIAA is correct, it would follow
that the general interest in music was unchanged and that attendances at
concerts would be about the same as previous years. They weren't. According
to MTV's reports on the web, concert attendances dropped off by about 15%
in 2001 and revenues were down. The average ticket price rose by about 7%
during the year but as usual it is difficult to say if this deterred ticket
buyers or generated the best possible revenue in a bad situation.
An article in the Miami Herald of March 2002 provides a more balanced
commentary about the slump in music sales than the RIAA's rants. It attributes
a lot of problems in the industry to the fact that the record companies were
under attack from many directions - the government was threatening investigations
into payola, the companies were suffering the excesses of the technological
boom and bust, costs were rising and recording artists were in revolt about
the terms and conditions of their contracts with the record companies.
The terms and conditions are normally that artists
are contracted to produce a certain number of CDs in a certain time - but
it is the companies which dictate what music is acceptable to be marketed
and the manner in which a CD will or won't be marketed. For all this, the
artists receive 10 to 20 percent of the profits of the sale, but only after
the record companies charge them for promotional and marketing costs. Janis
Ian has in fact described the situation as being like indentured slavery,
and it is therefore no wonder that some artists were very pleased with using
Napster to get their music more widely known.
According to the same Miami Herald report,
sales of Latin music were up by 9% in 2001 but "In Latin America itself,
riddled with economic hardship and rampant piracy, mid-2001 sales fell about
20 percent." At least someone made the connection between personal wealth
and piracy.
For a further commentary about issues within
the music industry that were contributing to its slump, try this article
which also provides a far better analysis of the situation that the RIAA's
allegations. This gives an indication of the tone of the piece: "Given the
slight dip in CD sales despite so many reasons for there to be a much larger
drop, it seems that the effect of downloading, burning, and sharing is one
of the few bright lights helping the music industry with their most loyal
customers. "
One obvious factor that seems to have been ignored ... Sex Pistols, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd,
by the RIAA is the nature of the music being released by the record companies.
Let me throw some names at you
Rod Stewart, Moody Blues, Brian Ferry, Genesis, Elton John and Cliff Richard.
If you are old enough to remember them you will probably like some of them
but dislike others. That is not the point; the point is that they co-existed
on the music charts in the late 1970s and this kind of variation is a far
cry from the kind of music that has been dominating the charts.
The current number of "revivals" or modern versions
of old songs suggests that the music from the 60s, 70s and 80s had something
that is seriously lacking in modern music. Perhaps the record companies
should spend time figuring out just why this is so.
The RIAA's claims that piracy has caused a worldwide
slump in music sales are questionable. By virtue of its population size,
the figures for the USA distort the total picture. The claims also ignore
the fact that US music sells across the world - so if US music is unappealing,
sales will be down everywhere.
To refute the RIAA's claims, CD sales in the
UK actually increased by 5% in 2001 and in France by a similar amount. (The
BBC News report here has the usual comment about piracy but mentions
this very important point only as a final comment.) I would not be at all
surprised if the influence of US music on the UK and French was somewhat
less than for other countries - or that the locally produced music in 2001
was rather more appealing than US music.
To label all US music as unappealing is quite
unfair. Latin and Country music sales have been quite good - probably because
they offered variety, positive energy and far broader appeal than mainstream
pop.
The possible causes of a decline in music sales
go further than these reasons.
Potential music consumers today have far more
choice in their form of entertainment than just listening to music. They
also have other things on which to spend their money and in many cases, they
have less money to spend than they did a few years ago.
Computer games continue to improve and they
are a big leisure activity. Games cost money that might otherwise be spent
on music. Further, games have audio and there is little point playing a
CD if the game's audio will drown out the music.
DVD sales continue to be good and the availability
of "home cinema" systems with DVD player and high quality audio has made
this a popular pastime. Entertainment has become more visual, at least for
those with time to sit and enjoy it. Music videos themselves have increased
the emphasis on the visual aspect of music.
In the USA the price of movie tickets compared
to CDs shows a dramatic difference, with movie tickets reportedly less than
half the price of a CD. Recent reports also say that movie attendance figures
are very high.
Finally, mobile telephone use is on the increase
especially among teenagers who might otherwise buy music CDs. Music might
be aimed at this demographic but most of them are still reliant on pocket-money
and probably have to pay their own mobile phone charges. Little wonder then
that they cannot also afford CDs when some of them rack up bills equivalent
to the GDP of a small country.
The RIAA is under threat from a number of directions
and it is fighting, on behalf of its members, for continued monopolistic
existence. They are under attack from increasing diversions in entertainment
and for the would-be music buyers' money. And they are also under attack
from a new medium that threatens to drastically change the way that music
is distributed and to reduce their control.
They are also seriously concerned about copyright
law and fear that as copyrights expire they will lose significant profits
and, even more importantly, their control over music distribution.
Since the RIAA started raising a fuss with Napster,
the US copyright laws have been changed and the period for which copyright
applies has been extended. Depending on your source you will find that this
is either the eleventh or fifteenth extension of copyright period in about
forty years. One report also indicated that many of these extensions have
occurred as various Walt Disney characters were nearing the end of their
copyright. (For more details see here).
