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Cringely Proposes a Music Sharing Alternative
WEFUNK writes "The I, Cringely 'Pulpit' column at PBS presents an interesting idea for a new business model to take on the RIAA. He suggests that a publicly traded company could legally and profitably buy a single copy of each record which could then be freely copied and listened to by its shareholders under fair use. His 'Snapster' (Son of Napster) proposal is essentially a digital music co-op that would let shareholders/consumers bring copyrighted material into a quasi-public domain. While fair use and the public domain continue to be lost in our courts and congresses, maybe the capital markets will offer an alternative." While a neat idea, it's doubtful that it'll ever be implemented. Still, it's a good read.
There is no such thing as fair use. Just ask the RIAA.
In my opinion, his idea is brilliant. Create a corporation that is publicly traded, so that everyone has the chance to 'own' rights to every CD. I'd love to see some lawyers' opinions on this.
...the retail price of a CD jumps from $18.99 to $1899.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Admittedly, I would want to see a Whole Bunch Of Lawyers(tm) try to rip the idea in to little tiny pieces. But, if they can't easily find a way to sink it, then why the hell not?
I am eargerly waiting to send in my $20 check!
Interesting, but probably too hard to implement seriously (especially considering the possibilities of legal battles moving to that arena if a share holder shares his/her copy with an unlicensed person). Another aspect is that it would probably hurt sales, if the large companies buy all albums their shareholders are interested in (and take some form of payment from the people, naturally, for the service), then when an artist makes a new album they will know exactly how many copies it will sell, because there are only 4350 companies with shareholders interested in their music...
"If you go to the next town, going across a desert is a shorter way." - Pu-Li-Ru-La (Taito)
I think most dl'ers are just going to continue stealing it.
According to the RIAA anything that's not illegal is you buying an overpriced CD, not reproducing it, and only you listening it. :p
Didn't my.mp3.com get in trouble even though they owned one CD of all the albums they were electronically distributing? And the judge still declared that illegal...
And how long would Snapster hold copyright? Same as the RIAA/MPAA? The bigger issue, for me, is to see these things released to the public domain after a reasonable time (here, death+70 is not reasonable). Sure, it'd be great to have legal access to these under whatever conditions--no argument there. I'm thinking long term, though.
Nothing about this proposal would change the SOP: the Disneys of the world snarfing up and then essentially blackholing characters, songs, lyrics and the like. That's the biggest problem that exists now, imo, and while this proposal is interesting, it does nothing to address the problem.
If I own stock in a company that owns the rights to, or I don't know, KFC's chicken, I have the right to that recipe? If they want to give that info out?
Essentially they operate as a co-operative. On the surface, it is the same as paying a membership fee - but on paper it is a different story (i.e. Snapster would be just like Napster on the surface, but largely different on paper).
Here's a snip from their about page:
..mork
They already have a public corporation that allows many users to share ownership of a copyrighted work. It's called a "library".
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
How about some enterprising cracker writes a virus that spreads out and shares the mp3 files of the victims. Keep the client to surf this network seperate.
You don't get control of how much bandwidth and files you share, but you get plausable deniability. Hey, it's a virus - and your virus checker was just out of date. Shucks.
Does narcissism count as a hobby? --Shawn Latimer
Some services such as ConsoleClassix allow users to join a co-op for the purposes of playing classic video game ROMs... but only one copy can be played by a user at once for each copy of the game the co-op owns.
Therein lies the problem with Cringely's proposal. If I split the cost of a $20 CD with a friend (or a million friends), we can both listen to it, just not at the same time (legally).
Right?
Right. But the people they distributed to were not shareholders of the company. That's the point here.
It's a funny idea, but ultimately it's a silly one. It's the surest cause for the legislators to take away fair use, or change it so it's not so fair.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
How can this even come close to working? If the corp purchases the cd, the corp, which is considered an entity in and of itself, is bound by the copyright. The shareholders of that corp have absolutely no rights to the cd's at all (except maybe at liquidation time). Just like having shares in IBM doesn't mean I can take advantage of ANY of their assets. This idea, while an interesting fancy, is just that.
This can only work assuming:
1. Most people who share music are willing to pay for music.
2. Most people who share music are ethical, and won't give the music to non-shareholders.
I think both assumptions are questionable. (Note: if you share music, I'm not saying you are a freeloader and immoral. But is everyone like you?)
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I think the difference would be that the new company would only distribute the music to shareholders. Taken as a whole shareholders are the owners of the company. If they own the company they also own the company's assets, i.e. the music. Thus, the people obtaining the music from the company to some extent share ownership of the music they download.
No such relationship existed at my.mp3.com. The people downloading the software were customers of my.mp3.com, not owners.
United States copyright law allows you to make one backup copy of the work, for private use. So if someone downloads it, they'd have to be the only person downloading it, and once it's downloaded, it would have to be deleted off of the servers. I don't seem to recall anything about group owners being able to make an unlimited number of backup copies.
I had the same idea a couple months ago, except it was about DVD's. I was talking to my dad about it! I have a witness! A DVD co-op where people buy DVD's and share them with each other. Kind of like a private library. You have to pay a fee to get access to DVD's, and you are rewarded by a fee reduction for sharing your own DVD's, plus maybe priority access to DVD's you've submitted.
A solution to the problem with music today
This idea is very flawed. A much better idea would be a netflix type CD rental, except they keep the CD in escrow for you and you own it rather than rent it. CDs could be bought or sold on the open 'virtual' market. You only get remote access to it. If you want physical access you pay for shipping. That remote access can be in a number of fomats from ISO,WAV,MP3 etc.
Once you have owned the CD for a day, sell it to someone else and erase your fair use copy. Next time you want to listen to it buy it again and sell it again.
Just like Cringely send some of those IPO shares to http://www.pcast.com.
Brad.
The "corporation" really has only the need for 1 central copy with appropriate backups. Expect an argument about what constitutes an appropriate back up.
Even if everyone in the corporation is allowed their own "backup" copy of the entire music archive the concept of copyright and backups will mean that 1 copy is viewed as the access copy. All other copies will be "inactive" backups.
The "active" token can be passed around quickly, but does not solve the concept of multiple simultaneuos access to the same song.
Simply drop the concept of access control altogether and call the whole thing a distributed multiple access data base and get the RIAA to define the concept of simultaneuos access down to the quantum time level.
The immediate disclaimers prevent this under personal use under federal regualaltion yaday etc,
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Unethical businessfolk have always used the idea of incorporating as a way to shield themselves personally from the legal liabilities of their companies. How clever and ironic now that the same institution which shields these people from legal liability, the same institutions which have subverted our legal system through the judicious (pardon the pun) use of money and lawyers, now could stand to be used to shield file traders from this corporate-driven legal system gone mad.
While on the surface it seems amusing enough there's some things I don't totally get, maybe someone else can explain where I'm wrong...
First off, owning company stock is not necesarially the same thing as wanting to own the company's product. I might want to own the product but not take on any of the risk of owningthe stock. Likewise, there are plenty of companies I'd own the stock for only for the point of making money, not because I want to personally want to use their products (stock in a pharmecutical company comes to mind)
related to this is the idea that there will be tons of people who want to own tons of stock for the point of being rich, namely the insiders or the investment bankers that want to make money off the IPO. Typically a large amount of shares of any company is held by institutions, not individuals. This idea sounds like he wants stock to be held by all the customers which totally goes against the way investments are usually held. I don't think the institutions would like this idea one bit.
Then, what happens to people who own shares of the stock via a mutual fund? People who own the stock that don't even know about the service? Or people who want to download the music but don't have any means of getting shares of stock because they can't open a brokerage for whatever reason (bad credit)?
Lastly, what happens at the shareholder meeting?
Maybe I just don't get this idea, but to sum up, the product / service a company provides is (and should be) totally separate from its stock.
The author of the article mentioned that you should be the owner of a CD in order to download. Didn't MP3.com try that with Beam-It and get forced to lock up 99% of their archives? It was a good idea, forcing you to prove your ownership by having the program read your CD and then allow you to stream the MP3's, but alas, the Rich Ignorant A$$h0l3s of Amerika didn't see it that way...
There's a major (future) flaw in this:
If I buy stock in a company (even the one I work for), that doesn't mean that I can freely use any software that they buy from another vendor. Most software comes with per-seat licenses, not per-company. What's to stop music companies from just packaging only a single-user license in a CD? Replace the word 'music' with 'software' in this scheme, and it all falls apart.
Could the same thing be applied to software? Probably not because of the license you agree to. What if this provokes the RIAA to set up music in a license format?
"By opening this package you agree to the terms of the Listener Licence Agreement on the back of the package"
Thereby you would only be licensed to listen to this CD on a certain device and don't have a license to copy this CD. Oh well It was nice while we had our rights...
All the fee money goes to either buying new DVD's or extra copies of popular DVD's, and maintaining the library and tracking systems.
They should have done this instead of letting the cat out of the bag. No doubt people visit /. to get a feel for what's happening but they will read or hear about this idea and slip it into the drm. At least start this idea up and once the RIAA sues just let it go back and forth through the courts for years until this thing is settled.
I cannot think of one company or individual excluding sadam or OBL that is more despised currently. The RIAA is obviously done caring about how people view them and I can finally see users are starting to turn on them in droves. They really think we need to buy music so badly that we won't stop no matter what they do. They have obviously underestimated the American public.
Play your games, buy laws, sue people into financial ruin but understand your industry will not go unpunished. Your days are numbered as are the days of ripping off the artists who are on your labels. Your industry's death may be slow but the writings on the wall and there's not a law you can pass or enough users for you to sue to save it.
Kiss it all goodbye for you are an archaeic industry who has over stayed it's welcome in the country where freedom of choice matters and consumers ultimately decide what stay and what goes.
RIAA you're gone....
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Napster had 60 million users with a membership price of free (many of which were no doubt duplicates) therefore a service with a membership price of $20 should have an equal number of users? What part of "supply and demand" did you miss, Robert?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Is there any reason why we can't go out and buy a Sony share or a Warner share???
They own the rights to begin with!
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
I can see it now, Snapster starts up, buys a few CDs, and all of a sudden every new CD that is bought comes with a draconian Microsoft-style license which explictly states that you may not play the CD on more than one audio system at a time, without the express written consent of the RIAA, which comes only comes with an unrealistic royalty fee. If you don't like it, you can return the CD to the record store. Or, not.
Unfortunately, it's going to be a long struggle before the Record Industry is forced to submit to the fact that recorded music is becoming an economic public good -- because of pratically infinite distribution (at the cost of bandwidth and storage), the good has become non-rivalrous. This does not mean music will disappear, but it does mean that it will not be profitable for a music company to distribute CDs.
Once the RIAA is forced to accept that, and takes the huge accompanying profit cut, their real business will be the promotion and distribution of the music itself -- it will lower its overhead by allowing P2P-style downloads (let the consumers give up their bandwidth), and will profit by sponsoring artists tours.
The downside is that record stores will, for the most part, go out of business. Were that there was another way to save our slave-wage friends who are knowledgable, but in every war, there are casualties.
But sorry, Cringely -- Snapster won't work for long. The fight for free music will be much longer than we hope.
"Say, you're Hilary Rosen, aren't you?" he asks. "You used to work for the R.I.A.A."
"That's right," Hilary says, more than a little surprised. "Ten years ago."
The employee's face becomes sad. "Eight years ago, I was in college and getting pretty good grades," he moans. "But then the R.I.A.A. sued me for downloading a few songs off the Internet. I settled out of court, but had to quit college and get a job to pay the money agreed to in the settlement."
Hilary is unmoved. "That is too bad," she says, "But the law is the law."
Another employee, an old woman, hears the conversation and walks over to join in. "My grandson used my computer to download music," the old woman says with sadness in her eyes. "The R.I.A.A. sued me, too, even though I didn't know anything about the Internet. Now I have to work here to pay the settlement money."
Hilary doesn't flinch. "That is unfortunate," she says, "but after all, the law is the law." The old woman shuffles away.
At this point Hilary decides it would be better to get her food somewhere else and walks toward the door. A thin and attractive woman in her early thirties enters through the door as Hilary approaches it.
Hilary is pleasantly surprised. The woman sold a million records eleven years ago while signed up with one of the record companies the R.I.A.A. represents, and was famous for a while. They had met at parties on more than one occasion.
After exchanging greetings, the two talk about old times. After a while Hilary, pressed for time, excuses herself. "It was very nice talking with you, my dear," Hilary says, "but I'm in a hurry and I have to go now." Thinking of the two unhappy workers behind the counter, and their probable dislike of people connected to music, Hilary adds, "By the way, I don't recommend that you get anything to eat here."
"Oh, you don't have to tell me about that," the former pop star says, "I work here."
Really, people, step back and look at what we're talking about here. Who cares if it is technically legal? Clearly it is a loophole if it is legal, and that hole will quickly be closed by lawmakers.
The other point is, why would you want to do this? Does no one here understand the basic concepts of economics? If people don't pay for music, there won't be any music -- or, at least, there will be very little. It costs money to produce. The artists need to eat. Sure the RIAA is evil, but two wrongs don't make a right. How could anyone seriously consider a plan like this without realizing that it is wrong?
Why do you people believe that you are entitled to free (or absurdly cheap) music? If you're unhappy with the RIAA, don't buy their music, but don't steal it either. You have no right to use something that someone else spent time and money to produce if you are not willing to use it under their terms.
Remind me... how did that Nike case turn out?
...the real trick, of course, is controling the value of the stock (assumeing it is a valid loophole) and verifying that the client the content is being distributed to is indeed a "stock holder". I guess a bit of PKI magic and use of already passed legislation (digial signature laws) can solve the verification issue.
I a corporation is a corpus made up on it's individual stock holders, then we just might see the advent of right ear, left ear licensing of content.
OK, so the worse case scenario is that every song becomes a listed corp (oh, that's the tricky bit... getting listed; otherwise, it's penny stocks for everyone). What's to keep a parent company from being a stock holder of each and every song and then circumventing the entire thing buy providing "one stop shopping". Market dilution at it's worst...
Fucking loon. After all his rabid crap. Lets see him go OJS(Open Journalistic Source), work for free and distribute it to whatever fool is willing to purchase
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Why not provide a DVD player with two drives; put a store bought DVD in one, and an "edit" list in the other. Software looks at the edit list and figures out what scenes/words to omit. Surely a bunch of pointers into frames in a copyrighted movie doesn't infringe on the copyright for that movie, does it?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
The doctrine of fair use was originally adopted by judges ruling in early copyright cases. Ultimately, Congress incorporated the doctrine into the Copyright Act of 1976, where fair use is now codified at Section 107 of Title 17 of the U.S. Code. In creating section 107, Congress listed four factors to be considered in determining whether a use is fair or not:
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
These factors are essentially the same factors that had been used over the years by judges, and Congress's stated intent was to preserve the fair use doctrine as it had evolved. However, as many courts have pointed out over the years, whether something constitutes fair use is very fact-specific. It is difficult to craft a clear, bright-line rule that explains which particular uses of a work are fair use and which are infringement. In short, the exact parameters of fair use are often determined based on the facts of specific cases.
Just from a quick look Cringely's idea, while novel, seems to violate several of the 4 criteria. This would be copyright infringement for comercial gain on a massive scale. No way any judge would believe that this falls under the intent of fair use.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
Cringely has always struck me as a moron.
A simple perusal of copyright laws would show anyone with half a brain that what he proposes is illegal.
Fair use allows for the end user to make a copy for PERSONAL use. Not corporate use, not public use, not any other use. Personal, baby.
Survey says....
BZZZT!
Whatever. Considering the average mp3 @ 192kbps
is 4MB x 100,000 mp3's = approximately 390GB served to a large user base. For $100,000.
This guy may have ran his idea by some lawyers, but he didn't ask anyone here...
So once Snapster begins to get profitable with music it starts buying copies of all ebooks, movies, and software...
But then there is the problem of license agreements. The RIAA could just take a page from M$ and start issuing CD licenses on a per-stereo basis. Hell, they even have a sort of "Product Activation" system with DRM. I guess that would pretty much seal their fate though.
