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 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 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
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/
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.
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.
Remember this quote?
"How do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time."
(Aside: If someone could please attibute this properly, I'd be grateful)
IOW, we have to start sometime even if it does take 20 years, and now is as good as any to get change underway.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Copyright violation!=stealing. Damn some people are dense. Is it nice not needing hammers around?
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Bad reference. Copyright violation ( in truth ) would be playing a ROM you do not own using MAME.
Your reference is flawed because the arcade machine is OWNED by somebody, and if an arcade machine is on free play that's their problem.
Either they're being very generous, or they realize what you're doing and kick your ass out on the street.
In truth, electronic music/movie distribution HAS NO COLLARY because it is a system that has no personal enforcement, and thus encourages people to take advantage of the system.
You cannot easily go into a record store and walk out with an album, it's very likely you will be caught by the owner. But you can go online and download the album and burn it, with little likelyhood of prosecution.
Direct supervision keeps theives in check, and keeps honest folks honest. Indirect supervision is a field-day for theives, and tempts honest people.
WHY IS EVERYONE SO SURPRISED AT THIS? Just look at the percentages of people who violate speed limits whn nobody's looking versus the number of people who violate speed limits WHEN COPS ARE SPEED TRAPPING, and you'll see similar numbers.
I thought it was well understood by companies, after 20 years of trying to MAKE COPY PROTECTION WORK. If there's a link in the chain you cannot supervise personally, somebody is going to break it.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Unfortunately, a lot of powers at be have tried to enforce Morality. Take prohibition for an example, it's a law that NEVER should have passed because it was religious zealots trying to enforce their morals. And when you really think about it, many laws are based on morals, loosely or strictly. Patent law is an example. It wouldn't be right to let people steal my work, so I use the law to protect it. How about the ammendments? It wouldn't be right for us to force our beleifs on other people, so we have freedom of religion. (Did you know G. W. Bush actually had a Jesus day when he was a player in Texas? scary stuff).
Thomas Thoreau beleived as you did, in an expedient Gov't. However, the gov't we have today tries to enforce it's own morals onto other people.
YOU SUCK BALLS!
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.
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...
If you can get those 60 million Americans to vote and make their voices heard to the politicians then no amount of steak dinners and golf outings are going to change their mind. Without votes they are powerless. The only reason they cozy up to the lobbyists is because they are the ones promising that they have control of the public opinion in whatever segment of the population they represent. If politicians start to doubt that then they'll tell them to go to hell in an effort to pander to their constituents.
Using that term would be incorrect. Sharing MP3's may be a violation of copyright, but it is not theft.
Copyright laws have been overextended from their original goal. They were established to provide creators the ability to profit for a limited time. With the changes that have taken place over the years, however, that limited time can now be extended almost indefinitely. It takes away the balancing act of rights of the individual (the copyright holder) and the rights of society to use that product freely.
MP3's and file sharing are going, in the end, to help swing the pendulum back toward society. It will then slowly swing the other way once again.
The problem, however, is that now copyrighted material is being "protected" in such ways that your legal uses under copyright might be blocked. If that happens, then the copyright holder has, in effect, secured permanent exclusive rights, which is not what copyright is designed to provide.
-- Mark Lyon http://www.marklyon.org
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.
the DMCA can work both ways, you know.
Actually, I suspect if you tried to use the DMCA against RIAA/MPAA they would just get it revised. The law won't help you because they can change the law and you cannot.
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.
Great, there's no sense in the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few insanely popular artists. I highly doubt confusion will reign if you remove marketing. People know good music when they hear it. Variety is a good thing.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
And when did these services go on-line? You have heard the president of Sony music saying the success of iTunes woke the industry up, making them realise they could make money this way?
The problem has been, and always has been, the record labels refusing to give the customer what they wanted: diversity, choice and fair pricing. If you want to hear the songs of a new artist not on the Top 40 or Clear Channel's Can-Play list, or just listen to the back catalog of a New Wave 80s group, you basically had no option other than piracy and P2P. Internet Radio stations were few and far between, and their diversity was limited (for reasons we all know and love). The demand was there, but the RIAA just didn't want to give their customers what they wanted.
That, my good sir, is why P2P exists. It stepped up to fill a void by music buyers to try and discover before they buy. The idea that "sharing" people won't buy has been debunked so many times, it's not even worth my time to look up the links for you. You are defend ing the RIAA's stupidity and avarice. Their arguments don't hold water anymore, and it's time to find a new whine other than "theives and freeloaders!"
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
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.
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.
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.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
So far, so good. My right to do anything doesn't give me the right to trample on your rights.
Ahhh, here we go, the second hand smoke gambit. This has worked to curtail the freedoms of tobacco smokers, to the point that in many areas, it's pretty much illegal to smoke tobacco anywhere but in your own home. That's not to say that I think second hand smoke is harmless -- I am of the opinion that it can cause real harm. But I think this carping about second hand smoke has gotten out of hand.
We already have such a contract. It's a social contract enforced through laws which prohibit driving under the influence of any drug (even over-the-counter drugs you pick up at your local pharmacy or grocery store). People who do any drug, legal or not, and then get behind the wheel of a car, are criminals. So why criminalize the substance when it's the behavioral problem that is the issue?
Prohibitions don't work -- history has shown this. Both pot smoking and file sharing will become decriminalized soon, if not made fully legal, because public opinion is swinging in that direction. It might take another decade or two, but the change will happen.
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
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?
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???
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...