Media Monopoly: Thomas Edison to Hillary Rosen

An anonymous reader writes "George Ziemann has posted two excellent articles that explore the early days of the recording and music industry, how their attempts to monopolize their respective mediums in the past failed, and how their attempts to do so strangely mirror those presently being undertaken by contemporary media conglomerates to control digital distribution over the Net. Seems the two industries back at the turn of the century tried to pool their patents to block out competition like the RIAA and the big media companies today pool their copyrights. The first article "The Dawn of Recorded Music and the First Pirates" focuses on early collusion in the phonograph industry. The second "Music, Movies and Monopoly" on Thomas Edison's failed attempts to restrain fair trade in the two new media he gave commercial rise to."

Comments

Slashdot and the RIIA

[CausticWindow]

It's time for another flame fest, I see.

I sometimes wonder if people here are reading or spending time on things other than Slashdot. If you were to, you would discover that elsewhere in society, the opposition against RIAA is almost non existant. Most people find it perfectly reasonable to protect their intellectual property for monetary gain.

Same thing with the MPAA. If you were running a movie studio, like Paramount, who bet all their assets on three movies (the LotR trilogy), then you would also be defending your property as offensively as they do. For them it's not an abstract discussion about "free speech css descramble" or any such nonsense, but about putting food on their families tables and putting their children through college.

If you for once tried to put yourself in their situation, I'm sure you would rethink your position on this one.

I'm so sick of media bashing

[geekee]

If Thomas Edison patents a device, he has the right to refuse to licens the patent if he feels like it. He may be able to profit better from his invention himself, rather than by licensing it. That is and should be his choice to make. In the US, the goal of govt. should be to protect the rights of individuals, not to better society at the expense of these rights. In the end history has shown that societies that protect individual right end up with the best societies anyway. Patents are limited, and the inventor needs control through this period in order to get a reward for the financial risk involved. Otherwise there's no incentive to invent and get sponsorship to fund invention. Although the DMCA has problems, given the nature of digital copying, I'm not surprised at all with the RIAA's heavy handed tactics. If you want fair use, do your share to stop piracy and stop supporting companies and software whose main purpose is to trade copyrighted material. The RIAA would rather pocket money than spend it on high priced lawyers. They wouldn't be spending the money if they didn't think they were losing money.