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Cringely Tries Snapster 2.0
Fungii writes "Following up from this story last week, here is an update on Cringely's site about the snapster idea. He writes about some of the more interesting reader responses to the idea. Raises some interesting questions."
What ramifications will this have in the consumer marketplace?
So... he's writing... about what we said, when he wrote to us... about what he said?
.....
1.) Write Article
2.) Get Feedback
3.) Write Article
Ow. I think I've gone cross-eyed. : )
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
If this actually holds up in court. An amusing thought experiment though..
Fair use isn't actually fair.. I don't think RIAA, with all its money and lawyers will let this slip through..
Though of course, I hope it does..
I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
I really like the second version he's come up with. I think the first version was just way too risky legally. This version sounds really solid though IMO.
I would love to see this cross-apply to different industries as well. Essentially it's just a digital library. I can't imagine why it wouldn't be legal to operate snapster 2.0.
I for one would join for certain.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
He almost has it there. Maybe more like the system that Lloyd's of London has where the members of Lloyds are responsible for the loses of the company is more like it.
Snapster sounds like a good idea, but the RIAA lawyers will fight it tooth and nail, which would be a problem regardless of whose side the law is actually on... a netflix for CDs would be much the same, except there would be higher distribution costs (offset by lower legal bills). Of course, they would have to make it clear that you shouldn't rent a CD and then rip it to MP3 before sending it back (wink wink).
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
You don't think that if he exploits this 'loophole', it will get patched immediately by the RIAA? If anything, legislation or rules preventing this 'loophole' will emerge.
KARMA TAG! You're it.
Interestingly, if you rent a DVD from them you get an edited DVD and a copy of the original DVD in a tamper-evident container which you are not to open. That way they ensure that they own one original copy for each edited copy and that you can't watch both at the same time. More importantly, you can't watch the edited one while your neighbor watches the origianl that you lent him. This is very similar to the ideas that Cringely puts forth in the Snapster 2.0 idea, except for the editing part. The fair use and mutal ownership aspects though are identical.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Danger! Danger Will Robinson!
You've used the word 'theft' in a thread on music piracy. Expect 500 Slashbots to jump down your throat telling you that downloading music without paying for it is not the same thing as theft adn another 500 to jump on them saying they're just doing that to try and justify their actions.
Abort! Abort!
So ... are you saying you do like the idea? Or you don't?
KARMA TAG! You're it.
His plan of locking physical access to the CD's has some practical problems. Let's say that you have 1,000,000 users. Let's suppose that each user has 2 cd/dvd rom drives they can put cd's in for access. That leaves us with 2,000,000 CDs peak. It seems like alot of CD's but how do you ensure that there aren't 2,000,000 Britney Spears CD's on the network instead of songs you'd actually want to hear.
This is the end Beautiful friend This is the end My only friend, the end It's sad to see the RIAA go away :'-(
YAFIRL (Yet another Free iPods referral link)
If I check out a CD from my public library, do they have to pay royalties every time someone checks it out?
If not, then could they make a MP3 and loan it out to one person at a time? Download of course, but only one patron at a time.
Now just find some kind soul to build a non-profit organization, buy and burn lots of CDs, and maybe this might work.
If my 4 yr old wants to play the same song 50 times everyday for 2 weeks (week days only). Is that 500 plays at .05 per play = $25?
That is the model the record companies want to have.
Embed wireless DRM in everything, you have access
to every song ever written for .05 each.
Every time you play it.
is the same problem mp3.com had when the riaa successfully sued them for their virtual music locker. the idea, was that mp3.com's software would scan a CD to verify you owned it, and afterwards you could listen to the songs on it anywhere, without actually having to rip or upload the mp3s yourself because mp3.com had a master copy. IIRC the courts decided this wasn't airtight enough even with random "please insert the CD again so we can verify you weren't just borrowing it from the library" checks.
if anyone tries snapster 2 they'll lose in court for the same reason...
That depends on whether or not Snapster can make enough money quickly enough to hire better lawyers than the RIAA can.
Doubtful.
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
I will ride naked down a rocky cliff on a bicycle with no seat.
if you're riding off a cliff, neither clothing nor a seat will save you.
riding a chopper, though, will increase your karma and that alone could let you pull through.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
While this may allow others to download and listen to a song, then listen to it then notify snapster that they are done with it so that copy of it can can be "freed up", it does not allow the downloader to make a copy of a song.
If this was not a streaming only service then
RIAA would argue that people are copying the songs, and thus violating the copyright, which is most likely what will be happening.
Another problem with is if I have a copy of a disc, and I register it with snapster so others can "borrow" it. If I dont get a notification that it is currently lent out I (or someone else) will be in violation if I listen to it. I can not belive that I will tell snapster every disc I bring into the car or play.
It's an intresting idea, but I dont think it will ever fly.
Are you paranoid if you know that they just want to know everything you say and do?
the artists get next to nothing now with the existing system, so this isn't a detriment for them. the RIAA should get off it's high horse about they are key to the economy. a telecom has more revenue in a week than the music industry does for the year. the music industry does have a talent for turning no-talent clowns into celebrities, though. but we don't need any more of those.
...it's called a library.
"The Pope! And how many divisions does he have?"
- Josef Stalin
He lost it a long time ago.
How is his suggestion theft? For every simultaneous copy being played of a given CD, there is a physical CD bought and paid for not in use.
In other words, the physical media is still payed for, it's just not being used. The digital copy is. And only one digital copy is allowed to be used in the system at a time per physical media purchased.
Better yet, people can just mail their CD's to the library, confident that should they want to use it, it'll still be there.
You'll need a biggish room to put them all in.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I wouldn't be surprised to see someone make this system, and then to see the RIAA use all of its immense financial resources to pressure Congress into changing the "fair use" laws so that it specifically says you personally have to own the CD to hear a song... so much for radio if that happens!
stuff |
most musicians don't either. they make money by performing it infront of other people for tips, a flat fee, or a percentage of the ticket.
In other words, the RIAA could lobby for a law change that effects one little aspect (factor) of Snapster, which could cause the whole mess to come into question, which leads to failure.
Fail, Snapster will. The dark side I sense in you.....
It's not flamebait, because I have absolutely no expectation that anyone will flame me in his defense.
/.'s goofy moderation/karma groupthink system.
It's not a troll or offtopic either. It's an opinion. If the mods dont like it, overrated is the only fair option.
Not that I really care about
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If you look at the fair use subsections of US copyright law, you see that there is very clearly a difference between individual fair use and fair use by a library or archive.
Instead of arguing that P2P should be allowed as inidividual fair use and that P2P users are patrons of an archive, I think the better analogy is that each P2P node IS an archive and should be allowed to lend to other archives.
According to the law, one copy can of a copyrighted work can still be made specifically for lending to other archives.
The stipulations are that the archives must be without commercial advantage, open to the public and retain any copyright notices.
Now, the one copy part might not fit Kazaa, but a differen type of P2P app could meet this requirement. It might not be as efficient, but it would still be P2P.
Who is this guy? Sounds like just another techno-pundit who is wrong 50% of the time.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Anyone want to lend me 2 million? We'll probably still be able to keep a tidy profit when the RIAA breaks it up or makes us bend to their will.
-- Ted tsikora@powerusersbbs.com
Disclaimer: I look forward to his weekly posts. I may not agree with everything he says but I'm there everyweek.
With that said, I respect that he is willing to "stick his neck out" in an attempt to solve a problem. Given the response to his initial
idea, I feel many others share my desire for something new. And if his "ideas" somehow cause even the slightest improvements for the artists or
consumer, then its worth it.