The unofficial
am I breaking the law when I borrow a cd from the library, rip it to my computer and then return the cd? If so, my bad, I better stop doing that right away (wink).
People you forget Fair Use only applies if you do not in any way make money off of the copy..
So Cringely is quite wrong in this concept..
Now a non profit org that gives a used music cd for someone to use in exchange for another music cd fromtha tperson..would probably be very legal..:)
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Business model A is "better" than business model B iff A($)>B($)
This is my sig.
What if you just had an library of every piece of music ever made and allowed only one person to check it out at a time? It works for books24x7.com. No copying of CDs, effectively eliminating the copyright issue entirely, and it would allow users to sample music to their heart's content. Have a search engine for genre, etc., etc. and you'd be all set.
IANAL, but suppose this will work - that owning one 10 millionth of a company can give me such rights to their assets - how long would it take for the laws to be revised?
... fastest new law ever.
This wouldn't just affect the music industry - it could be used on tv shows, movies, books, magazines, software, and anything else I haven't thought of; the concept is no different when applied to any of those things.
Were this legal, it would devastate our economic infrastructure. And, even if it would work, for these reasons
(And, in any case, were this only applicable to the RIAA, and, I suppose, a "Good Thing" to many slashdot readers, it would be struck down by corporate lobbying alone.)
Me and all of my friends form a "co op." We all agree to buy CDs and trade them amongst ourselves. Not on a public P2P connection - maybe something simple (unless you have a linksys) like ftp. Maybe a password protected web site with links that we dynamically add to our local host.
The trick is, I don't let joe sixpack know about it - or any anonymous surfer. Let's see the RIAA get me now.
ummm - gee - that's what I was doing in '98.
Somehow, I doubt you could use this brilliant legal framework to install even a single unlicensed copy of Windows even if you are a shareholder of Microsoft. Copyright is copyright. What applies to music applies to software.
Something that didn't make the cut for story submission...
I have been watching morbidly as the RIAA tries to make felons out of normal people. I am disgusted by these tactics, and it saddens me that the United States government would even momentarily entertain the thought of fining or jailing people for wanting ownership of that which gives America a cultural identity.
We don't all have common backgrounds, or live in similar situations. What ties Americans together as a nation is a longing for freedom, and the music that provides our identity as a generation, or as a nation. It is along this line of thinking that I wrote the following, and I would appreciate constructive comment on it.
We are not criminals!
We are not criminals. We are the proud citizens of these United States of America, and we want our culture back. For too long the music industry has branded us criminals -- thieves who would fight to take what is not ours, unwilling to support those who influence our lives and shape our culture, our national self-image. Yet there is no sign of the media calling off its plan to define and control our culture.
The music industry claims to have the interests of artists in mind while persecuting those who would attempt to make free certain parts of our culture. With the belief that work should be compensated fairly it is self-evident that artists deserve fair compensation for their work. However, the music industry routinely uses the "work make for hire" clause of the Copyright Act of 1976 to rob artists of their right to profit from their own creations by working with whichever publisher they choose.
If the music industry holds fair compensation in high regard, perhaps they could consider a business model in which an author retains ownership of her own works. If they are unable to fairly compensate artists, it is not the fault of the consumer. Business does not exist in a vacuum, and it is unfair to produce legislation which aims to preserve a monopolistic industry's position without significant consumer benefit. We want the right to experience the music of our lives at will without being forced to use our dollars to vote for the music industry's dominance.
While the popular media industries demonize citizens whose lives are most strongly tied to their products, they are fighting hard to retain their status as the group solely responsible for driving American culture. These self-proclaimed owners of our national identity strive to ensure that our lives are pervaded with their music, their movies, their values. They force their media into our lives; billing movies and albums as not just mere entertainment, but "events" which will affect our lives. One can hardly watch television or a film or listen to the radio without being subjected to mainstream music. Yet rather than rejoice and celebrate their successes they cry out at the realization that culture is a hard thing to bottle.
We do not consider it fair that the media surround us with the same sounds and images, over and over, yet we are criminalized for trying to integrate them into our culture. We have a right to our culture, and to not be regarded as criminals for demanding ownership.
A company cannot own a common term; trademark laws are such that trademark owners must take action to prevent their trademarks from falling into common usage, lest they become public-domain terms. The curious lack of a similar concept in the media domain means that our lives can be immersed in elements which become part of our cultural vocabulary, yet current law dictates that most of us will die before gaining ownership of our cultural identities.
We want ownership of the media that pervades our lives.
Well, that's it, folks. If I had bandwidth I'd turn it into a petition of sorts, but as it is all I can do is put it up here for comment, in hopes that somebody else will be inspired to take some action.
Please do comment -- I'd like to hear what people have to say.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
Can a company that makes a product dictate the price a retailer must charge when selling it? If not, how is this idea better than (for example) Blockbuster buying a pile of DVD's and then renting them out very cheaply, maybe even for free? Now, Blockbuster probably wouldn't do such a thing, but a co-op "video store" could.
This might be a helluva lot less complicated than any arrangement that involves issuing stock.
BTW, did anyone else think that the second paragraph made him sounds like a total crackpot?
Every idea or discussion I hear seems to always forget about the artist.
So under this plan, if an independent artist (pays their own recording, cd pressing, etc) has their disc bought for $14, is lucky enough that just one single is downloaded 100,000 times at $0.05/download, then $5,000.00 is made and then artist only receives (maybe) profit off of a $14 sale. If that is not motivation for artists to side with the RIAA I don't know what could do it.
Why are people who want pop music (I said 'want', not 'need', because nobody needs music or pop entertainment) willing to go to such great lengths to get entertainment for free and, if they had their way and nobody paid for entertainment, drive their favourite artists, writers and musicians to bankruptcy, along with the entire entertainment industry, which is supposedly reviled by so many, yet so deeply integrated into the lives of and desperately clung to by those who seem to despise it so much?
Please note - this whole issue revolves around entertainment
ENTERTAINMENT!!!
If you're going to fight against corporate evil, why not fight for something that really matters? Something that might make a meaningful difference and improvement to your life, as well as an improvement in quality of society as a whole.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
If you want to see a nice example of fair use, check this out.
is why if the cast of Friends can be paid a million dollars an episode, why can't music channels fork over a good deal of cash to bands that bring in a lot of viewership. If the band was a big enough draw, they could make quite a bit of money this way and it wouldn't matter if their songs were traded for free or not.
I'm also surprised more corporations haven't just paid bands to make songs that would be given away free from their web sites as promotions. I think a band could make some good money and some company could get a lot of traffic if they did something like this. A lot of car commercials have cool music and I never go to the web sites to look at the cars, but if I knew I could go to the web site and download that cool song...
Between these options and the money artist get when their songs are played on the radio, it looks like they could come up with a way the artists could get paid and the songs still be "free."
Of course the RIAA would hate all of these ideas, but if the artist is getting paid and music is free, everyone but the RIAA is happy.
Usurper_ii
Why not go one step further and just buy stock in all RIAA and MPAA companies. Heck, set up a mutual fund. Clearly if you own the RIAA and MPAA they can't hurt you. Right...?
Let's go even further and never pay electricity or phone bills by purchasing stock in the electricity and telecom companies. Free lunch--if you buy stock in McDonalds!
Those Wilshire 5000 total market index funds are much more valuable than I thought! I never have to pay for anything again because I own everything!
Cringley's always been a dumbass.
I think that's a really bad idea. Face it, the RIAA all but owns the government, and if something like this became popular, they would have an excuse for removing fair use from the copyright laws. They've already managed to remove fair use via legally protected technological measures, but at least it still exists in theory. Until we abuse it, that is.
Litigious bastards
We have two extremes here.
Do you really think #2 is the right answer? Don't give me the standard lines about "music sharing increases record sales." Sure, it might, right now, in the limited sense it's going on. Okay, what if copying anything you want is legal.
A studio spends $100 million dollars making a great movie. Last night I watched Gangs of New York. Fantastic...amazing...Scorsese is a fucking genius. I don't know how much it cost to make, but I'd imagine a shit-ton of money. So, they spend all this money, use all this talent, and equipment, and employ all of these people. The master copy is made. Immediately, somebody gets their hands on it, makes a copy, and puts it on the Internet. Everybody and their brother downloads it. Somebody copies it onto DVDs and sells it for $3 + shipping. How does the studio make money?
Don't tell me it's off ticket sales because people want to see it on the big screen...unless they own all the theaters, it won't do any good. I'll open up a theatre, buy the DVD for $3, and charge $4 for a ticket to see it on the big screen, then charge $8 for popcorn.
Is this the world we want? How will artists make money? Will it all be ads and product placements? Should Daniel Day Lewis have to say "Drink Pepsi" after every stabbing?
There should be a happy medium between options 1 and 2. So, what is it? Should there simply not be big-budget movies anymore, because the idea of "owning the bit pattern on the DVD is nonsensical?"
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
However, there is still a distinction between the assets of the corporation and the assets of the shareholders. The assets of the corporation do not become the assets of the shareholders until the corporation liquidates, and then the shareholders are last in line (as various governments, followed by those who are owed money by the corporation have first crack at the assets). Even then, each shareholder would get it on a pro-rata basis. If the corporation bought 50,000 CDs and had 5,000 shares outstanding, you would ultimately be able to get 10 CDs for each share (assuming no one was ahead of the shareholders in this example) you held, and you would be the only shareholder to get each particular CD.
By Cringley's logic, if me and 17 friends each chip in $1 for a CD, we should each be allowed to make a copy of it by "fair use", since we're all co-owners. Yeah, right... that'll fly in court...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Why not develop software that really lets you share - when you download something from someone, it is actually deleted from thier hard drive.
Songs that get "injected" into the network, simply float around from person to person. If the network is big enough, you will still find what you want.
Let the RIAA prove what you do with them while they are actually present on your machine.
If I own at least 1 share of AOL/Time Warner, I can legally make copies of any of their movies? Cringely, please tell me the names of the lawyers you supposedly ran this idea by...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
The US Supreme Court has already ruled (I can't find the link at the moment, try "supreme court wordperfect" or something similar) that it is legal for you to buy one (1) copy of (say) MS-Office, and install it on all 3,000 workstations at your company.
The trick here is that since you only have one (1) license, only one (1) copy of the software can be active at any time.
A similar thing already exists in the physical world, it's called "loaning a book to a friend".
Karma: Food Fight (Mostly affected by Date Plate).
This may make RIAA extinct, but there's no revenue stream for musicians, and it's worse than Napster/KaZaA as presumably all the titles will be perfectly ripped and organised, thus providing even less incentive for people to go out and buy.
Coupled with the dismissive "Oh, it only takes $500 per hour to do a recording", and with profits being skimmed to support the pyramid scheme, Cringely sounds like one of these guys who think the cost of the average recording looks like this:
1. CD and box, 10 cents
2. ???
$19.90. Profit!!!
Although ideas like this one may not work out, there are is one major effects it can have - it gets people thinking.
When reviewing why this idea doesn't work, people may also discover that a variation of the idea will work. It is a process of elimination.
Although it is now a bit dated, if you get a chance, read Cringely's book "Accidental Empires".
Not only will you learn about the history of microcomputers, but, what I consider to be more important, which is why I'm reading it again at the moment, Cringely identifies the human behaviours that drove the microcomputer evolution.
Who'd have ever thought that a description of cognitive dissonance would be in a book about PCs ?.
For now, what we need to is to set up a legal coop site as a clearinghouse of info on what you can do if you are served papers by the RIAA. Since these will be civil cases, people won't get free lawyers, and many of them won't be able to afford them. A page of useful info may allow people to defend themselves and at least to know what not to say when talking to an RIAA lawyer in order not to further incriminate themselves.
I think you're missing the fundamental "hack" the article implies.
If I own part of a corporation, and that corporation owns a recording, do I not have rights to that recording? Provided there is nothing in the corporate charter prohibiting this, I see no reason it wouldn't work. The difference between this and my.mp3.com is that the users own the service they are using.
The only hole I can really see is in the distribution method. If it's provided by a corporation as a service to its shareholders that's one thing, but if it's provided by a separate company? I'm not sure. Of course, I'm NAL.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
that's right. who are you going to call when the music dies?
consult with/trust in yOUR creator. vote with yOUR wallet. that's the spirit.
the daze of the Godless phonIE payper liesense hostage ransom stock markup FUDgepeddling bullshippers is over. that's that.
Fair Use is law of spirit more than of letter -- there is no bright line distinguishing what exactly it is. I don't think you'd find a judge that would let this proposal weasel through.
I'm no expert on fair use. Heck, I doubt any of us here are, but maybe someone can help clarify something for me.
I burn copies of most of my CDs, and keep the copies in my car. That way I don't have to worry about them being damaged or stolen. As far as I know, that's perfectly legal.
Now, I personally can only listen to either the original or the copy at once. Not both. But, if my brother takes the car for a drive and listens to a CD, I may be listening to the same CD at home. I purchased a single disc, and it's being played in two entirely separate locations at the same time.
Is that still legal? If not, then this whole plan is definitely a piece of crap. If so, then we have to begin considering the difference between personal and corporate use.
If such a concept was possible, every company would just buy one copy of software for all their employees. The software is bought by the company, and the employees are agents of the company. In addition, in the tech industry employees usually own stock in the company. But there's a pretty large amount of case law showing that each employee needs their own license for the software they use at work.
The same would go for music.
my blog
i like his idea of sending radiowaves around trees and mountains by using a set of wires and unpowered antenna better.
of this wonderful company? in particular, what happens when they become a majority stockholder?
there's no place like ~
we could of just used the old smoke&mirrors(fud) detector, but we've become so fond of va lairIE's PostBlock(tm) device, we decided to reuse the gnu stuff again.
thanks so much.
consult with/trust yOUR creator. vote with yOUR wallet. that's the spirit.
BUT, while it's a good idea, don't count on it being implemented. Americans (and i am one) just aren't quick on the trigger anymore. the good ol' days when somebody jumped on a cause and rode it home come hell or high water seems to be gone with the wind.
the problem is, how do you stop those downloaders who have had all that free stuff they can peer2peer out there? there has to be a reason for music lovers to jump to the legal side of the fence and PAY, but i just don't see it. once you have gone to the dark side of p2p, you don't come back...
So perhaps it needs to be a privately held cooperative, rather than a publicly traded company, where the owners really are co owners.
Also, with regards to public companies... the shareholders might be last in line, but then, so is the owner of a small home based business when he owes money all over. IT's not all that different.
The stuff you are mentioning is about how debt is handled, not about who owns what. the shareholders DO own the company, and it's assetts, there are just rules they have to follow.
If the company has it's bills paid, and pays it's taxes, and it's employees, part of the company's business COULD be that the shareholdres have rental access to the company assetts.
The scenario you draw is about a company liquidating, and who gets what.. that's a totally different matter than the running company.
...the market would disappear. Once this plan has been implemented (i.e. all EXISTING albums are bought up), every member of the RIAA knows that if they release a new album, they'll sell a few hundred copies to non-Snapster-shareholders, and one copy to Snapster, which will then be downloaded by tens of millions. There's no way for the labels to recoup their costs. Forget whether they would want to release new albums, they couldn't possibly afford to!
(reply with your smarmy comments about the rise to power of the indie labels, the labels changing their business models to pure-play marketing organizations, etc.)
Snapster-Lite available for download.
It's the right of an owner to listen to the music he legally owns.
Fair use doesn't come into play when you listen you a cd you bought at home.. fair use is for exceptions to that.
OK, I thought of an improvement.
We'll sell shares in the Library of Congress. They will be issued to all citizens of the US, and the government can come up with some sort of service to collect revenue to fund it. Then, we'll have the right to a copy of anything in the Library of Congress (inc, tm (r)).
Now to figure out some way to trick all of the producers of copyrighted works into giving a copy to the Library of Congress...
The idea is brilliant, it might even be legal, but the sad truth is, that the whole business would be probably tied up in the courts for 2-3 years with noone being able to hear any of those purchased records, the price of the shares falling to a few cents, a lot of wasted money and disappointed shareholders who don't want to hear anymore about it after the first year of legal troubles. The problem is not the idea itself, it is the fscked up legal system that allows to drag out the proceedings endlessly and bleed out anyone who hasn't got a few million dollars in his bank accounts.
