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Lessig And RIAA Answer NewsHour Questions
Zeta writes "The answers are finally in! Stanford's Lawrence Lessig and the RIAA's Matt Oppenheim have responded to all the tough questions on copyrighted music, many from Slashdot readers, for the online part of the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Take a look - some of the responses may surprise you." We ran the original call for questions a few weeks back.
"just because a car is sitting idling and unlocked does not mean that you can get in it and drive it away for your own use"
The Riaa Guy
I'd let anyone make a perfect copy of my car and drive away with it if they'd like, I still have my car.
"B. The record industry has been hit very hard in the last few years as a result of illegal downloading and piracy.
In 2002, unit sales were down about 11 percent.
In 2001, unit sales were down about 10 percent.
In 2000, unit sales were down seven percent. "
No, you jackass! Your sales are down for other reasons.. not illegal downloading.
1) Only so many bands can look and sound identical, before people need only buy ONE album and pretend it is five different bands.
2) Music sucks.
3) CD's are overpriced for what you get.. when Rush used to put out albums, five or six songs were GOOD and the rest were OKAY.. now your pablum barfing force fed musicians are wont to put out one hit, on a record that Im payign 16 dollars for.
4) see #2
5) ITS THE ECONOMY STUPID!
Thank you.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
Haven't read it all so far, but this is just blaring...
Nobody is really "sharing" as we traditionally think of the term. Sharing involves lending something to somebody, and while it is on loan, the owner no longer has it. "Sharing" in the P2P context has become a euphemism for "copying." That copying is neither legal nor ethical.
So...why do they say copying music files is "stealing"? Nobody loses any physical property, nothing of monetary value, but yet "copying" is equal to "stealing" in their minds...
From an ethical perspective, when individuals engage in illegal copying, they are taking money out of the pockets of all of the people who have put their hard work into making the music
Yeah, and from an ethical perspective suing a student for creating a search engine and letting him go for merely all he's worth is just dandy.
"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."
So, this guy's saying that we should let everything stand for a few years, and then all of a sudden companies are going to make things _less_ restrictive? No offense, but I'm not holding my breath. I wouldn't trust the major labels to do that for a second, much less years. If we let it go until then, the DMCA/UCITA-type laws will be firmly entrenched and fair use will have disappeared entirely in digital media. Anyone else want to wait for that to happen?
SELECT quote.text AS sig FROM quote NATURAL JOIN attribute WHERE attribute.description = 'witty';
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One industry you don't hear complaining about P2P sharing is the porn industry. Needless to say, you can get more videos and pics on file sharing networks, etc, than you can shake a stick at (not to mention posting on newsgroups). What's their stand on file sharing? It seems like they really could care less.
The RIAA is desperate because bands that used to make good records can't make any more. Why? Well, because:
1) they may not have been that talented in the first place, and/or
2) it's hard to be that inspired when you got 5 million bucks in your pocket.
Ever seen 5 million bucks? Most people, one they get that kinda money, go one of 2 ways:
1) they get super-greedy, and try to just make super-popular records, which flops hard at some point.
2) they just say "ok, i'm done" and that's it. The RIAA needs to realize that people are gonna listen to the music one way or another if 1) you can't hear it on the radio, and 2) the band's new stuff blows, or 3) if they want to hear something to see if the band's new record blows, which it most likely does. STILL, did Eminem go platinum? Yes. RECORDS ARE STILL SELLING IF THE MATERIAL IS ALL THAT GOOD/POPULAR! People really don't want the hassle of the internet, unless the material is hard to find elsewhere, i.e. at stores, or if they are unsure of the quality of the material, etc. DUH.