Also its alot easier to slam him with vulger language then it is to take something that he is attempting and make the effort to help solve the problem.
For me, I've stop buying RIAA contracted artists directly. If I want something, Half.com, local used shops or go see them live. Everything else is independent.
So to be honest, I hope he keeps trying. Heck maybe rev 12.0 will be the next "it" we need.
What this really is: Organized Fair Use on a massive scale. Good luck to him.
So where does that money come from? Once you drive CD manufacturers out of business, this royalty scheme will be the dominant one. I don't recall the fund plan having any means of generating capital beyond the initial offering, so any royalties that come out, come from that original bag o' cash, which will dwindle faster and faster.
This plan continues to look like a lot of hand-waving to me.
My idea is start up an online music store where people buy physical CD's. Once they buy the CD, they can also download the MP3 files associated with it, which is legally within their rights as new owners of the CD. The physical CD won't ship for 72 hours, so they have 72 hours to cancel their order. Then charge a 10% restocking fee if they cancel within the 72 hours, and request they delete any downloaded mp3's. Of course no one will delete the mp3's, so effectively they will have bought mp3's to the CD for 10% of the physical CD cost. And it is all legal. Even if the record companies choose to not sell them additional albums, they could buy them from individuals and sell them. A couple of CD's should last a while as long as people are canceling within the 72 hour period.
Fox
Despite all his conspiratorial talk and financial maneuverings, what Cringely is basically talking about is an online music library, like the one you go to to borrow books. You listen to music by electronically checking it out, and no one else can listen to it while it is checked out. The question is, do the Fair Use provisions and First Sale doctrines that protect physical book libraries also protect online music libraries?
Well, it's up to the judge. Both sides have a strong argument:
In defense of Snapster, ordinary libraries are definitely legal, and the doctrines that protect one could be argued to protect the other.
On the other hand, the mp3.com precedent is not sympathetic to the effort, and the ease of making a copy of a streaming download might suggest to the judge that Snapster is yet another means for facilitating copyright infringement. There's clear precedent for banning programs that do that (napster, morpheus), so once infringement is seen as the primary purpose, it's all over.
On the other hand, physical libraries permit patrons to borrow CDs, and these can easily be ripped. Such does not make infringement the primary purpose of borrowing CDs, as evidenced by the fact that libraries are still legal.
So the million dollar question is whether Snapster is seen as a scheme to facilitate infringement or a legitimate library. It's up to the judge, really.
The upshot is that Cringely ought to drop his conspiratorial muttering and winking, and he REALLY needs to pick a different name for it. Why not something like "Music Library"?
so now everything this guy does is going to be a headline on slashdot? what makes this guys opinion more important than yours or mine? i have nothing against him i just dont get it...
I haven't read the article. Having said that, it would only work if its not for profit. Check the rules.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Huh, I didn't read the first snapster article, because I doubted it would have plausible ideas. This sounds interesting, basically in the electronic database, there would be one physical copy of the song that could only be used by one person at a time. This seems to make it legal - fair use is preserved, and communal ownership is possible.
I dunno about it being cheaper than the other ways of buying the music in many cases. Particularly if the music is popular: In that case, many people would want to access the music at once, requiring many physical copies to be purchased. You would always be walking a fine line between providing a useful service that is cheaper than outright ownership, and annoying people with a busy signal. Plus, as you bought more copies, the cost would go up.
Where this could really shine is building archives of music where overall volume of the archive makes it more valuable than being able to get to a specific song. There has been a lot of music made in the past, an enormous quantity really. Classical music fans would doubtless appreciate the ability to access recordings of as wide a variety of music as possible. Getting the latest hit single would not be a priority, and there are frequently multiple recordings of popular works anyway. Most other works would not have a much competition for access at any given time.
Building an archive that people would want to access would have to mean an archive that would rival any individual's collection of recordings, while costing significantly less. But if this holds water legally, it might be possible. It would take a lot of cdrom drives though, unless the media was transferred to disk, and the physical copies were merely tallied and stored.
Right now it is 1 physical copy per 1 playing copy. However the copyright is attached to whole items which may be fragmented. Consider taking a book and breaking it into chapters. You can spread the chapters amongs all your friends and everyone can read the book at the same time, just be in different places in the narrative.
Already the CD's can be broken into tracks. And the system tokenized on individual tracks. With a faster managment system the tracks could be divided in sections of seconds each. This would allow for a decrease in the number of physical copies required.
There is a good hole in this system. I can tell it that I physically own 50 copies of all the top 100 CDs out there. I will be paid $0.01 for each play from my (nonexistant) copies. I, "the supercriminal that I am", will earn money for giving away the virtual rights to something that I do not own. I'm sure it isn't a huge money incentive, but it does give incentive for people to lie. For whatever this is worth.
Onto a cross with the netflix model, this could be interesting. Think about Netflix, but instead of physically sending DVDs through the mail, it makes them available for download to broadband users. And then add to that system that the DVD doesn't just have to be in the company's inventory, but users can give up usage rights (of existing titles) to the central server for it to be farmed out to other users. [Or a more complex system where a user could actually upload a different DVD to put into the system.] I'd love it.
You could control the download quality setting, perhaps. With broadband, either way, you're going to beat the time it takes for Netflix to ship you a DVD. So it is like netflix... only faster. And potentially less wait for hot titles. And a chance to earn money on your existing DVDs.
I think he may have a viable system legally. However, it doesnt let a subscriber or user walk away with the song. Cont put it on the mp3 player or on the HD!
People want to "have" their music, not just be able to play it.
Why shoult I pay to listen to what I can hear on the radio for free? Ill pay $.99 to walk away with it though.
MMH
The method presented in the second article (only allowing one check out at a time) is what I thought Cringely meant when I read the first article.
I don't see why it shouldn't work, after all Apple is paving the way for electronic music distribution, as a store. Now we just have to implement the electronic library.
It could be as simple as time stamping an expiration time in the file. Of course you would need a plug-in for various players (winamp, etc) to "enforce" the time stamp. If you get two requests simultaneously one has to wait the three minutes until the first stamp has expired and then fire off the file to the next listener. If you get more than some set number of people in the queue, creating too long of a wait, the server could be set to place an order for another hard copy of the disk.
This would create the problem of winding up with 50 copies of the latest #1 chart hit, but in a few weeks, when the online demand has ebbed, you could resell the "used" disks to people who want to buy them at a lower price. (A good deal for the buyer as the "used" disk would probably still be in the wrapper!)
The biggest problem would probably be the necessity to keep detailed logs of what was distributed and when, so that when (not if!) you are dragged into court by the RIAA you could prove that you had purchased a physical disk for every concurrent user.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
In the event that you are not first in the future, could you provide video instead of still pictures?
Thanks.
I'm an egotistical prick who thinks the tinfoil hat is a bad idea.
"NetCDs" would actually be more open to liability than Snapster 2.0. the NetCDs type system would be open to the charge that it facilitates copying, since many (most) users would in fact rip the CDs to their HDDs. the Snapster 2.0 model, however, avoids this by using a streaming approach, ala Songster which is clearly legal. As long as every copy being streamed is only being streamed to one client at a time, and the technology can actually enforce this, Snapster would merely be doing what Songster is, but buying the rights to music by buying actual CDs rather than direct rights from the RIAA.
Of course the eventual downfall of this system is that either CSS-like encryption is used or CDs become software programs that play music, and the EULA indicates that Snapster 2.0 is an unpermitted use.
