Slashdot Mirror
EFF Ad Campaign On File Swapping
miladus writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is launching an ad campaign
to
counter the RIAA's lawsuits about file
swapping. There are more details available at the File Sharing: It's Music To Our Ears subsite." The press release kicking off this campaign says that "EFF's Let the Music Play campaign provides alternatives to the RIAA's litigation barrage, details EFF's efforts to defend peer-to-peer file sharing, and makes it easy for individuals to write members of Congress."
the Electronic Frontier Foundation?
The internet does not change things. Copyright was and always will be a dumb, illogical idea. It didn't make sense when the printing press ruled, and it doesn't make sense now.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
The RIAA/MPAA know how to manage our lawmakers - through their lobbying and campaign contributions. EFF's attempt to mobilize the voters is really the only chance we have against that kind of influence.
I always tough it was the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as it says on the website.
(yes, I know.. offtopic bitching)
"Today, more U.S. citizens use file-sharing software than voted for President Bush,"
So millions of people doing the wrong thing somehow makes it right. I don't think so.
Honestly, the point of groups like the EFF is to proactively seek to change things NOW.
But does anyone honestly believe we will see MAJOR change in the entertainment industry in even 20 years? It takes times for behemoths to fall.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Our work newsgroups went into a panic when the RIAA announced that they were going to be sueing people.
Amusingly it took them about 30 seconds to get around to Freenet and how it might be worth investigating it.
Evil contains the seeds of it's own destruction as they say - being over zelous with a bunch of basically honest people who like to share some music yet still buy lots has foced them onto a more efficient, totally untraceable (or rather plausibly deniable) network. It's certainly not pushed them towards legal services.
Beep beep.
I like the Ad .
It's simple, and to the point. However the site with more information is waaaaay too complicated for most people. I've been trying in recent times to explain to people why I stopped buying cd's. Why the RIAA suing for 98 billion dollars is recockulus. But people in general don't understand. And this site is too complicated. People will read it, say wtf is "compulsory licensing" and go back to downloading porn. What we need is a good site with the whole idea explained simply. That would be excellent.
...it does.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
But otherwise I don't produce ideas, because NOBODY produces ideas. They exist outside of time. Ding-dong.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
It's good to see that the EFF is focusing on getting them to create a way to pay people, rather then the usual P2P chant of making the theft legal.
Apple has it right, people will pay if there is a way to do so, otherwise they WILL just steal stuff.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Turn filesharing off.
Congress needs to spend less time listening to record industry lobbyists [...]
...but the lobbyists are the ones taking our senators out for $250 steaks & donating millions of dollars to their respective party. With our current government, we need to convince congress that it is worth their while to listen to us 60 million americans. (FYI, 60M downloads != 60M users)
maybe we could start one of those pyramid schemes where you add your name to the bottom of the list & send $5 to everyone on the list; But we could do this with senator's names on the list instead of our own. Then we just give them a heads up that they'll be getting 10,000,000 $1 bills in the mail over the next 3 weeks & I bet our senators would even go so far as to make a law legalizing w4r3z.
Did anyone else notice that the EFF Executive Director, the person who is trying to encourage file sharing, is named Shari Steele? I cannot think of a a better name for a person defending sharing, Except Mr. P. Too Pee, that is.
Karma: Can there be a void?
.. -. - . .-. .-. --- -...
from the looks of this - it appears EFF is going to be running newspaper and magazine ads. wrong place. these need to be made into 30 second television commercials, where a much wider audience can be reached.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
"The problem is that there is no adequate system in place that allows music lovers access to their favorite music while compensating artists and copyright holders."
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say this is flat our wrong. There are SEVERAL music services that allow one to download music, burn it to CD, carry it on portable players, and the like. I use two, emusic and iTunes (which appearantly is going to be available for Windows this year).
I get the feeling, that music "sharing" people are only interested in a service if it costs NOTHING. If that is the case there will NEVER be a way to pay artists, since noone wants to pay. Get of your ass, quit downloading music you didn't pay for, and quit bitching.
Burn Hollywood Burn
So WHAT exactly is the EFF campaigning against? If it's campaigning against the above, and suggesting that people should be able to redistribute the works of others without the permission of the people who were responsible for us having those works in the first place, then how is this going to make the EFF, technical community, and peer-to-peer advocates look in general?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Making an arcade machine give you free games. After all, you didn't take anything tangible away from the owners.
For those of you who do not feel the need to RTFA, and might easily take the slashdot story the wrong way, here is the important part of what the EFF is after (Paragraph 2 on the the EFF site):
The problem is that there is no adequate system in place that allows music lovers access to their favorite music while compensating artists and copyright holders.
This is quite different from the 'illegal-file-sharing-rules!! the RIAA-sucks!!' idea I got from the slashdot story. I very much agree and support the EFF in this effort. Give the artists what they deserve, give me what I want and stop artificially inflating the music prices.
Copyright violation!=stealing. Damn some people are dense. Is it nice not needing hammers around?
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Kudos to the EFF on the campaign, but it would have been that much cooler if they had gotten 80's house legend Shannon to record PSA spots promoting the campaign and reprising the famous tune.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Sure it will. Thry're realize how good a deal it is, like the rest of us working stiffs.
Mod point free since 2001
Shut up. With a space. Maybe you should take your own advice, eh?
Coyright reform will never happen. Our bill of rights is "tolerated" by the elite, but cheangeable
at thier whim. When it comes to intellectual property the elite class will put its foot down and
not budge an inch. To reform copyright and patent law will take away control from the elite class, and
they will not allow any such reform to happen.
How is this flaimbait, suggesting that people's labor be compensated for, that us of one's property is determined by the owner?
My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.
It's about time Pirates started acting like them.
This to me sounds pretty loaded. At first glance I took it to mean that the EFF is happy that massive copyright violations are taking place. I like free music as much as the next person, but this statement makes the EFF's thoughts on p2p sound more controversial than they really are.
The US is not a true democracy. It is a representative republic.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
If we called "file sharing" and "file swapping" something more accurate, like File Stealing. Then people couldn't go around pretending to be ignorant of copyright issues.
You can argue that there are free things out there that people can swap, but I've never actually seen them personally.
Now BitTorrent, that's another matter, that's not really file swapping/file stealing. It's an infrastructure to redistribute data in a scalable way, and often you can get stuff like RedHat ISOs and things off it. Very handy.
Generally I have no sympathy for college students who cry about getting fines for stealing thousands and thousands of copyrighted works.
It is more imporant to lobby for less evil copyright laws and promote the rights of the public to have access to material and remove the focus on private ownership of everything. Oh no, I better be careful before I come off sounding like a communist!
Eric Eldred Act
Center for Study of Public Domain
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yes, copyright is way out of whack today. (Personally, I'm for 20 years, and 5 for software with mandatory source code escrow.)
Yes, the content producers want to take away fair-use rights. (Meaning format-shifting, not what's commonly referred to as "file sharing" -- which is just unauthorized copying.)
Yes, it is true that spreading music files around can help lead to sales. (This is only right to do when the copyright holder authorizes it.)
Does that somehow make sharing copyright-protected material right? Most definitely not. I hope the EFF doesn't send the wrong message here.
Countering the suits against the infringers is exactly what should not be done. The copyright holders are finally doing the right thing by going after the actual infringers, instead of the service providers.
The music labels do add value. The thing that makes a song popular is not that it is good, it is because it is promoted. Of course not every promoted song becomes popular, but as a general rule, a song must be both promoted and decent in order to become popular. Being a good song only gets a very small minority of songs popular.
If we got rid of marketing, then it would perhaps be a good thing, but it would drastically change the face of music. Everybody would be looking for different songs, or would not know which songs to look for, whereas now everybody looks for only the most popular songs.
--SolidGold
Everything you know is wrong. Or more accurately, inaccurate.
Then this money would go to the RIAA or whatnot. Maybe if they pursued some sort of campaign like this, they might make more money, because a lot of the people who are supposively 'hurting' the RIAA by using P2P instead of buying CDs weren't planning on buying CDs anyways. And then there are those who pirate an album, then buy it so they can listen to it in their portable cd player (instead of just buying a .mp3 player with the money they'd save on not buying CDs...)
Current P2P systems are being hampered by deliberately corrupted files, as well as music companies joining the network to get evidence against users.
Solution:
1) create new protocol for P2P sharing
2) patent that protocol (in as many countries as possible, or at least all those that the xxAA operates in), ideally giving the patent rights to somebody like EFF
3) release code/client with a patent license that prohibits the behavior above
If the RIAA/MPAA/xxAA violate the patent, charge them with DMCA or patent violations.
Just a thought... the DMCA can work both ways, you know.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Rather than trying to sue people into submission...
Suing is the American way! Hey, you don't like it? Sue me.
--- I'm Green Hornet's sidekick not Inspector Clouseau's!
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
Phil writes "MozillaZine is reporting that Mozilla 1.4 has been released for Windows, Mac OS and Linux. The new version is pretty similar to today's Netscape 7.1, which is based on the same code, but lacks Netscape's proprietary features. More information can be found in the release notes. The release can be downloaded from mozilla.org's releases page or via FTP. From here on, mozilla.org's focus shifts to Mozilla Firebird and Mozilla Thunderbird." The official release news is now up on Mozilla's main page, so let the downloading begin.
I don't see what this has to do with the RIAA/MP3 group.
"...EFF will also place advertisements about the Right to Share campaign in magazines such as Spin, Blender, Computer Gaming World, and PC Gamer. . ."
First of all, the EFF is not going to convince anyone by placing ads in those magazines. It's like preaching to the choir.
Second, we have no "right to share" if sharing infringes on someone's copyright.
I say if the RIIA wants to sue people who are breaking the law by infringing on their copyrights then let them. These people knew, or should have known, that it was illegal.
If you don't like the law then work to change it. If you choose to ignore it be prepared to pay the price.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
It DOESN'T MATTER what type of government it is; majority rules.
If the public vastly outnumbers the law makers, then the law makers govern under the public's implied approval. If the law makers veer too far from public opinion, that's when the law makers get overthrown.