stuff |
Yes radio sucks, yes many riaa bands suck but there are definitely work arounds. I've bought more music in the last few months than I have in a really long time (mostly stuff from metropolis/different drum/emperor norton/spv and some european equivalents). Shoutcast has been a godsend for those of me , I buy records but the kids who run the radio stations on shoutcast provide a great way of discovering new music. Need decent non-riaa music for your car, leave a few shoutcast streams on overnight and rip to cd/rw while you shower and play it on your mp3 cd car player. Use opennap/gnutella/shoutcast whatever to find your new music but if you LIKE the ARTISTS and BUY THE MUSIC! Most of the smaller labels need you to do this to survive. I honestly don't think the smaller bands care if you've discovered them by browsing some kids opennap file share becase some friend of yours told you about some new ebm band called "brudershaft" and you want to know what the hype is all about. But listen to it, if you think damn this rocks, this shit should be on the radio, buy it, it wakes the radio stations up, it gets the peoples making all the cool new music the recognition they actually deserve and it'll make the radio stations not suck so hard.
-blo
Matt Oppenheim (from the RIAA): Intellectual property should not be treated any differently than other property. Unless you buy it, you should not copy it for your own use.
Umm, the whole point of intellectual property is that it is treated differently than other property. If you buy something, absent copyright or patent law, you can copy it.
If intellectual property shouldn't be treated any differently from other property, why can't I take it apart and examine it without violating the DMCA? If they are to be treated the same, why can't I charge an admission fee to show it to my friends? After all, I could do that with my brand new Porshe, right?
The RIAA rep shot their entire propoganda campaign in the foot with this gem:
So, according to this guy, "sharing" only takes place when the lender doesn't have the shared book/CD/whatever available for their use. If the lender retains a copy, or the original, then it's not, "sharing," but, "copying."
However, the RIAA -- and, to be fair, just about every other intellectual "property" advocate -- often refer to unsanctioned copying as, "stealing."
Except... Wait a minute. Isn't stealing where you take a thing from someone such that, as the RIAA guys said, "the owner no longer has it?" Indeed, isn't the primary distinction between lending and stealing the consent of the owner?
So if, because the owner retains a copy, it's therefore not sharing, then how can they possibly make the argument in the same breath that's it is stealing?
Answer: They can't. They're trying to have it both ways. It's not stealing, it's copying, a distinct activity.
There's little question that it's illegal -- the lobbying dollars of the RIAA and like organizations have ensured this. Whether or not it's ethical is a question that is still being discussed, and is by no means a closed subject.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I am sick and tired of people comparing the sharing of music and movies as the same shoplifting or stealing a car. This is a ridiculous analogy on many levels, but my main gripe is with one level in particular: if you steal a shirt from a store, that store has suffered an actual financial loss. When someone downloads a music album from somebody else, the record company doesn't suffer direct financial loss to the same degree as if the product were physical merchandise that couldn't be digitally replicated. The record companies may suffer an "opportunity loss," if indeed that person would have purchased that album anyway (lots of people download music that they would never have spent $15/disc for), but that's not the same thing as losing the production cost and the opportunity cost.
The marginal cost of production for music, movies, software, and other intangible property is almost zero, and it's about time people took this into account before coming up with absurdly misleading analogies.
Did anyone else besides me stop reading what Matt Oppenheim had written in response to these questions?
.05% of copyright holders!"
He should have just said:
"While lobbying for insane copyright extensions, suing kids, and whining about not milking that extra billion from teenagers over the last three years is generally not in the best interests of the public at large, it sure is helping us flog the last few drops out of a dying cow for benefit of the interested
And left me some time to read Lessig's well
thought out, poignant, and meaningful answers.
NMG
From Matt Oppenheim's comments:
On the Internet however, it is extremely easy to download and the audio quality is near CD. Millions of people now mistakenly believe it is legal. The RIAA, among others, has been trying to educate people that downloading recordings from unauthorized services on the Internet is, in fact, illegal.
Millions mistakenly believe it's legal? Do they really believe this, or is it just a good line? The truth is that pretty much everybody knows that downloading copyrighted music is illegal, and pretty much everybody figures it falls into somewhat the same category as driving five miles per hour over the posted speed limit, except that maybe speeding is a little worse, since it can actually hurt someone.
