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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 Inquirer has another interesting article on the same topic.
The dogcow says "Moof!"
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."
Unfortunately you contracted with your label to deliever 3 albums. So far you've only delivered 2 and thanks to the studio bills from those two (and the dragging of feet in getting you your royalty checks, assuming there's anything left after the double billing) you're too deeply in debt to afford to produce the third in the label approved studios.
Since you haven't produced your third album yet, you can't pick up and produce your own music... you're still under contract, it's still the label's music. If you should do something so improbable as actually turn a profit, they'll probably sue you for breach of contract and take your masters.
In short: signing with a big-name recording label is the end of your music career.
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions
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.
It is unfortuante that people seem to have such a poor understanding of what led to the establishment of a patent system. Prior to patents, businesses and trades kept ideas that gave them a commercial advantage secret (this is where the term 'trade secret' comes from). There was no dissemination of these ideas whatsoever. This had a large negative impact in the growth of technology.
To counteract this, the concept of the patent was developed. In its most fundamental form, the patent is a contract between a government and an individual. The exchange of value is that the inventor fully discloses his invention in the form of a document that becomes freely available (the patent) - this is why patents are NOT copyrighted. In return the government provides the patent holder with a limited time monopoly on the practice of the invention. This system is so effective that the only inventions that are kept as trade secrets these days are those that cannot be patented for one reason or another.
The history is quite compelling - prior to the institution of the patent system there were very few inventions that made an impact in daily life. With the possible exception of the chimney and the horse collar man lived little differently in the 17th century than he did immediately after the invention of agriculture 5000 years previously. The patent was one of the keys to the occurance of the industrial revolution in England in the 18th century, and the onset of modern technological society. In the past 200 years the effect of and growth of technology, and the improvement in the lot of mankind has far outpaced the previous 5000 years.
The patent plays a siginifcant role in this, for the simple reason that it promotes the dissemination of ideas that would have otherwise been kept secret.
This is as good of time as any to point out that voting with your wallet is not how changes are made in the US capitalist system. If I bring my small wallet to a fight, and the RIAA brings their war chests, I'm gonna lose. Even if me and my best 1000 friends bring their pathetic wallets, we'll still lose like sword fighters to nuclear weapons.
We have to make our views known with intelligent, clever action. If you think US society is being perverted by corruption in companies and Congress, then *do something* about it -- boycotts aren't enough. You don't have to paint a sign and walk around city streets, though that's one option. It is probably more effective to educate your friends and family directly. Other *do something* options are to fund people who are already doing things, like the EFF or FSF.
I would like to make two notes about the eduction process:
1) People learn best when they control the dialogue, i.e. when they are asking questions. No matter how much you want and try to teach something to someone, they control the learning.
2) You cannot educate unless you are educated on the topic. Read. Think. Rehearse arguments to find your weaknesses, and explore those weaknesses. If you want to know how smart you are, see how simply you can state your position. If you can't state it succinctly, then you don't know your position well enough.
These are things I've learner (learner the wrong way, I might add) in GNU/Linux advocacy over the last 5 years. I've been far more successful in having my voice heard, and changing people's minds, since I learned these things. Never have these lessons been more important than now, with America's apathy towards the "reasoned and wise" actions of our current Congress and administration.
-Paul komarek
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
Non sequitur. If you pay attention, you'll notice that this article was an address to NARAS, not a statement of their position. Just because John Snyder has expressed this opinion does not mean that NARAS agrees with him. He's only one member, after all.
For that matter, it wasn't even an address to the whole of NARAS: it was ". . . written in response to a discussion by the board of governors of the New York chapter of [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." (Quote from the intro of the article on Salon, emphasis added)