In a democracy the public should have a right to determine what is publicly acceptable and legal and what is not. Certainly where somewhat in excess of 50% of internet users are trading copyright files (and yes, I do know that it's an unrepresentative sample of the population) and no person has a qualm about swapping some CDs with friends (Can I borrow that CD? no, it's copyrighted. Ha, as if.) the law is probably outdated and should be reconsidered.
;o)
If the EFF can mobilise popular support to legalise file sharing, at least on a limited level (so keep it illegal, say, for commercial pirates or profit making entities to copy music), then I would be all for it. You opinion might be different, which is why I hope that more voters agree with me
Beep beep.
As obvious as it may sound, I would argue that most people download music simply because (1) it's a helluva lot cheaper (iTunes or Kazaa) and (2) it's much more convenient than to trek down to a store then sift through how many albums hoping that what you want is there.
The RIAA pisses me off not because of their "Stop stealing our music" stuff (which I agree with) but more importantly that they seem to want to stifle any technological advances that affects their music UNLESS it's spearheaded by a big player such as Apple.
Instead of them suing everyone and his mother I'd RATHER see them try and figure out a good way to let people get access to music online for a reasonable price - what the EFF is doing. So hurrah for the EFF! It's been forever since I've bought a CD and a solemnly refuse to do so until they (RIAA) become reasonable.
- utterly annoyed
So yer saying that voting for Bush was wrong? I have to agree there!
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
First p2p is legal and this is not what the RIAA is going after. They are going after individual mp3 pirates in their most recent legal rampage. Yes they tried to go after the p2p networks but failed. They are now going after the users.
.99c a song their is no execuse.
Swapping mp3's is illegal and unethical. Not to be flamed but the RIAA did offer an alternative via itunes. At
The RIAA is still bad of course but they are reforming. I agree that they have the right to go after big time pirates who make up %85 of piracy. Its that or go after the p2p networks which I oppose.
I can not wait for the new itunes store for Windows. I want the RIAA to know that this is acceptable and the only way to do that is with my dollars. I withheld purchasing cd's for 3 years now and also voted with my dollars. The RIAA just cares about the money. Nothing else.
http://saveie6.com/
The reality is that we (the techno elite) should be responsible for building a workable solution that would allow artists a way to make a living (not make a million). The old guard (RIAA et al) was terminally flawed and we engineered a consumer revolution. I think that is great - yay us! Our government failed to protect the consumer from evil corporations (as they always will until we find a way to take money out of politics) and we stood up for ourselves (and even joe/josephine sixpack) and showed that we really aren't as powerless as the media scares us into beleiving we are. Unfortunately, like most revolutionaries, we didn't build a sustainable new way. If we build compensation into the system and it makes good artists successful, then the artists will come. There are plenty of unsigned acts out there that are better than the crap the corps are selling, but they are all trying to get signed because it seems the only way to make a living. We're so smart and leet - we should be able to figure this out.
That doesn't sound like a good idea.
How about digitally signed releases rather than sharing (something very roughly like freenet's insert or konspire2b's channels, but probably more like PGP signatures)? Group reputation ensures quality. Some sort of review system is needed.
As for poisoning the network, well technically, assuming script kiddies get on it, you really need to make it attack resistant. RIAA aren't your only enemies. Make the network not trust its own nodes - a "paranoid" distributed hash table, for example. I've seen a couple of designs for this sort of thing in research groups, it's starting to awaken some real interest. I've even had a play with prototype clients, although none of them are really usable yet.
You don't need the DMCA for this sort of thing, either. Think of it like this. You may not be able to enforce an EULA... but can the p2p network itself have Terms of Service that prohibit connecting to the network in order to damage, hinder or inhibit the network infrastructure?
Just throwing around ideas I overheard here...
That is fucking hilarious, I didn't even think about that!
My point is that file-sharing and file-swapping serve a legitimate purpose. The RIAA would serve the interest of its affiliated artists far better by finding a way to legitimize file-swapping as a form of promotion, instead of trying to nail Kazaa users for offering a years out of press Bowie live club track for download. The genie is out of the bottle, and there's no getting him back in. But he can be harnessed and put to work in a positive way. The RIAA needs to rethink its business dynamic in a big way. Online music libraries for legal download can only help matters in the long run.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
why dont they tax a bunch of shit like they did with blank audio cassettes to offset piracy. like 10% of cdr's and 1% of hds or something silly. maybe 10% of broadband service or something.
then we can listen to the arguments about how the cd music production costs are just as high as they were the day they came out. and how there isnt any room for lowering their costs.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
The network will become fully sentient soon.
All the indications are clear. Within 10 years time, the consciousness of the people comprising the communications of the planet are combining into a common intelligence.
It is not only predictable, it is now inevitable. Just as Moore's Law predicts the doubling of circuit density every 18 months, the doubling of communications links proceeds at a geometric rate.
Copyright will fall to the network. The intelligence of the network is directly proportionate to the number of unique voices to which any individual may hear at any time. Copyright imposes a cost to hear each voice, as this cost reduces to zero, the entirety of the connected human population will hear one another, at will.
When this happens, a new Renaissance will flourish. Art will be promoted on quality, not on its profitability to the distributors. For if distribution costs nothing, there is no incentive to promote the latest Britney Spears album to the masses of people who do not know any better.
When you can hear anything, you will want to hear the best music you can find. Friends will recommend to you what they enjoy, and you will be able to listen at once and form your own opinions.
Artists will prosper under the new system. People will gladly pay people to produce quality, to perform, to entertain and enlighten them. And without the middleman distributors, 100% of the money going to such things will enrich the artist.
This is the new world, it will be here soon.
Peace and love, y'all
... that the most important part is missing from the page, how to help! I know you can join EFF and that helps, but people are (mostly) cheap (like me, being a student and all). A link that said "How to help" with links to petitions and draft letters for government officials would be instrumental and would look more like an effort then just 'give us money and we will do this' type of thing.
Free speech is getting expensive...
Deviously Brilliant: Use a subject of intense interest to draw publicity and possible membership and funding to a premier electronic freedom organization.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Stealing is a crime, you can go to jail for it.
Copyright violation is a tort, you can be sued for it.
There is a difference.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
What is the Matrix?
From the ad: "The problem is that there is no adequate system in place that allows music lovers access to their favorite music while compensating artists and copyright holders."
What about the iTunes Music Store?
It's in place, it allows music lovers to access their favorite music, artists are compensated, and so are copyright holders. I suppose you could say it's not adequate because all tracks have not been made available yet. If all tracks are made available on iTMS, would this not satisfy EFF?
If so, is copyright law really broken?
Who is to say we can't make up false files with the mp3 extension. I am sure someone could come up with a file that would either play nothing, or have gibberish text, or maybe some words of wisdom, (unlike Madonna). Then we could call these "fake" files all names of top 10 hits, then replicate them a hundred fold on our machines, then sit back and watch as the RIAA's legal fund gets whittled down to nothing when they try and prosecute and find out that all the files are actually bogus, and that no real mp3's were ever violating their precious copywright laws. Of course we would have to use a new file swapping program, that say... encrypts files between users, and still works like a p2p network...hmmmmmmm
This is the age of information, the age of technology. Anyone can get a computer, and a nice one too, on a months salary or less. It is very common to find multiple machines in a single household. With broadband you're seeing even more online and online often. The computer has now been put right up there with the television as an entertainment device. As more and more people adopt this mindset, more and more people are going to be using this so-called 'entertainment device' for, wait for it.. wait for it.. Ah! Entertainment! Music is one of the most basic forms of entertainment there is. And if people are looking towards computers to provide that, the RIAA needs to adapt to that demand of the market. Thus far, no one has responded well except Apple, but I'll get to them in a minute.
.wav files for a few seconds of audio. Granted MP3s were several megs for a full song, but this was much better than 50 megs for the same .wav file. I knew then, when I found myself 'collecting', that this was going to be a problem.
When I was sent my first MP3 on IRC back in '96 I thought it was pretty cool. No longer did I need 10 meg
In any case, the word about MP3 spread like wildfire amoungst people 'in the know' and FTPs were set up all across the 'net housing files. This was a some what underground thing until Napster showed up. Once again, proving that the more you yell about somethig, the more popular it gets, Metallica single handedly made MP3 a household name.
By now, the idea of getting music online was so entrenched in everyones minds, the thought of not being able to play music on your computer became an almost alien concept. In my opinion this is where the RIAA, if they were sensitive to consumer opinion, could have stepped in and made a killing. As of now, they're only alieniating potential customers. As was said on Slashdot:
"I don't get it! I've threatened them, sued them, and they still won't buy my products!"
Apple has the right idea. They're selling single songs. Not only have they made a few million so far from this, but its proving that people _will_ buy music online. Why? Because the computer is now an entertainment device. There has been some opposition to this by people like Linken Park (do people really listen to this crap?) and Jewel (who openly admitted to downloading music a few years ago). Basically they say that their work is art and should be taken as a whole. But lets look at that.
You make a CD that kicks ass in every way possible, every track has you giving 100%, every second is thought out and wonderful (like say, Tool ). And then say you're some corperate crap band that makes _one_ good song. You'll both make the same money on CD sales because the prices are all the same. I think this is bad. If you put your blood, sweat and tears into a full 10 tracks, people will download them all, paying you for every ouce of effort you put forth. If you make _one_ good song, you make money off that one good song and thats _it_. This model that Apple has created is the best system of 'natural selection' amoungst artists I've come across. Personally I'm all for it.
The RIAA needs to wake up. While, yes, its technically illegal to have music you didn't pay for, p2p by way of IRC and FTPs have been around since the early 90s. This isn't going to stop, even if every p2p network is shutdown perminatly. The _reason_ its not going to stop is because people have changed what they use computers for. As I said, they are now as much of an _entertainment_ device as a television. If the RIAA had responded at the time, or even takes Apples current model, people would not be downloading illegal music. I feel that as long as the RIAA uses these strongarm tactics against the very people that provide them with a living, people are going to pirate music.
I have four MP3s of me playing my piano compositions:
-
Geometric Visions
(I'm afraid there are some artifacts in Recursion - I'm going to have to re-digitize it from the analog master tape I have.)I will have Ogg Vorbis as soon as I find the time to encode the files.
Enjoy!
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I'm not going to pay "leives" or taxes or any other form of "presumed guilty" tax.
If they stick a P2P theft tax on my cable modem bill, I won't pay it.