That is not to say i wouldn't buy a share or even a few shares when it starts. Even betting on the off chance that something good results from this is better than just sitting around watching the RIAA turn back the wheel until we're back at feudalism. And at least it will tie up some of their lawyers in the courts. Yes, by now i'm so pissed off with the record industry that i'm willing to give away money if it hurts them in any way.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
An earlier post suggested a NetFlix type service for music CD's. Is there a NetFlix type service for music CD's and if not why? Would it be legal if the CD was physically shipped to each customer rather than the MP3.com setup where they owned a copy but distributed it electronically?
[words]
-- I'd say your post was about 3 monkeys, 18 minutes.
Read the RTMark FAQ if you don't instantly grok the above.
Once the corporation has been established no one is going to the lose their shirts, e.g. college kids won't be forced to give up their life savings. All you can lose is whatever the corporation owns. I think the only thing that breaks the corporate shield is worker's comp.
So Cringly is pulling an RTMark, but instead of activist reasons he's using it to trade music (which could be seen as an activist reason too).
Bravo.
Now here's the fun part. Why not live our lives as corporations? People complain about corporate power all the time, so if we can't beat them, lets join them. What if everyone made a corporation in their name and put all their assests into it? From there you can add shareholders (family, friends) then safely and legally swap MP3s, share ownership of just about *anything*, hire people to do your job at a cheaper rate and pocket the difference, wear a world's sexiest CEO t-shirt, take out loans, form off-shore tax havens (why pay tax?), have a great time knowing that whatever you do will be the fault of the corporation not you personally, etc.
Excellent "What is a corporation" primer here.
Damn straight. I'm off to become a corporate entity.
but the article indicated publicly traded company. Is your company publicly traded?
Incorporation is not the same thing.
Software--unlike books or music--is generally licensed, and not sold, which means that the purchaser doesn't have rights under First Sale Doctrine.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
MP3.com owned 300,000 CDs, but the usership of MP3.com was not limited to MP3.com. I'm not saying that Cringely's idea would work, only that the MP3.com involves different legal issues.
The naysayers to this idea forget that the _critical_ component of this plan is that it must IMMEDIATELY go public. It also must limit downloads to owners (shareholders) ONLY. While the cost of going public may be significant, there is not necessarily a need to bring in investment bankers and join the NASDAQ or NYSE... The press would likely provide the marketing for free on the nightly news (due to the sheer audacity of the idea), and the employees of the business could probably sell the shares via telephone. "limit one share per customer"! (or something).
The real problem here is that by sharing the backup or shifted assets of the company among the owners in this way, IF a court later decides the idea is illegal, they (the RIAA) might then seek to recover directly from the owners... Usually by being a corporate entity, this kind of thing is avoided, but since the corporation is distributing it's assets directly to the owners, who can say.
Concerns that users may share their downloads with their non-owner friends are baseless. TODAY, even without this company, people MAY record things from TV and share it with their friends... and TV and radio are legal last I checked.
One final note. In the end, the legality of this plan would not matter. Unless stopped quickly by injunction, Current RIAA distribution methods would become obsolete technically (ok, ok, they are already technically obsolete), and practically. If this became widespread, digital distribution would be the only comercially viable alternative. The distributors would have to change or declare bankruptcy in short order. This company would need to be able to drag out any court proceedings... basically, they'd need to take a page out of Micro$oft'$ playbook. A delay of two to three years is all that is needed...
There will always be a small market for physical distribution, but the days of monopoly-via-artificial-scarsity-of-media would end. And wouldn't that be nice?
Strictly speaking, this is only if the corporation is that modern beast of commerce, the Limited Liability Corporation. You can certainly have -- and indeed, prior to the railroads, often did have -- wholly owned companies which were not LLCs. Of course, no sane investor would ever buy into Snapster if it weren't an LLC, since then the RIAA would be able to sue for that investor's personal wealth as well as that of the company.
Hmmm. I wonder if that could be a way around the ridiculous lawsuits? Incorporate yourself, then file-share as the corporation. Then.... profit!
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I think a gazillion indie bands would leap at the chance to be distributed alongside the entire catalog of digitized music, especially if the site could serve up streaming radio and indies have a prayer of getting some airplay...
What I'm really saying is I'd like to see "the Snapster Studios Records Radio Entertainment Channel Online" and 500 other startups doing the same thing, because ultimately future companies built around this business model are owned by it's shareholders, who are the users.
I'd like the artists to enjoy a larger percentage of that revenue and better contract alternatives than they are currently, under the 75 year old curmudgeon with five heads that's suing potential lifelong customers, and can't imagine why CD sales continue to drop other than file sharing (answer: the economy sucks and so does your record company, two reasons I'm not buying your CDs).
And another thing that bothers me...some record companies have blatantly hired and trained armies of would-be usurpers to take over the International Space Station! Think about it.
Vonnegut: "What is the purpose of life? To be the eyes, ears, and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool."
BEST. GOATSE.CX LINK. EVAR.
So if I own 1 share of Time Warner (becoming a shareholder) I should be able to download whatever music I want by that company, right?
Heck, why not expand your idea to include hardware? Maybe I should buy a share of Intel, so I can get all of my future processors for free.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
No, your Honor. I did not pay this woman for sex. I bought a share into the corporation that she is married to.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
After the slavery based economies of Egypt and Central Mexico collapsed, no more pyramids were built. Do we really think that is the right answer ? How do the architects make money ? Will it all be personal houses ? Do we really want to live in a pyramidless society like the surrounding heathens ?
The truth is, the world has a few pyramids, they're cool, and we don't need any more. So there is no need to suffer under the kind of society that made them necessary and that made them.
Similarly, sometime in the next ten years the last 100 million dollar summer blockbuster will be made. It's ok. We will still have all the others on freenet.
And the new movies will be there too. You know, the ones like "Clerks" except what "Clerks" would be if the kids had $500,000 worth of equipment. Because what costs $500,000 now will be merely a largish birthday present in ten years.
There will be no more massively hyped albums by singers so famous they are basically short lived religions. That will be fine, though. The old music of the "massive project age" will still be free for the taking. The new music will largely be hobbiest produced -- shareware like volunteer payments might pay for a few equipment upgrades, but unless you can play well live, you have a day job. It's ok though; out of the massive amount of garage crap out there, the one good band can become famous without quiting there day job. Society no longer needs band managers and entertainment lawyers any more than we need two guys with a whip and drum to keep the rowers going to ship goods.
I'm not trying to persuade you that this will happen. It will happen whether you want it or not. The harder you fight it legally, the larger portion of law and order falls with the Pharoh. I'm just posting this so that in ten years I can dig this up out of the finally working slashdot search feature and say "I told you so, meta-monkey."
However, corporations in the US are limited liability by definition. The LLC designation is (along with its cousin, the LLP) one of the new methods of incorporation that a few states have trotted out which mingle features of partnerships, sole proprietorships, and traditional corporations.
Because the principals of a corporation DO have some liability for it's actions. The board, the executive officers, have some liability for the actions of the company.
You can't just form a corporation with you as the sole director and owner, and escape liability, or taxes.
In a typical company, the corporate officers, and the board of directors, ARE responsible for what happens, and have a fair deal of personal liability for what the company does. Their assetts are not the company's, true, and if it's merely a matter of the company going bankrupt, they will be okay.. but in many places, if the company dodges taxes, it WILL be taken out of the director's pockets, and if the directors instruct the company to do something illegal... they can be held accountable.
A corporation exists sort of like another person, but not entirely.
Is Darel McBride married ?
do it now. please.
I was not aware that Cringely was trying to base this around Fair Use, (I had hoped he had a better argument than that at the core of this!) but I did in fact read the article, and before it was posted on /. IANAL, and apparently neither are you; Fair Use is not the holy grail of all copyright law--there are other limitations placed on the copyright holders, and they aren't all listed in the code. I mention one of them in my other post in this thread. I doubt that it could be used to justify what Cringley wants to do here, but it would be more likely to succeed than Fair Use.
Incidentally, I end up with copyrighted material stored on my computer all the time. Corporations give it to me, and for free! Since no sale has taken place, they still have the right to do whatever they want with it, and could probably try to sue me depending upon the countries involved and their interpretations of the law. It's all hidden away in my browser cache.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
While I doubt that a single copy purchase and multiple copy distribution would be reasonable or equitable to the companies and that create, produce, edit and distribute music this idea has some interesting possibilities. What if ...
:-)
Create a corporation. Corporation could either be a co-op or publicly traded with multiple classes of stock. Their would be the normal two classes of stock (Common and Preferred) plus further classes of securities particular to this business. A third type of security would be issued as something like a common stock with a reverse dividend. For example, you could buy into the company by purchasing the stock but then to keep the stock valid you would be required to pay a reverse dividend. The reverse dividend would essentially be a subscription fee at a guaranteed rate. Failure to pay would render the security void, invalidate it for a period of time, change the securities fee schedule or revert ownership to the company. The securities, having a set rate which could cause the stock to increase or decrease in value in relation to the interest rate would be fully transferable so that they could act as something similar to options. (Okay, an investment quality subscription seems farfetched but I just like the idea.)
The Corporation negotiates use rights with the copyright holders for digital use and redistribution. The contracts here would really have to do two things; guarantee unfettered access to the music by the corporation, allow the corporation to set rates as it sees fit (with no necessary relation between what the corp charges and what the copyright holder receives) and determine a payment schedule agreeable to the copyright holder.
In regards to the agreements between the corporation and other companies I think it fair to note that it would be VERY important that deals be directly with the copyright holder. Ideally this would be (in order of preference) the author/band/singer/musician, the label/producer, the major label, the distributor and/or the licensing agency (RIAA). The more intermediaries get cut out the better.
Owners or co-op members could have use of any piece of music on a sliding scale depending on purpose of use and membership type.
In determining the amount of payment for stock and reverse dividend an equitable use/cost business model would have to be determined. For example, a standard user could download whatever music I like and listen to it without limit. A club or mobile DJ user could download with specific performance rights at a slightly higher rate. A radio DJ could purchase a set of rights for rebroadcast at yet another rate. Bulk use rights could be purchased by radio stations or other rebroadcast entities allowing use of any audio for any length of time. Use rights could allow rebroadcast, restrict redistribution, set quality requirements. The market would really determine all of this so I won't go further into the business model just now..
Actual payment to the copyright holders would have to be on the basis of real and/or statistical models. This would mean that if you purchased a back library from Xunil Records of 1000 songs then regardless of what you are paid you would have to fairly report the actual use and probable use from a pre-arranged statistical model. So payment to Xunil might be a flat rate of $.10 per track, plus $.05 per download, where 450 songs were downloaded once, 100 were downloaded twice and 50 were downloaded three times. That would mean (1000*.10)+(450*.05)+(100*(2*.05))+(50+((3*.05)). But as we know one download would not mean only one use. The statistical model would have to describe the manner of compensation for any downstream uses.
The real beauty here is that the company would be handling both distribution and licensing fee collection in a single step. Effectively this would displace bypass RIAA and deprive them of influence in any future digital music marketplace. Any business model that can do this is worth a look.
Or I might be wrong.
just force the RIAA to allow music sharing with a small (as in 5 cents a song) fee for each download.
Frankly, I don't see why the current system of copyright is tolerated. It benefits only a very small number of people while harming tens of millions. Times and technology have changed, and the cost of distribution is now effectively nil. In that sense information _is_ free.
Yes, I know there are other costs asociatated with producing a work, but even those costs are dwarfed by the economies of scale involved here. If every america downloaded just one album a month at 5 cents a song, that'd be around $150 million a month. Plenty to keep the industry going, I should say. I understand that in Napster's heyday, the volume of downloads was much larger than this.
Furthermore, I don't see any reason why violations for copyright infringement should be punished with anything more than requiring the person charged to pay for each item at the going rate. Copyright violations are _not_ stealing. It's copying. That's why it's called copyright. If I steal your car, you have one less car. If I copy a song, you don't have one less song. You've lost a sale, nothing more. The degree of damage is much less.
Not that this'll ever come to pass. Something I figured out a while ago is that just about everyone is secretly hoping to be the guy to stike it rich with copyrights/patents/whatever. So even though they probably never will profit from the system, and will probably end up being screwed over by it, they'll defend it to the death forever looking forward to the day they get to be the ones doing the screwing over.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Hey! Cool! You mean my corporation can buy just one copy of Microsoft Windows and my entire corporation -- and all its shareholders! -- can legally copy it?
Something here doesn't quite add up...
Actually, I think those knowledge workers currently making slaves wages *pushing* those plastic discs around their stores, will do fine. They will be in HIGH demand by the vast multiplicity of new "labels" who are producing the many many groups that will florish (though at a small market capitalisation).
Those knowledge workers will enable a Mom-n-Pop label to find their TEN groups and distribute their 200 MP3s to the real fans of 'North-East U.S. Ska flavored Punk with touches of Brazillian Samba', or 'Hard driving Country popular in Alaska this year but sung in Polish' or [fill in your own micro-music-genre]
Getting paid to listen to tunes, blog and take PayPal payments for $1 per track (TO DO WHATEVER the LICENSEE WANTS TO DO WITH as part of the NEW MUSIC LICENSE). Not a bad gig. Or a bad business model. Cringely still misses the point: the RIAA as gatekeeper has died. The Music will start coming over the walls to the listeners and many folks will make some, but very much, money.
-ptah
Is that really a good thing? That the system should be set up so nobody can make money from digital content? Sure, musicians can tour, but what about non-performance artforms? What about movies? Books?
Let's say I write The Great American Novel. I print the books, and go to sell it...some chump buys one copy, scans it, gets some friends to proofread it, then puts it in a nice eBook format on the web. I get nothing...nobody's going to pay to see me on tour. Do I have to resort to product placement or ads or something? "Johnson, made especially fast by his Nike brand cross-trainers with ProFlex Support, chased down the mugger..."
Same thing applies to movies. Now, I don't think we should have the draconian controls the RIAA and MPAA want, but it shouldn't be a free-for-all, either. I, for one, think artists should be well compensated for producing good art. Please, no snappy comebacks about how much pop music sucks. There's lots of other good stuff out there. Also, the "Well, the RIAA rips off the artists..." ploy doesn't work, either.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Does no one here understand the basic concepts of economics? If people don't pay for music, there won't be any music -- or, at least, there will be very little. It costs money to produce. The artists need to eat. Sure the RIAA is evil, but two wrongs don't make a right.
If the only reason music existed in the first place was so that you'd have something to do with a stereo system, you'd be right. But, if you'd believe it, music actually existed before the advent of the stereo.
I have paid large sums of money (given my salary... Bill gates would call it pocket change) to see the performances of bands that I appreciate. I also regularly see and support local bands. Music is a performance art . So long as people are willing to pay to see bands perform, the economics will still support musicians and a "music industry".
Would the RIAA's business model crash and burn due to instant Obsolescence? Certainly! But you yourself said that the RIAA was evil.
The RIAA does not have a right to, nor even the reasonable expectation of, a protected business model. New business models need not protect existing ones. No economy NEEDS a RIAA.
Think about it. We rent video all of the time. But no one rent audio CD's. What is that?
As film director, Richard Linkletter said once, "I thought the film industry was run like a Mafia until I had to deal with the music industry!" He was trying to get rights to a certain song for a film. But my point is the RIAA are not reasonable people. They are Special People with Special Powers. It appears that there was a Secret Admendment to the Constitution pass when we were looking and They would never allow this.
I would just like my DVD rental service to have the right to backup out of print DVD's so they would have a spare when one breaks! And the public domain return to us - 28 years was plenty!
Musicians make most of their money from performing live, not from CD sales. That applies whether they have a multi-platinum album or play in a local bar for $50/night. The $1 per CD that the artists receive is dwarfed by their concert income and endorsements. The current model where radio stations are paid to play certain artists and consumers pay $16 for something that costs $1 to make is unsustainable.
