Slashdot Mirror
Pew Study: File Traders Don't Care About Copyright
An anonymous reader writes "A recent poll by the Pew Internet and American Life Project focused on that portion of the file trading community that is over 18. The major finding is that two-thirds of all file traders in this age bracket are not concerned about violating copyright laws. This remained consistant even when they split up the respondents by sex, income, and race."
You mean the death of meaning of the Constitution's language "limited times," effective eternal copyright on software and media, along with excessive laws that provide jail time for what would be a minor property crime in the physical world have eroded respect for copyright law?
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Yeah, there is a link here too (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/31 15829.stm).
The RIAA have dismissed this, as the time the survey was taken was before their recent legal action. Note that doesn't mean the action will work, just this survey is irrelevant for the here-and-now.
--
FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
A recent /. study shows that anonymous cowards don't care about karma.
It's no big surprise to discover that most people who violate copyright laws aren't concerned about violating copyright laws. I'm more surprised by the other third - do they represent the traders of legal files (new Linux distros, freely tradeable music etc.) or the truly stupid?
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Bring on the revolution!
Seriously though, we live in a democracy, congress gets to set the limits it wants. If life + 90 years is 'reasonable' then so is a day. Copyright protection is a matter of practicality, not morality. If it's impractical in it's present state, then we should change it.
Note to RIAA: we will dance on your grave.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Copyright violators not interested in copyright?
What are the chances??
Furthermore most really free stuff can be easily downloaded from special websites.
So, I wonder about these guys who need a poll to get the result that people who are circumventing copyright laws don't care about copyright.
Usually you would suspect that every person on this planet has something called "common sense".
Next we'll see from these guys:
- Thiefs don't care about property.
- Phyromaniacs like fire.
- Drug dealers don't care about the health of other people.
- Bush invaded Iraq for Oil.
- Communism is a oppressive dictatorship.
- Linux and FreeBSD are for free.
But on the other hand, not everybody can be as clever as me.Owner of a Mensa membership card.
This is why I have proposed to our representative in Congress, Mr. Berman and Mr. Hollings, that copyright violations be made punishable by death.
A new force will be recruited from among our friends at BayTSP, MediaDefender, and our more clandestine operatives to man squads carrying automatic weapons. These will be authorized by Congress to carry out summary executions against those sharing our property via P2P networks.
Perhaps this will engender the respect our copyrights deserve.
The Pope is Catholic?
But will it mean they're done politically? They've bought an awful lot of politicians in Washington, no matter what our honored lobbiest guest said here a couple days ago. (If Bill Clinton and other top pols show up to a going-away party for Hilary "Wicked Witch of the East" Rosen, I would say they have bought influence.)
My question is, the media like to talk about how the average person doesn't know what file sharing is and what the issues at stake are, but if there are 60 million people doing it then how can that possibly be true? If one fifth of the population of your country does anything on a regular basis, then how can you seriously claim that they don't understand what that activity is? It seems like so many other ridiculous claims ginned up by journalists like that disgraced NYTimes reporter, and repeated unthinkingly by the rest of the news crowd.
OK, so if that's bunk, and those 60 million people do understand what is at stake with file-sharing, then why aren't they making themselves heard in the government? Why isn't that anger translating politically? My theory is there is no membership organization they can focus their voice through. If we had something like the AARP or NRA for online freedoms, my bet is you'd start seeing politicians learning to dance to our tune in an awful hurry. (and no, the EFF is not that organization. they do great work, but a membership organization they are not).
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
... of the political process, which may be subverted temporarily by injecting enough money, but in the end the political process will always revert to majority rule.
Therefore, the public *owns* the political process.
When the RIAA says they want to educate the public about the law, the public may eventually lash back by educating the RIAA about what it means to be at the receiving end of the public's wrath.
...for most people.
In most people's minds, this is a crime in exactly the same sense as going 5 clicks over the speed limit. People just don't even think about it.
And when they do they just don't think its important. This is the reason that the more the RIAA ramp up the legislation and bully-boy tactics, the more they will get up the nose of Joe Average.