U.S. War Crimes blog. Email for free Mandriva support.
I generally enjoy reading Cringely's columns, but this time he's lost himself in the details.
Any way you cut it, he's trying to devise a system where people can listen to music for less money than it would cost them if they had to buy those CDs at a store.
Fair use is not about saving people money. It's about making sure that once a person has purchased something (in this case a CD), that person then can use that thing fully.
Fair use ensures that ownership of a CD results in the owner being able to derive full benefits of owning that CD. Those benefits certainly do NOT include giving copies of the CD to other people. It really is that simple.
There is very little difference between "streaming" and "file sharing": once the music is coming through your sound card, you can save it to disk, hence have received a shared copy of the original file. How you share the music really doesn't matter: buying a CD does not entitle one to give out copies of the CD. It DOES entitle you to make copies for your own personal use, such as keeping a copy in your car and another copy in your home and another copy in your basement for backup. Or whatever you want to do with it, for YOUR OWN BENEFIT.
It's been a good run, but honestly, who didn't think "this is too good to be true", the first time they saw all the free music on Napster? Well, it was too good to be legal.
I could care less about the RIAA, but regardless of who's selling the music, buying a CD ensures benefits to YOU, not to anyone else (unless you actually transfer ownership of the original CD and any copies to the other person).
Thoughts?
That's why he works for PBS.
He literally cannot get anyone to publish him without pointing a gun to their head.
Mutual funds are regulated by the Investment Company Act of 1940. To simplify a bit, a mutual fund can only invest in securities; it cannot actually run an operating company.
First there is the problem that Snapster is not planning on buying any securities. By law, this must be a mutual funds main business. A CD is not a security.
Second, Snapster is really going to be an operating business, which a mutual fund cannot run. A rental company, like Blockbuster, cannot organize itself as a mutual fund. Even without the distribution of physical tapes, a satellite company, like DirectTV, cannot organize itself as a mutual fund. An ISP cannot organize itself as a mutual fund.
Snapster 2.0 is going to need servers, databases, system administrators, etc. This will make it an operating company, not a mutual fund.
A mutual fund run business functions to the extend needed to track shareholders and make investment decisions. Snapster's lending of CDs goes way beyond this.
First, I think Snapster 2.0 might appeal as a middle-road of the services out there. The most profitable target audience would be users who listen to lots of music but not for a long time (e.g., to try out new bands or following fads).
But this is really not much more than a combination of the two types of services already out there (but a co-op model instead of top-down). In one corner are monthly-subscription services that offer a limited number of downloads. In the other, iTMS which charges per download, and then it's yours.
Snapster 2.0 instead has a subscription fee (share purchase) which determines how many CDs (or number of songs) you can keep out at a time. Then, each download costs a small amount of money to cover bandwidth and other expenses. You'd need to have some sort of protection to keep from CDs being locked up forever from users who pay once and then don't use the CD for a while, which would keep others from using it.
The physical-distribution record companies would fight hard, too. It would be only a matter of time before Snapster 2.0 would contract directly with artists and become another record company.
And, only music that is popular would really benefit since niche groups would only get a CD or two in licenses purchased.
Finally, how would you go about deciding which new licenses to purchase? If all CDs are taken, purchase another when requested? Since you ultimately cannot return the original purchase to the artist, this would end up losing money.
Somehow you would have to buy a new album only for each new share, but it might be difficult to decide which to buy. This would mean a critical mass of initial shareholders would have to join to make the library large enough to attract further shareholders.
I think I'd invest in it, but not my life savings.
You are right about the effects of piracy, but the long term effects of Snapster 2.0 would be the opposite of what you describe.
About ten dollars of the cost of a CD ends up being getting the CD on a crowded shelf at Wal-Mart through big bucks advertising and promoting, and then there is the cost of physical distribution.
An electronic distribution method would greatly lower the cost of an album by allowing more of the direct profit to go directly to the artist. Much smaller sums of money could be spent advertising because you don't have to spend big advertising bucks just to get your product on the store shelf. An electronic store has no physical space constraints such as Wal-Mart is prone to.
Make no mistake, an electronic distribution model where the artist cashes in directly and the middleman is eliminated is the future. It promotes GREATER DIVERSITY of music because you are not limited to physical shelf space, and artists reap more direct monetary rewards from music downloads than they would record sales through the RIAA.
The only real losers are the record companies, who can help increase the GDP of the U.S.A. by doing something else. And if I save $10 bucks on a CD, I will spend that $10 bucks somewhere else, and of course the government will tax it. The whole "tax revenues" argument is ridiculous.
Fox
Yes. Libraries are organized fair use. This is a library with digital distribution of the media, and virtual rights transferring (to and from the central system).
I thought his first plan was just dumb, this new one is mind-blowing idiotic!
Let's assume, for the sake of arguement, that what he proposes is legal. That is, a company can exist that owns 1 of each CD, and as a shareholder in this company you are given access to download an "archive" of a song or CD in such a way as to guarentee that you are the only person who is listening to a given song or CD at that time.
What would this accomplish? So say Metallica realeases a new song and 100,000 people want to listen to it. Get in line. Assuming a 5 minute song, that last person in line has to wait 500,000 mintues (347 days!) just to hear it. In the mean time, everyone else has only heard that song once!
Who, in their right mind, would sign up for that?
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
As previously mentioned, this is very analagous to the cleanflicks case in some ways. Cleanflicks does it in a "cleaner" way, however, in shipping the two physical copies together.
Here there is a remote physical copy and one other remote copy - e.g., a digital copy available on the Snapster system, a digital copy on the home users system, a digital copy on the users Ipod, etc.
From what I know, the "remote control of a physical copy" has not been decided in a court, and that could be the rope for the noose. It would be more interesting to devise a system that comes closer - like Cleanflicks does not send two DVDs, but keeps one in a lockbox. That would provide legitimacy for the "remote control" theory.
It could then be extrapolated to users who are contractually bound to not use their physical copy at home while it is checked out.
Okay, so in v2 there's supposed to be one physical copy for every digital one. I wonder how this would work in practice, in the sense that the most popular songs would invetably run into problems with being not available, and the less popular songs having too many cds required to purchase for too few plays. So the company would have to spend a huge amount of money keeping the most popular songs in stock, and waste money keeping less popular songs around just to satisfy the eclectic folks ... which sounds like ... record store. As soon as you get into record store type inventory a lot of the advantages of digital media go away. I think at the rate Cringley is going, he'll realize the best way for this to work is to do what NetFlix is already doing, except with cds. That way you have physical media, you have borrowing that's limited to one user per cd, and hey ... if anybody's ripping those cds thats the customers problem not the company.
I think there should be digital libraries. The traditional kind where you have to bring items back. You could for example have to right to have 10 CDs worth of music at any time, or maybe two or three computer games, or a couple of books. We know it's possible by mail (NetFlix) it should be even simpler electronically.
All that is needed is a DRM solution that lets you check-out and check-in items. The provider then needs sufficient licenses to cope with parallel use. For anything that's not particularly new, i'm sure there are never more than a couple of hundred people world-wide listening to the same track at the same time...
If you have 100 Mn subscribers for say 10 dollars/month you have a lot of money to buy licenses (+profit!)
Ponxx
Article : "the only businesses that mutual funds are not allowed to hold shares in are mutual funds."
Somebody better tell that to Vanguard quick!
he gets slashdotted all the time.
A download system that benefits the artists more via micropayments, and I mean less than the $1 or so AppleTunes charges, can end this nonsense about getting around RIAA and so on. Anyone not willing to pay no more and probably less than $0.50 for a single is a jerk who probably deserves to have their hard drive invaded.