Since musicians don't make that much from album sales anyway, they should get together and ditch the big record companies. CDs should be used as marketing tools to attract people to their concerts, not as high-markup artificially scarce items. They should sell CDs at a slight markup over its manufacturing cost, and allow people to copy them freely and put them on P2P networks. The more people hear it, the more will come to their concerts.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
If Time Warner or Intel wanted to do this, they could. if this imaginary company wanted to share it's assets with it's shareholders, it also could.
This idea is pretty outlandish, but what it it were toned down. Does a CD have to have only one owner? Could me and 17 of my closest friends each pitch in a doller for a CD, then each rip the mp3s from the CD we collectivly "own"?
I don't know how that would work, interesting thought though.
Finkployd
Perhaps more relevantly, look at how software works. Companies that buy one copy of a piece of software can't distrubute as many as they want internally. Technically, this could be because of the license (ianal, of course) but I suspect that that's only a case of being extremely clear about what it allows.
So the corporation would need to buy a copy of each song for each person that wanted to play it, or get some sort of "site license." This probably would be no better than how things are now.
What he's suggesting is all fine and well unless people actually want to PLAY the music.
The solution to this problem is not a new business concept. It's a compulsory license fee charged by ISPs for media use (much like the British TV license). Here's an article by Fred von Lohmann of the EFF describing the idea: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2003/04/ 14/opinion/7930.shtml
I haven't bothered reading the laws to check this, but I doubt this would be legal for the reasons other posters have mentioned.
Of course, more importantly, let's consider a hypothetical situation where it is legal under current laws. Considering it totally violates the spirit of copyright law, I can't imagine this practice would last long before being made illegal by congress.
Cringely's article has to be a troll. Its got so many problems, its not even worth discussing. Does he think a judge is some sort of stupid compuer that can be fooled with "copy.type=t_backup"?
"Yes your honor, we have made 60 million backup copies. And instead of paying people to back up our data, they paid us to backup our data. We are only exercising our fair use rights to protect our property in the event the moon falls out of orbit and strikes the earth."
Hell, since I'm a shareholder of Apple, I think I'm going to start distributing copies of MacOS X. I'm gonna be fucking rich and best of all Apple can't touch me 'cause my dumb-ass lawyer friend said it was "legal."
Ok, this is a stupid idea for all the legal and economic reasons that everyone else is ranting about, but what about a much smaller (in scope) version?
For example, let's say 15 of my closest friends and I each kick in a doller and buy a CD. Could we each exercise our "fair use" rights and rip the mp3s from it? How many owners can a CD legally have? I suppose this is basically the same idea Cringely had, only without the corporation around it.
Finkployd
Here's a (hopefully) legal and tractable alternative Cringely's idea:
Libraries can legally lend a CD because there's only a single physical copy. The big problem is that you've got to pick up and return the physical copy.
So why not use DRM to our advantage, and have our libraries electronically lend the CD (or a single track), and use DRM to ensure there's only one electronic copy out at a time. Add a "Just In Time" inventory model where you only borrow the song immediately before playing it, and you return it immediately afterward. Then each track is potentially played a large number of times, back to back, throughout the day, by different users. We'd make a request to a server that finds a library with an available copy, and maybe queue up if none is free right now.
Of course, you've got to be online when you listen to the song for this to work, and you've got to get a lot of libraries (or entities with a similar legal status that would permit them to distribute a single copy of a work) involved.
An alternative it to set up such an entity which buys lots of copies of each CD, and simultaneously distributes as many single, one-time copies as it has a right to. Perhaps the users pay a tiny amount to fund the CD purchases.
This is not right!!! What, production being owned by the PEOPLE? For the people? By god, thats COMMUNISM!!!!!! Cringely is a terrorist!!
This space available.
Music is just information. And information wants to be free.
Right?
Right?
This reminds me of teenagers who get mad about high prices at the mall and thus suggest a system where "there is no ownership! No property! Where everything is free!!!!"
Here's the news; if somebody makes something (A book, a song, a poem) that tens of thousands of people love and enjoy, they DESERVE to get something for it.
True, the RIAA screws artists as much as it screws consumers... it needs reform, but cringley's idea is actually much more evil. The most deserving party in this situation is not the consumers. It's the artists.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
Aaah, an apologist for the RIAA. What? You own stock in those companies?
/. previously.
There are a number of mistakes you make that I think have been discussed on
First, that no one will make money. Have you any idea of how many bands make no money NOW? The ones that make money, do so because they have created (with our willing, if naive, participation) a false scarcity. There are plenty of groups that play in bars around the country and sell their home-produced CDs and make a few bucks. Those groups will diversify and flourish. MORE money will be made, it just won't all go to the 50 groups (try and name 50 groups) that make real money -after the mafia-like protection money the RIAA takes out of 'THEIR' groups.
Second, you seem to think musicians or authors or poets or sculptors or comic-book artists or [fill in any creator type] is doing their creating as part of a plan to make big $$$$. AND, if that's not enough of an assumption, you FURTHER suggest that they will all just *stop* getting together to play music (or to write a book, etc). Believe it or not, artists have been poor in the past, and we can be SURE there will be starving artists in the future.
Related to that, you adopt the plight of the poor starving artist and appeal to common decency or something. To which I say (and would say to any artist): do something else if you don't want to be poor and stuff. As a consumer, I won't care, because I will have access to plenty of cheap music/books/poetry/scuplture/etc THAT I'M willing to buy at a reasonable price. But, I can be nice too, and say: try having a public reading for $10, and maybe 100 people will come because they read your Great American Novel (that they downloaded for $1 -or borrowed from the library, or downloaded for free or WHATEVER). And if only 5 people come, then that's fine, have a book signing and charge $1 and maybe more folks will come... etc. The artist will struggle, but can come up with things that fans will pay for. BUT, we can be sure for those small authors, so Publisher is going to be getting 80% of the cut because there will be no Publisher.
Anyway, I think your concerns don't have any evidence. And history suggests the concerns aren't going to amount to a problem for anyone but... those stockholder types.
-ptah
The idea is that in his, the only people who get to download are shareholders in the company that bought the CD. Mp3.com was letting people who didn't buy anything listen to songs that mp3.com had bought. If you are mp3.com (as in a shareholder), then you did buy the CD. I still doubt it'll last long, but it's something nobody's tried yet.
What is interesting here is how if you play it right, you might get the RIAA to shoot down corporate personhood along with you. It's your best argument at least. They'd be trying to keep a company from copying mp3s for itself. Since [my non-lawyerly interpretation of] modern equal protection means you can't discriminate between corporations and individuals in the law, the only way for them to get you would be overturning Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific or just abolishing fair use rights for everybody. You just have to hope that fair use is a stronger precedent than some random contract dispute case from the 1800s. Even if they do find a nutty enough judge (or a big enough sack of Cash MoneyTM) to kill copying for personal use, I think you'll have a big enough freak-out to bring down some serious hurt down on the RIAA.
Well, it's not my idea, obviously. I'm no lawyer or expert in the field. It's some other genius that's responsible for this whole mess.
But, yeah. Apparently the fair use laws will allow shareholders use of copyrighted media in posession of the company. I guess it would work like a photocopier and a book that the company owns. I'd guess that it's in fair use to copy portions of the book and use them seprately.
EULAs in software prohibit this sort of behaviour, so it dosen't apply here. I'm sure they thought of that. Though I don't know and I am mostly full of shit.
Heh, that will be the day: when CD's have a EULA affixed to the outside saying that opening the packaging makes you accept the contract.
I better make some prior art, and patent it. Sharpie. Check. Post-it. Check. EULA. Check.
Anybody who opens this CD has to sign the soul of their firt-born over to me. Whee.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
The solution for musicians and music fans is for us to become the distributors of music legally.
.50 cent per mp3 download, however the mp3 isnt downloaded from the musicians site, the mp3 is downloaded from the distrinbutor which happens to be a person who previously paid their way into the system by buying an mp3.
The solution for musicians and music fans is for us to become the distributors of music legally.
How?
We replace the RIAA and distribute music via P2P systems.
The solution is a P2P system which intergrates into the web, there also needs to be a payment mechanism, (maybe paypal?)
Users buy credits in this system, credits represent dollars and cents. So how do you get into the system? You buy in by buying music from fans who are already in the system.
Say you are an indie musician, you make a bunch of music and you create a website, you then intergrate this system onto your website, allowing people to download off a certain P2P network via your site, almost like magnet links. The person who downloads from your site pays
So the fans take the place of the RIAA as distributor and take 25 cent of the 50 cent, so the musician gets 25 cent and the fan gets 25cent or 25 credits. When the fan gets 50 credits they can then go buy another song, so its a system which allows you the filesharer to get unlimited access to music (Free Music) because you become distributor, you legally pay the musician for the music so the musician is happy.You may even make a bit of money. Everyone Wins.
Consumer/Downloader --> $ = $ --> Distributor&Creator , Consumers = Distributors & Downloaders. A closed system where we are the distributors, the creators, the owners of the intellectual property, and we get paid while having access to unlimited free music.
You get free music as long as you share. Musicians get paid. New people have to pay their way into the system but once they do, they get free music or money, whichever they choose.
If we can put the RIAA out of business, alot of the famous musicians which everyone likes would agree to such a setup.
What do you think?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Cringley has discovered the concept of the Public library - what a genius! :) Serious, does anyone wonder what legal battles would be underway today if we tried to invent public libraries in this age?
Why the Amazons and Barnes & Nobles of this country would be telling everyone how libraries would put their businesses under and that it was just a form of stealing to read a book for free when you really know you should be paying for it and supporting intellectual property.
vince
I've seen this argument three times now: "Just because I own a share of Corporation X doesn't mean that I have rights to copy its corporately owned IP." Granted. This is absolutely true.
But Cringley's Snapster is a compnay that is set up so that owners become part of the corporation, and one of those rights of the corporation is to space shift its corporately owned media. Snapster would be set up so that this was the raison d'etre of the corporation. As part of the corporation I would exercise my corporate ability to space shift the corporately owned CDs.
Furthermore, the ownership of a CD and the ability to space shift is very different than the terms of an EULA on, for example, MS Windows. Without such an EULA, Sony, BMG, Time-Warner, etc. might be out of luck. There is no explicit restriction to how many machines may play a space-shifted back up.
Still, Snapster might not fly, but only a court can test that. These arguments about how "Snapster would be just like Microsoft/Mp3.com/etc." have not considered the terms of incorporation Cringely proposes.
blog
If this sounds good to you, you'll totally love my new plan:
1. Forward this note to five of your friends and send me and the ten people before me on this list a dollar and an mp3. Maybe on one of those cute little CDs. Then your friends will send you a dollar and an mp3, and soon you will have forty gazillion dollars (3. Profit!) and so many THUMPIN' TUNES that you won't ever have to buy another Now That's What I Call Music until they're at, like, eleventy billion. (What? They are at eleventy billion? Well, then infinity raised to the eleventy billion.)
2. Seriously, I mean do you know what five times five times five times five times five is? That's huge! And that's just how much you'll have after just five 'links in the chain'. But if you don't forward this right away, you'll have lots of bad luck. Oh and also I have testimonials, but I forgot to put them here, but they are totally convincing. Oh and we'll sell stock for $20 at our IPO, no problem. Just 'cause I'm totally awesome.
DON'T BREAK THE CHAIN!!! OR RIAA AND SATAN WILL PREVAIL!!!
3. Profit!
But seriously, no matter how you slice it, Fair Use does not involve making money, even if you try to dance around with some sort of 'public ownership' hogwash. The legal restrictions on what one (or many) can do with a copyrighted work seem much more well-defined and far-reaching than the rights that one enjoys, and no reasonable judge is going to swallow this. Moreover, no sizeable popular base will get behind it because it so obviously screws the musicians (even more than they are already being screwed).
When the power players abuse the intent of the law in favor of the letter, we all cry foul. But those cries carry less weight if we start sniffing around for loopholes of our own. The real problem, as always, is that the power players get to write the laws. They have the muscle to close our loopholes, whereas all we can do is find somewhere to bitch about theirs. Until that changes, any legal tomfoolery that we manage to abuse will just distract attention from the more fundamental problems.
It's so much more attractive / inside the moral kiosk.
This is the guy that thinks Windows XP is DOS based....
In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey --Beck
Interesting- A collection of media shared by a community. Perhaps they could name it library.
If you had changed out your company and your employerto your record label you probably would haave been modded insightful. Record companies routinely screw over the artist, by raising the price of CDs unnecessarily, yet not passing on one red cent to the artist.
I truly believe that if the record labels offered a good product at a reasonable price, people would buy more music.
In even simpler terms: if I feel like you're ripping me off, I won't feel guilty ripping you off. Golden rule boiled down.
No, I'm not a stockholder in any of those companies, nor am I an "apologist." I am a professional artist, though (photographer). Would I still create art if I weren't getting paid? Of course. I do it all the time...I take LOTS of photos, which I never intend to sell, or even try to sell. Some of these I post on my website for anybody to download, or give them to friends and family for nothing. Also, I don't freak out when a client scans one of my photos into their computer and uses it as their wall paper. Big deal.
/. stories before about authors who distribute free eBooks. There are free concerts and musicians around town...free plays, etc. These artists choose to perform under these conditions, or are compenstated for it in other ways. You, however, want all art to be distributed under those terms, the artist's wishes be damned. I'm sorry, but you have absolutely no right to a work of art produced by someone else. None, zip, zero, zilch, nada. You have no more right to their art, than I have to whatever it is you produce in your job. Are you an engineer? Then I demand all of your work...I want the code, the schematics, the designs, your notebooks...I'll pay to produce the copies, of course. Oh, and your boss won't be paying you anymore, because you love engineering so much, right? So, you'd do it anyway, even if you weren't paid.
However, that's my choice, and I think that's where we differ.
I think artists should have a choice in how they are compensated. You seem to think there is a fantastic amount of great art being produced and distributed for free. There certainly is some. I've read
So, how about this. If you like the free music and literature some artists produce and give away, then you how about you limit yourself to partaking of those forms of art. I, however, appreciate some commercial music, books, and movies. So, I'll pay $5 to rent Gangs of New York. If you want to pay to see it, great. If you don't want to pay...then don't watch it. If the "free art" is so good, then Scorsese will be out of a job, won't he? Deal?
By the way, have you ever read the book or seen the screen adaptation of "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Folks... this is not brain surgery...
...Bet I could get rich on college campus' alone, by composing industrial rock whose background included the sound of Music Corpos being tossed into wood chippers!
Why is there no election reform? Why has our government become the best that money can buy? And, why does the RIAA do what it does?
People in power, with money, and legions or souless legal zamboids, will squeeze out any law they need to, to protect their corporate asses. If they need to repeal the 'Bill of Rights' and pave over old aunt Mauve's grave... they absatively, posilutely will (one only needs to look as far as the Patriot Atrocity... er I mean Act.)
So discussing a business plan to legally sidestep the RIAA is tremendously naive. Until you can grab the lawmakers by the short and curlies, and make them pass sane fair-use and IP laws (and pimp slap the U.S. patent office into sanity), we can continue to expect (corporations and) the RIAA, it's lobbyists, and it's jackbooted nazi panzer lawyers to keep doing more of what they do so well.
Hell I'm still waiting for the basturds to figure out a way to sue the entire country for the use of air, because everybody knows that their copywrited music must pass through the air to your ears, therefore as a fundamental aspect of the music business, we must pay them for the air.
Genda Bendte
-
Money needed for music creation?? Actually ... not! Human beings are quite incapable of NOT creating music. The behavior is HARDWIRED. Also, humans are incapable of NOT creating poetry and myth. The quality will be as it always has been ( before say, 1907 ...) . I naturally exclude libertoons and business fascists from this group of music/poetry/myth creating "humans".
> Cringely sounds like one of these guys who
> think the cost of the average recording looks
> like this:
> 1. CD and box, 10 cents
> 2. ???
> $19.90. Profit!!!
Well funnily enough, check out Moving Shadow.
They are an independant Drum & Bass label who release about 2 CD's a year (as well as their other releases) for about 1-3 pounds and they are not a multinational corporation who can afford to make a loss.
Ram Records is another independant Drum & Bass label who fairly recently got a release of theirs (Andy C & Shimon - Bodyrock) into the UK Top 40 for a tiny fraction of the cost it would have taken a major label. That was purely from sales of vinyl too.