Everyone agrees that, in the abstract, speeding can kill people, just as in the abstract, people agree that musicians need to get rewarded. However, no-one thinks THEIR teensy, weensy breach will really hurt anyone.
well i totally agree with the poll that most people do not care about copyrights et al, but one should not forget that these polls do not reflect the recent riaa attempt to sue everyone and everything that has something to do with down or uploading contraband.
these scare tactics will work in my eyes, as people will get educated by the laws that are being introduced slowly but surley by the riaa and its henchmen...
surely a handfull of people wont care and continue and it will take a lot more than a few laws to eradicate the filesharing scene, since its roots are deep..but at the end of the day the normal non-geek user will stop and start using itunes and its clones and start paying...
at least thats what i think...
Quoted from the report:
Kinda half-serious, half-joking, but I wonder if those that participated in this survey should also be categorized as folks that are willing to submit to phone surveys. Is that something that's worth considering?
And am I reading the above correctly that of the 2,515 folks they called, only 32.7 percent actually responded? That's a little over 820 individuals. Is a survey successful if only 32% responded? Inquiring minds and all that.
Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if they did a similar survey among folks that use computer software in the workforce and found that most people don't comprehend that software itself is copyrighted. I still meet plenty of folks that pirate alot of software, with rather innocent looks on their faces when told that they're not supposed to do that. I'm not talking about lone computer users... I'm talking about the head of a business that oversees a few dozen machines and they're all running Word with pirated numbers, etc.
n/a
Another proud carrier of the $rtbl flag
Drug dealers don't care about the health of other people.
I have pharmacists in my family. Please don't knock the profession.
Bush invaded Iraq for Oil.
Are you sure? I seem to recall that the government had evidence that Iraq was getting ready to attack the United States. The forces in Iraq may not have found a smoking gun, but there was still enough evidence to warrant an invasion under the previous United Nations resolutions.
Communism is a oppressive dictatorship.
Perhaps as misimplemented by Joseph Stalin and his followers, but I've read that even Vladimir Lenin didn't like the direction the government was going under Stalin.
Linux and FreeBSD are for free.
In other words, you confirm that your time is worth little to nothing.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I think the majority of Americans understand this as all some stupid game and one side has already bribed the referees.
Ex1: Disney's obvious bribing of Congress to get the Copyright length extended.
Ex2: AOL, Microsoft etc bribing state politicians to pass DCMA even though it is as anti-consumer a law as you can get.
and so on....
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
but in the end the political process will always revert to majority rule.
The people may control the republic through voting, but the broadcasters control the people to a large extent. TV and radio advertising paid for with campaign contributions from broadcasters seems exempt from FCC "equal time" regulation. MPAA movie studios own all major U.S. commercial broadcast networks except NBC. Get the picture?
Will I retire or break 10K?
It would have been a better study if they had delved more into the reasons why most people don't care.
For example, do people not care because they don't even think about it, because they think they won't get caught, or because they think a monopoly is abusing both copyright law and the campaign finance system? Some of the above ? None of the above ?
My only reaction to the study in its current form is like "well duh-uh !!!".
The copyright system has traditionally been a system that concerns professional authors and professional publishers and distributors. The general public has never really had a need to pay any more attention to copyright than to many other business-to-business issues or issues that concern a narrow field of profession.
Now basically every individual who can access the Internet can distribute works in massive quantities. Any person who makes their own web page and has a few hundred visitors has done what was very hard for an average person a decade ago. Publishing is no longer an expensive task that only traditional medias such as newspapers and record companies can afford.
The copyright system will eventually go through a major reform. The current form is simply designed for a situation where there are few authors and few publishers and then the general public that isn't either an author or a publisher. That situation no longer matches the reality which is why a new copyright system (if there will be a copyright system at all) will need to handle copyright as an issue that concerns each and everyone.
Well, lets see, RIAA sets up a cartel, overcharges for CDs (and still does), gets convicted for it, and uses bribed politicians to get out of it with 50 cent coupons for purchase of more inflated priced music.
RIAA buys more laws with more bribe money not to charge customers to copy the above music 50 cents per violation (like they got away with above), but rather to hit them with multi thousand dollar lawsuits.
RIAA then buys more laws making copyrights to be infinate in length (effectively).
Then some wonder why people have no respect for copyright laws as they are now. Uh... why should we? The current laws were all bought and paid for, and represent the interests of 'we the people' in no way whatsoever. So screw them..
If CD's sold for $5 per disk (which is what they should sell for without all the cartel and payola action), the problem would pretty much go away, as most people wouldn't have a problem buying CDs for that price rather than hassle with looking for downloading them.