The RIAA isn't trying to convince people it's illegal; they're trying to scare people that they're going to go to jail or be hit with fines that are completely out of proportion to the offense.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The main difference between these two:
Lawrence Lessig:
"The DMCA is an embarrassment to copyright law. Copyright law has always been about balance -- about the balance between restrictions and access.
The Constitution expresses that balance: it requires that copyrights be for "limited Times;" the First Amendment requires that copyright yields to "fair use." "
Matt Oppenheim:
"If you are attempting to distribute recordings that you own the rights to and the RIAA is in any way preventing you from doing so, you should contact us immediately."
Note how Lawrence Lessig focuses on balance, while Matt Oppenheim focuses on saying what consumers are allowed to do. (Lessig does not explicitly refer to people at "citizens," but Oppenheim does at least once refer to individuals as "consumers.") This shows their respective trains of thinking quite well.
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
IANAL
The propaganda term "Intellectual Property" is a creative fiction designed to confuse two separate types of limited control granted by government.
1. Patents - A limited monopoly over the commercial implementation and distribution of a novel concept IN A PRODUCT. Patents represent a trade-off to encourage open distribution of the concept after the limited term of the patent. Note that a patent doesn't prevent someone from using a concept for their own use.
2. Copyright - A time limited monopoly over the commercial distribution of an authored work. The term is limited and this is traded by the government to encourage the creation of a large public domain. Note that this is intended to prevent PUBLISHERS from making money off of other publishers works.
Note that in both cases the primary motivation is creation of goods for the public.
The fiction is that it isn't property at all... it's a time limited grant of monopoly, and it's meant to expire. Property is a durable item, not a lease.
</ANTIPROPAGANDA>
Sales are down over the last two years not due
to lost opportunities as a result of file sharing,
they are down due to the fact that CD TECHNOLOGY
HAS BEEN SURPASSED by magnetic media.
News flash: LP sales are down every year since
1990. You know why? Because CDs replaced them.
Well guess what? CDs are now yesterday's
technology... I can't fathom spending money to
buy a physical medium that's more difficult to
transport, less durable, skips, can't record,
etc. etc. etc. The combination of computer
digital media management plus affordable
portable digital music players have made CDs
OBSOLETE.
Jeesh. Wake up RIAA.
-Pez
The problem is that copyright is essentially unenforcible. Unless the people enforce copyright on themselves, you can't do it for them. Why do people enforce copyright? Because it's seen to be *fair*. You make something, you get to own it for a while, after that it goes into the public domain.
That's what's missing here. There is no "goes into the public domain." People are individually and unilaterally repealing copyright law, because it's not a fair law anymore. The people who make something never have to share it. That's not fair, because so much of what the creators do is stolen from the public domain (like all of Disney's plots), and just about every jazz riff.
If you're interested in the law, go read Bastiat's _The Law_. It will explain how a law is seen to be fair.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
...and am not merely licensing it!
The only issue would be if you decided you wanted to download somebody else's copy of John Denver's Greatest Hits (which was likely from a CD, and a much higher audio quality).
Just as you would not go into a video store and steal a DVD copy of Star Wars and claim that you should be permitted to do that because you own the VHS version, you cannot download somebody else's copy of a recording.
If they were licensing the song/or whatever to me, they shouldn't care where I got it, as long as I have a license. This says to me that they are selling me the copy, to do with as I see fit.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Now, copyright infringment is illegal. Fine. But in 5 short years P2P services have gone from brand new to being used by double-digit percentages of the entire population of this country. A hundred million people may not be right, but you can't simply tell them they're wrong and throw the lot of them in prison. If a law is being ignored by nearly everyone, it says more about the law than the people breaking it.
Dyolf Knip
When you buy a CD, you should feel free to copy it for your own use.
- Matt Oppenheim, RIAA
I'd love to, except that some nefarious individual seems to have "copy protected" some of my CDs.
So by that logic, the inventor of the automobile stole the livelihood of all the buggy makers, horseshoe making blacksmiths, and so forth.