Just goes to show that releasing music doesn't have to be as expensive as the majors make it out to be.
Sony comes to mind, but there are others.
All the corporation has to do is mantain the physical CDs and a database of CD and song names. I, as a shareholder, would be entitled to search the database, find the CD I want for review and request it. It would be send to me by mail (we could cut this part by making it available to me through a CDROM drive shared over a private network connection - but we if we can't use the Internet we can certainly use the Post Office). To cut delivery costs we may have a branch at each major city, each storing a legitimately owned CD. I would have it for a day or two and then return it. The corporation made no copy. Whatever I did is none of anyone's business.
I believe such and organisation is called "library" for a certain instance of media.
So let's say that tomorrow I invent a raygun that duplicates apples. Take one apple fresh from the grocery store and *zap* ... you've got two. People would be thrilled... nobody ever has to go hungry for want of apples, and all of the land that used to hold appple trees can now be used for other crops.
People in the apple growing business would be pissed, since their apple producing business model just became terminally outdated, but so did aluminum companies when someone discovered how to manufacture the once precious metal from cheap bauxite. Technology changes, and if you can find a way to do something better or more cheaply than someone else, you win. Free markets aren't about desert and entitlement; they're about efficient distribution of scarce resources.
Nobody ever says "Buy Pepsi or else Pepsi workers don't eat." They say "I've got a sweet drink that you don't have... if you want it, give me something in exchange." It doesn't have value because it's intrinsically important; it has value because it's scarce. Air is a billion times more important to me than Pepsi, but nobody charges me for it because I can get plenty on my own.
Modern technology has progressed to the point that music can't really be called scarce anymore. If I can make six billion copies of a song and send one to every person on Earth, can you give me moral reason why I shouldn't? Sure, the artist put a lot of effort into making the song, but effort alone doesn't entitle you to compensation. I can spend all day digging holes in my lawn or hauling 40lb sacks of concrete from one end of my house to the other, both of which are far more strenuous than singing a song, but nobody is going to give me money for either.
I understand what the law is, and that some rant on slashdot won't overturn hundreds of years of intellectual property law. But let's be clear... the basis for copyright law is not some moral principal or "fundamental human right;" it's totally public interest; we want artists to make things and be paid for doing so, so we require that they are by law. If the system doesn't work, because of monopolies like the Clear Channel or cartels like the RIAA, then the law should be changed.
There's no "right" and "wrong" here, just legal and illegal, and both are just a function of what people want and are willing to trade for. That's economics, not some pathos-laden appeal for starving artists.
I'd buy one share of Damlier Chrysler, go to the Lamborghini dealer about a half mile from my house, show him my certificate, and drive away in my Lambo.
This is exactly what I was wondering. Seems like you could just transfer the idea to "me and joe both own half the CD, so we each have MP3s of it". And then use this to get out of all lawsuits since "I hereby declare that every person in America owns a percentage of this new CD I just bought, and thus may have exactly one MP3 copy by law".
Then of course there's another side of this - if I buy 1 share of Microsoft, am I entitled to install a copy of everything they make (I know, why would you want to etc etc)?
Hello? Good quality music equipment and recording studios are quite expensive. Furthermore, creating good quality music takes time. People need money to eat and pay rent. Yes, musicians eat too. Before copyright, only those who were already rich or who had rich friends could spend their time on such things. Are you saying that's the way it should be?
Sure, the artist put a lot of effort into making the song, but effort alone doesn't entitle you to compensation.
If that effort produces utility for other people then, yes, the artist does deserve to be compensated.
I can spend all day digging holes in my lawn or hauling 40lb sacks of concrete from one end of my house to the other, both of which are far more strenuous than singing a song, but nobody is going to give me money for either.
Obviously, that effort doesn't produce any utility for anyone, hence you don't deserve to be paid for it.
OK. I've read through what people have been writing and well, the moderators just like to +1 people that can write intelligently. That's the bottom line. I don't think most of the people that refute his idea know what they are talking about.
..., or because of.... Your IPO (Initial Public Offering) is determing by YOU!
;).
Several points. You can IPO at whatever the fuck price you want to. Don't give me that, oh, you can't do that because of
Robert's idea is simply brilliant. To put it simply. I work in the world where money matters, and law matters, and his idea is awesome. I see nothing wrong with it. But he is also correct with the fact that this is a small loophole which can be fixed by a quick lobby to Congress. Someone that works for the RIAA (read: intern) is reading this article, and tomorrow they will be reporting this to their supervisor and ni about 2 months this "law" will be lobbied.
I'm sorry to all the people that simply just say that this article is a bunch of horse-shit. This is one of the most comprehensive and simple (to-the-point) articles I've read recently. He's got everything covered (basics) and it is enough for "just about" anyone here to get it started. Just takes a little know how and in order to get it done before the "law" takes hold, just a few connections. I'm sure Robert (Cringley) could get you started...for a small fee of shared
Anyway, the point of this post was to say that all the people that got +5 for saying that this isn't possible. Wake up! Read something relevant. No, Wall Street Journal does NOT count. This is reality, and this is absolutely brilliant. This should go side-by-side with his "I use Linux to play DVD's" article.
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
There is a way something sort of like this could work. It would require a far more substantial up front cost, however.
Imagine a corporation does an IPO and raises, say $150 million. They use that $150 million to buy 100 copies each of the top 5000 CD's, and maybe 25 copies each of another 100,000 CD's. Each CD probably has around 10 tracks. So this corporation now owns around 30 million song tracks.
No RIAA control of the music, and no copyright violation so far.
Then they sell a "library type" subscription to folks for a buck a month or whatever or just only allow shareholds to log in and keep it free (in this case, perhaps, bandwidth could be paid for by interst on excess capital or music could be served via a distributed network).
Then they either:
1) Let people borrow any song from the library that they want to listen to and, as long as all the owned copies are not currently "checked out" folks can listen to whatever they want whenever they want.
Or, to expand on the idea
2) Let people que up a song list and, as copies the songs they want become avialible, they get streamed in. That way you never violate copyright, folks get to hear exactly what they want (like a personal radio station) and you even avoid broadcast fees, because it's just an individual listening to a single owned copy of a song. No different, legally, then going to the library and checking out a CD really.
Ok this idea is so incredibly stupid for so many reasons, but ignoring all the reasons already stated as to why this does not work, just think about this. If the RIAA bought 51% of the stock (which, if this is a public company, the RIAA could do), it would own the company, would appoint directors, and you can expect the corporation to start acting differently once that happens. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the company then merged with the RIAA.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
I was actually recently thinking about something similar - what if a group of N people came together, and each put in an equal share of cash to buy a CD? Is it legal, then, to actually create N-1 copies to so everyone has their own? Would this be fair use?
How could the above be 'worse' than having people over your house listening to some music? Copying the music would allow multiple people to enjoy it from one source - the original cd - which is, in my eyes, equivilant to having friends over & listening to music - which, surely, is considered 'fair use'. (Imagine being sued for copyright infringement because you were listening to a Metallica CD in your car with a passenger!)
Just some thoughts.
Just buy the $@#%@#^%! album, you $@#$#$@#ers!
This message brought to you by the letters A, Q, and the blood alcohol content of
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
See US Code Title 17, Section 109 (b)(1)(A). "Rental, lease or lending" of CDs "for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage" is prohibited.
Also, unfortunately, this kind of "logical" idea fails as long as the company is for-profit (which it'd have to be to have a $150 million IPO, setting aside how hard that is to begin with). When the company copies the music from its computer to the shareholder's, it's doing so for commercial advantage and has comitted a copyright violation. I refer again to the mp3.com case.
Cringleys scheme makes most share holders wealthy. the early investors get back the money when the stock splits. the stock retains value by earning money. every new investor means more revenue. the late investors get the music but perhaps no profit.
Because I think that is what it is all about, loopholing, isn't it?
The corporation do not "dispose of, or authorize the disposal of" the CDs "for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage". It mantains all these CDs for a legitimate business reason (for instance, to see if some of them become rare enough in one hundred years or to conduct CD MTBF tests). The transfer is done solely to shareholders and only to allow a shareholder to inspect personally the company asset.
Also, I don't think a non-profit would have problems if it had enough (or rich enough) "shareholders" or mantainners. This one would certainly attract millions of small mantainners.
I don't think he's a bozo. Answer me this... If a corporation buys a song, can its owners listen to it? Seems fair. Can its owners borrow the asset (the CD)? Seems fair. Can its owners make a personal copy of that CD? Possibly. At any rate, it's an interesting idea and not automatically a "bozo" idea until it's really been explored and tested.
Many entrepreneurs, discoveres, scientists, and inventors are considered bozos when the rest of us first hear their ideas.
...you own the music!
(sorry, mods; it's my first "Soviet" post. I'm sure you can understand)
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
Not true. Under this scheme you never copy it to the users computer. You streeeeam it to a single point. Remember, one copy in memory is legal...as long as it is not "fixed".
It is no different than any corporation that has a library of CD's for check out. (and no different from a Blockbuster video, or a used CD store) As long as o one makes copies of the CD's, everything is legal. In this sceme no copies are made beyond what has been paid for.
So for profit is fine in this instance.
Just never have out more then is owned at one time and you are free and clear.
Why? What's fair use? Corporations aren't allowed to buy just one copy of commerical computer software for use on all of their machines. Why should they be allowed to buy one copy of a piece of music for simultaenous use by all.
One copy = one user at a time. And "fair use" doesn't mean you can make a copy of music and allow multiple people to access that copy at any one time.
Fair use? A library is fair use, but libraries don't photocopy their books for each person carrying a library card.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
why do we need their content anyway? isnt that half of what this is about?
dms0
-= world leaders choose world leaders not us, not a democracy, not a revolution! =-
Again though, I'll direct you to USC Title 17, Section 109 which says that lending or renting CDs for profit is illegal, anyway.
People, copyrights exist to control copying. Like it or not, just because you buy a CD, that doesn't make you the owner of the song, and fair use doesn't allow for wholesale copying of songs or albums or whatever.
Cringly's idea is really bad. Instead of trying to find loopholes, let's get to the three issues that matter with RIAA:
* Because of the degree of control over distribution, competition in the music industry, at least as far as price goes don't exist.
* Unfair contracts to artists.
* There's no incentive for innovation or new material for derivative work because old stuff doesn't ever move to the public domain.
-- $G
I wouldn't give it the best model award...but it is moving in the right direction. The model is trying to find a way to fund the creation of music, while making downloadable music on the net possible.
In some ways the proposal of selling worthless stock to fund public wreaks of the failed dot com model. The problem is that the money is likely to be wasted on some stupid feat like the MP3.com Beam it Up program, or the corporation would spend millions on the gazoo tunes of the CEOs younger brother.
Rather than one initiative that tries to own all music in a semi public domain mode. Another approach might be to have multiple funding mechanism where fans of a certain artist would get together and raise funds for a the recording and release of an album into the public domain. If there was a very clear public domain full of music, that repository of public domain material is likely to grow into the popular music of the next generation.
Hmmm, instead of generation-y the people after generation-x should start calling themselves "Generation-Sued."
That's why you don't lend or sell the CD or any fixed copy of the song. You stream the song.
USC Title 17, Section 109 does not apply to:
"a computer program which is embodied in a machine or product and which cannot be copied during the ordinary operation or use of the machine or product"
It is an interesting idea. Is it legal to sell half of your CD or only certain songs? What about "timesharing"? Could 20 people each invest $1.00 in a new CD with the agreement (perhaps even written) that each person is allowed two days per month with the CD? What about a thousand people? Would it matter if the CD cost $2000 instead of $20?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
At the very worst, if wanting to avoid any possiblilty of an infringement suit, just get enough people to donate $150 million to start the thing up and run it as a not-for-profit lending library. Again, streaming the audio and limiting the number of streams per song to the owned number to avoid a legal restrictions there.
What's to prevent Time Warner, Sony, BMG, etc. from buying all the shares?
But streaming is covered by another set of laws. Sorry I don't have a clear link to the law (getting tired) but USC Title 17 Sec. 115 says if you're going to do on-demand streaming (where the customer picks what to listen to) then you have to pay mechanical royalties and get a deal from the copyright owner, or you're guilty of copyright infringement, again. That's the next thing mp3.com would've gotten killed on if the first blow hadn't taken them down.
My friend, if I knew how to get people to give me $150 million for a nonprofit I would not be sitting here talking to you right now. :)
Notwithstanding I think that putting together a nonprofit so clearly structured to avoid the law would probably in and of itself be illegal. And, as far as I'm aware, the streaming stuff hits nonprofits as well.
IANAL, but isn't this public broadcasting: displaying to several people. Don't the warnings say you are not allowed to (for example) show a movie to an entire office.
Equally, if you own 1/1,000,000 of a company, and the company owns one million cds, you own 1/1,000,000 of each cd. You're still not an owner of each cd.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
"But everyone should know everything." -markab
1. Didn't mp3.com try to stream out copies of CD's THEY OWNED, to avoid the whole p2p legality issue?
2. iTunes had the ability to stream songs to users over the net(later revoked to only the local area), and sites online (spymac.com) create systems of automaticly build a music list of all available songs from the current set of users...
Aren't both those ideas very similar to this Snapster? Maybe it is just me.
It's a clear transfer of ownership."
Not quite... you own only own ONE copy - the CD. You have the right to a backup, but owning the CD does not give you the right to copy and redistribute to many. Even if it's a corporation.
If you want further clarification read copyright law. I think someone actually posted the fair use section somewhere in this thread.
The law is pretty much the same on software as well, but companies issue EULAs not only to double insure copyrights but to also add additional types of protections... such as support terms, resale conditions, etc.. etc.. and why not - ink is cheap.
I'm surprised record companies dosn't start putting EULAs on CDs... cheap and easy way to get consumers to agree to even more draconian terms...
Cringeley's Snapster is somewhat similar to what's already been done with video rentals. There's a company around called Cleanflicks that buys videos, edits stuff that they think is questionable, then rents them. Hollywood got very hot over this and hit them hard with the lawyers. (Of course the artists had a problem with the censorship, this probably could be the subject of another thread.) Hollywood actually lost. The way their activities were covered under fair use was by having anybody who wants to rent pay a membership fee, turning them into part owners of all of the material. This precedent seems encouraging.
Are all those used CD stores in violation of copyright. There are big chains like Best Buy and little ma and pa stores making money of the resale of CD's. In this transaction the copyright owner gets no benefit. Is this a "fair use".
If so then maybe a model of selling the rights to someone to "own" the used copy say for a penny would suffice. If that system then no longer allowed you access to that copy. So the copy would have an owner for the duration of time that they were playing the music, then maybe offer it back up for sale. Micro Payment systems would be ideal for this. If you seeded the business with used CD's to begin with then the copyright holder would be out of the picture altogether.
The business could keep track of usage and sell that information to the media and companies to track on popularity and trends.
I am not advocating not giving royalty to artists (I have an issue when the copyright is held by a company and not the artist). I think that "creative people" should make resonable payback for their work.
But this used CD industry is a big one and alive and well in your neighborhood.
Is it an industry that the RIAA will try to shut down next (after the P2P networks and the kids and their parents)? or is this a "fair use". Or does it depend on the EULA that you agree to when you break the seal?
mp3.com tried something similar to this just a few years ago. They purchased CDs, converted them to mp3s, and put them up on a special section of their website. After proving that the user actually owns the CD they are about to download by putting it in their CD-ROM drive (not sure what kind of verification was used to verify that they are a match), the user was able to download the mp3(s) for free.
Needless to say, mp3.com was sued and lost.
The point that noone wants to discuss is that many of the CDs accquired through p2p systems are NOT canabalized CD sales. Many of these people would NEVER accquire this music at the current price point of CDs. You can't say.. "Well, there have been 10,000 copies of this CD copied, so we lost $180,000" because many of those people would simply have not bothered.
:)
I have an example, but first some assumptions... (Yes I know the joke about assumptions)
First: We will assume that there is a lot of profit in an individual CD sale. I've seen enough evidence of this that I believe it to be true.