Well, let's see here. File sharing of copyrighted material is becoming a felony. Let's follow the trend, shall we?
... and 4 CDs. Get's charged with a felony. What are the best defenses for felony charges?
Some file sharer get's caught with 200GB of music
Addiction/Insanity!
Lawyer: Your honor, my client is addicted to music. His income is insufficient to purchase the music legally so he trades online.
Judge: Six months in rehab, two years probation. *bang*
RIAA Lawyer: *stunned bunny look*
In the beginning, books could only be reproduced by carefully copying it line after line, like monk did. It took very much time to make a single copy. Every copy had a great value... But anyone with enough time and knowledge (not everyone was able to write) could do it... without being prosecuted.
Then came Gutemberg. He found a way to make numbers of copies of a single work much faster. The initial work was still a long process.
Now, anyone can have a copier at home and copying of paperwork became available to anyone. But "production" costsof a copy and the finish of that copy are still quite expensive in comparison to "commercial" process. And duplicating a book damage the original and is still slow.
There are some "pirate" distribution of books, but having a book scanned in PDF or in TXT is not similar to hving the real thing.
For the music, the way was a little bit different...
At the beginning, there was NO way of recording music. Bands were paid to play. Then came the firsts recording, which were process unavailable to people (a little like Gutemberg press) and there was a protection which was mostly between companies (not companies vs individuals). This is like what we have for books.
Then, new media appeared, beginning by big tapes on a wheel, then the tapes we still use today, then the CD and now, computer formats like MP3.
The biggest difference is that, where it's still more expensive, destructive and less appealing to copy a book by an individual, copying a song is (very) cheap, don't damage the original recording and with color printers and scanners, you can have a CD-box with a copy of the original artwork or some custom artwork. Only the on-cd picture can't be done.
So, even if the law protecting both a book and a music record is the same, we have 2 distinct situations.
Add to that the fact that many musician complain about recording companies, that even if the manufacturing costs have dropped, the cost of music has increased (the cost of books has DROPPED).
One more is the fact that record companies are introducing more and more "one-shot" artists (making new stars from nothing, using mass advertisement and such). When you like some artist which make new musics of equal (or similar) quality over the time, you are more willing to buy its CD than when it's some "jack out of the box" artist you don't know and which won't last past the summer. You can be willing to support some artist you like, but when it's a one-shot artist, you are NOT given that opportunity.
And you can add to that the fact that many songs are unavailable at stores because the recording companies found that these were too old or that there is no interrest in these. While you can rent a book at the local library and won't probably read it again and again, this is not true when we are speaking of music because when you like a song/tune, you'll listen to it again and again nad will need to keep it. and if you can't find it at your local music-store, you're left with only ONE solution : copying it.
We have a similar problem with films. many films are NOT worth the price you've to pay for them. and, when you've paid to see it in a theater, you could find it incorrect to have to pay for it again to see it at home... not speaking about the many films which NEVER find their way out of their original country because of lack of interrest.
For films, we see more and more films with nearly no story but loads of known actors and of special effects. This lead to lots of "junk" with little interrest, which cost more and more to produce and is less and less worth it's price... and while the actual manufacturing of the film support (VHS or DVD) is less and less expensive, prices have actually gone UP.
Both for music and films, the people feel that it has a "real" value which is constantly decreasing and a price which is increasing... Add to that the wories like protected-CD (well... these are not really CD as they don't conform to the standard)
The comparison is not quite correct. Yes, you can borrow a book from the library. For free? Depends. You may not have to pay for lending the book, but your tax money was probably used to buy the book in the first place (of course libraries can receive grants - in the form of money or book donations).
Then you go and copy the book. Normally, you have to pay for the copies. This is cheaper than a book from the store. But the quality is inferior since you only have a stack of paper as opposed to a handy book. You can not reproduce a printed book digitally - this is a totally different matter with e-books.
Furthermore, in some countries it is legal to reproduce excerpts (for personal or scientific usage) from a printed book since the author receives additional compensation based on the number of books sold. In Germany, this would be money from the VG Wort.
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
And while there has been a remarkable "revolution" in the arts which has created some "in the gut" recognition for something called "intellectual property," the human animal simply has a terrible time recognizing that music, or performance, or writing, or any idea made slightly tangible, is not just something you share.