If they stick a tax on blank media, I'll just order it from overseas.
I don't download music, movies or software illegally (or at all), as SCO, RIAA and MPAA would have you believe and I will not pay for the actions of others in a collective punishment manner such as they propose.
That's just as wrong as saying that because a *few* bad people used guns to kill someone that everyone that owns a gun is a bad person and a killer..
Wrong answer, collective punishment is wrong.
What I don't get is this: the RIAA says they are going to go after people that are sharing a substatial quantity of music files. However, if I connect to my favorite peer-to-peer network to trade my thesis and writings with other people *and* I just happen to allow others to browse my personal music collection (ripped from CDs that I *purchased*), how can the RIAA come after me? I just can't see how it can be a criminal act to expose music files on the Internet. Perhaps it is a copyright violation to download said music, but that's not who they're targeting (at least from what I've heard).
So, am I missing something here?
... it would make about as much sense!
Copyright infringment is not theft. No legal decision has ever equated illegal copying with stealing.
The copyright industry works hard to maintain the copying=stealing connection, it's good for PR, but they have no legal basis for that claim. Copyright infringment is illegal, but it is not theft; a lot of people in this debate lose sight of that.
0 1 - just my two bits
When I went to the EFF website, I read about how the RIAA is planning on deciding whom to sue based on this:
"The RIAA has stated that it will choose who to sue by using software that scans users' publicly available P2P directories and then identifies the ISP of each user."
Now I was wondering, why is this tactic by the RIAA not considered "unlawful access" to all the p2p computers? I mean, don't p2p users grant other such users access to their shared directory for a limited, specific purpose (file sharing) ONLY??? And if the RIAA uses software to HACK INTO these p2p computers (unauthorized access), they should be held accountable! I am thinking that COUNTERSUITS against the RIAA might be warranted.
majority rules.
if this was the case, bush would not be president! Gore actually won the popular vote.
I admit that I use P2P apps a lot, to download music without paying. But at the same time I own quite a lot of CDs. And you know what? A lot of the time those CDs have been bought as a direct result of downloading music!
...but I hope not :)
For me, P2P is a great way for me to listen to new bands that I discover. If I like them, I buy the CD because frankly I feel guilty not paying for the music, and also the mp3s people share tend to have been ripped from a gouged CD, using some 3rd-rate software to encode it at 128kb/s CBR.
It is the same for most of my friends. Many of them seem to agree P2P is only necessary because the current distribution methods seem to be an anachronism. I would rather pay for a service whereby maybe I can stream a couple of songs from an album to see if I like them, then pay to download them. Yes, I know there are services like iTunes and emusic, but these services have their own problems, like regional issues (I live in the UK, so this causes problems with different labels having distribution rights and such) and hardware (I believe iTunes is still only available for Mac, although perhaps I read about PC support in the future perhaps? I forget).
So, basically I am in support of this campaign and I truly hope that they expedite the implementation of a more modern and more useful system for acquiring music. However, I have my doubts- sometimes I think that the large record companies feel such a great need to control peoples musical tastes that they might fear that the greater freedom that an electronic system could provide would cause them to lose control of being able to force certain bands down peoples throats as "the next big thing"...
RIAA: Now that millions upon millions of people have been exposed to the pleasures of filetrading... STOP IT!!!
[holds gun to own head]
RIAA: Don't make me pull the trigger now... Put down the MP3's or I swear I'll do something that I will regret...
"EFF's Let the Music Play campaign provides alternatives to the RIAA's litigation barrage, details EFF's efforts to defend peer-to-peer file sharing, and makes it easy for individuals to write members of Congress."
- yet only 10% of the slashdot community write to thier congressmen and of that half of the emails sent are filled with the words F* U attached....
Honestly more people need to not just post some flame or even well thought out idea on shasldot - they need to start emailing there congressmen, writing to them, or calling them. Without the VERBAL and WRITTEN protests to the CORRECT PEOPLE - laws you feel are not right - will NOT get changed on there own.
I've sent my emails to my congressmen - have you?
Ave Molech Setting
The EFF site states in bold that: "copyright law currently is broken". But in the area of file sharing and Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), the real problem is that there is no good system in place that matches copyright law. Copyright Law provides a nice mixture of benefits to both the copyright holder, and the purchaser of copyrighted material (ie. Fair Use Rights).
File sharing permits too much freedom to copy and distribute material - far beyond Fair Usage.
DRM schemes tend to eliminate all Fair Use Rights.
(The solution that seems closest to achieving fairness for both parties is Apple's iTunes store.)
Does this mean that we should amend Copyright Law to match the current state of things? If so, which way do we bend: eliminate Fair Use; or make the Copyright Holder's rights minimal?
(There are other aspects of Copyright Law which are bending the wrong way. The life span of copyright is being extended due to lobbying by Disney and others. But that's another matter.)
If a parasite feeds on its host too fiercely, both will die. You decide who is the parasite.
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
That's the point of course. WE the free-loading OSS/FS community do not agree that people should have exclusive rights over their work. None at all, because copyrights are bullshit. Have you ever heard of an OSS/FS project that uses a form of copyright?
For reasons you DON'T understand, I have been assigned rights to manipulate your work in whatever imaginable fashion, and I will fight for that -it's called fair use: the management of your rights is assigned to me without your aknowledge.
Hmm no I conjecture that the millions do not subscribe to your idea of morality; your conception of right and wrong. Flip side. I concider censorshop more wrong then copy infringment. Is it wrong that people would withhold something that should bring joy to people irregardless of wealth just to extort the maximum money they can from society? For the majority the RIAA does not promote creativity. They tie the artists in a web of contracts and legalities. I want some startup to sell content I could for myself evaluate if it has merit. This would show me that there is creativity to protect, and not just another monopolistic trying to keep hold on to power. Judge morality for yourselves. You have a head on your shoulders. I will not on sole basis of something being illegal conclude it is wrong. Quite the reverse, we should make sure the laws are what we as a society believe right. So as millions are breaking this law and not loosing any sleep over it, perhaps it is time for the laws to be changed. They eventually got rid of prohibition after all, because no one would give enough of a damn to roll over up to a obvious minorities ideals. I believe that it is more inevitable for the law to change then the untold millions who disregard it. On second thought, oh what was I thiking they lawmakers are infalible.
Video camera's aren't allowed in congress. They don't want us to see what's really happening. They know we wouldn't "understand" and get upset.
Imagine a P2P network with an EULA - to download a file you have to agree to the EULA (clients can send the EULA the user agreed to and in case of a mismatch the download fails?). Any attempt to use the software without agreeing to the EULA fails. Agree, and you agreed not to sue, try to locate other users, etc etc. If you try to circumvent that - why, then, the DMCA card is played.
Combine that with privacy/encryption technology, and you've got very little to worry about.
Downloading mp3's is illegal if and only if I don't already own the song(s) of the mp3(s) I download.
Remember mp3.com, way back when, decided to buy a shitload of albums, rip/encode them and offer them as part of the MyMP3.com service? In a nutshell, registered users who owned the album could access the mp3.com encoded versions of those songs online (after being validated by some sort of hash match with their own purchased album).
Well, the RIAA said nope sorry bzzt. Court upheld it too. If you own an album, you may back it up. In other words, you can rip YOUR OWN mp3s from that physical media. But you can't legally download someone else's mp3s of the exact same songs that were encoded from a different physical media.
Yes it is the law, and yes it is stupid and non-intuitive.
A web of trust. Well implemented, it is nearly impossible to penetrate. Once you have a fair amount of trusted people, fake files get rooted out real quick. I still haven't seen any good attempts though, apart from the "Trust/Not trust person X". That isn't a web of trust, that's a P2P of trusts... A real web of trust would consider friends' friends and automatically adjust trust for providing good file segments, checksum trees and checksums.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Vote with your dollars people! These days it's all about Special Interests. The solution is to join a special interest. Groups like the NRA and ALCU are comprised of individuals concerned about their rights and liberties.
To start with, donate to the EEF. I'd also like to see a PAC who's 'special interest' is preserving the freedom of p2p, etc. I suppose there's digitalconsumer.org, but they seem more interested in hardware rights.
Democracy costs money people. Don't bitch about it, pay up.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
He's making the exact same argument as the comment about two comments down entitled "EFF wants alternatives to the current system ". If saying "Stealing from the artist is bad and there are alternatives that work" is considered a troll then Slashdot needs to reasses it's politics.
We're talking about industries like the RIAA and the MPAA which operate under a specific business model. This business model has been in place for at least the past 50 years. Along comes a concept of the Internet and file swapping which is forcing these industries to rethink their business model.
The problem is...they won't change their model. People are very frightened of change, and the Entertainment industry has evolved from lots of smaller labels and movie makers that were interested in putting out good product to these HUGE MEDIA JUGGERNAUTS that are only interested in the almighty dollar/franc/pound/etc...
If you can get them to change the business model and prove it works (Gee, didn't Apple just do that?), they'll come along for the ride. Until then, they'll continue to think we're all crooks.
Music and movies are no longer art and entertainment, it's part of Corporate big business now.
Nuff said.
"...the shortest distance between two points may be straight line, but it is by no means the most interesting."
This is way too popular for it to come to an end. What I hate the most is that if I want to create a program that'll let me share files with friends and anyone in the world then it would be illegal because some of them might break the law. Where's my freedom?
There's a story told about ancient Rome where someone once asked why they didn't dress the slaves distinctively so that they could easily be identified. He was told this would never happened because if it did, the slaves would realize just how many of them there actually were.
Translation: The **AA does not have by far enough money to overcome a public backlash of voters if that backlash is ever sufficiently provoked.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Consider: while the RIAA and MPAA have been stealing our elected political representatives from us, while we saw the media companies' propaganda universally echoed from every mainstream news outlet, our response to date has amounted to little more than wailing, rending our hair and gnashing our teeth.
We could not conceive of any effective way to combat their mindshare amongst the apathetic population-at-large, and without which we could never get sufficient leverage to move the politicians.
At the same time the EFF struggled valiantly on our behalf but their voice is relatively tiny, representing (as it appeared to be) only the tiny fraction of the population that is geekdom.
The answer was staring us in the face the whole time.
- * The EFF adopts the same media tactics as our enemies.