Second: We will assume that the music industry WANTS to make as much money as possible FOR ITSELF. (As opposed to making lots of money for it's artists)
Anyway, My example/idea/experiment is this... The next time Madonna, or Brittney, or whoever's hot next week, comes out with a new album, sell it for $6.00. Or maybe $6.50. Work out a price that still gives everyone in the distribution chain at least 1/2 the profit they were making on a 'regular' cd. (Except the Label, who's profit margin would be cut to 1/3 what it is right now.)
I predict that two things would happen. First: A lot more people who wouldn't buy an $18 album will be entirely willing to buy 3 (different) $6.00 albums, thus increasing total cash receipts. Since we halved everyone's profit (Except the record labels, which we cut by 2/3'rds) the artist is seeing 50% more money, and the label is making the same money it was on the expensive albums. This would also have the effect of tripling unit sales. Second: People would be more willing to buy an entire album just to get one or two songs. This also means more money coming in. And Third, people who had been entirely priced out of the market (Example: Young Kids) would now be in a position to buy music. All of this means more cash coming in.
(Short Tangent: If they did this, The Electronics arm of Sony would give every Record Label a big wet sloppy kiss as they cranked out more and more mega-CD-changers....)
This kind of pricing has precident. Anyone remember when Taco Bell used to sell it's regular taco's for like $1.79? They decided to swap volume for price, and they are now one of the Big Three Fast Food Chains.
But it won't happen.
Since the record industry makes it's profit after they pay everyone else, it is in their best interest to keep unit sales low, and costs high. Why go to all this trouble just so the ARTISTS can make a few more bucks? The Label doesn't care if the artists album goes Platinum or not. Just as long as they are raking in the bucks.
On a personal note, there are MANY artists who I own SOME albums of, but not all. If CD's were priced like tacos, I'd own the entire catalog of many musicians, just to say I had them all.
Specific examples: They Might Be Giants, Madonna, and The Nylons (Who?
Also! I'd go out tomorrow and buy up the entire back catalog of "Weird Al" Yankovich. I single out Weird Al because I already own all of his music, but much of it is on Vinal and Cassette. I'd have no problem re-purchasing on CD if the price was right. I bet you'd do the same thing.
Nipok Nek
Why choose white shoes?
Actually the work *is* scarce until the artist intentionally makes hundreds of thousands of copies of it to spread far and wide. As soon as the first copy is made and released to the public the artist has lost this scarcity.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Sure, how this avoids the near-fate of mp3.com is that it never streams out more then the number of copies owned by the sender (unlike mp3.com which relied on on an unproovable establishment of the reciver owning the music instead of the sender).
You are right in that, it might not avoid the compulsary 3.5 cent per song compulsary licensing fee, however. Interestingly enough, Cringly may have (sort of) actually pointed out one exception. Change the word shareholder to the word employee, and you can get a coompulsary license excemption under USC Title 17 Sec. 114 (d) (II & iv) if you are transmitting to your employees at thier place of employment: "a transmission within a business establishment, confined to its premises or the immediately surrounding vicinity;" is excepmted. Ok, so perhaps this is only a mental excercise...
Otherways of being exemted from the digital transmission compulsary licensing:
Transmit the music recoded to matahmatically recreate the waveform of the music, thus constituting an analog, non-fcc licensed transmission, which is excempt.
Transmit only music videos that are properly purchased by the sender. Music videos fall under AV laws and are fully rentable/loanable. (folks don't have to watch if they don't want).
But, hey it is indeed late...
This is genius! Fair use: "The artists feel used, and the RIAA thinks it's fair."
I would assume it's because the video rental business is established and of course benefits the MPAA. In other words, no one has a vested interest in shutting it down. But how come I can rent (thru Netflix) a Norah Jones concert DVD and yet I can't rent a Norah Jones music CD? I need a legal explanation here.
Thanks
Message-ID:
.html). I am not a
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 16:26:36 +1000
From: Sam Johnston
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030718
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: bob@cringely.com
Subject: The Business of Music
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Good Afternoon [Robert Cringeley],
A regular reader of your column, I write from Sydney, Australia to
provide some feedback about your 'One Possible Future for a Music
Business That Must Inevitably Change' article
(http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpi t20030724
lawyer, so I cannot comment on how successful your model would be
although at first glance it seems to be taking advantage of a loophole
that would soon be plugged. Worse still, initiatives like this are
clearly not in the spirit of 'fair use' and may jeapordise the future of
fair use provisions. I believe the test is 'would it replace a sale',
and on that front you're buggered in a similar fashion to mp3.com.
That said, you have correctly identified the (diminishing) role of music
companies. I currently have some guys in my office churning out HDTV
ready broadcast quality footage using a $1,500 Mac, $500 in software and
a $10k DV camera. Admittedly these guys won the 'Best Comedy' section of
Tropfest (http://www.tropfest.com/) using similar technology earlier in
the year, and thus possess some amount of technical and creative
ability, but the point is that they are not requiring hundreds of
thousands or even millions of dollars of equipment to generate content.
I trust the same applies to the music industry.
Now, if new electronic distribution companies were set up which would
allow content creators (note I'm using the generic term, rather than
musicians) to sell their content with a 95/5 split (or thereabouts) in
the creator's favour rather than the current (reversed) situation, and
if the cost of the content was adjusted to maintain similar returns per
sale, I believe we'd all (with the exception of fat record company execs
and content creators who require significant investment - eg hollywood
studios) be much better off. All of a sudden we're paying 90-95% less
for content. Distribution is much cheaper and so the distributors are
still able to make a profit (which is more in line with effort
expended). Content creators still get $x/sale. However, content
consumers are suddenly able to stretch their content budget much
further. Say I spend $300/annum on CDs - that might be worth 20 CDs
which are bulky, inconvenient and prone to damage. Instead, I get
something like 20 times that, and in a format that is convenient. Note
that even if I spend 1/20th of what I spend today, the artists are no
worse off.
Users don't bother sharing it because:
- the distributors have fast, distributed networks as opposed to slow,
intermittent connections that are oh so common on P2P networks
- their files are high quality, and are able to be converted (ideally
'peeled') to lower bitrates for portable devices
- the integrity of the files is guaranteed by checksums and/or digital
signatures
- digital rights management (if any) is transparent and unobtrusive.
an identifier - maybe a watermark if it could be implemented without
quality degradation, or simply a header and digital signature (without
which integrity could not be guaranteed) could be used in cases of
copyright violation.
- i can still be sued by the distributor or industry associations and
the value proposition is simply not worth the risk. this process is self
funded, and without a secure way of ensuring my identity is concealed,
is an effective deterrent.
- significant value is added in the way of being able to download
content at multiple sites, maintaining and sharing playlists, etc.
allows a non-owner to make a copy...
At $100,000 per violation if I am correct, could get very costly. It is the corporation that would get sued...
Cringley forgot to answer the obvious:
"How do you control the owners to insure that they do not provide copies for non-owners?"
=8-)
Let me try to rally from coding too long and answer to the best of my abilities.
:p
:) you'd still need to digitize the equation and I bet you'd lose that one in court.
;) If you got big on it, though, I imagine you'd need to pay mechanical licenses, anyhow, which is prohibitive at the interactive, statuatory rate ($.075+)
I'm having a lot of trouble finding the part of the law you're talking about. In my copy it's maybe 114 (d)(1)(C)(ii & iv). If so, 114(d)(1) says "The performance of a sound recording publicly by means of a digital audio transmission, other than as a part of an interactive service..." interactive service is the magic phrase, there. If the listener gets to decide what it is, it's interactive. Otherwise, you've just reinvented streaming radio, congratulations.
I realize there are a lot of magic code words here and the law is nonobvious. As I've said, I only know it because I spent several years trying to make sure I didn't accidentally step across the line while designing systems at EMusic.
Transmitting the music in an equation - setting aside the nontrivial nature of this task
As for the music video idea, see rollingstone.com, which was purchased by EMusic.
Why is everyone focusing on the tremendous legal shortcomings of his plan, and nobody is focusing on the severe financial problems?
Essentially, he wants to sell a startup for 200 million dollars, then split the stock 6 times while retaining the original stock price. Not only would his company be worth 12 billion dollars, but the incentive for early investment would be exclusively based around the entry of new stock investors and not in the financial value of the company. And this fresh investment would provide the financial capital that would drive the company.
Can you say pyramid? I knew you could.
Furthermore, at 10 CD's per year at 50 cents each gross revenue would be about 6 million per year but the cost of all of those Visa transactions would be about 5 million of that... and that's just what Visa would charge you, not your accountants, your billpay system, your backlog of unpaid bills, etc.
In short, neither of Cringely's proposed revenue systems will actually produce revenue. Complete illegality aside, there would be nothing to power the company. Nice try, but he needs some new economist friends to go along with better lawyer friends.
The ______ Agenda
So I post to slashdot with this cool idea 3 stories down. I then go upstairs to talk to my roommate about it and he says, "yeah I heard of that before". So I wonder why I never heard of it before, but hey, at least it might be a good idea.
:)
Great minds think aline
----
Squirrel
Well, darn it all anyway then!
Thanks for helping me play out this line of reasoning a bit!
(and for ignoring my gross spelling and gramatical errors as they compounded with the lateness of the hour).
This is Cringely.
This is the article that Cringely wrote.
This is the Slashdot article about Cringely's article.
These are the ignorant comments that the_quark posted after reading the Slashdot article about Cringely's article.
This are the people that posted ignorant replies to the ignorant comments that the_quark posted after reading the Slashdot article about Cringely's article.
And this is giveuptheghost, who posted an unfunny parody of an anti-drug TV ad, was modded down, and lost precious karma points on Slashdot.
Slashdot posts support ignorance. If you post to Slashdot, you might too.
Sponsored by the RTFA Committee
No, that isn't the point. They did not get in trouble for downloading. Read the decision. All they got in trouble for was making 3,000,000 MP3s with a profit motive. That's a clear violation of US laws, and Cringley's company would have the same problems.
Read the decision. Mp3.com got pwn3d because they copied the CDs with a profit motive, at all. They got burned on the encode. They never even got tried on the downloads (which they would've lost, too). It doesn't matter if they're shareholders, or not. Cringley suggests charging a nickle - if you make $.05 on the copy and don't pay the copyright owner, you're clearly guilty of copyright infringement and will lose. This isn't some weird gray area, it's very well defined.
That's not what mp3.com got in trouble for. Read the decision. MP3.com got it trouble for ripping 3,000,000 songs to encode them to MP3. They never even got to the question of whether users could download them.
The law in the US is, if you aim to profit from making a copy, you have to pay the copyright holder. MP3.com didn't plan for this, even though the copy the end-user would've made would've been fair use. Every time they copied the music (once to make the repository, once for each end user) they need to pay the copyright holders. They didn't, so they lost. Cringley's company has exactly the same problems.
Hey, my pleasure! And double for me on the errors.
Very true, but you are only referring to the CD. The issue at stake here, is the IP contained on said CD. The record company owns the IP on that CD and you are therefore bound by IP laws governing that IP. This is a very different ball game. This is either yet to be challenged in court, or has already been challenged, a la MP3.com
In Soviet Russia, the monkey spanks you!
"Each share also carries the right to download backup or media-shifting copies for $0.05 per song or $0.50 per CD [...]. If they download an average of 10 CDs per month revenue grows to $60 million per year. [...] Now grow the business to its logical size of 60 million users. At 10 CDs per user per year, Snapster download revenue would be $3.6 billion or about a quarter the size of the current recording industry, which it would effectively replace."
That should be "10 CDs per user per month".
Funny, no one noticed.
I don't know about the legality of his proposal, or even if his business estimations are reasonable, but he forgot the most important point: the artists
By his reasoning, CD sales would drop enormously, as anyone subscribed to the service would have access to the music, but the artists wouldn't see any kind of compensation for their work. In a "best case scenario", where everyone used this kind of service, any given record would sell only as many copies as there are service providers, plus a few CD's to those who insist in having the original packaging. How long do you think this would last?
Why not try making a usable UI for Linux, or a decent piece of office software? Why are you so OBSESSED with STEALING MUSIC?? I DONT GET IT!!
People are just getting tired of the RIAAs and SCOs of the world dictating what music they should listen too are what OS they should run.
Cringely made this great documentary called "Triumph of the Nerds." If you haven't already seen it, get it on DVD its very interesting and entertaining. Even though its quite old now, it still has relevance in today's computer world. It would be cool if he did a follow up documentary.
Not being a lawyer, I found Cringely's idea very imaginative and stimulating. Other readers have mentioned possible legal flaws, but I think the scheme has an even bigger problem: it ignores the fact that we really don't need a music downloading business. Of any kind. The recording industry might need one, but musicians don't need one and the public certainly doesn't. The idea that anybody has to make money distributing individual copies of songs is an artifact we can afford to lose.
In an editorial mentioned on Slashdot a couple days ago, Doc Searls said something about television that I think is highly relevant: that it is a mistake to think of television shows as products and viewers as customers. Searls points out that the television industry makes its money selling eyeballs to advertisers. Shows aren't the product, they are merely bait that converts ordinary people into ad absorbers who might buy products later.
Likewise, from a musician's viewpoint, recordings are a way to convert people into future concert ticket buyers. It's been pointed out abundantly on Slashdot and elsewhere that musicians make money by performing, not by CD sales. What musicians get out of distribution (of any sort) is the fame that generates better gigs. For some reason everybody seems to have a hard time letting go of the idea that somebody has to make money selling copies of songs.
Try looking at it this way. The recording industry is in the position television set manufacturers could have been in if they had thought of building tv's like pay phones, collecting the coins, dictating which shows could be broadcast and demanding most of the rights. If that were the case, television set makers would now be right in the middle of the fray over video file swapping, claiming to be losing money with every download, probably also claiming to be protecting the creative artists who produce the shows (but who get none of the coins), and perhaps suing everybody like the RIAA is doing.
Obviously all that is unnecessary and sounds ridiculous, but it might not seem so if we were used to it. After a century of constantly feeding quarters into televisions, it might well seem like something was morally wrong unless someone was getting paid whenever a show was viewed.
There is in place right now plenty of infrastructure to freely distribute the songs of anybody who wants their songs distributed. What musicians and the public get from this technology is a way to eliminate the filtering imposed by the music business, do the distribution automatically, get the exposure for free and let the public pick the winners. Replacing the recording industry with a different middleman is completely unnecessary.
all of a sudden every new CD that is bought comes with a draconian Microsoft-style license
Three problems with that scenario. First of all it still isn't legally clear if even the Microsoft EULA is enforcable.
Second you can only licence the right to make copies, the right to distribute copies, and the right to public performance. Without the grant of one or more of those rights a licence does not exist. You can't simply slap arbitrary restrictions on a product. The only reason software comes with an EULA is based on the theory that you need a licence to install (copy) it to the harddrive and/or to copy it into RAM when you run it. That theory of software EULA's probably fails becuase US copyright law explicitly states that you don't need a licence to do those things. They can't licence you a right you already have, so if they aren't actually giving you anything the contract null and void.
Third, even if they could slap a licence on new CD's, the corporation could still buy a copy of every existing CD. Assuming the plan works that would probably be enough for this company to completely kill off and replace the RIAA.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The legislators can't take away fair use. They added it to law in 1976 (IIRC), but it had existed years before under the courts.
That the system should be set up so nobody can make money from digital content?
Once the RIAA is gone the company still needs new music. There's no reason it can't pay artists quite well for their work.
I'm not sure why Cringely didn't go into more detail on this part. He points out that the company will need a new source of CDs when the RIAA is gone, and later suggested that the company should plow profits back into the music industry but says he's not sure how. Seems obvious to me, let artists contribute at will and pay them based on downloads.
Really, that's how the RIAA should function. It's sheer stupidity that the RIAA refuses to properly serve the online market. No one wants to buy a DRM crippled product. No one wants to pay a buck a download. And no one wants to be restricted to a fraction of the full catalog of music. And there's absolutly no reason not to enable every garage band in the country to put their stuff on the system.
The RIAA could be quite successfull and profitable selling downloads. They simply refused to. Instead they are persuing an insane agenda of new laws and getting every piece of hardware crippled with TCPA.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
What he says is just so true.