Those with an interest in extending copyright
are more organised and have much deeper pockets than those opposed to change,
and so can finance a greater amount of pro-extension lobbying than those
who are opposed.
In 1998, an extension to the copyright laws meant
that period would last 70 years after the death of the creator, while works
owned by corporations were extended to 95 years. The RIAA is pleased with
this decision because we would otherwise been nearing the time when certain
music from about the early 1950s - the early days of rock and roll - would
have moved to the public domain. Anyone would have been free to publish
it and equally free to take the profits.
This 1998 extension to copyright period was
challenged but in mid-January of this year (2003) the court upheld the earlier
ruling and the RIAA and its cohorts were able to relax in the comfort that
their various treasure chests would not be released to the public. Don't
forget though, when the RIAA was fighting Napster, this outcome was far from
certain.
Cynics among us look at the notions behind the
copyright law and shake our collective heads. The US law was first introduced
in 1790 for a 14-year period with the aim of encouraging creativity and ensure
that the artists or thinkers could enjoy the profits of that creativity.
Extension of the copyright period is only in the interest of groups like
the RIAA because it means they can rely on older material and can minimise
any efforts to find new talent.
The battle for copyright is not yet over because
European authorities do not kowtow to American interests quite so easily.
EU copyright protection lasts only 50 years, as opposed to 95 in the US,
and so music recordings from the 1950s are becoming public domain in Europe.
The 1950s were a boom in popular music with rock and roll exploding and a
big jump in the number of records being released. Elvis Presley's first
record appeared in 1956 and Chuck Berry's first just two years later.
US music distribution companies have indicated
that they will start to fight CD imports, declaring that the import of European
CDs would be an act of piracy and that customs agents have the authority
to seize these imports.
Make no mistake, the RIAA is under attack from
many different directions, some legislative, some social, some from their
artist "slaves" and others from technology. Loss of control of the music
business would mean a dramatic loss of profit for these companies and it
is for those reasons they are currently embarking on a scare campaign about
music piracy around the world.
Again, European authorities are not impressed
by this blathering. According to a recent BBC report here, the European Commission has only outlawed commercial
(i.e. for profit) piracy but has decided not to criminalise people who download
music from the Internet for their own use. Needless to say the RIAA, and
its international counterpart the IFPI, are up to their normal tactics and
alleging - on no proven basis - that this will cause losses of 4.5 billion
euros annually.
In the bigger picture, these organisations are
out to police everything on the web that just might be somehow related to
the copyrighted works that they jealously guard.
In July 2002 a bill was introduced to the US
House of Representatives to permit the owners of material under copyright
to hack into any computer that accesses or uses a peer-to-peer file transfer
service to see if it was holding any illegal copies of the material. It
was described as vigilante justice in the 21st century. I think I know how
commercial enterprises such as banks would view such intrusions!
It appears that they need no "due cause" which
is what even the various law enforcement agencies require for any similar
search activity.
Using similar wild claims about piracy destroying
their business, the RIAA and IFPI are embarking on what amounts to a marketing
campaign to protect their backsides. Unfortunately the assertions are getting
lots of press attention, and there is a danger of the old problem that if
a lie is repeated often enough it gets accepted as truth.
In their latest moves the RIAA and other are
trying to persuade legal authorities to hold ISPs responsible for any illegal
material that is stored on their servers. (For example, see this report). I am
not certain if the ISPs will be required to call out the rottweilers (i.e.
the RIAA) or to decide if a music file is public domain, copyright but authorised
or copyright and illegal, and then act as judge and jury to decide the form
of punishment.
As I have argued earlier, the ISPs should not
be held responsible because it is not their problem if a user wishes to risk
prosecution for whatever crime. I am waiting for the day when ISP operations
can be fully automated and there is no need for any middle-person who currently
provides a ready and easy target for legal authorities and those who pretend
they are legal authorities.
Already the RIAA has managed to convince a
US court into demanding that Verizon hand out the personal details of a user
who is supposed to have copied music files. I know of no other legal situation
where a middle party has been obliged to provide these details to someone
who believes that they may have been a victim of some crime.
Fortunately Verizon is already objecting to
this demand
This Verizon case was discussed in an Australian
article, which went on to blame music piracy for a drop
in CD sales (yet again) and make the typical kind of claim that we have already
seen from the neo-Luddites. "The finger of blame is pointed at the internet,
as industry officials cite a corresponding increase in broadband adoption
as proof that increasing numbers of people are stealing music and movies."
The truly sad thing is that the RIAA is not
acting in the interests of consumers or even their musical artists. It is
only protecting its members, but a lot of influential people are swallowing
the story hook, line and sinker.
This is why "IP" isn't property. Think about it. If I sold one acre of land to two people I'd wind up in jail.
Or, say I sold you my car but included a set of rules saying that only you can drive it, you'll have to pay me extra if you want to bring passengers, and you can't sell it to anyone else when you're done using it. (And oh yeah, even if the thing is a defective POS when I sold it to you, tough!)
Do you really think we'd all sit and quietly accept the terms we get for most IP if we were buying real property?