Go EFF! Why the fsck didn't anybody think of this before ?! (smacks head repeatedly on desk)* They effectively rebrand themselves as representing the much larger number of people who mainly use the internet to download music etc.
* The EFF becomes a truly popular movement with mass appeal - fingers crossed - and the pro-digital-rights community in general gets a significant mindshare at last.
* The EFF gets a big funding boost from new subscriptions - fingers crossed again - and at last, at last, the battle will be fought on a much more level playing field.
Sure, everyone is tired of the RIAA ranting, raving, and suing. The only sure way to stop the RIAA from all of this is for people to stop stealing music. (Duh.) RIAA is doing what they are suppose to do: protect the owners of the music.
--Slashdot: News for Turds. Stuff that Splatters.
They Might Be Giants and Bauhaus? Ooh, color *me* happy!
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
The world does not begin and end at the the doors of US corporations. That's the entire fucking point.
The MPAA/RIAA had a chance years ago to work *with* this wonderful new decentralized distribution system which obviously had consumer appeal. The rewards would have been enormous for corporation and consumer alike.
However, threatened by a new distribution method which would (necessarily) erode their absolute control over unit pricing, artist contracts, and royalty payments, they chose the ignorant and paranoid method of attempting to hold water in their fists merely by gripping tighter.
Instead of meekly returning to their easily-predictable demographic marketing boxes as demanded by the Media Masters, many consumers chose instead to exercise this new-found freedom. An economic downturn decimated the disposable income of hundreds of millions who could no longer afford to gamble on whether the contents of a CD matched the quality of the lone song pushed in heavy rotation by related radio stations across the country.
In a further effort to reign in the unmanaged masses, the RIAA/MPAA turned to ridiculous claims of speculative "loss of potential income" and outrageous lawsuits which only served to alienate higher numbers of consumers. Some who were merely curious grew bolder and some who like to sample prior to purchase became dedicated pirates. Too late, some industry entities released anemic and over-priced "services" that were mere shadows of the technology embraced and demanded by the consumers.
So now we have artists denied the ability to manage their own work (ie when Sony denied The Offspring the right to release their upcoming album via MP3), multi-million dollar lawsuits against private individuals, and blatantly illegal activities (release of virii into the wild, attempts to hack into suspected "offenders'" systems). The hypocrisy and greed of the corporations becomes more evident with every action and every press release.
The RIAA/MPAA made this a problem. They have only themselves to blame.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Every time the file sharing issue comes up, some people bring out this old saw. Reality: under the current system, with the exception of a miniscule percentage of "stars," e.g. Britany Spears, musicians get nothing, or virtually nothing, from CD sales. The onerous contracts that the monopolistic recording industry imposes on artists ensures this.
Humans were making music long before the concept of "intelectual property" existed... and we will be making music long after the concept of "copyright" is a distant memory.
Artists have always found a way to make enough money to survive and to create, struggle though they may. The current system of granting special monopoly rights to the copyright "owners" benefits only RIAA excecutives, politicians, and a few mostly mediocre "stars." It harms the rest of us by forcing us to give up our freedoms to shore up a system that benefits only the few and is doomed to soon collapse.
Who is running the EFF now? There has obviously been a number of changes of power over the last decade, but this latest incarnation of the EFF seems to have nearly nothing in common with the principles with which the organization was formed.
.com era knows how meager ad revenue can be, especially for someone who is creating their own content and not simply presenting millions of page views of other people's work. Digital patronage, another answer presented is akin to saying "We don't want to pay you to do your work, find someone else to pay you. We still want the product, though!"
As a former supporter of and contributor to the EFF I am appalled at this latest campaign. After reading the information available about their latest campaign on their website, it is clear that the EFF now is promoting mass violation of legally held copyrights of music and other works. Obviously stepping far beyond fair use doctrine, the EFF appears to be supporting mass distribution of copyrighted works to thousands of people the user has never met.
Some of the alternatives to paid copyright use the EFF suggests are simply laughable. Tip jars are one of the suggestions, something that nearly every investigation into that i have read has discounted as ineffective. Ad revenue sharing is another suggestion they make, and anyone who has survived the
Cases such as Steve Jackson Games and others that the EFF cut their teeth on and grew influential were all examples of protecting individual's rights online and in a digital age. Indeed there was a need for this kind of protection and there still is, physical rights that citizens had been granted were being ignored either intentionally or unintentionally in a digital venue.
Now it seems that the EFF has done a complete 180 degree turn in their approach. They are now attacking copyright holders, saying that they shouldn't have the same protections online as they have in the physical world. Meanwhile, while these rights still do apply to the digital world the EFF is trying to make sure that anyone who choses to violate them is guaranteed anonymity.
Wouldn't the old EFF have stood up for these people who were having their rights violated - the vast majority of whom are regular folks, paying their rent, or small businesses (bands) making only a mediocre income on their work?
Generally I detest receiving chain letters in my email, but this time I'll be the sender rather than the receiver. Posting here to encourage all of you to do the same.
--Chain letter body--
Did you know that there are approximately 60 Million FELONS on the loose in the USA? Penalties for their crimes include 5 years in prison and $150,000 *per offense*. They outnumber the people who voted to elect our current president.
Who are these people? You, me, your loved ones, and everyone else who's used a Peer to Peer (P2P) file sharing application. Why are we felons? Because Orin Hatch and the creators of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) say so. In exchange for bribes, er.. campaign contributions, from the music and movie industries, they have written unconstitutional laws to prop up these industries. Rather than change to compete in the internet age, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Movie Publishers Association of America (MPAA) choose to buy legislation that props up their failing business model.
What can you do? Forward this email to everyone in your address book. Got a few bucks to spare? Donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). It's tax deductible. No money? No problem. Join their newsletter and stay informed. You get a chance to vote these bastards out of office every once in a while, don't you?
What should you not do? Throw this message away and say "Pfft, that doesn't affect ME. They'll never come after ME." Why? Because they ARE coming after you. Have you been watching CNN lately? The RIAA plans to file upwards of 100 lawsuits against individual file sharers in the next few months. They've already stripped Jesse Jordan, a 19 year old college student in NY, of $12,000. His entire life savings. Why? Because he wrote a search engine, like Google.com, that discovered shared files on his campus network , including but not limited to music files. They're building momentum in court and their next target is you, or someone like you. Keep in mind, the longer they take to get to you, the more case law they will have supporting their position. Stop them now before it's too late.
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/music-to-our-ears.php
--
They call this a DeMoCrAcy?
hhahah go cry in the corner. It is just karma!
Should 60 million people go to jail just so the RIAA can stay in business? I dont think so.
The law must be changed because the people want it changed. Thats how democracy works.
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Why do you want the few CEOs in the world who own all the copyrights and all the information to decide your laws for you.
People want to share music, they want freedom on the internet. This is what the people want, why should we give up freedom so the RIAA can stay in business?
60 million people, vs maybe a few hundred thousand people who work for the RIAA.
Think about this.
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If when libraries were invented, we had the technology avilable to distribute content to all men, don't you think we would have done it.
God spoke to me
It has the 4' mark halfway between the ground and 6'. Funny math, or are these people partially subterrainian?
And most of the 6 billion people on this planet do not own copyright. Why should we save an industry which is no longer needed? We no longer need record companies to distribute music, they are useless.
Capitalism remember? Let the dead companies die, let the laws adapt to the needs and wants of the people. People do not need or want the current copyright law, people desire more freedom. Give the people what they want!
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What makes these hundreds of thousands of people more important than the rights and freedoms of 60 million people?
Oh wait, money buys freedom and those hundreds of thousands of people have the money.
Look, geekee, just because you own a copyright, or a patent doesnt mean 99.9 percent of the worlds population cares, the rest of the world does not own any copyright or patent, and if they do the copyright or patent they own is of no value because they sold it to some CEO such as yourself.
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visit www.justablip.co.uk
our first full release, wtf the madonna remix project, is fully available for download on most p2p networks (kazaa, limewire, soulseek, KDX) & we encourage you to continue sharing it online & via word of mouth once you download it if you like it. (of course, we'd love you support if you'd also like to buy it from our site too!)
I would think most of the people on here would like it or at least get a chuckle from it...its electronic, collages, & samples. check out tracks 2, 13, & 14.
also, please read our articles, there may be something of interest to you guys if you are passionate about music.
ant
--
))
((
c[_] bLiP
www.justablip.co.uk
ClearChannel is the company largely responsible for the homogenization of the airwaves. ClearChannel is like the McDonalds of radio: every radio station will be the same across the country, and it will play music that's not really very good, but is designed to appeal to the widest range of people, and is catchy enough that most people put up with it. Also, the same songs will be played many times so that they get wedged into your brain.
ClearChannel is in the business of advertising, not music, and they will readily admit this. Music is there so that people listen to ads and ClearChannel gets money.
Sadly, a lot of commercial-but-non-ClearChannel radio stations have adopted at least some of this model, and will seldom play anything really original/groundbreaking (unless it gets a buzz in college radio first. Most recent example: Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Did you even know that what's on the radio isn't their first album?), and also play the same songs over and over again.
Aside from DJs bringing in their own music (which is not usually allowed on commercial radio), even college radio stations need promotion, as they rely on music that is sent to them by (smaller) labels and distributors.
Having an organization to represent the rights of recording artists is actually a good idea, but the RIAA has really become more of a representative of the major labels instead. Is this entirely their fault? No, the labels would have to change, and ClearChannel be destroyed and never allowed to rise again in any form before really open competition is possible.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Which is more important? Well lets see, every human on the face of the Earth benefits from freedom.
Copyright benefits the upper class elite.
Which is more important?
Now it seems that the EFF has done a complete 180 degree turn in their approach. They are now attacking copyright holders, saying that they shouldn't have the same protections online as they have in the physical world. Meanwhile, while these rights still do apply to the digital world the EFF is trying to make sure that anyone who choses to violate them is guaranteed anonymity.
Thats because the online world is not the physical world. People dont want the online world to be the physical world, the internet was not designed to be the physical world. The internet was designed to promote freedom. Finally theres a place on this earth where people have nearly absolutely freedom and stupid people like you want to take that freedom away from 60 million people, just so a few hundred thousand greedy rich CEOs such as yourself can profit off other peoples ideas.
Who the hell are you to tell 60 million people they are wrong?