They're like the air on a hot summer day. We swim in an ocean of ideas - our own indistinguishable from those around us. We inhale and osmose and exclaim and excrete all as natural instinctive intellectual processes. We are not built to recognize such artificial distinctions as "the owner of a song" (or a sentence, or an idea) because they are simply unnatural. This ownership must be violated at every instant - as you sing in the shower, as you share a rumor, as a teacher teaches or a librarian lends you our richest treasures. Calling it "intellectual property" is itself propaganda - it is the most shocking of bad metaphors in recent times.
Copyright is the barest of fictions, intended to allow artists to live, not Michael Eisner to summer in Tenerife. It does make for some interesting, even good, results, in the way they were originally practiced (as intended by the folks who founded our nation, for instance) - where for a few (like seven!) years there were some artifical means for an artist to thrive from her work, that didn't involve the help of wealthy patrons (which was how the old world used to do it).
But I think if you asked Washington he would be very surprised at the idea of copyright taken precedence over sharing - though of course he and his colleagues would have shaken their heads at the complexity of "mass-scale distributed sharing."
They would certainly rage at and mock the outrageous "extend every time mickey mouse is in danger" new time limits (one of the more transpareant examples of the subversion of democracy by a wealthy cartel). And if informed of the new punishments for violators, or pre-punishment of potential violators, or direct trust "taxes" on things which might be used to violate... they would pick up their arms and fight.
You think it's melodramatic to say so, but America is a nation of ideas, of rational supremacy, and the economic achievement that can only come from intellectual liberty. The new rules that Disney and Microsoft have mutated intellectual property with over the last decade choke off that liberty in the most violent way, by destroying the commons of ideas, erasing the essential quality of trust in our democracy, and violating the supremacy of free speech and free expression that made our country wealthy, successful in affairs of state, and also a fun place to live.
And all this, not for some grave end - to fight terrorism or feed the hungry - but only so a publisher can increase their profit margins.
Not even the politicians would countenance it, ordinarily. It's bad for almost everyone but a select few, and it is even bad for them - content creators need the commons more than anyone. But politicians have a unique respect for those who control the media...
Remember what copyright was originally intended to do. Consider the new tools we have - there are better ways now than what we did in the past, and anything is better than what the cartel wants.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Seriously though, we live in a democracy, congress gets to set the limits it wants.
No, Congress is supposed to set the limits that best serve the public, i.e. what the PEOPLE want. And yes, it does need to be changed. You got the millions of dollars needed to lobby Congress? Neither do I. I do have the power to write to my reps incessantly to make my point heard. (In fact, I think that's what I'll do today...write to my new reps [just moved])
BTW, "life + 90 years" is NOT reasonable. The copyright law needs to revert back to the 14-year limit, with certain circumstances making that time frams SHORTER. To use everybody's favorite OS as an example, if I want to run Win95 for some reason and MS doesn't sell it anymore, than I should be free as the wind to make as many copies as I desire. It's not as if I'm taking away from their revenue stream, they weren't going to sell it to me anyway. (No jokes about forced upgrade paths, please.)
The same holds for music, books, movies, whatever. If I want a copy of a book or CD that the original copyright holder/publisher/etc. doesn't make available, then I should be free to make my own copy as I see fit, even if has been less than 14 years since the copyright took effect.
"Intellectual Property" my ass.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
Is that it exemplifies 'legality' and 'deviance'.
For a quick lesson in socialogy, legality is whether the law has determined something to be wrong. Deviance is whether or not it is against societal norms.
Speeding is and example of something that is NOT deviant, but is illegal. EVERYONE speeds, if only a little bit, despite that the law says you arn't supposed to. When a situation like this arises, usually the law is repealed, the punishment is slack, or there is leeway when enforcing the law. That is why cops tend to be lenient with speeding tickets. Cops will let you get away with 5-10 MPH over, while someone who is doing 35+ over will almost certainly come down hard. Prohibition in the 20's is another example, except in this case, the laws were repealed. (there are probably more recent examples, but IANAL, or a socialogist, so I havn't done much research)
This survey shows that amoung (american) internet users, file-sharing(downloading) isn't deviant, despite it's illegality. I'm going out on a limb here, but I'd say in most of the world, file-sharing isn't illegal, and it certainly isn't deviant. Even if laws are passes to severly punish the users, the judiciary system will almost certainly strike them down if the behavior is relativly harmless (nobody is getting killed), and it isn't deviant.