Of course this would not apply to recordings to artists currently under contract, but so be it. (Those contracted artists who complain about losing money are idiots. They signed that opportunity away long and should shut up).
Ideas like Cringely's sound good on the surface but seem to be nothing more than instigating rock throwing fights with the RIAA and other idiots (politicians, some artists, etc) who share their philosophy. Let's move forward.
But just occasionally I wonder who the fuck half these people are that Slashdot stalks with such regularity. Cringely who? Cringely Whiplash? Or am I thinking of something else?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Like any member of the RIAA gives a rat's ass about artists, creativity, governments, taxes, economies, consumers, diversity, or... oh wait. They might give a rat's ass about record producers.
I have two words to illustrate this point: boy bands. Any organization that gets some of the vanilla, mindless, over-produced, talentless, 2.5 minute pieces of crap out there onto the radio clearly desires to benefit no one but themselves.
There's one thing Sean Fanning, Bob Cringely, and everyone who has put forth an effort to do to the RIAA what they've done to use for decades all have in common. They are all simply agents of karmic justice.Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
"funny doesn't add to Karma anymore"
when did that happen?
I'm screwed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
1) The "borrowing" model reminds me of the Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice bit in the climax of Trading Spaces (Murphy/Ackroyd).
2) The record labels do have one function that makes them a "necessary evil" : tour support. Bands can't really break into a national scene without playing outside of their regions, and that in America gets *expensive*.
Even a modestly popular and established band like Marillion, who when they tour small clubs selling out 600-1200 seaters throughout the states, will *lose* $30,000. Generally, that $30K is covered by the record label (part of a secondary "advance"), who account for it in the hopes that it will be made up for in increased record sales due to the promotion.
3) There's one other Force against Nature in all of this, one whose legal budget alone is worth more than Snapster could ever hope to raise : ASCAP. They won't go for this. ASCAP wants to and WILL take a cut from every copy, not just the original purchase.
In the example of a clothing store in a shopping mall playing the local top 40 station, ASCAP collects first from the station's purchase of the CD, second from the radio station's own broadcast license, and third from the clothing store itself to have a "public performance" license.
Out of an annual income of $8.6 billion, ASCAP claims to give 84% of all its income to the copyright holders. Sounds great, until you realize just how many lawyers can be bought with 16% of 8 billion dollars...With less than one year's "profits", ASCAP could buy controlling interest in Snapster 2.0 and shut it down in a heartbeat. Or just sue it into oblivion until a broadcast license rate is reached that makes operating it prohibitive.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
I agree with you that this is theft and I agree with you that this makes some people to loose money. I find hard to believe that the efects are catastrophic but again, I don't know any figures and you may as well be right.
What I don't believe is that this causes less diversity. The music business is as industrial as food processing and unfortunately this is based on recipes. Two years ago everything was latino. No matter how good or bad. Now it's dance I believe (I'm not following the trend).
Diversity is exactly what file sharing offers to someone like me.
Those of you who liked Napster, why aren't you using Filetopia? http://www.filetopia.org/
It's a lot like Napster, with a file sharing system, search engine, online friends list, message boards, instant messaging, chat, etc., plus it uses strong ciphers and public key techniques to keep you anonymous.
Is there some reason this program isn't catching on?
I really think you will have great problems convincing thousands (or millions) of people to essentially give up the ability to play at will the tracks of the CDs they own. Yeah, if everyone suddenly became part of the collective there would probably be enough overlap so that no one would ever really have to wait very long. But for the more obscure tracks there could be a definite shortage of slots and the possibility could be very real that the owner of a CD would be unable to play his library for a significant time period until someone checks something in.
And, this all completely ignores the problem of enforcement -- how do you:
If courts find that there is significant or rampant evidence of these protections failing, then the legitimacy of the plan really takes a hit. And let's face it, people are used to copying MP3 tracks at will, so why would they ever be inclined to voluntarily restrict themselves (and pay for the right to do so)?
I'll admit, v2.0 is a lot closer to legal than 1.0 -- in fact it would actually BE legal if you could enforce the above restrictions... but human nature being what it is, I wouldn't count on it. Finally, to get mass appeal you would have to stay clear from proprietary formats or DRM, and that usually means that your chances of enforcement through software go way down.
At the end of the day, this is just a very efficient library. However, it achieves this efficiency by eliminating the one thing that guarantees the legitimacy of the library: the fact that the items are physical units that pass from hand to hand, so that the one-copy-per-use notion is enforced. By doing away with the physical item, you open up a huge degree of efficiency and scale, yet you also make it very easy to cheat the system... and at then end of the day there's no way to ensure compliance, so this will fail along with all the Napsters and MP3.com's of the world.
Since they are "real tangible" things, like books, only 1 subscriber can borrow a CD at a time.
So let's automatize the lending process: only one subscriber can lend a MP3 at a time; at that time, the MP3 becomes locked. It's only when he checks it back that it is unlocked and someone else can borrow it out.
What he does with the MP3 when he has it his is own business (and in Canada, making a copy for your own private use is LEGAL - that's how I made my own MP3 collection).
Of course, if some americans would borrow MP3s, and it's illegal for them to copy them in the US, well, that's a problem for the US, no? And given how the US/Canadian networks are intermingled, you can't be sure packets won't go through the US. As a matter of fact, to go to my library, eight blocks from my home, packets go through New-York City:
traceroute www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca
traceroute to montrealweb.ville.montreal.qc.ca (65.39.219.34), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 Montreal-HSE-pppxxxx.sympatico.ca (65.95.xx.xx) 7.259 ms 7.217 ms 7.52 ms
2 dis4-montrealak-Vlan200.in.bellnexxia.net (64.230.237.130) 7.986 ms 7.829 ms 7.497 ms
3 core1-montrealak-Gigabite2-1.in.bellnexxia.net (64.230.240.61) 7.525 ms 8.529 ms 7.509 ms
4 core1-newyork83-pos1-2.in.bellnexxia.net (64.230.240.78) 15.416 ms 16.171 ms 15.896 ms
5 HSE-Sherbrooke-ppp98979.qc.sympatico.ca (64.230.223.118) 16.103 ms 16.248 ms 16.18 ms
6 208.50.13.129 (208.50.13.129) 17.011 ms 15.065 ms 15.398 ms
7 pos2-0-2488M.cr1.NYC1.gblx.net (67.17.64.145) 15.663 ms 15.865 ms 15.641 ms
8 pos0-0-2488M.cr1.JFK1.gblx.net (64.214.65.162) 15.161 ms 15.854 ms 15.653 ms
9 so0-0-0-2488M.ar1.JFK1.gblx.net (64.214.65.198) 16.12 ms so3-0-0-2488M.ar1.JFK1.gblx.net (64.214.65.202) 15.865 ms 15.664 ms
10 Peer-1.so-2-0-0.ar1.JFK1.gblx.net (67.17.161.118) 17.287 ms 17.566 ms 17.64 ms
11 OC48POS3-0.mtl-core-a.peer1.net (216.187.123.233) 25.005 ms 24.602 ms 26.489 ms
12 Gig5-0.mtl-gsr-a.peer1.net (216.187.90.6) 26.721 ms 25.644 ms 25.271 ms
13 65.39.219.252 (65.39.219.252) 26.458 ms 26.752 ms 26.453 ms
So, this clearly shows that the system is definitely b0rk3n, and that scheme could really force a redesign of the whole IP hoopla...
