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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.
I think most dl'ers are just going to continue stealing it.
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
Yes, but remember that Windows server licenses are owned by a corperation, and you can only use it on one computer.
You know those little "by opening this CD you have agreed to.." things? Think a slight modification, here..
Wouldn't be that hard.
"The most looniest, zaniest, spontaneous, sporadic Impulsive thinker, compulsive drinker, addict"
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.
The ignorance of both business and law displayed in his article is nothing short of breathtaking.
First, he handwaves about going public at $20/share. Maybe in 1999, pal, but not now. You can't just decide to do it, there are significant capitalization requirements, to say nothing of the money the bankers will want for doing the work for you.
But the real guffaw-worthiness of this article is the tremendous misunderstanding of fair use he displays. Number one, it's quite questionable what corporations' fair use rights are - but it's clear that they are less than an individual. Remember mp3.com? They bought 300,000 CDs and made one digital copy of each. That's perfectly legal, under fair use, for you and me. But when a corporation does it for profit (and by definition everything a corporation does is for profit), it's copyright infringement. MP3.com got pwn3ed by the major record labels for this.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, the traditional test of fair use is, "would it replace a sale?" This clearly would. It's legal for you to make a copy of a CD so you can listen to one and home and one at work, since you won't be listening to both simultaneously. If they wanted to build this system so that only one shareholder could listen to a given piece at one time, they MIGHT be able to squeak through. But try this, and they Major Labels will just laugh all the way to the bank.
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.
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!
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.
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...
The ignorance of your reply is breathtaking.
1. mp3.com was not owned by people who were downloding copies.
2. $20/share inital outlay per person can be though of as joining the club. It does not even need to be publicly traded, and the price can be kept fixed.
3. Maybe the intention of the law is "would it replace a sale", however that is not the actual wording, otherwise all those poor souls who got hit by RIAA would use that as an easy defense. "But your honor, I would not have bought that CD I downloaded, it is a buch of crap!"
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
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.
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.
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?
The thing is, you become a part of the "they". If 51% of the shares are voted to do something, then it is so. So, if you ever get 51% of the company, it's your call and yours alone. (And, at that point you get to stack the board of directors with people who agree with you...) If a bunch of people who agree with you combine to make 51%, that works too.
Cringley's company of course would have that trap door. As a publicly traded company, they'd always be subject to a hostile takeover by the pro-RIAA interests...
Yeah, I'm sure it would work great. There does seem to be this little "leap" there in the middle... let's see:
1) Buy 100,000 CDs
2) Suddenly every shareholder somehow now has a right to have a copy of that CD which they will make full use of (way beyond fair use)
3) Profit!
Wow, I'm impressed. Cringley has uncovered the long-sought step 2.
Really, I think he may run into a little trouble with the idea that a shareholder suddenly has rights to everything the corp has a single copy of. Heck, that wouldn't even fly if the corp held the original copyright. If it did, I'd be set! Buy a share of Microsoft, get a free copy of any MS software I want. Buy a share of SCO, I can run all the unix-like software in the world I want. Heck, I don't need Cringley, I'll just buy a share of each of the 6 or so music companies, and then I'm cool getting whatever I want from Kazaa.
But who knows, maybe in some strange way, he's right. Just in case, I present the open-source version of his plan:
I form a corporation for $100 dollars or so. I issue 10 billion non-public shares. I make each of you an officer in the corp, and issue you a share. You take a CD that you have a copy of, and transfer ownership of it to the corp. This is a distributed corporation, so you will be storing said CD in your home. You then rip the CD in MP3, OGG, etc.. and store on your harddrive. You then join the private corp p2p net. BTW, in order to actually sign up for the corporation and receive your share, you join the p2p network. To indicate that you wish to transfer ownership of your CD, you rip it and make the files available on the p2p network.
I think I'll call it Kazaa.
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!!!
2. Not relevant, you're already out of business from 1.
3. "Would it replace a sale" is a shorthand way of saying, "would you normally need to buy it to do what you're doing?" The relevant law is 17 U.S.C. 107, "Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use":
I'd say his idea is a slam dunk not-fair-use under section four, as (he freely admits) it would "destroy the potential market for...the copyrighted work." Not fair use, not legal, not a good business idea.
None of this, of course, is trying to make any argument about what the law should be. But these questions aren't hard under the law now, and they're very obviously not legal under the law now. Anyone who tries this is going to get eaten for breakfast by the major labels (and the minor ones, too - they sued mp3.com pretty hard as well).
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."
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.
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
Scale. Your fallacy is called the Argument Of The Beard. You assume that two ends of a spectrum are the same, since you can travel along the spectrum in very small steps. For example, being clean shaven must be the same as having a big beard, because if you pluck one hair out of a big beard, you still have a big beard. Also, all piles of stones must be small, because if you add one stone to a small pile of stones, you still have a small pile of stones.
Using headphone jack splitters with a friend sitting next to you is not the same as making a copy of a song with a complete stranger on another continent, even though the two are connected by small steps.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
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
I suppose that might be all right, but that's not what this article is about. They're talking about copying, and multiple people being able to listen to the music at the same time.
If we're splitting hairs, though, even with streaming there's still a copy being made. The song will be buffered by the receiver. It may be deleted once the song is played, but it's still a copy. I'm not sure what the lawyers would make of that argument.