I wish people would realize that the only way to get rid of the RIAA is to give an alternative to the Artist that create the music and not come up up with a grand scheme to defraud the whole industry. There are thousands of working musicians that put in a lot of time and effort to create the music that many of you believe should be free. Well, they need to be paid, or else there won't be any more music. Now, if you want to modify this idea and have the publicly traded corporation hire musicians to create music owned by the corporation and available for it's shareholders, that would be legal and quasi-ethical as long as an independent musician could still sell his product to the general public. At this point, when you steal music, you are hurting the artist far more than the RIAA. I know this isn't what most of you would like to do, so come up with some means for an artist to freely own his work and get paid for it while making it available to the public for a reasonble fee.
What to do about the RIAA
;-)
From: Chris Moore
To: letters@lwn.net, andrew.orlowski@theregister.co.uk, bob@cringely.com
Subject: What to do about the RIAA
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 21:33:18 +0100
Hi,
Boycotting them is too much and not enough. It's too much because it implies abstinance and it's not enough because they deserve so much more. There's a much better way to stiffle them; swapping CDs in meat-space. Since there is no copying taking place and no re-sale then it's entirely legal. It removes the abstinance part, it's fun, hits them where it hurts the most and there's the obvious analogy with what happens online.
Finished with a CD? Take it down to the swap meet. An ideal place to meet is probably in front of the court house. Even if RIAA aren't prosecuting file swappers there, it's kind of symbolic and who knows, maybe the judge has some CDs he's finished with?
Chris Moore
Portsmouth, UK
--
Sig pending!
As you can see it is also based on sharing but since there's NO COPYING its entirely legal and you don't need $2 million to start. Combine with flash mobs for extra buzz.
Sig pending!
If there is something you want to be able to share with everyone donate it to the library.
Now they have a way where they can control the distribution of music over the internet, and make money off of it as well.
As for the part of the fair-use law specifying personal use, and not a "collective ownership" remember - this is RIAA - they'll just get the law changed. Not possible? This is the same bunch of folks who wanted Congress to make it legal for them to hack in to your PC to look for pirated files, and then have the right to damange your PC to shut it down.
Cringely didnt come up with that far-fetched of an idea - he just came up with one to fatten RIAA's pockets more and let them keep control over the music industry - which is exactly what they want.
Surely it would be better to set up Snapster to raise enough money to mount a hostile takeover of the RIAA (and record companies) one at a time, shutting each down and donating all their copyrights to the public domain. Buy them one at a time so you never become a monopoly.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
Does this mean that, if I own shares of Time Warner, and I am sued by the RIAA for downloading TW's music, that I can claim it's my right as part owner of the company?
I'm much to late to be read by anyone but, you could use a similar system to hijack opensource programs.
instead of selling copies of your proprietary descendant of an open source app. Just let anyone of your "partners" use it. The GPL doesnt require you to distribute the source of any changes as long as you don't distribute binaries. But in this case all the binaries would remain within your partnership.
I have to agree that many musicians can survive by using recordings as a way of promoting live performances, but this model doesn't fit every musician. When was the last time you heard of that monster Dead Can Dance tour?
... and embracing technology for distribution is the key.
IMHO, the dinosaur that is RIAA needs an overhaul that puts a larger % of sales income in the hands of the musicians and less % in the hands of the leeches. Overall music "cost" to the consumer could be lowered while at the same time increasing income to musicians
I don't pretend to have any of the answers for how to do this while protecting the musician's copyright, but it is clear enough that RIAA is trying their hardest to make everybody that knows how to point-and-click look like a potential thief.
To RIAA: If you think you are having problems now, just wait 5 years. Technology is not slowing down.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." - Napoleon Bonaparte
I own a cd, I can use it
My wife and I own a cd, we can ues it
My wife, my kids and I own a cd - can we all use it?
My extended family?
My neighbourhood?
My community?
where do you draw the line? Based on blood?
Based in shared financial comittments?
If the latter; My company/commune/cooperative owns a cd...
The judge would have to strike it down, but I'd love to see the tortured reasoning that would be required.
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
Regardless of when a law was made, I'm not so confident that it can't be removed, or changed for the worse. After some of the stuff that's passed in earlier years, and the underhanded tactics that some politicians use, I'm just not sure they're always on the lookout for the people.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Let's say you and a friend go to the store to buy CDs. Getting there both of you discover that neither one has enough money alone to buy the CD they want, so you pool your money to buy the CD.
Now who has ownership of the CD? I'd say you now have shared ownership of the property. Could both of you make a copy for backup, probably. Could both of you transfer the music to MP3, yes, however my understanding of the law would say that the mp3 copies of the song could not be used at the same time. There is the problem.
Otherwise Blockbuster could make DVD copies of all there VHS tapes and form a a mini-partership which would allow all parterns to have unfettered access to the material.
I think Cringley is onto something though, morph his idea into a music rental system, similar to Blockbuster. Form a company, buy CDs (you'll need multiple copies of popular CDs) and offer streaming access to that music though a subscription service.
However the max amount of people who can listen to the same song at the same time is limited to the number of copies of the song that have been purchased. Example you buy 10 copies of CD "X" you can now offer out 10 streams of each song on CD "X", if an 11th person wanted to listen to that song they would need to be queued.
Would probably be legaly viable now would it be practical from a business view.
I have no
I own stock in several companies. Said companies own chairs, Microsoft Office licenses, copier paper, etc. Do I have the right to copy or use their MS Office installation? Can I go into the company and sit in the comfy Aeron chairs? And take home some paper while I'm there? NO.
According to the "Origin of Phrases" page:
One red cent
Meaning: A single symbolic penny.
Example: I refuse to pay even one red cent for the work until you complete the whole job.
Origin: The "Red" refers to both the color of a penny (one cent) and the image that used to be on the penny, an American Indian head. Redskin is a slang term used for American Indians.
Before today's Lincoln penny was the Indian Head penny.
The Indian Head penny was first issued in 1859 and looks just like that as issued in 1908 (before the Lincoln Cent). The only difference was that those from 1859-1864 were of a different copper-nickel alloy while 1864 started the common bronze, which was used until 1982. (You didn't know it changed then, did you?)
The copper-nickel alloy has a reddish tint, which turns redder with time and skin oil.
Before the Indian Head penny was the "Buzzard Cent", as the One Cent coins in 1856-1858 were called. The flying eagle on the coin was damned as an ugly bird and it wasn't popular.
However, it was the first "small cent" using about the same size as our penny today. In the half century before this, One Cent coins were about the size of today's Half Dollar! (of course they were also worth something then)
I am dyslexia of borg - your ass will be laminated.
Does anyone else see the resemblance to the "PFJ" (Peoples Front of Judiah) in Slashdot posts recently? "I, for one, move to have an immediate discussion about having a discussion.."
Heck, maybe soon they will free "Wodowick" or "Bwyan".
....move along....nothing to see here....
Aferall, through my mutual funds, I and millions of others own shares of Microsoft. Does that mean by default, I then own Windows and have the ability to use its products without paying for the licence under fair use rights? C'mon now.
Actually, more like $18,999,999.99! Consider for a moment that you could induce the music producers to license a CD to you for re-distribution... (i.e. the normal notion of fair use of a single product sold to a single individual is void) You'd probably have to pay quite a bit for that, don't you think? Of course, the music producers wouldn't want to destroy their ability to distribute thier own music through "record stores" (CD stores?)... or would they? What if you could pay the RIAA more than their otherwise realized income on even fewer sales? What if you could ensure a long-term non-physical distribution channel? Do you think they'd be willing to give you the license then? You betchyer bobby-sox! Three major reasons (off the top of my head) this is possible: 1. Physical production and distribution is expensive compared to electronic methods. 2. CD stores will not exist forever (let's face it) and it's time to plan for the future... You know they probably think about it everytime they take someone to court/settlement. 3. Decades of revenues already lost due to bad pricing policies. Any economist would tell you they've missed decades of opportunity for increased revenue... One word: ELASTICITY! Pricing every CD between $13.99 and $18.99 is simply not intelligent when so many more people would buy it if it was cheaper. Summary: We're right to question the fair-use of a single user product, but it may still be lucrative to pay our way around fair-use as a corporation, offer music cheaper, and make more money for everyone who has staying power. (Buh-bye CD stores... You didn't really think selling information at physical retail locations would last forever, did you? The shame!)
Peace and Blessings, jday
It is a question of whether people are willing to pay for the utility that is more relevant - and 'piracy', copyright infringement, filesharing, etc. are merely a market response to the overpricing of this particular utility.
Morally, you may have a point, but then the market has no morality, nor should it have.
If people wish to distort free markets by making laws, then it is only fair that this should be shouted loudly from the rooftops.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
Google for "Corporate Personhood" to muddy the waters futher. In the USA corporations have the rights that people have.
Lasers Controlled Games!
I couldn't agree with this more. Recorded music (read information) should be distributed freely while live performances (read services) should be charged for. This business model has worked very well on many open source software projects, and it's just as viable elsewhere.
In my ideal music industry, the RIAA would be abolished thus doing away with the old business model of influencing music purchases though advertising. CDs would be available directly from the artist(s) at a highly reduced price ($1-2 to cover media and production costs), and freely online. Concert tickets would be more expensive, in the range of $40-50, and the artist(s) would give more performances in smaller venues. This would take the emphasis off production and put it on talent. The artist(s) with little talent but good advertising and production would fade away, while the artist(s) who really had talent would grow in popularity. Music which is more production based (read electronica), while fun to experience live, could justifiably be priced higher to cover increased production costs.
I could see this model being applied across the board. The freedom of information coupled with the sale of services just seems like the most logical, natural order of things. And everyone lived happily ever after.
I have never regretted my speech,
but I have frequently regretted my failure to speak.
Netflix caught on because it was already common to rent video tapes, and when the form factor of dvds allowed them to be mailed then it was a small mental step for people to adapt to this model of usage. Now that it has caught on, it is one small step further for people to begin renting CDs through the mail. I hope netflix or someone else branches out into the CD rental business.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
If they can get people to pay to hear them play, all well and good.
If they can persuade people to pay money for recordings og their work, even better.
But for a situation to arise where people are forced to pay where a free alternative is available is totally illiberal and against all rational concepts of a free market.
Before copyright, only the best music survived, because it was worth supporting (in an abstract, not an economic sense).
Now we have a morass of pop-pap and gangsta-rap, thrash metal and tuneless, inane crap thrust down our throats by the marketing fools, and they expect us to part with our money like good little drones.
And I'm not a classical music snob - I merely prefer to listen to properly crafted music played by musicians who have a love of what they do, rather than mechanically generated studio pap.
Patronage - let's go back to it. There was plenty of music around then, all played by real people who ate, payed rent and enjoyed life.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
The only thing Snapster will accomplish is the final eradication of fair use rights. Fair use was originally developed as a judicial remedy to the recording label's draconian approach to enforcing copyrights. If you can use a fair use loophole to completely circumvent copyright law, the legislature will solve the problem by closing the loop. They'll answer the question whether fair use still exists with a resounding "NO". It's evident that the lobbying power of the RIAA and MPAA have placed many politicians in their back pockets. The fair use movement isn't going to make any headway in the overall battle just by being "clever".
If people wish to distort free markets by making laws
I'm confused. Are you suggesting that a free market could work without laws?
It's a wonder to me that I had to look so deep to find this suggestion.
I don't even think you need to have the "checked-out-at-one-time" caveat.
Simple: form a not-for-profit institution, owned by it's members, and calling itself a library. Members can donate the CD's. Possibly, the physical location of the CD is irrelevant: members simply need to stamp "property of the InternetMusicLibraryOrg" on the CD.
At this point, everyone in the organization is part owner of the CD, and is a member of the library services. So, everyone in the organization has the fair-rights use to make a copy of the CD in a new form (i.e. mp3) for institutional use.
"Under your proposal, any artist, with or without a label, would sell exactly one CD to, well, the entire world, because people would be crazy to not participate in "Snapster" if it exists."
Based on Napster, Kazza, etc . . . that does not seem to be the case. emmnemm had probably the most downloaded album ever, yet he still went platinum.
"The only way to raise the price that Snapster will pay for your albums is by "getting established." The only way most bands will be able to do that is... big shock here... sign a contract with a big, evil record label (now a "marketing service") who is entitled by the contract terms to something like 95% of the sale (not sales, sale) of each CD the band releases under the contract."
Not true. IT is the way it is currently done, but it is not the only way. Point in fact, if it was the only way, music radio would never have started.
Music Radio stations need music. If big corpration stop providing it, they will go to the local talent. The raio station would need to pay a fee every time a song is paid. There is your money.
I would also like to note, if all new musician refused to sign the current contracts, the contract will get changed. Contrary to what music companies will tell you, they need to to survive.
I know it would be hard to resist the money, but I would wager most muscians could hold out longer then the reccord company, espcially if it was done en-mass.
Sure, the musicians will have to eat hot dogs and top ramen for another year, but how much would a record company loose if the didn't sign new talent for 4 quarterin a row? there stock would plummet and they would loose millions.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
mp3.com streeeeeamed their music too. They lost.
For example - anti-trust laws are against strict definitions of a free market, but they are accepted as good because they promote innovation through competition. Limited copyright laws are also good, because they give an incentive to innovate.
But copyright is not an inherent right - it is a privilege granted for the purpose of promoting invention. It is, without a doubt, a distortion of the free market, and needs to be justifiable in its extent and its application.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
Not to nitpick, but what exactly were you trying to tip toe around? I thought eMusic.com had the express permission from all the copyright holders to do... whatever service eMusic does. (I was a subscriber, so I know what the service is, being generic on purpose because really you got permission from those labels to: sell full mp3 copies of their albums on a subscription model)
Otherwise, you've just reinvented streaming radio, congratulations.
Exactly! Many people seem to be reinventing that today! ??
And I'm not a classical music snob - I merely prefer to listen to properly crafted music played by musicians who have a love of what they do, rather than mechanically generated studio pap.
You're a snob. Just because YOU don't like some sort of music doesn't mean it is bad. It only means that it doesn't meet your particular tastes. If it was actually crap, people wouldn't buy it. That's how the "free market" works.
But for a situation to arise where people are forced to pay where a free alternative is available is totally illiberal and against all rational concepts of a free market.
That's exactly why the free alternative is ILLEGAL. Otherwise, the market for information would not exist!
Patronage can produce some art, but not much. It certainly will not produce the variety or the quantity that we have today. This is exactly the sort of thing that free markets are meant for -- producing the things people, as a whole, want, rather than just what a few rich snots like. Obviously, the best music will be produced if it is produced using capitalism, but that is only possible if copyright is enforced.
This is not an original idea. It was proposed a while ago as an effective method for avoiding the GPL. If an arbitrary organization took some GPL'd code and made modifications then sharing the binaries to members of that organization is not "distribution" in the same way that a company can internally use GPL'd binaries without making the source available to all employees. Now given such an organization's requirement to entry is a nominal fee then you are effectively paying for the right to use a binary but the organization is not required to give you the source because it's not being "distributed".
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Well, great. Then, I say that copyright is a good thing to have. Copyright allows free market economics to apply to information, which obviously leads to more and better information being available, just as it does with goods and services. Without copyright, there is no comparably good way (that I know of) to produce these effects.
BTW, the defition of a "free market" that I learned in economics specifically stated that there must not be any monopolies. So, anti-trust laws don't seem to be "against strict definitions of a free market".
Exactly -- those dinosaurs refuse to be trained in the new ways of doing business, and will die out.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Shows aren't the product, they are merely bait that converts ordinary people into ad absorbers who might buy products later.
...phew! I thought you were about to suggest that CD's should have commercials in between songs.
Likewise, from a musician's viewpoint, recordings are a way to convert people into future concert ticket buyers.
It's been pointed out abundantly on Slashdot and elsewhere that musicians make money by performing, not by CD sales.
Pointing something out on Slashdot doesn't necessarily mean it's accurate. Many musicians might make more profit from peforming than recording, but not all. I know some fairly prominent musicians myself, and even after brisk ticket sales, respectable merch stand sales at each show, and travelling by rental truck and sleeping in Red Roof Inns to keep costs down, they still lose money every time they tour.
