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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."
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?
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.
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?
"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.
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I also wonder how the RIAA would feel about edited versions of music as well.
I have a collection of >5,000 CD's (I'm an ex-DJ and confirmed music junky.) Many of my CD's are the Parental Advisory (PA) versions of the CD. There are many times that I need the clean version (radio edits) of popular songs (i.e. at work or driving in the car with my 7 yr old daughter.)
I have used various p2p applications to download the clean versions of various popular songs I already own and have never felt guilty that I was stealing music from the artist or label.
I know they prefer that own both the Clean and PA version of a specific song, but I'm not going to pay double the price just so I can keep it clean when I need to.
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.