You don't have a girlfriend do you?
Sure,
it's all the evil piracy, it might not have anything to do with the fact that:
1. The music industry though they had found a licensese to print money by hyping clone bands.
2. They completely missed the possiblity of digitial distribution and are fighting it still tooth and nail.
3. They depreciated their own product by creating throw away stars.
How many musicians that are new on the market these days are you going to listen to? Assuming right now you bought the audio medium and can still play it back 10 years from now? I think there won't be a lot, throughout the 90s the companies set themselves up for a fall.
Piracy is a great argument to deflect from their own greed.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
And how do you ensure that the original is "not in use"? Even if you require all shareholders to run some kind of gatekeeper app on their computers to prevent playback of an in-use disc, that app will have absolutely no effect on home stereos, portable disc players, car systems, etc. This is where I see the biggest flaw in this proposal. {Jonathan}
Why is this so complicated? If you have the money, compete for the friggin artist contracts and you can do what you want.
Quit trying to screw the labels, if you can do it better or cheaper, then just do it.
Everything else is BS.
"For Snapster 2.0, then, the purchased copies act as masters that can be copied under fair use. But there can only be one copy in use at a time for every physical disk in the system. If 10,000 shareholders wanted to play the same song at the same time, we'd need to buy 10,000 CDs OR borrow 10,000 CDs. To do this (borrowing not buying), Snapster would have to be a big database that includes both music and ownership rights to that music. "
So if n people are playing a song simultaneously, the collective needs to own n cds. "Investors" thereby save money theoretically since no listener linstens to all his cds simultaneously, therefore an advantage is gained by sharing the cds you own and are not listening to with someone else in exchange for his cds. The question he didn't answer well is who pays for the cds? Buying 1 copy of every cd isn't enough anymore, even though he still suggests doing it.
It seems to me that a monthly fee needs to be established for snapster 2.0 that produces enough capital to buy the requisite number of cds to adequately satisfy demand. This system is actually nearly identical to Rhapsody, especially when DRM is forced on it to prevent people from cheating.
Vote for Pedro
Check the FAQ. Apparently "you have to be smart, not just a smart-ass." Of course, the trolls have all been quick to point out that CmdrTaco was never smart, just a smart-ass.
Once you've bought a CD, send it to Snapster - this would then be added to the repository (or the number of copies would be incremented). This proves that you've bought a real copy of the CD.
You could keep the case (The best bit of a CD! - I like keeping them around as eye candy).
This idea is stupid. He clearly does not understand how music is consumed. Sales of a CD normally peak right after initial release when lots of people want to listen to the album. Over time, people start listening to other things and the amount of time they spend listening to the album slowly tapers off. In order for this system to work, you'd have to buy hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of copies of hit albums to satisfy the desire of everyone who wants to listen at the same time.
:-)
Independent of that, I don't think a single artist would support this. Some artists do make lots of money from CD sales, and even those who don't are not going to be willing to give up their royalties.
This is just another example of someone who knows nothing about the industry (or the law, as he has admitted) commenting on a problem he does not understand. Of course, this *is* slashdot
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_6/kelsey/
The street performer protocol (I'm sure has been mentioned before)
Since copyrights are simply an artifical inflation of demand by creating a monopoly, I think the more approriate solution (as suggested by this article) would be to have people invest in the copyright's production/outcome before it get's released. Then when it hits the public domain, it is public domain. Everyone has access to it. It's an elegant solution, but almost impossible to implent because the only people that will be really hurt by it is record labels.
(When actually they can profit just as much off this system, by changing they're bussiness model to back artists more.)
Would this system of ownership tokens raise as many lawyer's eyebrows if it were scaled back from "own every cd" to smaller groups?
You could have universities with their own group ownership servers or genre specific collections based around appropriate music websites.
Even just the ability to set this up for a group of friends who all have large music collections would be rather interesting, especially if the token system could follow individual tracks as well as whole cds.
The basis of this system is that since we have a fair-use right to listen to our music at any time, and we are only actually listening to a single cd less than 1/100th of that time we need to we are wasting money. So instead we can share that cd with 100 people and take full advantage of it (actually we would need more than one cd depending on peak listening hours and popularity of certain songs)
The problem with this system is that if it ever took off, and was actually maintained legal in court, it would mean that there would be a lot fewer CD's being sold, since we are squeezing more use out of them. Therefore, as demand decreased, prices would rise, since an artist would have charge more money for a CD to make as much money as he used to. The result - it becomes too expensive for a single person to buy a CD, and and the only economical way to listen to music would be to belong to some sort of 'Snapster Fund', which probably wouldn't be that less expensive than it used to cost to buy CD's, and possibly more due to the overhead costs in running it.
So in effect it would not decrease the cost of music in the long run, and would simple make it manditory to go through this additional middleman. Note this plan does nothing to get rid of the RIAA - heck if they couldn't beat it they'd probably end of buying it. (/me shudders)
If I stream directly from the physical CD, and guarantee that only one client can receive the stream, then I'm effectively using the internet as a glorified audio cable. Surely this must be legal! As soon as it stops getting ACKs to the streaming packets, it stops sending packets, and somebody else can access the CD. Of course, it requires a massive jukebox somewhere with enough copies of CDs to keep concurrent requests happy. But really, it's just the online equivalent of a library. If the call in an "online library" instead of naming after a service the courts have already decided infringed on copyright, it just might be successful. Has anybody patented online libraries yet?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
i just figured out a flaw to this system for any types of item cd/dvd/software... given that you are giving up ownership of your cd to another party, what's the stop a member of the RIAA/MPAA/individual/etc to just collect on their ownership rights to the item in question. They could pay whatever nominal fee is associated with this system and then just request everything and decide not to share it back out. Given that in order for this system to be legal, full ownership must be transferred to the current user, they should be within their rights to force you to give back "their" cd.
This model sounds very much like that of something another company is doing.
Console Classix is providing a similar service in the emulation industry. They have a physical repository of old Atari2600, Sega Genesis, NES and SNES cartridges. All of these carts have been digitally imaged into a server. By logging into their server you can "check out" a particular cartridge and play it using their client client software. The central server locks that cartridge so no one else can play it at that time. When you close the client software the central server releases the locked cart for someone else to play.
So far they have caught the attention of Nintendo of America Inc. but NOA has not pursued any sort of Cease and Desist or any other legal manuvers.
I like Cringely's idea, but I would propose that, as part of the start-up capital, the mutual fund should hire a few well-known groups to each put out a CD in order to start sales off with something the RIAA can't fight legally. This way, if the RIAA comes up with some sort of miraculous legal victory, Snapster could work towards luring away the artists, thereby crippling the RIAA. If they could make $1.50 on a $3 CD, odds are the RIAA would lose enough musicians that they would either go out of business, or lose enough power in the music market to make things competitive once again.
...but rather than just admit I am a dork and move on, I am going to PROVE I am a dork by proposing Snapster 2.0...
It's hard not to like this guy, isn't it?
Next week I'm just going to have to keep hitting "refresh" on his page.
I'd like comments on my idea, everyone please check out my journal,http://slashdot.org/journal.pl?op=display I'll also post my idea now.
Please review it and find its flaws.
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?
I think its better than snapster because there is no central company involved.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Better yet, why can't you just chop up the digital media into convienent byte size chunks and float a version of multicast underwhich the clients help certify that the same byte isn't played at the same time by different clients. Combine that with a p2p database, and player that helps find more stuff one likes based on past stuff one lilked, and allows a person to add their media to the digital collection by agreeing to let the system lock them out when in use by other users, customizing how much can be "checked out" from them at any one time.