The original poster mentioned the console gaming system, where the sharedholders only get to play the game one at a time. I suppose a system could be worked out, much like Napster, whereby a central server keeps track of what songs a person is "sharing." The sharer will stream the song to one other person at a time, and only when the sharer is not listening to it himself. Assuming the user purchased the song, that might be covered under fair use. There may be 1 million copies of a song sold, but only 10,000 people want to listen to it at any given time. Still, if you actually tried that, you'd still get sued, and, if you won, Congress would just repeal your fair use rights, anyway, because that's really not what they're intended for.
We're splitting hairs here, and trying to find loopholes in laws. What we really need is to decide what rights an artist, distributor, and customer have when it comes to a piece of music, and craft our laws around that idea. Good freakin' luck, though.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
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."
Property rights, communal rights, performance rights, and copyright do not map one to one. A corporation cannot buy one copy of a book and then send a photo-copy to all its stockholders. A corporation can't take a hit song, buy the CD, make it the corporate anthem, and play it at company events without charge.
At best, it can behave like a library: offer the book up, and let one stockholder at a time read it. If the one-at-time method is implemented via electronic downloading of the data, the copyright holder probably has a good claim that the whole system is designed to facilitate infringment.
Actually, if you, say, read the article, he suggests going public on the NASDAQ at $20/share. I was merely pointing out this was nontrivial. I'm perfectly aware how easy it is to incorporate and issue stock. That wasn't what he suggested; he is clearly seeking a world where any idiot can buy your stock from his broker. That's harder.
Even penny stocks have some listing requirements. They're just less than for the major exchanges. Unfortunately for the purposes of Mr. Cringley's idea, generally the less reputable the exchange and listing requirements, the harder it is to actually buy. Still, if the rest of it were legal, you might be able to set up a company you'd list on the OTC:BB and sell shares in for some small amount. But since there are no market makers on the OTC, your stock would be illiquid and ripe for manipulation.
As for issuing shares in your still-private company to the massess: Selling unlicensed securities to unaccredited (read: not rich) investors will generally get you sent to jail for running a stock scam.
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...
And if I want to buy the artist's masterpiece, take it home, and paint Mickey Mouse(TM) into the middle of it, so what? It's mine, I bought and paid for it, I should be allowed to do anything I want with it. Now, if I asked the artist to paint Mickey into the scene, I could reasonably expect the artist to refuse. But I'm not buying directly from artists. I'm buying from corporations that pay the artists for "work for hire". These corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder returns. If that means the Disneyfication of the Sistine Chapel, then so be it!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I have an alternative to your plan. Say that a P2P system was set up such that each file trader needed to put up songs they legally owned for sale at $0.01 each. The trader's account starts at $0.00. Some of the trader's songs get put into a 'for-sale' status. Each time someone downloads one of the songs the file is deleted from the trader's hard drive and the account increases $0.01. When a song is downloaded the account gets reduced $0.01.
One problem would be that the songs would need to be purchased separately, can't delete them from the original CD. Another problem would be how to prove the songs were legal to begin with. If the system were set up there would have to be some way to prevent abuse.
I assume the RIAA would claim that copies could be made of the songs even if they were offered and sold with the system. What's the difference with selling any other copyright item like a book?
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.
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
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.
The critical difference between CleanFilms and Cringley's stupid idea is that CleanFilms has that 1 to 1 ratio thing going.
For each movie they give to a customer/"co-owner", they've purchased one DVD from the publisher.
Cringley's plan is to somehow achieve a 1:200000 ratio. Buy one copy of each CD, and somehow let multiple shareholders play several of them at the same time.
That's just illegal. One entity (single person, or a corporation) is allowed to buy a CD and make backup copies. But if you play more than 1 of those at a time, you're breaking the law- because playing it isn't a "backup" use.
Cringley's idea is as dumb as suggesting Merril Lynch can buy one copy of Microsoft(tm) Windows XP(r) and install it on 9000 PCs, because they're all property of 1 corporation.
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
So tell us, how long have you been involved with Amway?
This is a pyramid scheme. The problem is, it only works as long people are buying into the bottom. While I agree that there are lots of alternative ways to sell music, this isn't one of them.
If I'm Joe Indie, why would I want to let someone else take half the profit for "distributing" my music (which amounts to keeping it on their hard drive and running Kazaa or whatever), when I could do the same thing myself and get all of the profit?
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!
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
In fact, that's why Justin designed Gnutella the way he did - no company in the middle. I am of the opinion, however, that decentralized P2P will, long term, only be used for things that are illegal. It's inefficient by definition compared to a backbone network. Recent attempts to make distributed P2P be more like a backbone network come dangerously close to making the network attackable, I think. True anonymity (freenet) under the current Internet must be more expensive than traceability. As long as this is true, anonymous P2P will only be used for things where anonymity is more important than efficiency - i.e., for illegal things like piracy.
But, once you get into morality I think the tradition in US copyright is that piracy isn't immoral (whatever the RIAA would tell you aside). The Constitution's enshrinement of intellectual property was controversial at the time and is entirely pragmatic: It is "for the advancement of the useful arts and sciences," not because copyright owners have some moral right to control their works. Tonight I've merely been discussing what the law is. I've made no assertions about what it should be.
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?
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.
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
"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