It is amazing to see how the people are always right, ahead of the politicians.
Since "intellectual property" is not a natural law, but was introduced only to increase productivity, one cannot help feeling that IP law, in its current form, may have outlived its usefulness.
What does the society gain by protecting the IP of music publishers? Do we risk underproduction (or extinction?) of music if the IP "rights" of Sony Entertainment are not protected at all? Or would that rather restore some sanity and the value of culture? IP is becoming a tool with which major corporations tax average joe and small business startups, not unlike emperors used to tax salt.
In the software field, for all I see, dispensing of IP would stop corporate lawyers from trying to destroy honest developers working in companies without huge legal departments, and would even encourage sane re-use of software and thus increase the general welfare, the Linux way.
It's no real mystery what people do with P2P applications.
1) Provide free advertising for the RIAA, MPAA and proprietary software
2) Make it harder for independent musicians, independent filmmakers, and free software to be seen through all the noise of the more well-known, possibly inferior products
3) Prove that the RIAA, MPAA and proprietary software vendors are relevant by demonstrating that their marketing works even if their products are inferior
4) Giving the RIAA, MPAA and proprietary software vendors a leg to stand on when they go to congress to complain about illegal file sharing on P2P networks
Sharing content that the RIAA, MPAA and proprietary software vendors own the copyrights to doesn't help anybody's cause except the RIAA's, MPAA's and proprietary software vendors'. Do you want to be counterproductive?
Well, the "democracy" entry mentions rule by majority vote, and the "republic" entry mentions rule by elected officials according governed by a body of laws. According to this, we in the U.S. currently live in neither.
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
Copyright is largely an artificial construct, unlike theft (which certain people like to erroneously and politically link it to.) It's never really existed in any significant portion of our evolution, so (I'd say) it's not really considered a real thing: it's an artificially imposed prohibition.
If the same principle was applied to food, or furniture, with everyone having their own little Star Trek replicators, people wouldn't respect it then, either.
Maybe it means: since everyone has their own printing-press, making a significant living from the prohibition of duplication of a work, is nolonger feasible or realistic? Like any number of other professions (starving (visual) artists languishing in obscurity and poverty, anyone?)
I don't think it's so much about price (though it's always a factor) as people's psychology: copyright doesn't really make sense in a world where things are easily and cheaply copyable; where the means of production and dissemination is in the hands of everyone.
Is that noise I hear the fingernails of the copyright cartels screeching down the cliff-face of a paradigm shift?
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
I don't believe Mensa membership gets you discounts at the grocery store, you don't earn points towards frequent flyer programs, you can't get free upgrades on your hotel or car rental, so honestly, what is the point? You can get credit card offers and insurance anywhere.
If you are a
- Your local chapter of 2600
- Slashdot meet-ups
- Toastmasters
- Association of Computing Machinery
- IEEE
- A user group for Linux or a retired OS, proprietary server software, programming language, etc.
If you are looking for that elite publication, some of the groups mentioned above have a more focused publication, as opposed to something across the board. Here are some of my "intelligentsia publication picks:"- IEEE Spectrum
- Bohemian Club Library Notes
- Science News
- Policy Review
- any museum quarterly/newsletter
- Cinema Journal
What this all boils down to is: none of the intelligent elite crowd waste their time pirating the copyrighted material of their circles. Seriously, when was the last time a film director ran a site containing screenplays or what-not of a rival director he/she didn't like? How often do you see nuclear physicists ripping each other's ideas off? Their papers are about 30% acknowledgements/references as it is. Most truly innovative computer software is either government funded and top secret, or it is public domain and funded any number of ways.I see the RIAA as the champion of those who make their money off of cultural information. Musicians, actors, etc. The RIAA is trying to keep the poor from having the cultural enrichment that they think is entitled to them. Think about it, people are stealing copies of Harry Potter, not Jules Verne, JRR Tolkien, or Joseph Conrad.
Our local (NY, NJ, CT) WB affiliate ran a poll the other day, and their result was that 92% think it's OK to share copyrighted files using P2P systems.
:-)
As they reported that number, the anchor's comment was, "As you'd expect..". I guess he thought it was OK too.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
What is the practical effect of forever copyrights? Lack of creativity. Copyright holders concentrate on protecting the value of their current copyright rather than think up new things to copyright.