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Let the music play!
Worry for another day!
Dance your cares away!
Down in Fraggle Rock!
Laws are for people with no friends.
Plenty of good points here. Sure, lots of music is there on the networks. But how do you think it got there in the first place?
Just because a few hundred thousand people such as yourself think something is wrong, doesnt make it wrong.
In a democracy, we decide our own laws. You should move to China or Iraq, where a few hundred thousand people can rob hundreds of millions of people of their freedom. China wants to censor the net, its funny to me that some guy like you will jump up and say thats wrong, but when some CEOs or Companies in the USA want to do the same thing to our people suddenly its right?
So anytime someone is profiting from something, that makes it morally right to protect?
So if i profit of selling air, and I make it illegal for people to breath air, is that right? Is it right for me to force a market to exist even when in reality there is no market?
Face it, people dont want copyright to exist in the digital world, they DONT. They dont want it, the masses prefer freedom over copyright. This is the choice, freedom or copyright, and the country has made its choice.
If you dont like it, move to China, join Al Qaeda, where people dont get to make choices for themselves.
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you have two choices for the letter you send to your representative. e-mail or fax.
60,000,000 e-mails can be deleted/filtered in a heartbeat.
at least 60 million faxes are a pain in the ass.
First of all, the recording industry is making strides in providing online music. Even if they didn't however, consumers have no right steal from producers if they don't like the legitimate ways the product is sold. This is a clear violation of everything the US stands for (or at least used to stand for). Copyright is meant to protect producers and stimulate free trade. It is not free trade when consumers steal a product because they refuse the terms of the seller. The fact that the EFF is sticking up for criminals, just proves that they're so consumer-biased, that they are willing to trample over the rights of producers at every turn to protect the imagined freedoms of consumers.
Vote for Pedro
You'd love a place like Iraq, China, the former Soviet Union, North Korea. You are the kinda guy who wants your government to decide everything for you!
You dont like freedom, you dont believe in what this country was founded on! You are a capitalist, you believe capitalism is more important than the constitution, more important than freedom, more important than democracy, please just move to China where you belong. China has a very stable government and if you speak out against them you'll be killed.
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Your post is all over the map. Should the government enforce morals on people, or not? You say "unfortunately, a lot of powers at be have tried to enforce Morality." And then in the same breath, you say that you're glad they did, so people wouldn't be able to steal your work. That's the first thing that comes to mind? You're not happy that it's against the law for someone to, say, kill you?
Then you talk about freedom of religion, and mention "Jesus Day" in Texas. I don't know anything about the specific holiday you're talking about, but I suspect that people weren't forced to celebrate it. Are you saying we shouldn't recognise Christmas, or Easter? Freedom of Religon means that you're free to worship (or not) as you please. It's not an attempt to drive religon from the lawbooks.
I fail to see what your point is. Maybe it's that the government should only enforce the morals that you agree with.
c-hack.com |
I mean its the same thing, people want to share files. People love freedom. Isnt that what the net is all about? Freedom? Isnt that what America is supposed to be about? Freedom? Democracy?
We have no right to preach to other countries, and liberate people when we suddenly overturn democracy when enough CEOs say their profits are going down.
Fuck that, I'll leave this country before I let a bunch of CEOs take away my freedom.
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Since when did Capitalism and Profits of companies decide morality?
If this is the case Microsoft can call Linux users evil cyber terrorists because Linux users prevent them from making a profit.
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Someone is standing up to fight the Juggernaught that stands for everything evil and dark ^__^ Seriously, it's about time that someone stands up to the RIAA. It kinda reminds me of the time their website got hacked. Now for the MPAA!
The right way would be for ISPs to handle it, I'd gladly have my ISP bill increased by $5 a month for the right to download unlimited amounts of music. Taxes on blank CDs can work to.
But this money should go directly to the artists or it should not be collected at all, we do not need a corperate welfare program.
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I'm a musician as well and the RIAA is a music corperate dictatorship, like saddam, who collects taxes from consumers and refuses to pay artists.
The RIAA must be removed, then artists can sign contracts with ISPs, ISPs can then raise their internet rate by about $5, the government can also collect taxes on music equipment, and give out grants to musicians who want to produce music.
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And if everyone who made statements like that wrote letters and voted, we wouldn't have these representatives. How hard is it to grasp that corporations and PACs don't vote, citizens do? Congress leverages corporate money into campaigns to draw the attention of a voting minority. If a fraction of the disillusioned would stand up and be counted, the system would change dramatically in a single election cycle.
Disclaimer: I do not presume that Master Bait is apathetic or politically disengaged. How would I know? I only note that I have heard this song many times from people who are apparently much more interested in complaining about the system than changing it.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
Freenet needs are much donations as the EFF.
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"There are more than 60 million people in the United States alone who use file sharing--more than the number of people who voted for our current President."
How many Florida Anti-Bush votes were actually counted in 2000 ?
Rather than fighting to get copyright law changed and such, why doesn't the EFF just promote free music? Besides being legal to swap, it may also open peoples' eyes to what's really out there.
Not only is it music to our ears, but it's also music for our wallets. :)
The laws should be changed. The rights of the minority should be changed to suit the needs of the majority. I mean what good is a system which cannot adapt to the needs of society?
I'd rather live in a dictatorship that preserved my individual rights than your twisted society where the majority opinion is law.
So why are you in the USA? Iraq and China do everything to preserve peoples individual rights if you are an elite military official.
You have no right to a freedom that infringes on the freedom of another, in this case the constitutionally protected right to maintain a copyright.
Sure I do, our freedom 60 million people, is more important than your freedom (several hundred thousand CEOs and elite musicians)
You must weigh whos freedom is more important. I think alot more people want freedom of speech and freedom online, than freedom to own copyrights.
Its our freedom vs yous, would you like to have a civil war over it?
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A few years ago a band called "The Barenaked Ladies" came out with a funny song sung in a mock rap style. My older brother promptly went out and bought the CD.
Afterwards, when I saw he had a Barenaked Ladies CD, I almost fainted.
"Why the hell do you have this Hank?"
"The song on the radio was funny. I didn't know that they were the worst band to ever make a record. How did you know they sucked?"
"Because my friend downloaded some of their songs from Napster."
My brother promptly had me download and install Napster on his computer. Never again should anyone be duped into buying a Barenaked Ladies CD, ever. I'm all for P2P.
Theres a poll on TechLive, Tell them what you thinkTechlive Poll
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I really don't care what they do. I'll happily steal music through whatever means nessesary. Probly using 6/4 or Freenet. $15 for a CD?!? thats capitalism for ya...
Legalize Everything. www.infoshop.org
Most producers of music ARE NOT making money from CD sales.
Most producers of music are DJs, you know the one you see at the club you go to. Or bands, you know the band you see playing for tips. They dont have record contracts with the RIAA, and if they have contracts at all its with indie labels who actually PROFIT from the internet.
Most of these people know how to profit from the digital world, they put their music on P2P networks to gain popularity so they can go on tour, CD sales were never a big deal to the average musician unless that musician sells millions of CDs. The average musician sells thousands of CDs, a very good musician sells maybe 50,000-100.000 CDs in a year.
CDs to these people are marketing devices, like advertisements, these people make more money going on tours in Europe playing live concerts to their online fans than they EVER could have made if they didnt have the net to attract people from all around the world to their music.
You cant make money from your music unless you have a fanbase, you cannot get a fan base if only people who buy your music get to hear you. This means you MUST play and give free music to profit. You must build your reputation before clubs and other places will hire you.
You must not know anything about the music industry, I actually make music and I know what I'm talking about.
Would I like someone to steal my music? First I dont own it, I sell a service, you hire me and I create music for your party, your club, your wedding, etc. You hire me and I'll make you some great music, I'll be an awesome DJ, and if you like my music enough, you'll pay to come see me play my music.
The truth is, I know that if I have any talent at all at making music, that no one else is going to be able to make the sounds that I make, no one will be able to recreate the experience of hearing me live, so you can have your recorded music, thats yours, what I own is the art.
Music is an art to some people and its a business to others, let the music businessmen go out of business, people would get better music.
I'm sure fans of Eminem would rather have Eminem playing live shows at their party than buy Eminems CD.
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Sure I do, our freedom 60 million people, is more important than your freedom
So if 60 million people wanted to rape your wife, and only your family disagreed, you would support their freedom to do with her what they would? Of course not, modern society recognizes that human rights are not dictated by those who have the biggest stick, or the biggest constituency.
I think a lot more people want freedom of speech and freedom online
There has got to be thousands of great thinkers rolling over in their graves right now to think that your idea of freedom of speech (which you are blessed with) is there to allow you to mass copy someone else work because you want to enjoy it but dont want to pay for it.
i give the EFF a 50% chance of the RIAA police (ya know, the cops and politicians they pay for) indicting every member of the EFF (yep, even me for donating money to 'em) under RICO for being a criminal organization as they are soliciting crime (sharing).
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
The whole reason we claimed to have liberated Iraq and the whole problem with the soviet union according to our government was lack of democracy.
So now democracy is communism?!
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Of course not, modern society recognizes that human rights are not dictated by those who have the biggest stick, or the biggest constituency.
And it's this fallacy that has led to most of our problems. Human rights ARE dictated by those with the biggest stick - so long as I have the power to control you, and you do not have the power to resist my control, I effectively own you, and there's nothing you can do about it. All government is coercive force, and it's high time we own up to it and start working with it instead of pretending it ain't so while we manipulate it from behind.
The only reason we are given as many rights as we have been is because it's easier than fighting off the constant attempts at revolution and terrorism that would result from clamping down - and as those above us in the hierarchy find better and better ways to dupe us into complacency, those rights become less and less relevant.
The bottom line is, whoever has the most power and the strongest will to use it will make the rules, and this whole copyright fiasco is just a big play to see who has the most power and the strongest will to use it.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
Read a a dictionary you stupid moron. This is theft.
Main Entry: theft
Pronunciation: 'theft
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English thiefthe, from Old English thIefth; akin to Old English thEof thief
Date: before 12th century
1 a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property
2 obsolete : something stolen
3 : a stolen base in baseball
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duplication of data (except for Backup/QOS purposes) is an evil thing
Later you write:
Streaming audio is very do-able over broadband today.