This is the logic of those that think that just because they found something useful to do and are making money off it now, everyone else therefore has an obligation to avoid doing anything that will make what they're doing less useful, and therefore less lucrative, in the future. It's the logic of entitlement, of protectionism, of the Luddites and all their kin.
The record companies once performed a valuable service. They got paid for it. When technology changes so that service isn't so valuable anymore, they should adapt and change so they continue to offer value and earn money. Instead, they try to turn back the progress of technology via legislation. They seem to believe that, having once provided value, they are now entitled to be paid in perpetuity, without earning it.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Sharing involves lending something to somebody, and while it is on loan, the owner no longer has it. "Sharing" in the P2P context has become a euphemism for "copying." That copying is neither legal nor ethical
and then From an ethical perspective, when individuals engage in illegal copying, they are taking money out of the pockets of all of the people who have put their hard work into making the music...
Yet using the same logic, reading a book checked out from the library would be just as unethical since you are "taking money out of the pockets..."
Those companies (including Pressplay, Rhapsody, Listen, etc.) are delivering to consumers high quality music online in a format and form that consumers have demanded.
Actually, a quick look at the subscription numbers of those services shows quite well how that is simply not true. Consumers have not demanded a crippled product that disallows most of the abilities they want.
The goal of copy protection in CDs is not to prevent individuals from making copies that they want to make for personal use, but rather to prevent individuals from distributing the recordings or making copies they don't have a right to make.
Yet it seems they have not discovered the magic way of discerning between those two, so will happily prevent both.
The record industry has been hit very hard in the last few years as a result of illegal downloading and piracy.
In 2002, unit sales were down about 11 percent.
In 2001, unit sales were down about 10 percent.
In 2000, unit sales were down seven percent.
During that same period, illegal Internet downloading has skyrocketed. On the FastTrack network alone, there are about 900 million files being distributed at any given moment. The majority of those files are music files. Polls confirm that those individuals who are downloading illegally online are buying less. That illegal downloading is decreasing sales is probably not a surprise to anyone.
Such a common, simple, wrong assumption at work here. A decrease in sales and an increase in music downloading have *not* been shown to be related. The economy as a whole has been hit very hard in the last few years. In fact, studies have suggested this effect can explain nearly all of the riaa members' decreased sales. It is handy to have a scape-goat, but as usual, the scape-goat is likely not the problem at all.
In any event, are you suggesting that a royalty dispute between an artist and a label is justification for stealing from both of them? Would you feel free to shoplift a CD from a record store based on that logic?
Hm, I wonder, is it ok to steal from a thief. You could just as easily frame it as 'how dare you steal my stolen goods!'
Given the increased cost to produce and distribute copyrighted works, Congress has tried to keep pace with what it has believed is necessary to continue to incentivize creators and publishers
Increased cost? That seems to be backwards, progress has decreased the barrier not increased it. As for the second clause, bullshit. Congress has bowed to corporate lobbying. You can't honestly say with a straight face that any person needs life+70years' worth of fiduciary recovery as incentive.
Just as you would not go into a video store and steal a DVD copy of Star Wars and claim that you should be permitted to do that because you own the VHS version, you cannot download somebody else's copy of a recording
Again, apples and oranges. Stealing a DVD is depriving ownership of an object, Copying a song is depriving no one of ownership.
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
I've suggested this before. I think that one factor contributing to the suck of music is record label contracts. They have gotten progressively more onerous as time goes on. Bands have to keep making music with each other, album after contracted album, until the contract plays out. Anyone who's done any serious creative work knows that you can't keep doing the same shit over and over.
People keep saying "all the bands suck" but this is clearly not true, because all these bands have hits that you've heard and liked at some point. They just can't sustain that creative energy.. they hit a configuration of art and artists that work for one song, or maybe one album, and based on that they are enslaved into a contract and forced to churn out crap for the rest of their lives.
Bands, like any creative labor, need to try different material to keep the quality of work high. They can even go back to their original stuff after a while, but to keep that engine turning they need to prime it with other sources of creative energy.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
"The DMCA Anti-Circumvention provision is not intended to stifle technological innovation"
Just like the Gatling Gun was meant to end wars quicker, not make the murder of huge numbers of people fast and efficient.