Like sharing different pages of the same song with different friends, only at (potentially) superluminal speeds. Just in time network deliveries don't seem *that* far fetched to me.
Oh, I was going to make a joke about how a 100 Manganese users wouldn't be as good as a single mega-user, but then I realized it was unfunny and kind of pathetic.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=72869&cid=6569 926
The RIAA still gets paid, and still exists. This is bad for musicians, bad for the industry and bad for us. I want the RIAA to die.
Second, a central company is involved, while this does make sense, what happens when that central company becomes too powerful?
My solution is to decentralize everything including the business model. Check out my journal for information on my idea, please comment on it, if you think its a good idea let me know, if you think it sucks let me know.
My idea is to have consumers completely replace the RIAA as distributor. Each consumer will sell music instead of share it, by giving music a value in the market, making it worth something to the consumers, people will be more likely to sell music than share it.
Simply split the profit 50/50 and problem is solved. Credits represent money, each song should cost 50 credits which is 50 cent. When you sell a song you earn 25 cent and the musician earns 25 cent. No RIAA, no record company, nothing, we negotiate with the musicians, we become distributor, we earn money on distribution or credits which we can use to buy music, when people buy music from us we earn more and more credits, and as this happens we can download more and more music.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Trying to sell zeroes and ones is a stupid idea. I love piracy.
If the RIAA and music companies had not closed down Napster in the courts then they would have had to compete with it. Real competition finally. If that happened, I'd say we'd be getting better products at better prices today. I doubt the record companies would have just gone out and died. Instead I feel the music market would be expanded in the same way lowering prices in other markets expands the consumer base. And there would never have come a time where Napster replaced the record companies entirely since some people for a variety of reasons would never use it regardless of price. (And btw, Napster was never free to use. It cost time, internet connection fees, disc space, lower quality, and other trade-offs.)
I feel the biggest and best result of a successful Snapster x.0 will be the same. The record companies would have to work harder for less money since some money in the market would go to Snapster. Yet anyone who feels there isn't a lot of fat to cut in the recording industry is not a student of history (and I don't mean the obscene advance given Michael Jackson for HIStory). There is no reason to believe the recording industry is any different from any other industry.
Snapster in any surivivable form would be good for us all.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Whats wrong with this? Its proven to work if Amway is doing it.
http://slashdot.org/~HanzoSan/journal
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Sure, but how many people can "own" a CD? Can my friend and I eatch pitch in and buy a CD, then both own it? Are we both entitled to fair use rights of this CD then?
This is a fantastic question. My music collection generally exists in triplicate. The original disc which remains in its case, a copy of the disc for my wife, and a copy of disc for me.
MORTAR COMBAT!
http://slashdot.org/~HanzoSan/journal
I also have a NEW solution, why cant we rent music CDs like we rent DVDs?
Perhaps music rental services would be a possible solution.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Or (in the short term), boycott buying new CD's,just buy used CD's, rip them when you get them, then sell them online again once you're done. This way you avoid giving the RIAA your money, and you can contribute by buying a new CD once a month, and selling that. It's low tech, but if you don't distribute, you're probably pretty safe.
Then again the RIAA would probably lobby congress to supeona half.com, or make selling used CD's illegal.
-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-
What would Yossarian do?
Lets implement it, make a website, create the software, intergrate paypal into the system, etc.
Or we can just create a site and put the Idea on it, and do what Cringly or whatever is doing and see if anyone picks up on it.
I consider the current process I'm in as the peer review process, but if people say it can work then I go into the next phase of figuring out how to implement it. I think it can be done, mojonation attempted to create a payment system they just did it in the wrong way.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Please check out my journal entry http://slashdot.org/~HanzoSan/journal
Review my idea, and tell me if you think it can work, if you think it can work, lets discuss how we can implement it.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The site:
http://www.mont.lib.md.us/researchinfo/ebooks.asp
Excerpt:
Snapster 2.0 is a subscription library (which is perfectly legal and which has existed for hundreds of years). The technical details are all but irrelevant.
The real question is:
Should a right that no longer makes sense be perpetuated at great cost to society? Before recording equipment there was no recording industry. If you wanted music you played it yourself or hired a musician.
Today, recording and duplicating stuff is trivial but we want to create complicated laws and technologies in order to force ourselves into a virtual past where recording and duplication were expensive. This seems stupid (as in both wrong and ultimately ineffectual) to me.
It seems stupid to me that it's even legal to sell DVDs that can be legally purchased in Europe and then not be played in the USA (and vice versa), especially when the technology has intentionally been crippled (it's not like the PAL/NTSC incompatibility we have with video tape).
In theory, when you photocopy a book you are infringing copyright. But "fair use" means that if you don't do it with bad intentions or on an industrial scale, you don't go to jail. In practice, the main reason that people don't photocopy expensive books instead of buying them is that the copies are ugly and inferior. Likewise, avid fans of star trek prefer DVDs to home made video recordings with ads and poor reception etc. When the copies are sufficiently perfect and cheap, the market will ignore copyright, as well it should!
In theory, I probably "own" the air around my house. Exerting any ownership rights is essentially pointless, arguing that my trees are converting my neighbour's carbon dioxide into oxygen that her large family and pets are consuming is similarly pointless. But sometimes residents band together to stop large companies building factories, or creating pollution standards for cars.
Economists -- should any read Slashdot -- will point out that I'm confusing a "commons" (the air) with a "public good" (Intellectual Property). But Economists would also note that IP should, theoretically be FREE and that patents and copyrights are a kludge to encourage people to produce IP and publish it in exchange for a temporary and limited monopoly.
When companies are able to perpetuate their copyrights (e.g. the way Disney can remaster the audio in Snow White and extend copyright for 75 more years having NEVER provided the public with a master copy of the original version to duplicate once copyright on that version expired) the system has failed and needs to be fixed. Fortunately, digital copying gives us a de-facto fix for this big problem and we should resist any attempts to subvert it by making it more complex and expensive than it needs to be.
I would argue that intellectual property is in the process of moving from being "like a manufactured good" to being "like the air". The law needs to move from managing trivial transactions (e.g. do I own more Nelly CDs than I play simultaneously) to large scale infractions (e.g. SPAM is large scale pollution and abuse of the internet and it's reasonable to regulate it).
We can argue all we like about how to micromanage the collapse of intellectual property as we know it, or instead we can start planning for what the world is really going to be like down the track. We never figured out fair or intelligent systems for dealing with the threat to IP posed by VHS, compact audio cassettes, or photocopying. We got over it.
And what about the people whose job it is to make those radio copies? Do you feel okay screwing them in the ass?
It's not like bleeps grow on trees, you know. Either the artist has to produce a second version of the song, which requires time that they could be using to produce another song (and thereby generate more revenue if it doesn't suck), or some underpaid smuck at the record company has to do it. As you no-doubt know, it's not just a matter of listening through the song and hitting a button whenever you hear something naughty: a censor has to decide whether to replace "fuck" with a whip sound or silence; bring the artist back into the studio to record them saying "frig"; or in a worst-case scenario audition and hire a voice-double if the artist is too expensive or not available. Doing this without completely ruining the song requires creativity ability.
Don't forget the exhorbant costs to the record company from producing a second CD. First they have to pay someone to design packaging that clearly and attractively expresses the nature of the album. Then they have the logistical cost of distributing it, with a significant danger of getting confused and accidentally sending the PA copies to Walmart. Finally there is the lost revenue from kids returning their grandmother's mistaken purchase and simple brand confusion from having two nearly identical items.