Broadband isn't affordable in all locations today. Where residential high-speed Internet access is affordable, this is because 1. throughput is oversold, and 2. the typical TOS considers several-hour outages acceptable. I find storing the data locally on a machine located within the end user's household a valid "QOS purpose".
Will I retire or break 10K?
So if 60 million people wanted to rape your wife, and only your family disagreed, you would support their freedom to do with her what they would? Of course not, modern society recognizes that human rights are not dictated by those who have the biggest stick, or the biggest constituency.
We arent talking about rape, murder, etc. Please do not try to spin this debate by comparing copying with murder and rape, thats ridiculous. No human is harmed by copying a file. Rape is wrong because someone is harmed when you rape.
You arent harmed when I copy something, you arent harmed when I download something, and you arent harmed when I share something. Musicians arent harmed when their fans copy and share their music, musicians actually want this because like a politician, having name recognition actually helps them when its time to go on tour.
The only people who are harmed by copying are people who want to control the distribution of music. The RIAA does not want the distribution of music to be free, the RIAA knows they cannot control the music industry if Musicians can directly sell or give their music to the fans. The RIAA knows they will go out of business if the Musicians gain freedom from the RIAA's contracts and fans gain freedom to share music.
Face it, everyone benefits from this situation but the RIAA, and the RIAA does not create the content, nor do they provide any money to the content creators, they arent a part of this industry anymore.
There has got to be thousands of great thinkers rolling over in their graves right now to think that your idea of freedom of speech (which you are blessed with) is there to allow you to mass copy someone else work because you want to enjoy it but dont want to pay for it.
Ok i want you to pay the Newton family for calculus, pay einstiens family, pay the egyptian government for stealing their math to use on your homework, pay the africans for stealing the drum, pay for the right to use a wheel to whoever created it and if you cannot find out who did pay whichever country represents them, how many things would you be able to afford?
Lets see, a calculate would be out of your range, math would be too expensive for you to use, your use of English would be very limited, your use of technology would be very limited, you wouldnt be able to create music because someone will have a copyright or patent on almost every note, there will be copyrights on every beat/pattern.
So tell me whats the point of this? Progress would slow down to a crawl, most people wouldnt be able to afford music, math would be too expensive so even if you are a math genius you wont be able to contribute to society simply because you wont be able to afford to use the math thats under copyrights and patents.
Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, they'd all be under patents and you'd have to pay each time you want to use them, and if you want to use algebra you'll have to pay for every formula, every algorithm, every use of the basics of subtraction, multiplication and division.
Look, the computer would not exist, because every computer owner would have to pay per a license to use a CPU due to the math a CPU does.
You wouldnt have computers because software would cost billions of dollars to make, games would cost a fortune to make because not only would programmers have to license the math, they'd have to license the artwork, the algorithms, the programming language itself would have to be paid for, the music would cost millions of dollars because you'd have to pay for every beat, tone, and rhythm simply because your yourself wasnt the first to discover it. The calculus involved in making the 3d engine would require you license perhaps thousands of algorithms and formulas.
Lets set a reasonable price of $20 each time you use it. Can you afford to use a calculator if it costs $20 per calculation?
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Ahem. That concept of politics has been attempted before. Forgive me if I'm not too keen on that modest proposal.
No cheers for you -- Quothz
What filesharers are doing isn't wrong, what the riaa is doing is wrong. Infact, before the printing press books were copied manually and when greed kicks in, the first copyright laws kicked in a well and publishers wanted to copyright the artists' works for themselves perpetually and forever. The sonny bono act came into being saying copyright should be for 14 years and all was good. There was no copyright before that and the incentive to write books came from boardem, if you were a farmer and you knew how to write you'd make a book and make a few copies for your friends.
What people need to undestand is that copyright law wasn't meant to be abused like this. First, copyright as it stands right now is forever, or rather, forever minus a day as congress has extended it 11 times thanks to disney. Copyright, patents, etc ensures artists have incentive in our society to get money and hence to be rewarded and make more art, they never had nor never should have the control the riaa says they should have. The fantisy that you make a cd and earn fabulous prizes, millions of dollers, women chasing after you etc is an outright lie and in addition stupid and it's something that damages our society as greed tears it apart.
At some point your art becomes public domain for others to build onto and to use. Why? Because capitalism is a system where you are rewarded at your level of ability and it needs to be understood that if eminem makes 30 million, he'd probably goto the bank and live out the rest of his life fat n' lazy and never make another piece of art. If enimen got payed nothing, he wouldn't make the music and if he got payed too much he wouldn't make it, so there's a point where copyright law should protect but not too much. Music and art are our culture, it barrows from past ideas and adds to future ideas and if we let companies pick apart everything to the finest detail nothing will be left and we'll stop advancing as a culture becuase as soon as you take 3-4 inventions, stick them together with other inventions you'll have large corperations on your ass within seconds asking for money.
Corperations want you to think making a profit and maximizing profit are good things, and a lot of people think they are but in reality the people who made copyright and pantent law never intended for things like microsoft to come into being. They never intended buisness to get so huge and for our school system to teach dependance to the point that almost everyone is dependant for a job on large companies and hence, subject to that companies abuse. What if the fortune 500 companies decided chipping their employees was manditory and if you didn't get a rice-shaped chip implanted into the back of your skull you were fired? That's a lot of influence these companies have to do very terrible things and copyright and pantent lawmakers never intended for that to happen and our goverment isn't handling these things very well, infact the fda approved chipping. Tells you what side they are on.
Copyright law hasn't answered how much money should someone be allowed to make, and the people have rather nicely. P2P is here to stay unless congress puts forth some serious cash to regulate the internet into hell. AS the OSS community has taught us they can do anything, and if someone want's their mp3's free bad enough they'll sit down and make some code that exploite some bug in the system that can't fix.
Now, back on subject, I think the EFF is doing an awesome thing here. Going on the p2p apps and spamming "hey, file sharing is legal have fun!" is a great way to ease some of the fud the RIAA has been spreading and they can do it cheaply. Writing letters isn't going to do much without a lot of punch at the voting booth so spread the word around college campuses. $20 worth of paper and ink now means you aren't in manditory slave labor later on becuase the riaa decided you downloading music not lisenced by them is a bad thing. Don't believe me? Listen to the tales of the afternow.
http://theafternow.com/listen.php
Candy-Coated Knowledge
The US is a republic which means the rule of law supercedes the rule of the people. A pure democracy is mob rule and pays no attention to rights of the minority -- those with an unpopular opinion. A pure democracy could decide that all geeks deserved the death penalty for create software that could be used by terrorists -- and there'd be nothing you could do about it. Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's right, and just because it's unpopular doesn't mean it's wrong.
You seem to imply that copyright infringement is not a crime. However, willful copyright infringement for financial gain is a crime (17 USC 506). Because of the default behavior of file-sharing apps (downloads are shared by default), the labels can usually show "financial gain" as defined in 17 USC 101.
Before you reply to this message, please read the statutes to which I linked, especially the definition of "financial gain" in section 101.
Will I retire or break 10K?
However, RIAA can do things that EFF can never do. RIAA is a political action committee and can give money to congressional election campaigns; EFF is a 501(c)(3) charity and cannot.
What EFF needs to do here is follow the example of NORML: set up a parallel organization with separate accounting, except make it a PAC instead of a charity. NORML routes lobbying through the PAC and advertising through the charity. Donations to NORML Foundation are tax-deductible; donations to NORML PAC aren't.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Just like you shouldnt be able to "own" math and language. It stops progress.
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The intent to compensate artists and copyright holders may be a good one, but like almost every argument over the music sharing issue it assumes that the 20th century profit model established by the music copy making industry should be perpetuated. This isn't necessarily true.
Before recording technology, musicians made money only by performing. Recording technology could have changed that but it didn't. Because record companies were in a position to dictate how the system would work, they set it up to give themselves all the profits. Standard ecording contracts are written such that all the expenses of producing and distributing a record are paid out of the musician's percentage, usually leaving zero. What musicians get out of a recording contract is exposure, which leads to them getting more and more lucrative gigs. They make a living by performing, just like in the days before records were invented. And that's the ones who have recording contracts. The vast majority of working musicians don't.
File sharing gives musicians exposure just like record sales do, and they make the same amount of money from it. The people who might stand to lose something from file sharing are the copymakers, whose role in the system is becoming obsolete. It's not at all clear to me why an obsolete industry should be kept on life support, or why the replacement system should try to implement the mythical concept of musicians being compensated when copies of their work are distributed. It didn't use to work that way and it doesn't work that way now. Why should it suddenly be a priority?
Let musicians benefit from the exposure afforded by file-sharing, the same way they have always benefited by the exposure from record sales, and they will continue to make money from live performances. Why can't we leave it at that???
suppose coming up with this belief helps a lot to reduce the pangs of guilt while you are ripping off other working class people like artists.
Eminem is working class?
Not a single one of these people owns an expensive car. None of them jet off to london to jam with the stones. Only a few of them own their own house, something that has long been heralded as basic achievement of working class people. Many work part or full time in record stores, recording studios, restaurants and bars. When we go out to lunch most of the time it's at a place that a burrito and a coke will cost you less than $5.
Really? So how do musicians make their money? Thats right they get on a jet and go to London to play their music in front of thousands of fans.
Let me tell you the other side of the story. I know dozens of people who make their living either in whole or in part due to creating music on records.
Artists dont make money off records, record companies make money off records. What artist do you know who makes 100% of their income from record sales? Most artists i know make the majority of their money at the clubs and concerts, they call it the scene, and its the scene that produces income, not the records.
These are the upper class elite you're talking about?
Eminem, Dr.Dre, and the corperate CEOs who own most of the copyright and who sell most of the CDs. Most of the people you mention arent making any money because they are too stupid to go on tour, and use the internet to build enough popularity to have a big enough fanbase to go on tour.
Are these the greedy people bilking you out of your hard earned money to scam you with music? No, they are working class americans. Based on your arguments about the evils of capitalism and copyright one would assume that file swappers would not be sharing music by these people, right? Well, of course they are though. Search for any number of these bands on p2p apps and you'll find their whole albums ready to download.
Bullshit, the people who work for the RIAA arent creating any music, these guys are suddenly working class? Hilary Rosen is working class? Where do you get this bullshit from?