I think it is great that people are trying to create different ways to stop piracy. It is about time. Others should try and come up with other creative ideas.
Stocks are routinely bought and sold without any attempt to transfer their physical manifestation. The paper stock is a representation of the abstraction that is the share just as a CD is a representation of the abstraction that is the information.
This is why it makes no difference for an album I own whether I rip the MP3s myself or download copies somebody else made: since I own the information it is insignificant whether I access the original storage medium or a indistinguishable copy of it.
With stocks you can, if you really want to, get the dead tree. I see no reason why this system couldn't act the same way: if you purchase a CD, you can ask the company to smail it to you rather than hold it on your behalf. Of course you'll have to mail it back if you want to sell it.
While eliminating the need for the recording industry going forward is by far the best case scenario for musicians and consumers, it still leaves the back catalogs in the hands of the corporations.
Maybe someone with a better understanding of the differences between catalog rights, recording rights and publishing rights can come up with a way around this stranglehold on archive recordings aside from the artists paying an enormous ransom to get ownership of their own catalogs.
A musician may be able to re-record their songs or sell new, live albums without infringing on the back catalog rights, but I'm no lawyer.
If I'm remembering correctly, Prince re-recorded his "1999" song for the new millenium, since he wasn't going to see any money from his former record company's re-issues.
Well hell, why not just buy the cds retail ($14), rip the cd to mp3, and then sell the used cd (in near-mint condition) on ebay ($10).
I assume that's completely legal - you bought the cd, you're not sharing anything, and you've paid $4 for your copy of the cd (which is about what it's worth).
... do I only get to listen a 1/2,000,000th of the song? (Seriously!)
Isn't the difference in your example that the scientists were employed by the company, rather than owners of the company?
I don't think there have been cases where the 'sharers' of the work in question have been solely shareholders. If the company pays for a journal article, and determines that it will allow all shareholders to access it, is that fair use, since they are all part owners of the document?
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
This is cute, but I think ultimately uninformed.
As I understand it, it is the company charter that determines what shareholders have access to, and what information is strictly reserved for members of the board and their designators. There are restrictions by the SEC on public companies of course as pertains to financials, but otherwise its up to your charter.
So, if your charter is "everything is available to all shareholders" or somesuch, then it works. I think you can bet that this isn't how the charter for RIAA members reads.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
I'll reserve comment on the rest of your article, but are you sure about Taco Bell's pricing history?
My first taco from them was in 1975 at East Lansing. I'm pretty sure they were under fifty cents, like 3 for a dollar (maybe even 4?). That was under market price for tacos at a regular Mexican restaurant (probably 75 cents back then). I don't think their regular tacos have ever been priced higher than 89 cents and they are still 79 cents around here.
This may be the critical tweak to his plan, put the 1-to-1 ratio back in.
Adopt a check-out/check-in system for the CDs, as well as a loan term. You borrow a CD, perhaps even just a track, and nobody else can. The inventory system keeps track of how often requests are unfulfilled, and buys additional copies.
How many CDs out of my library do I listen to in any given two-week interval? (small fraction) I suspect most of us are the same, and those who listen more have bigger collections, so they still hit only a small fraction.
You don't need a copy of every Pink Floyd CD for every Pink Floyd fan in the world. Well, maybe you d, but you don't need a copy of every Pink Floyd CD for every occasional listener of Pink Floyd.
This isn't a sink-the-RIAA, like Cringley's plan, but it's not so much a legal loophole, either. It may not even have to jump through as many corporate hoops, merely taking the mechanisms of CleanFilms.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
And that is to have a decrypter embedded in everyone's ears and eyes. The music/video can then be played publicly, but only the people that PAID for valid decryption keys, encapsulated in their heads, can listen to the music or watch the video.
For ANY audio/visual media, hardware/software can be built to read the output before it goes to the output device (speaker/screen) and record it into a unencrypted format. Virtual sound drivers or virtual moniters can record as easy as outputting to the device.
All of the recording and movie industries' efforts to control audio/video output is mearly slowing down the inevitable - no restrictions for private, fair use.
Of course, the other way is to arrest anyone who has private, peer-to-peer communication - which, considering the current political climate, doesn't sound too crazy.
Cheers
This is more like a public performance of a work. Which requires you get a license from the appropriate performance royalties organization. Ask any legit bar, restaraunt, disco, raidio station etc about public performance of copyrighted works, even ones they shelled out their own cash to buy. (Oh yeah, even applied to companies that play music on the pa or use hold music)
sounds more like you are the bozo
This message is getting close to what I think is the heart of this issue. Although the RIAA likes to argue that piracy is stealing, having copyright is not the same thing as owning something, and owning something is not the same as having the right to do whatever you want with it.
Copyright is simply the legal right to make copies of a particular work. To a first approximation, no one but the copyright holder can make copies of a work. There are some exceptions (called "fair use") to ensure that copyright owners can't exploit this right unreasonably, but the intention of copyright law is to ensure that only the copyright holder can make significant numbers of copies.
I don't think that part-ownership of a copy of a work gives the part-owner a right to copy that work, which is the heart of Cringely's scheme. It might be legal now, but this is just too big a loophole to let stand, no matter how you feel about the RIAA. If this loophole were allowed to stand, copyrights would be useless and the whole copyright law (which truly has been a net benefit to society) might as well be struck from the books.
Now, that being said, I'd love to see some sort of attempt to rein in the record companies. They have extended their monopoly on copying into a monopoly in distribution. The law recognizes that monopolies in one area can be used to create monopolies in other areas, and restricts the action of monopolies accordingly; why wasn't that done for copyright holders? Now, with the DMCA and the example of what the studios could get away with on DVD's (e.g. prevention of any kind of copying, even legal "fair-use" copying; control over where you can buy DVD's that will work in your player; control over such details as when you are able to use the fast-forward or pause buttons on your DVD player), there is every indication that the record companies will extend their monopoly on making copies to control how and when you can play music.
I'd love to see the distribution monopoly broken, so that the fear of competition can force record companies to consider consumers (and artists) rather than simply what they think is best for the bottom line. If record companies did not have the sole right to determine what music is available for purchase and in which format, artists might have some leverage to negotiate a better deal, and consumers might have a better change of buying the music they want in the format they want.
There might be a solution that allows artists to get paid and for consumers to have some control over how they may use the music they buy, even if Cringely's suggestion (to effectively repeal copyright laws) isn't it. However, unless the monopoly that record companies have is ended, we are not going to see any changes except those that make it better for those companies and worse for the artists and consumers.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
Dude, I want some of whatever you are having.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
I would assume (IANAL) that once you sell your CD you lose the fair use rights that go with it, and could no longer legally have mp3s from it.
Finkployd
IANAL, but since when does a shareholder have a right to a copy of a copyrighted work that the corporation has purchased? I may own stock in a Company A, but that doesn't mean that it is legal for Company A to make copies of software or other copyrighted content to give out to me.
This sounds really goofy to me. Is there a real lawyer in the house that can give further clarification?
Forget the whales - save the babies.
That it's already in place. More or less.
Anyone that wants to, is 100% at liberty to record what they like, distribute it this way, tour how they like, etc. Right now. Absolutely nothing stands in their way.
The reason that artists sign with labels, is for the marketing support. At least that's a huge driver.
Just because you can envision an alternate model, doesn't mean that anyone is obligated to subscribe to it.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Just because it's possible to create a music industry that's utterly devoid of marketing, doesn't mean that it's ever going to happen.
And as long as there's marketing, there will be "middlemen" to facilitate it.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Yeah, we did have the express permission of the copyright holders, but we were always looking at new business ideas. Also, we needed to understand exactly what we were allowed to do under the law because our company was designed from the getgo to stake out the maximum area possible under the law.
So, for example, we didn't set up interactive streaming services because that gets you into a different section of the law and the payments you have to make are different. We negotiated our content contracts to focus on the downloadable market, but in order to do that we had to understand the law very well. We didn't want to pay for rights we knew we weren't going to use because the law made them unprofitable, anyway.
As another example, I had the "Beam It" idea before mp3.com released theirs (although I think they were already working on it). But when I brought it to our copyright expert, he quickly persuaded me it'd be illegal and we didn't do it.
So, I spent a lot of time brainstorming with the other execs at the company, trying to figure out exactly the maximum services we could provide given the scope of the law. It was an interesting puzzle, although I can't say I miss always wondering if you're about to break the law very much.
Actually, whether you profit from it or not doesn't have any bearing on the legal implications. It may have a goodwill impact on the willingness of the infringed to sue, but from a legal standpoint, it doesn't matter. Making copies and giving them away is just as illegal as making copies and selling them.
/. have been about either customers (quite irrelevant) or agents of the company (employees), not about shareholders themselves.
The question, I think, is how fair use applies in this joint-ownership scenario. Can something in joint ownership be copied in order to be distributed to all its owners? As far as I know, this is legally untested. All the cases I've seen quoted on
For example, Mp3.com beam-it doesn't apply, because the people involved aren't shareholders. The Xerox or whatever landmark case doesn't apply because the people involved were employees (scientists), and did not own the documents. In this case, the people involved own the licenses in question. This isn't like MS software licenses, because (assuming for a moment the EULA is enforceable) the license specifically states that it is only able to be used on a single computer. There are no such stipulations on music CDs.
Mp3.com failed in court not because they were trying to make money from copies (though you could argue that that's the real motivation behind the RIAA lawsuit), they lost in court because they created an illegal public database of music. Which is bunk, in my opinion, but they didn't ask me.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
Which in the end, ended up being nothing, right?
Not to be a jerk, but it looks like the only service eMusic ever came up with, is what they started with: full downloads from labels willing to have you do just that. Leaving the company with just swaying more lables to join this business plan.
I'm glad to see the re-encoding of the mp3's as LAME -aps. Hope they finish the full inventory.
Well, full disclosure, I haven't been with them in over a year and can't claim to have kept up too much with the details of what they're offering, now.
I'd say the big innovation we did was switching from $.99/track to the subscription model in 2000. We had a number of ideas for feature enhancements we could do after that. We wanted to provide the functionality of an interactive streaming service but provided by DPDs to fit within our licenses, for example, and had a lot of cool ideas for client/server integration that I think you're starting to see Apple actually implement. Unfortunately, after we were purchased in 2001, a combination of uncertainty and then a move the mp3.com technical platform kept us from implementing most of that while I was there. Just because we didn't have the resources to get it done didn't mean we weren't thinking about it.
Don't know what their plans are, now, moving forward, but I wish them luck.
I certainly agree with you on the reencode, though. LAME is a lot better than what we were originally using.
I personally would still buy your book because I prefer reading from a small, portable bundle of paper than an expensive, fragile light source.
I would also still be willing to pay to see a movie at a cinema because I don't watch sufficient films to justify envesting in a large screen and sound system for my home, and prefer the emmersion a cinema offers.
Sure, some people would shun these benefits in order to save a few bucks, reading their books on their laptops/PDAs and watching movies on a computer screen with peedy little speakers, but there would still be money to be made.
This won't work with copyright completely removed, since the creator of the content would not make any money when a publisher prints and sells copies of a book. You won't be able to afford to track down and sue the people who distribute your works electronically, but you can still sue a publisher who tries to sell your book en masse without buying a licence to do so from you.
I guess my point is that, even with a few people distributing your content for free, there will always be money to be made because in general people are willing to pay to enhance their experience of your work. You could also sell your work online for a tiny amount of money for anyone who doesn't care about paper or cinemas but wants to give you some money.
This Slashdot posting is brought to you by the letter U and the Number 2... With a grant from the Caranagie foundation.
Even if this were possible there would be more albums that have the Fund Raiser in the middle of a song... and with that... I couldn't really live like that...
I am really okay with paying a few bucks to PBS every year or so... I do love Red Green. However... if you are just ripping people off (not that we are not being ripped off the otherway) make sure atleast the band is getting their piece of the action.
Oh yeah Negitivland probably has some copywrite on the first part of this message... but I will site fair use.
--Turvey
I had a flame... but she had a fire.
Ah...but if there's no copyright, there's no reason that I'm the only one who can put my novel on dead tree. I spend all the time and energy creating my novel, print a bunch of copies, and start selling them. Somebody buys one, scans it, proof reads it so it's exactly the same as what I'm selling, and prints and sells it himself. Maybe he's got better cover art and distribution. He sells the books for $1, maybe, in massive volume. How am I going to compete?
Same thing with a movie. Theatres are going digital these days. Take whatever digital medium it is the film is distributed on, buy one, then copy it, sell it to other movie theatres, and show it in your own theatre.
That's not cool. The artist should have the exclusive right to sell copies of his work for a limited period of time, so that he can profit from it.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
On the right track, but why not sell a package that offered ONE share of stock in the RIAA member labels? Since the owner of the stock package (YOU) own a share of say, Electra, you are a part owner of the company, and as owner of the "copyright" to say Metallica(sh)'s music, you would theoretically have the right to either download OR upload ANY Metalligreed tune. IANAL, but it at leasts sounds like a sneaky way to get around their legalege bullshit?
I think that is a good idea, and you wouldn't even need to raise the rates. This would only work, though, if the artists were "Snapster Exclusives". If they go with someone other than Snapster, then Snapster pays $20 for their cd and then makes it available to everyone. If they become a "Snapster Exclusive" then Snapster offers a percentage of the download fee on sliding scale. Say: 20% right off and increasing to 50% as downloads increase.
I agree that the biggest innovation was a subscription model. (Not technically, but psychologically) I don't know how many would have signed up otherwise. I bet it was HELL trying to convince labels to go with it, though. After all, you think of extreme: Unlimited downloads. I found out, however, that I eventually procrastinated my downloads....since... I would always "be able" to download it "later". And never ended up downloading 4 zillion albums like I imagined I would.
Do you have any statistics of any extreme downloaders? Anyone you monitored?
I don't suppose anyone here would know how much an album would cost if I didn't want it on a cd/tape or in a fancy case with cover art? I would assume it would be cheaper... the question is how much? It would cut people out of the sale, but really, how much do you suppose a band and their label and what not would charge for just a copy of their songs from an album?
I did say my reasoning depends on copyright to still exist. I was merely trying to put forth the idea that although some people will inevitably get the product for free, there will always be people who are willing to pay in order to improve their experience of the product.
You can't sue every kid who shares your book on Kazaa, but you can sue someone who attempts to publish and sell your book en-masse without a licence... and if they don't do it en-masse, it will probably cost them so much that they won't be able to compete with your mass-produced printed copies anyway.
One of the big problems with the internet for content provider is that all the costs fall onto the content provider's head, and they scale to the number of users.
While P2P increases overall bandwidth usage (and hence costs), it also distributes it amongst users so that the individual hit is neglible.
IMO, _this_ is the massive potential benefit of P2P, It will allow anyone who wants to to provide content - not just those who can afford the bandwidth.
Of course, for P2P to serve that purpose, the interface has to be considerably more sophisticated than existing gnutella clients'. Freenet is a step in the right direction.
Sounds like if this happens, the Recording Industry will start selling cds for massive amounts of money to account for communal ownership of the cds. Kind of like what software companies do.
what's next from that idiot? a story on an easy to use, Unix based OS to challenge the Windows monopoly?
he is really up with the times.
How about using Sealand for your data center, go for low margin at high quantities ( say $1 per album ) and keep as low a profile in USA or whatever your home country is as possible?
...just points out how sick and greedy copyright is. Good riddance.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I think this signal can be tapped from the acoustic nerves. You'll have to dig a little deeper.
Hello Cruel World
His approach is *way* too complicated. If there has to be legal way of music distribution, which takes care of the musician then it has to be simple. Think iTunes. Low prices, good music selection, ability to copy vs. BuyMusic's horrendous strategy to treat people like idiots and make them jump through hoops for their entertainment. Who's going to manage Snapster 2? Negotiate fair pricing with the record labels/artists? All this will require infrastructure and people to manage the distribution channel. Those people will need to be paid and held accountable. Is there going to be just one Snapster Inc. or a hundred? How do you pick one? This is like using a sledgehammer to drive in a nail. This can never be the answer.