... I wonder if it's coincidence that the trend before rock n roll was for each generation to come up with their own kinds of music sooner and sooner ... ragtime, early jazz, swing .... then rock n roll came along, and has dominated ever since and shows no signs of going away. The Roilling Stones still going after 40 years? Bizarre! I bet if their coyrights weren't still in force, there's be much different kinds of music ruling the airwaves now.
Imagine if Disney had had to keep on thinking up new characters and ideas, instead of the same old mouse and duck. Those would have been retired, new ideas would have come into play, and Disney would stand for new ideas every few years rather than tired variations of the same old mouse products. There would be no incentive for others to mimic the mouse and duck, because it would be so out of fashion, no one would care. Every generation would have their own Disney memories.
When the same stuff gets repeated over and over, the public just doesn't care. That old stuff becomes part of public history whether it's copyrighted or not, a de facto public domain.
I wonder if rock n roll is the same
Infuriate left and right
I had to do that for Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights myself...luckily, the SafeDisc was later removed.
Most games I buy nowdays, I never touch the CD...I pay the cash, download an ISO, install the crack, and usually get better performance in the bargain.
And the companies wonder why they're losing money.
I mod down anyone who uses M$ in their posts. I like to live on the edge.
Most people have no understanding of copyright at all. They can't respect something they don't really understand.
The average person doesn't understand what a copyright is. It's too abstract. A CD or a book is something they can physically hold. To them they think they own the book not a "COPY" of the book. Stealing a book is easy to understand and visualize. Stealing potential profits that one has a limited right (sic) to is something that is harder for people to understand or care about.
If they can't see and touch it they don't care. Many people bitch and moan about ATM fees because they can see that $2 charge taken away from them right at the time of withdrawal. Yet they don't realize that the amount of taxes a person has withheld on a paycheck is really double. They don't see so they don't understand it or they don't care.
They don't understand the difference between a constitutionally granted right and a constitutionally protected right. Copyrights are granted rights. Free speech and the right to bear arms are protected rights.
Despite the Slashdot wish that this was a grand showing of defiance against the evil corporations most people don't understand about that and don't care.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
People are used to getting books for free. It's called the library. There just a shift in the ways and means of distributing the books.
Based on your argument that copyright is largely an artificial construct and people don't really buy into the who idea of paying for things that are cheaply copiable, then no one should have a problem with the following.
When O'Reilly publishes a new book, I should buy it, scan in the pages into an electronic format and put it on the internet for the whole world to copy. After all, "copyright doesn't make sense in a world where things are easily and cheaply copiable", and all I did was easily and cheaply copy a book.
O'Reilly is abusing people with the high costs of his books. For example, "Programming Perl" is $49.95. This is far more that the cost of the paper to publish this book, so there is obviously some sort of collusion to artificially keep the costs of books so high. I think a valid form of protest is to boycott buying books.
Maybe if we are lucky, then OReilly will go out of business since his business model is selling copyrighted materials at artificially high prices, and it seems like everyone is against that.
Of course, this screws people like Larry Wahl who make money selling copyrighted materials. One of the common arguments I've seen is that in this world of easy duplication, that musicians should make their money touring and not selling CDs/Records, then Larry should make his money touring giving speaches and not get any money selling his books.
This could be bad since Larry might not get much money and may not be able to continue Perl development. But if Perl dies and Larry goes bankrupt, then it will be sad, but too bad for him since he hopped into bed with the man and proffiteered by selling copyrighted materials.
If all works perfectly, OReilly goes out of business, Larry Wahl goes bankrupt and Perl dies. But such is the consequence of people rejecting copyrights that don't make sense any more.
Is this really the future that everyone wants?
"Microsoft has made computing accessible to a population who would otherwise not be able to use computers" - B. Kernigha
Exactly. (Mod this parent up!) $5-7 per disk would be reasonable, even $10 is better than what we're paying now. Think about it: if BuyMusic.com is charging $8 per album, why isn't the RIAA trying to compete? If tapes cost $10 a pop 10 years ago, why are CDs $15? If CDs are the default technology, why do they cost MORE than what tapes were when they were the default technology?
Same goes for software and DVDs. DVDs are now the default technology, yet they are higher than tapes. Instead, tapes should be lower, and DVDs should be the same price. Software is at an all-time high, because they all sell to business.