A few years ago, an old friend joined their band... Now this guy was a bit different, he had been in a popular san francisco band that had toured internationally and consequently had made somewhat of a name for himself. Him joining was probably going to help them all make more of a living out of making their music. They made a new album and played a few shows locally to introduce the new guy. The album was available for sale on their website. About a month after their cd release I was told a sobering tale from my friend the sound engineer. The band had recieved a large amount of positive feedback on the new album... over a hundred and fifty people had written to tell them that the new album was great, that they loved it. The problem? Between the CD sales at the concerts and online, they had sold less than 100 copies
Maybe if you and your band werent such idiots, you'd instead of worrying about selling your CD, you'd use it to promote your tours. Your CD is marketing, just like for movies, the trailers are marketing to get you to go to the theater, use the marketing, if so many people liked your music, why dont you go on tour and play before a sellout crowd, you'd make x10 more money than you'd make selling CDs, of course its more work to go on tour, and you are just too afraid to admit that you are lazy. Maybe if you worked hard you'd make money, but thinking people will buy your CD in this era, forget it.
More people had loved the album enough to write in an congratulate them on it than had bought the album in the first place. And we know most people who get an album (either bought or copied) aren't going to write the band. So here were working class guys with a shot at getting a bit more for their labor essentially shot down by music pira
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We can turn that around and spin it the opposite way. If the minority in Germany were jews and owned all the businesses, and wanted to keep the majority from ever having a chance at those businesses, its the same situation.
Look at South Africa, until recently the majority was oppressed by the white minority.
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The RIAA not only takes away the rights from creators through the use of capital, they also profit on the behalf of the creators.
Why cant we consider the RIAA's pirates? They didnt create they art, they just profit from it.
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If you can do anything you like with your body why cant you do anything you like with your computer?
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nt
oops, good luck getting these ads on a TV channel owned by Time warner, sony, or disney. I think that covers all of them. In fact theyll have a hard time getting it into print media even, but that isnt quite as conglomerated (yet, thank you FCC) For an example of Ads that TV just wont run, check out Buy nothing day They have two ads on the right, and theyve had minimal success getting them to run anywhere, even though they are willing to pay, simply because of the message in those ads (dont buy anything the day after thanksgiving)
No, it's really not legally theft. I refer you to the copyright code for details. (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ch5.html) Theft is a kind of larceny, which is deriving someone of property. The law distinguishes property from copies of copyrighted works.
It's up to each person to make up his own mind with regard to the ethical issue. But an ethical system that doesn't distinguish between appropriation of scarce goods (my car, my clothes) and abundant ones (air, digital bits, a public park) is pretty naive, in my opinion. There can be many good reasons to regulate the latter, but they're not the same ones as the former.
Just another prohibition. Black markets exist and always will. Trying to completely make something 100% illegal your just giving your profits to those who can supply it and wasting money on lawyers.
Set a reasonable price and convenient service for music and people will pay. The price will be paid to avoid wasted time and higher quality downloads.
History doesn't repeat itslef but it sure does rhyme...
Unless I misunderstand what you're saying, the above is quite untrue. Copyright existed long before the Sony Bono act, which I think occurred in the late 1990s, and the act increased copyright far beyond 14 years; something like "death of copyright holder plus 50 years".
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Maybe by having a large amount of fans? How do you get a large amount of fans? Maybe by letting a large amount of people hear your music?
Connect the dots.
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[Bart holds his gun to his own head]
Bart: One move, and the nigger gets it!
Harriett Johnson: Isn't someone going to help that poor man?
Dr. Sam Johnson: Hush, Harriett! That's sure to get him killed!
Bart: Help me, help me!
[Bart maneuvers his hostage (himself) into an empty building]
Bart: (to self) Oh baby, you are so talented.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Also, I think it's important to share that, while I have probably downloaded thousands of songs in my day, I delete the ones that I don't like, and I'll buy an album if there are enough decent songs on the album to buy it. Also, most of the MP3s I download lead me to (a) delete them because they suck or (b) buy the album -- thanks for letting me sample the sound! The few that do neither are either an isolated good song on a crappy album, or they are live performances, remixes, or otherwise rare tracks that can not be acquired on any album.
If I had to choose a side, I would choose the RIAA's side. I buy enough CDs and I have enough friends in the music business that I can see clearly why there is a problem with downloading as much music as some people do. At the same time, there is something clearly wrong with the way music is presented to society. It seems that only the artists that the industry chooses will sell records, and anyone they don't like get to suffer. Sorry, that isn't how it's supposed to work.
When you come up with a way to allow all music to be heard for what it is so the consumers get to decide what is good and what is not -- so good music is sold and bad music is not -- then I won't have to download music to figure out what's good or not.
p.s.-- Thank the powers that be that I was able to download a copy of Metallica's St. Anger before I rushed out to buy it. Ironic, isn't it, that their newest album is probably the best example of why we should be allowed to hear the music before purchasing it! I would have hated it if I had spent money buying that crap before knowing what it sounded like...
Smalltime bands dont make a PENNY of Album sales. According to their countries with the RIAA, unless you sell over a certain number of CDs you dont earn a PENNY. Record companies give you an advance, this pays for your video, your MTV airtime, and any other made up costs they want to pin onto this. They then tell the musician that they must sell triple platinium before they can earn a profit.
This means you wont see a penny from selling your Album unless you sell to millions of people.
Small bands do not sell to millions of people, so how are they making money? Tours, Clubs, Djing, going on the radio and doing live mixes, Concerts.
If you give your music away you can then have millions of fans, you can then put on your website a list of places you will be touring to, and sell your tickets for say $15 a person.
Lets say the place takes $5 per person out of this $15, you get $10 per person.
Lets say you put on 5 shows in new york, and 25,000 people pay $5.
Thats $25,000x5, this is over $100,000!!!!
Lets say you go to LA, sell 10,000 tickets, $5x10,000 = $50,000 and then take a plane to London and play your music there, another 10,000 tickets sold.
Over a 6 month period, you could easily make a few hundred thousand dollars touring. This is more than you'd make if you sold millions of CDs.
You act like Musicians get $15 per CD sale, they dont even get 50 cent per CD sold. So if you are looking at 25-50 cent per CD and you do sell a 2 million CDs, you'll only make $500.000, the first million CDs sold will go to the record company to pay for all the promotion they did.
So in the end you are talking about $500,000 for selling a million CDs, vs maybe $300,000 going on tour and selling 0 CDs.
The difference is, its very difficult to sell more than 3 million CDs, its easy to sell tickets when you have name recognition, and the more people who hear your music, the more your concerts will sellout, eventually you'll be touring Tokyo Japan where little kids heard your music on the net, you'll tour Europe where people who normally wouldnt even know who you are will have heard your stuff online.
This is how it works. I know musicians who do this. You give your CD as marketing instead of letting the RIAA sell your CD as marketing, you cut the RIAA out and you get increased profits because theres no middleman.
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http://www.janisian.com/
Look at her site, what do you see? TOURDATES. Do you see Ads for CDs? NO! The Mp3s are given away for free, what do you see advertised? TOUR DATEs.
Shut up now, you have been proven wrong by actual musicians, now go back to your programming you know nothing about this.
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You aren't being punished at all.
You do not have an inalienable right, or anything of the sort, to not be taxed for any number of policies and programs when you purchase an item.
You do not have an inalienable right, or anything of the sort, to not have your money (which you have earned through this very government system) diverted to transfer of wealth programs.
In this case, permitting the burning of CDs at all causes copyright holders to be demonstratably harmed.
Imposing taxes on you, a practicioner of this behavior, the legal practicing of which creates the need for it to be permitted at all, is justified.
While there are other solutions, the following statement is nonetheless true:
"If it were not legal for you acquire and burn CDs, the net harm done to copyright holders would, so far as this harm is from CD burning, be lessened."
It would not stop it all, but it would significantly lessen the harm.
It is for this reason that it would be justified to impose these taxes upon you.
Yes, the government could just make it illegal for you to acquire and burn CDs, but for obvious reasons, you and many others don't want that to happen. You should consider yourselves lucky that it will not happen in the forseeable future.
1) 25,000 seat arena in new york for five nights? WTF are you smoking? Like i said there's a handful of bands, MAYBE, in the world that can play five nights at madison square garden. And this is your answer to smaller bands that want to make a living playing music? Come back when you have a shred of common sense.
2) $0.50 per cd sold? You are continuing to refuse to see the difference between media mogul superstars and the other 99% of the music industry. Bands that sell albums for $10 and play in clubs see far more that $0.50 for their efforts. Bands sell their own cd's, small labels, and even those that are signed to big labels dont have huge expenses in promotion, or $3M for a music video or if they are selling them themselves huge distribution costs. It's much more common for real every day artists and NOT eminem to make $5 on a cd they sell to a fan. They sure aren't making that much off a $10 door fee.
1) Small band is forced to give all their music away for free
2) You copy it and listen to it
3) ???
4) Play arenas in tokyo and mage huge $$$
you know what the missing ??? is? It's the part where you admit this is some kind of random fantasy you've made up to justify copying what ever you want.
You sound like an idiot **AA lawyer, not a computer science person. There's no way to stop people from locally storing data. And local storage of something like music that won't change just makes sense.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
For one, it does not imply copyright violation. The laws of the universe are against your case.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
If something is against the law, yes, you run a personal risk and its for you to weigh it up. Certainly if you think something is wrong, don't be so weak as to do it. But if you are just obeying out of blind obesiance to a piece of paper, then shame on you. In and of itself, "Because its the law" is no argument.
For starters, a big fuck you from a very deep and visceral place within my soul to all you motherfuckers who can defend an entity as corrupt and evil as the RIAA. This is an organization that has actively sought to do away with due process and seek vigilante justice through legislative means. We are talking about an organization comprised of companies that wield incredible power, and control the content of what has been estimated at 90% of everything the Americans watch or listen to media-wise - companies that have been granted an unprecedented stanglehold on the channel of distribution that restricts any sort of competition. Want an example? Cable television. I have to pay the RIAA companies for every one of those channels I don't won't, including Fox fucking news, just to get the few that I do want.