So what with intentions; It sure as hell IS stifling innovation, no matter what you say (See kid who wrote search tool, lost life's savings to RIAA). That it (supposedly) isn't meant to stifle innovation, but can, doesn't matter to large corporations that are so consumed by moneylust that they will do anything to turn a profit.
Maybe people should stop trying to make a living producing things that can't reasonably be sold for profit.
There is no fundamental right to be able to earn a living by making music. People used to be able to. But if technology is now destroying that ability, so be it! Nobody these days makes a living manufacturing vacuum tubes or writing letters for people who never learned to read.
Unlike physical property, "intellectual" property is a total fiction of law. If technology makes that fiction untenable, perhaps it should be rethought. If rethinking it destroys the lifestyle of people who are relying on music to feed themselves, well, shit happens. Lots of people have to change their lives, change how they make a living, all the time for much less important reasons.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
" No, you're wrong. An artist can not exert that kind of a control over their work. They would have to trespass to break into my house and hear me singing the song in the shower."
What if you were singing in the street? What if you were singing in the park?
The fact is that it's illegal for you to sing an artists song. If anybody heard you singing that is a performance and you owe the record company money. Sure if you are singing in the shower the police would have to break in but if you are singing in the street they don't have to.
You can make all kinds of speculations about whether they would arrest you or not but that does not change the fact that what you are doing is illegal. I remember a time when the cops would never arrest you for smoking a joint, in fact one time a friend of mine got pulled over with a bag of dope and a bong the cops just confiscated his stash and let him go. These days the cops would throw you in jail and confiscate your car. The laws that are not being enforced to day could be enforced with a zero tolerance in the future.
War is necrophilia.
True, but on the other hand I'm afraid it would be a bad thing for innovation. Who will be motivated enough to put lots of time, effort and money in developing new stuff, if they know they won't ever sell more than a few items?
This is the same argument the RI** uses: if no one thought they could get rich, they wouldn't bother making music/movies. That's demonstrably crap. There have been musicians and entertainers as long as there have been humans. Why would that change, just because we got rid of the outdated, bloated overlords of entertainment? It's not the artists these guys are afraid of losing. It's the executives.
http://xkcd.com/386/
In the US there is. It's in the Constitution.
No, it's not. It's an unfortunate and political renomenclature for what is collectively known as copyrights and patents, which as I mentioned above are provided for in the Constitution. To be sure, there are people who are looking to redefine the terms so that intellectual works are protected as strongly as physical property, and they're at odds with the Constitution and will ultimately fail if the system works, but your assertion that there is no right to make a living from creative works is on its face wrong as a point of law. People are not entitled to make a living producing things that other people don't want to buy (e.g. vacuum tubes) but they are entitled to a limited (in time and in terms) monopoly on their creative works.
Technology that makes it possible to duplicate and distribute those works cheaply does not invalidate that protection, it just makes breaking copyright laws easier. I'm generally not one for making the kind of specious analogies employed by the RIAA, but I think in this case your extremist position warrants one: Machine guns make it easier to kill people, does that mean the law against murder is obsolete? The idea that technology erases accountability to the law is absurd.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
There is no fundamental right to be able to earn a living by making music.
In the US there is. It's in the Constitution.
Can you point it out to those of us who couln't see it? The only thing I saw that even remotely resembles a reference to music is congres's right to make laws promoting "useful arts" - and that doesn't say anything about a musicians right to earn a living by making music.
People are not entitled to make a living producing things that other people don't want to buy (e.g. vacuum tubes) but they are entitled to a limited (in time and in terms) monopoly on their creative works.
Yes, they're allowed a limited monopoly - but that monopoly doesn't guarantee the right to make money from it.
Your statement is somewhat contradictory, as you first say that they don't have a right to make a living from something if nobody wants to buy it, then you imply that they do.
A monopoly doesn't guarantee the right to earn a living from something if nobody wants to buy it.