Why spend $600 on Office, when you can pirate it, or (if you want to stay legal) pay $0 for OpenOffice? Why do games cost $50? If I play a game at the arcade 100 times, I'd spend those $50, but most games aren't even worth playing 100 times like that. Then people are sick of spending MORE money on required expansion packs and monthly fees for MMOs. (Why is Star Wars Galaxies $15/mo? Inflation, or just trying to suck up as much money as you can get?)
The current business model demands that prices eventually go down as they age. Web hosting has gone down; the price of a watch has gone down; bikes have gone down. And they have all had improvements to their former models. However, the case seems to be the opposite for the media industry. So, yes, people are pissed off, and they really don't care about copyrights anymore.
Zodiac Survey
I am a member of a fairly successful American university choir. We record all of our performances for our own use, but can't sell--or even distribute for free--most of them, because of copyright laws. Keep in mind nearly all of our repetoire was composed before 1917.
Last fall we performed Mozart's Requiem Mass (composed 1791), and many of the singers wanted to make and sell/give away a recording... but we found out to our dismay that we couldn't. Why? Because the [i]scores[/i] we were using were covered by copyright. This is a bit absurd--of all the people who deserve to earn money off that performance, the typesetters and editors are the last on the list. We already paid them for their work, dammit: we paid $1000 for a hundred copies (plus orchestra parts) of something that should be public domain.
We have many recordings we'd love to publish on the Internet (publicity and all), but can't.
There are two CD's which we have secured copyright permission (from the score publisher--neither work itself is covered by copyright) to sell. While I'm not involved in the finances of the choir, I do know that the CD's cost $10 and we make a $5 profit off of each. Now, where does that other $5 go? Jewel cases, inserts, and the costs of CD replication are no more than $.50-$1, so [i]someone[/i] is getting $4 royalties from each disc--almost certainly the publisher of the score.
Modern copyright law isn't necessarily friendly to the "small artists". We'd love to put up our recordings on the Internet, or sell more CD's at concerts (the two aren't mutually exclusive!) for a greater profit... but we can't.
And all of us would be tickled pink if one of our recordings showed up on Kazaa.
No, Congress is supposed to set the limits that best serve the public, i.e. what the PEOPLE want. And yes, it does need to be changed.
... if I want to run Win95 for some reason and MS doesn't sell it anymore, than I should be free as the wind to make as many copies as I desire. It's not as if I'm taking away from their revenue stream, they weren't going to sell it to me anyway...
...
Yup. You should write your reps if you feel that your are not being sufficiently represented. Unless they know what the people want, they can't do it.
Why do they NEED to be changed?
BTW, "life + 90 years" is NOT reasonable. The copyright law needs to revert back to the 14-year limit,
The same holds for music, books, movies, whatever.
I disagree. I like the life + 90, and I think it is very reasonable. Perhaps the post-life extent could be shorter, but 14 years... Tell your favorite author what you want to do to their work -- most authors don't get paid as well as musicians and other artists...
Anyway, as for your Win95 example, you are hurting their business - Win95 is the ancestor of Windows XP, they would really like you to buy XP -- but if you can get Win95 for free... then they have to compete with themselves, and while they did attempt to make improvements over previous versions, free is a hard price point to beat, especially when many applications will run on either OS.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
Copyright could be abolished tomorrow if you could just get the votes in Congress required to pass a bill to repeal it. Sure, Dubya might veto it, but if you can get a two thirds majority in Congress, you can override a veto.
If you don't think this can happen, consider that more Americans are trading files today than voted for George Bush. Yes, many if not most file traders are under eighteen, but political upheavals usually take time. The sort of time that would allow most of today's youthful peer-to-peer users to come of age.
My new piece Change the Law explains this in more detail. It recommends several specific steps you can take to repeal copyright. The recommendations I give are:
- Speak Out
- Vote
- Write to Your Elected Representatives
- Donate Money to Political Campaigns
- Support Campaign Finance Reform
- Join the Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Practice Civil Disobedience
If you're under eighteen, you can do all of those things but vote. And your right to vote will come in time. The RIAA is not going to go away.Finally, Should Copyright Even Exist? considers the question of whether the ability of computers to make faithful copies of digital data without significant cost so outweighs any benefit that copyright may have to society, that we would be better off if copyright were eliminated entirely.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
The truth is likely that Americans understand politicians are corrupt and in the hands of big business. The problem is that rather than that generating a force to change things for the better it has given politicians lease to do even more against the best interrests of the public without fear of being singled out.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
The copyright law needs to revert back to the 14-year limit, with certain circumstances making that time frames SHORTER
Prepare to see all SORTS of artists going even more starving. I'm an aspiring photojournalist. Guess what all the folks who made it tell me. If you're great, it takes 5 years to build an archive of shots that is going to be able to moderately support you and allow you to start paying off your debts. It's copyright that gives a photographer that ability. If 9 years later those images that I took go into the public domain, I will be forever working to maintain a barely-decent level of income.