We are talking about an organization (the RIAA) that has actively promoted the DRM so that their content, and their content exclusively, can be watched or listened to on the majority of electronic devices that people use. So all you delusional motherfuckers still thinking you are going to strike it rich with one of the heavies can forget about any sort of independent every making you any sort of money if your desires for a more empowered RIAA come to fruition. Any artist that is too stupid, too lazy, or just too plain greedy to sign their souls away will get no love from me.
Just to let you know, I'm an artist. And I'm going to let people copy, share, and do whatever the hell else they want with my art. Why? Because I believe my art has integrity, and therefore, the people that will dig on it will more than likely have integrity too. Therefore, if they can, they'll support me. If they can't, I'd rather they be able to access my art than to have to do without. Maybe this isn't the best way to make a fortune. Maybe I won't even earn a decent living. Then again, maybe by making my art freely available I'll reach more people and touch more lives than I ever could have hoped for otherwise.
I don't see how to make filesharing legal and get artists paid. Many people won't pay for things unless they have to. :P I hope they come up with a foolproof plan for this, but I don't see how to force people to pay and still let them download as much as they want (for free). Does anyone know how to do this? Or can anyone point me to a website that has a foolproof plan for allowing people to share as much as they want privately, permanently, and without cost, while still making sure that artists get paid? Since, if someone comes up with some payment system, people will still try to get outside the controlled system so they can get things for free.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
In other words, he took Internet jokes, jokes people made up or just saw on the Internet, and profited from them. He took what people believed to be in the public domain, and now makes money off of it. Do you think he would like it if you scanned his book and placed it on Kazaa? Or his software? Or would he be the first to sue you for copyright infringement? If he would sue, doesn't that mean P2P trading is wrong?
Meanwhile, we all know that these companies have been releasing less artists, pushing a smaller and smaller new product base of bland, lowest-common-denominator garbage. We know that there are millions of artists out there who can rival and best anything on the radio, who can't get radio play because the media is all in bed together and semi-legal payola is rife. We know that the world is full of people who are desperate to run web-based radio analogues who cannot because of the restrictive costs of royalties on copyrighted materials cleared through conventional resources like ASCAP.
It's time for the EFF to stop fighting the RIAA, which has the law on its side, and start promoting alternatives - the organization of a cooperative, non-profit copyright clearinghouse for independent musicians and labels to make music available for web-based "broadcasting" (we need new words for these things) and to set the stage for rationally managed file-sharing.
Music is not some stash of gold that the companies the RIAA represents have in a secret vault. Our goal should not be to force them to open that vault and make the gold available on our terms. Our goal should be to realize and take advantage of the fact that the ONLY limit on the amount of music we can get out there is the number of musicians we can support on the amount of money people are willing to pay for access. Even if we changed the law and convinced the RIAA to become a kinder, gentler corporate lobbying organization, we would still be wasting our money paying off shareholders, fat cat executives, and the mortgages on prima donna stars' summer mansions in the Bahamas. Better access to stupidly managed content is the booby prize of this ideological battle.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
They'll change if given enough time, after they've put in place all means necessary to control this new way of distribution. After all, didn't Valenti declare something to the extent of "The vcr is to the movie industry what the Boston's strangler is to women alone at night"?
___
*insert sig here*
Here is an example of HipHop Artist Mr.Lifs tour dates.Read them, he gained his popularity online, he never was signed to any big record labels, never had his music on the radio, the only way these people know who he is, is through P2P.
Look at it and shut up.
July 3rd | Kristansand, Norway | Quart Festival | w/ El-P, RJD2
June 26th | Roskilde, Denmark | Roskilde Festival | w/ El-P, RJD2
May 23rd | Barcelona, Spain | Primavera Sound 2003 | w/ El-P, RJD2
May 8th | Eugene, OR | WOW Hall
May 7th | Olympia, WA | Longhouse
May 6th | Seattle, WA | Chop Suey
May 5th | Victoria, BC | Lucky Bar
May 4th | Vancouver, BC | Sonar
May 3rd | Portland, OR | B Complex
May 2nd | Missoula, MT | Blue Heron
April 30th | Ft. Collins, NM | Starlight
April 29th | Albuquerque, NM | Smooch's
April 28th | Tempe, AZ | The Big Fish
April 27th | Indio, CA | Coachella Festival
April 26th | LA, CA | Henry Fonda Theatre
April 24th | Sacramento, CA | Colonial Theatre
April 23rd | SF, CA | Slim's | w/ Oldiminion
April 10 | Bloomington, IN | Dunn Meadow
April 11 | Hip Hop Congress | Ann Arbor, MI | Blind Pig
April 13 | Cleveland, OH | Grog Shop
April 14 | Champaign, IL | High Dive
April 15 | Chicago, IL | The Abbey Pub
April 16 | Iowa City, IA | The Green Room
April 17 | Minneapolis, MN | W/ Odd jobs
OSAKA (TONIGHT)
TOKYO (TOMORROW/20TH) @ CLUB YELLO
KOMATSU (SAT.) @ KANEZAWA MUSIC HALL
rock rock y'all...
-tm
2003-03-18 21:12:32
Definitive Jux / Eastern Conference 2002 Fall Tour
Sept. 14th / Worcester, MA / Skatefest 2002 / Palladium
Sept. 19th / Providence, RI / Lupo's
Sept. 20th / Montreal, QC / Rainbow - ites
Sept. 21st / Toronto, ON / Opera House
Sept. 22nd / Ann Arbor, MI / Blind Pig
Sept. 24th / Chicago, IL / Metro
Sept. 25th / Minneapolis, MN / First Avenue
Sept. 29th / Vancouver, BC / Sonar
Sept. 30th / Seattle, WA / I Spy
Oct. 1st / Portland, OR / Crystal Ballroom
Oct. 3rd / San Francisco, CA / Great American Music Hall
Oct. 4th / Los Angeles, CA / Troubador
Oct. 5th / Irvine, CA / This Ain't No Picnic
Oct. 6th / San Diego, CA / The Scene
Oct. 8th / Albuquerque, NM / Sunshine Theatre
Oct. 10th / Austin, TX / La Zona Rosa
Oct. 11th / Dallas, TX / Canyon Club
Oct. 12th / Houston, TX / Engine Room
Oct. 13th / New Orleans, Louisiana / House of Blues Parish
Oct. 14th / Antlanta, GA / Echo Lounge
Oct. 16th / Asheville, NC / TBA
Oct. 17th / Washington, DC / TBA
Oct. 18th / Philadelphia, PA / Gasoline
Oct. 19th / New York, NY / Bowery Ballroom
Source:http://www.mrlif.com/shows.php
Lets be conservative and say he gets 1000 tickets sold per show for $15 each. Lets also be conservative and say he gets $5 per ticket.
Now lets count how many shows hes giving. I counted around 50 shows. 50x1000=50,000 tickets sold. 50,000x$5=$250.000
This guy is making more money from 50 shows than the average working class American would make in 4 years of work.
This guy makes GREAT pay, so for you to tell me P2P hurts him, you are a fool. Look at the proof. Those arent CD sales those are tour dates.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Copyrighting fire
You realize that he was saying that Mr. Lif would clear (conservatively mind you) $5 of that $15 for each ticket. Well, by that math there's $500,000 to cover all of those expenses. (Or are we saying that the venues get to pocket 2x the money for little to no effort?)
We've already seen the numbers run by Steve Albini and Janis Ian about how much money most artists make from recording contracts (I believe it was less than the average 7-11 worker.) Just go look at TLC's having to declare bankruptcy (and they were certainly no small act) while their records were selling like hot cakes.
Even if all of the numbers you quote are correct (and they very well could be) then where is there ANY income for artists?
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
In Canada. Not in the US, and not yet - but do you really think that current laws will survive the century?
Think, especially when gen old+crusty gets out of gov't, and gen-x starts getting in...
No one is denying that constitutional rights are given out and protected using force. The trick is to develop a govt. that protects the rights of individuals rather than abusing the rights of individuals to gain unfair rights for others. Again, copyright is protected under the constitution. The RIAA is asking the govt. to use its force to stop people from infringing on their rights. The US was founded on ideals of individual freedom, including copyright, not "Might makes right", as you suggest. That's why we have a supreme court: To strike down laws that are deemed unconstitutional. So if you don't like what the lawmakers are doing, you can take it to court.
Vote for Pedro
If I violate your copyright, and give away your hit song to everyone on the planet for free, I have taken the net worth of your song from $0.99 to $0. This is as harmful as if I went into a warehouse and stole the CDs and distributed them for free. The arguement that copy does no harm to the copyright holder is flawed.
Vote for Pedro
Both systems are wrong since the govt. is using force to deny basic individual freedoms. So I'm not sure why you're arguing with the parent about it.
Vote for Pedro
"subset of all possible ideas is significantly less than infinite"? What does that mean? Well, even if it were infinite, it would not change your first paragraph. Very good way to put it in the first paragraph. Did you come up with that? Well, then, who did? (ha ha, the irony, eh). I'll have to copy that, err, discover it from the realm of ideas that exist outside of time.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
If someone walks into my store and takes a record, they deprived me of my inventory.
If someone makes a copy of my song, I still have it, and they have it.
There is a difference that RIAA and others of their ilk try to paper over it. Theft means to deprive someone else of their property. Copying does not do that, therefor, it is not theft.
Does the technology f--- up their business model? Sure it does! But, does that mean that they should have a right to enact a public monopoly and empower government to keep their antiquated thoughts intact? We have machines that make it easy to copy information, and therefor, we don't need institutions to dole it out any more. The recording industry and media in general is completely obsolete.
For musicians to try and say that copyright is a moral right is no different than the Catholic Church of the middle ages fighting the renaissance. Both institutions are trying to claim exclusivity on the control of information, using the circular argument that if they don't have control, they will be damaged. Any institution that exists for its own sake and not for some greater public good must be ruthlessly kicked down. The Catholic Church was stomped down, and so should be Music industry.
This is my sig.
May be two wolves and sheep deciding on dinner, but our representative republic is like 60 million sheep deciding whether a wolf or a panther will decide what's for dinner. They can always vote for another sheep, but they never do because they consider it wasting a vote.
If you think that a society can't ignore 60 million people, take a look at China.
At least EFF is trying to make a differnece. I doubt they'll win, but at least they're trying.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.