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
A true artist will say art is about expressing yourself and not about the money. I personally don't care if they make money but there out there lipsinging and making millions! Most of these artist suck anyway. A clerk at Mcdonalds does more for humanity then them.
Water, water everywhere so let's all have a drink-Homer Jay Simpson
GET IT RIGHT!!!
'Give the wookie what he wants!' as Han Solo said so memorably in the first 'Star Wars' movie.
Is a far cry from...
THREEPIO: He made a fair move. Screaming about it won't help you.
HAN: (interrupting) Let him have it. It's not wise to upset a Wookiee.
THREEPIO: But sir, nobody worries about upsetting a droid.
HAN: That's 'cause droids don't pull people's arms out of their socket when they lose. Wookiees are known to do that.
THREEPIO: I see your point, sir. I suggest a new strategy, Artoo. Let the Wookiee win.
(I have a lot of free time...)
You can sell your IP more than once. In fact, you can even give your IP away and still sell it to boot.
Look at the Qt toolkit. You can either use an Open Source license and include it in anything you write with an Open Source license. Thus the IP is being "given away".
However, if you don't want to open source your work then you can go and buy the Qt IP and include it that way.
Remember, with IP you have two separate issues. The first is ownership also known as copyright. The second is the licensing of that IP. You can sell your IP licenses to as many people as you want. You can even give it away free to one person and sell it to another. There is no limit to what you can do.
There are numerous ways to frame the IP violation discussion. I was originally objecting to the notion that the Property aspect of IP should be emphasized. I was merely showing how if we extended the current limitations that are put on IP onto real property how absurd they would seem.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Big-label and big-radio music today is rotting fish. I welcome you and everyone else to come over to the other side and find out what real music is as opposed to prefabricated McMusic. You're welcome to stay (no snobs here) and you're welcome to go back - it's your choice and your health. I really couldn't give a damn what you do. But for those who are tired of vacuous sound-alike big-label music and the empty feeling with which it leaves you- there is an alternative.
Sigs are bad for your health.
English is such an imprecise language for all of this after all.
I would however cringe at the comparison of a copyright and a patent. Copyrights cover the individual creative work and have some significant limitations (fair use, satire, research, etc.). Patents cover processes and can even keep you from achieving a goal using a completely different approach (looking at things like the by-now infamous One-Click patent).
The original point remains that the sale of IP has no limitations like the sale of real property and thus shouldn't be mixed together with it. When you sell a piece of land you do not retain ANY control of it. Meanwhile, you can sell/license IP and both restrict what the user can do with the IP you sold them (including resale rights) and also sell that very same piece of "property" to someone else for completely different terms.
Your RSA example brings in a whole other can of worms. Imagine if all of the base math equations, principles, and theories had been given the same IP protection as the RSA encryption equations. Think about having to license multiplication, addition, differentials, etc. If not for the commons provided by the original thinkers in the field of mathematics would there be the RSA equations that exist now? (I realize that's a bit of a straw man but it should give one pause for thought.)
As more and more people try to put up "fences" around IP the more limited our capabilities to push the fringes of science become.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
I think that part of the problem with the discussion of IP today is that copyright and patents are both lumped together and there should not be such a thing as IP, but rather that there are copyrights and there are patents. I also think that copyright infringement is more similar to tresspassing (physical property infringement) than it is to theft (on the high seas with eye patches and parrots or otherwise.)
And even if this is "just" debate over semantics, the language used in a debate and the background for that debate has a great deal of influence over the ability to persuade people. I'm just trying to pull the debate away from thinking of IP (copyright and patent) infringement as theft and more as simply infringement since theft implies that the owner has lost something (and of course the owner still owns his work, and can still sell copies of it to his heart's content) while infringement merely implies that another has used that property (work) without the owner's permission.
There's probably many a hair stylist who would agree with you: "But sometimes the devil is in those split hairs" (sorry)
I'll agree that we definitely need to remove the emotion from the debate. (Though chanting "Rosen is the anti-Christ" can be quite cathartic.) The real problem is that the fear-mongering and emotional argument is being spearheaded by the RIAA. (Of course the MPAA's Valenti with his now famous Boston Strangler comment still leads the charge.)
Trespassing is probably a closer analogy, but it still misses the point. In that case the property is still being consumed exclusively by one person (the owner or the trepasser) rather than both sharing with no diminishment of value. That is the thing about an idea. I can share it with you and it still retains its original value to me or maybe even gains more if you combine it with another idea.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
...which I discovered just the other night. I went over to Creative Labs' website to update the drivers for my SB Live! 5.1 MP3+ soundcard for WinXP... 50MB download. Downloaded it, began the install, and noticed an additional grey popup box stating that this download now contains Microsoft DRM (digital rights management) software which WILL disable your hardware (soundcard) in the event you are playing any sound files through it to which you are not legally entitled to play. How they determine which are legal or illegal sound files, I'm not really sure, but it amounts to them assuming I'm guilty and taking pre-emptive measures (inserting a mechanism to disable MY hardware) before I've even done anything wrong. Needless to say, I cancelled the install.
So far left, I'm right.