Thinking that you deserve access to the edited copy of a recording is like walking into a store and stealing the latest Merriam-Webster dictionary on CD because you own the 1913 copy.
me if I decided to stream the streamed music? And share it with everyone else in the world?
Yes, I know it'd be illegal to re-stream the Snapster 2.0 stream to people, and the RIAA lawyers will be all over that possibility...
But I like the idea...
Karma: Bad (but who really cares anyway?)
I'm creating a model which REPLACES the RIAA, I'm not trying to steal the RIAA's current property, I'm trying to create a foundation which can allow an indie musician to make money without signing an RIAA contract.
I dont want to support the RIAA, and you are right musicians who are owned by the RIAA wont be able to use my system, my system however would be for musicians who want to make music giving them a better option than the RIAA. The goal is to replace the RIAA and make them obsolete faster.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
EL
OH
EL
Hey at least I have less chances of getting busted.
If you are only allowed to listen to one song at a time on a particular cd, what would happen if you sped up that time to 2x or more?
assumptions:
1. it is legal to rip a cd to disk
2. it is legal to let someone "borrow" that rip
3. there are no time constraints on the speed or amount of time for the "borrowing" knowing full well that listening can only occur at 1x speed.
so if you rip to disk, and then stream from there, you only really need to worry about having two accesses at any one time. Even if you are reading directly off of the cd drive, you can read at around 24x (being realistic). So read at 24x, and play back at 1x. This would allow several people to listen to the same song at the same time with a small time delay for reading the song into memory or some sort of buffer.
just my two cents.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
Why have a company?
Tell me why the Snapster 2.0 idea is better than my idea, my idea does not involve any company.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
You would always be walking a fine line between providing a useful service that is cheaper than outright ownership, and annoying people with a busy signal. Plus, as you bought more copies, the cost would go up.
This is where Cringley's dividend kicks in. One penny per download goes back to the physical owner of a CD. When a CD gets popular, somebody will
1) notice
2) go buy one (or several)
3) put it in the archive
4) Profit!
Wait a minute, there's not ??? here! I must have missed something!
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
Who promoted Napster? Simple. Use the internet to promote music, a musician makes a website and promotes their own music, they pay for advertisements like everyone else, if they are good their songs will be put on web radio (which will replace the offline radio), and word of month will promote them.
The RIAA does promote some artists to success, but then you have other artists which got almost no promotion at all but sold tens of millions of copies.
Look at the Jackson 5, they came along before there were ways to "create" a star, they used their actual talent to promote their music, What about stevie wonder? Hes blind and he managed to sell music on his talent.
Now you have Britney Spears with no talent selling music because the RIAA pours money into a music video. I say we let the internet take over as promotion, eventually there will be streaming music videos on the net to replace the MTV distribution, and I'm sure you could design P2P systems to support streaming music video advertisements. This way a user can click a button and watch random music videos just like MTV.
you could also listen to random music via web radio, college radio etc. You could use google to market your website, and you can use worth of mouth to get people to trade your music around.
Sure its not going to be easy, but musicians would make a shitload more money making 25cent per song than they make from the RIAA (25 cent per CD=15 songs)
But I'll tell you this, if a musician cannot market themselves, let them hire a professional marketer to make their website, create their music video, and work on their Ads. The RIAA is not needed for this, theres plenty of teenagers on the net who know how to make a successful website or market a product, The napster kid sure knew what he was doing.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Sure, but I copy DVDs from netflix, what's going to stop me from copying from this service.
anon
shhhh!!!
"Nothing in the preceding sentence shall apply to the rental, lease, or lending of a phonorecord for nonprofit purposes by a nonprofit library" So it's a library. And just because it's nonprofit doesn't mean it can't charge a fee for it's services.
Some points to consider:
e .h tml
The Lonesome Doc system operating through the National Library of Medicine is a model of providing the content of medical journals with the exception that the person ordering the articles must comply with Copyright fair use.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/loansomedoc/loansome_hom
Articles are selected using the PubMed index and a medical library acts as intermediary to route the request or fill it from their own collection. The copy of the article is sent from the owning library to the requester directly.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi
In this case the issue would be in part that the journal collections reside in the libraries and medical libraries are often affiliated with for profit hospitals or healthcare organizations.
The user of Lonesome Doc does not invest anything into the system, which is different from Spinster.
The person requesting the article is liable to pay fees beyond fair use to the Copyright Clearence Center. The Copyright Clearence Center charges for a single article are set by the publishers. The current cost per article [which may be one page] is frequently $30.00 [thirty dollars US]. Per article.
I have not checked recently but the situation in Great Britain was there was flat copyright rate set by law of about GBP 2 [about $3 US]per article.
Beyond fair use as a backup copy, it would seem the RIAA could set a fee at any level they wished and target downloads of multiple copies.
IANAL and all other diclaimers.
How about borrowing CDs? You can borrow 'em from the library.
Integrate it with Apple Music store so a bunch of copies of trendy songs can be licensed for a couple bucks.
Why does this service have to include all new songs? This service would work just fine for those who just want to listen to 1000s of older songs at a cheaper price than we can currently get. So those that want the newest songs can go out and waste their cash. Those that can wait a few months can use this service and save a lot of money.
Common people who arent computer nerds pirate music because they dont want to consider 20 different variables when they buy/rent/watch movies/music. Blockbuster is popular because its easy. Rent. Watch. Return. Online outlets for things like this are more complex. Buy. Download. Pause. Resume. Finish Download. Watch. Delete. Not to mention the codec/player difficulties of different platforms. Standards is where its at. DVD, VHS, CD.... Ease of use is key. DRM seems to only complicate the matter entirely. Thats exactly why people pirate. Download. Listen. Smile.
The only way I see this working out in a fair and moral way for everybody concerned is for the Snapsters of the world to both record and host the content. Then they will be in the position of being able to licence the recordings to the CD production factories. I love the idea of play on demand sound libraries, with the artists being paid on a fee per play basis, and the XXXX outfits which currently hold the market to ransom being on the other side of the monopoly fence.
This probably makes little sense but I thought I would post it anyways. If I were to buy a share in one of the recording companies (assuming they are public) wouldn't I have the same rights as a snapster member? The company owns the music, I own part of the company, "fair-use" (as defined by the snapster article) gives me the rights to copy any item the company owns the rights to?
Work arounds of the current legal system governing copyright are getting pretty clever and it seem to me that the RIAA is shooting themselves in the foot. We all wind up with added complexity and they end up with less or equal the amount profit they would have had if they just let it be. I suppose in the long run it's better this way though.
Copyright forbids making new copies, not to move existing ones. So here is an idea: Let us design a P2P application where downloading a file automatically deletes the original. Participating in this network would be legal, because no new copy is ever made. Files are just wandering from one shared folder to another.
Of course we cannot stop users from copying files that they own into their shared folder or vice versa. But it is not the P2P app which makes these copies, it is the user himself. The RIAA will not be able to distinguish between the users who use the program legally (i.e. who never make copies) and those who don't.
If everyone who claims to have a strong opinion on this matter would chip in $50 and some coding time we could set up an online music label that could make deals with musicians to sell rights to their music. The musicians could get $.25 for every song purchase ( a hell of a lot more than they get now) and the rest could go to maintaining and promoting the label. This wouldn't be that hard. 1000 talented programmers/webdesigners/database guys/sysadmins with $50 each could pull this off. If only we could find the person who could organize the whole shebang... Yea right. c-
I read about half and just got too bored. Why not shift to micropayments? All music is on a repository and you listen to streams you request. You put a couple of bucks through PayPal and listen. Royalties trickle back just like with radio stations.
Simple.
2. Replace "You've Got Mail" slogan with hipper "Mail-izzle in the Hizzle"
Does anyone have a wav file of Dave saying "Mail-izzle in the Hizzle" they can post to? And then post it.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
One fact strikes me here: the member companies of the RIAA own the exclusive distribution rights for music produced by the artists that sign with them. Since the RIAA isn't too likely to be taken with this idea, it means that virtually all popular music that currently exists will never be available on such a network. It would be restricted to indie artists, so the RIAA monopoly wouldn't be very much threatened.
With Cringley's scheme since you only own say 1/10000000 of the entire record collection does that mean I can only listen to 2 sec's of music. I would assume that being a partial owner of the entire collection restricts me from copying more than my share.
It is true that at one time you had to hire a musician to play the music but the person who wrote the music was usually only remunirated once. Currently with all the new technology the artist both performing and writing the music get paid even when they do nothing but let some else play the music.
PLEEEASE this is just a case of MBA's trying to squeeze everylast penny from a cash cow. The buggy whip manufactures did the same and the future whatitz MBA's will do it in the future.
The truth is they want to receive all the benefits of the technology without suffering any of the down side.
This idea amounts to statistical multiplexing, where you get the most efficient use of a fixed resource (in this case CDs) by pooling consumer demand for that resource. An IP router works this way to manage demand for bandwidth.
Statistical multiplexing has real value when the average consumer demands far less than the entire resource. If you play a typical CD in your collection for an hour per week, then that CD is being wasted for the other 167 hours it's sitting on the shelf unused. The idea is to share this single CD with 167 other friends and thereby distribute the costs. (The real answer is somewhat less than 167 in order to decrease the likelihood of collisions when trying to access the resource -- "buffer overflow" in the router analogy.) Interestingly the method is most valuable when applied to the music that you play the least.
When applied to a large number of subscribers (large meaning much larger than the number of distinct CDs in release), the economics are very attractive. If the average subscriber listens to music 10% of the time, then the per-subscriber cost of purchasing the entire central CD repository is only 10% the cost of a single CD!
One challenge would be convincing the court that the technology really does limit the number of simultaneous listeners, and that there's no way to spoof it (this killed mp3.com). At a minimum you'd need a persistent net connection to request/release control of CDs as you play them. I could see a scenario where you purchase the music that you don't want to be chained to the net to listen to (e.g., in your iPod), and you listen to the rest through the service.
How do you proove someone has "several"? You can't. Or, how do you proove several people are not the same user? Hard.
I like the idea but it still has some weaknesses that could undermine it. Something with a PayPal like address verification along with perhaps asking you to re-register one CD a month in an effort to not let people register CD's they do not own, would perhaps do it.
Also, what would you do about members that sold CD's after registering them? Again, a monthly check with auto-kickout after not having ten CD's might be enough for the court.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But how is the "collective registration" different from the mp3.com library registration version - unless you are physically sending them the CD's you own. I don't think that would really work.
In both cases you are telling the server "I own this CD". mp3.com's mechanism was about the best I could imagine you would have, I don't know how better to proove you own a CD to add to the collective CD count!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This whole Snapster thing is just silly to me. If you're gonna go through that whole rigamarole, why not just dish out the measly 10 bucks a month and get unlimited streams from any number of the online streaming companies?
Elsewhere you wrote:
In theory, when you photocopy a book you are infringing copyright. But "fair use" means that if you don't do it with bad intentions or on an industrial scale, you don't go to jail. [emphasis mine]
That's often stated but not quite true. It's not the case that "fair use" is an infringement you get away with. It is defined (in the USCA) as specifically "not an infringement of copyright." I suppose it would be more accurate to say that you are doing something which would ordinarily be an infringement, but because it's fair use, it turns out not to be an infringement at all.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
If this scheme inadvertently hurts record companies, that is just too bad. They can always invest in Snapster 2.0.
Well, there we go: if something hurts your commercial interests, screw you, just buy into it and then you're on the inside! Since you can't argue with logic like that, the only question is how much SCO stock you're going to buy,
Yes, I do believe you have missed something. Like, the other side of the economics of supply and demand. Once the market becomes saturated with copies of the latest album from A. N. Other, the relative demand (per provider) will drop.
The type of item that may experience this type of surge (e.g. a pop record) is also likely to experience the same effect in the opposite direction after a period of time. Now, if a CD is $15.00, you'll need at least 1500 requests before you even start to make a profit.
The same rules apply -- the first to market will experience the greatest profits (if at all), but the (vast) majority will not.
What happens when the demand for the item disipates? You are left with a CD that perhaps you are not even interested in (in fact, this is highly probable, because you are likely to follow the same trend as the rest of the population in respect of popular music). If I want to listen to a popular song, I use a radio and tune to a commercial station (but this is very rare).
HAHA! Me too. Haven't bought software or music since 1995...
I would love to implement the system (not that I have the resources!) but this hole is just too big it would seem. Like you, no way would I want to ship my physical CD's off to a central location (a number of which by now there is now way to get replacements for).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But how many people would really do that? Especially for CD's you can't buy anywhere anymore...
I think it woould really limit the audience for the bond fund, and therefore give you a fairly poor selection.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The whole point of MP3.com is seemingly even more sound than this service - that you owned a physical CD, mp3.com's service (which I did use while it was around) checked eight ways from Sunday that you had a real CD of your own and then let you listen to the music from their server - thus making sure the stream you were listening to had a legal source, which was your own CD.
This new fund has the problem that unless you send the physical CD to them, even if they use tokens to limit replays there are at least TWO people that can be listening to a CD - you (who have the real CD) and the stream token.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
* You do have your modifiers set correctly, don't you?
from CyberdogX:
Snapster 2.0 separates the concept of ownership from that of playing music or copying it. While those 100,000 CDs are still owned by all the shareholders, they really....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
my eyes are already glazing over. music buyers don't care about all of this crap!
they want to walk in, or log in, pay their money, and get their music. they they want to listen to it wherever and whenever they want, because they paid for it!
when you come up with a plan the facilitates that, you'll have something. otherwise it's just pseudo-intellectuals like Cringely impressing themselves with how many complicated solutions they can come up with.
his article was about as interesting as...zzzzzzzzzzzzz
Even if the service could statistically deal with demand waves for content (rather like the phone system only has enough capacity to cover the number of people that usually want to call at the same time), I don't think the system would scale because of the timely nature of the content. Music that's hot today, is just a pile of inventory tomorrow. Imagine all the left-over copies after the demand is gone. Do they get sold off on the clearance table at Walmart?
So it has to be virtual copies, and someday soon the RIAA will come to realize this. To make it manageable, content will probably have to be purchased in bulk. Distributers like Snapster could pay the RIAA and music companies for capacity rather than copies (much like companies buy network bandwidth from ISPs). The RIAA might agree to that if it could be shown that their profits are >= their current modus operandi, and this isn't going to happen until the p2p impact on their business has brought them economically to their knees.
So I believe that the RIAA does realize this, and is stalling in attempt to apply a tourniquet to their massively gaping wound. They need to figure out how to build a system that does the accounting, billing, fulfillment, etc. at a cost that is sufficiently low to deter piracy (and I think people would pay their subscription fee if the cost was reasonable and it meant that they could sleep without fear of suit/subpoena). As we all know, that's just a mere matter of programming.
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