If *I* make it, I get to control it until my death. Period.
If I take a photograph and post it on my web site for people to see for free, I don't want to see it end up in a commercial tomorrow. Copyright is the only thing protecting me from that.
Life + 90 years is not reasonable, I don't see why my great grandkids should profit from my work, but neither is 14 years.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
The conclusion that any intelligent person should make from reading this article is that No one believes that sharing intellectual property is morally wrong. Because it's not wrong, no matter how you look at it. There are no victims, and there is no loser from file sharing. Everyone wins.
That's why filesharing is so popular. The average person knows, deep down inside, that even with all the lawsuits and threats that: 1. They aren't doing anything wrong, and 2. They aren't hurting anyone.
-dbc
From the original article:
The RIAA is inflicting a pogrom against file traders? They are using death camps instead of lawsuits? Such extreme hyperbole does not call the policy of the RIAA into question as much as it does the judgement of the author.
If *I* make it, I get to control it until my death. Period.
OK, I'll grant you that. For the individual, I can see where copyright until death can be a good thing. As has been stated, what is yours is yours. When I said that in some cases the copyright epiration would come less than 14 years, I was thinking cases such as the creator's death. It's hard to hold a copyright and benefit when you're dead.
The next argument I can see is the income from a copyrighted work supporting the family after the author's passing. Ponder this for a moment: in some cases, a retired worker's pension will go to the widow/widower on the retiree's death. I can see the same principle applying to a copyright if the "until death" time limit is used. A copyright on a income-producing work can be transferred to the spouse who then holds the copyright until their death. After that, it's in the public domain.
As far as copyright held by a corporation, I stand by the 14-year term. Generally you won't see a company seriously use a work to generate income for a long period of time, as times and cultures change.
Case in point: I have a particular CD that is a copy of one that my parents have. I couldn't buy it as it was only marketed for a short period of time and was no longer available and would not be made available by the publisher. Therefore, I should be free to copy it as desired. Now, to prevent copyright "stalking," I can understand where a time frame may be desired as it would prevent people from waiting for something to go into the public domain before obtaining it. In such a case, a 14-year copyright lifetime would be appropriate.
It's a fine line between protecting the artist and benefiting the public; a fine line that in the current time has been stretched, mangled, and generally jerked about nearly at will by big corporations with the ability to buy laws.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
Same goes for software and DVDs. DVDs are now the default technology, yet they are higher than tapes. Instead, tapes should be lower, and DVDs should be the same price.
If anything tapes should be more expensive, since the manufacturing and transportation costs are higher. Then you have the problem of "duds" not being detected until a customer buys one and complains. With a CD or DVD you have an easy to automate pressing operation to manufacture. It's probably not that difficult to automate removing mis-pressed disks from the production line either.
A)I don't think I'll get caught.
B)I don't even thinka bout it.
C)I am fighting the RIAA
D)All of the above.
E)Cowboy Neal told me to do it.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
With Mozart's Requiem I can possibly understand to some degree, because of the unusual circumstances surrounding the work--I'm sure the publisher did have to do a significant amount of arrangement to pull together the various pieces written by different people. But for other pieces where the original score is complete, there is absolutely no logical or ethical reason a publisher should have any IP rights to the performance. No, the publishers aren't in it for the fun of it, or for the betterment of society. They're in it for profit. That's why they sell scores, instead of giving them away. They perform a valuable service by recopying original manuscripts, extracting orchestra parts, and printing and distributing scores. None of this, in my opinion and that of many others, is entitled to copyright protection other than "don't photocopy this." In many other languages, French for example, "copyright" is rendered "right of the author". That's the [i]author[/i], not the author's typist or proofreader. If Bach, or Handel, or Brahms were still alive, then I would hope that they [i]would[/i] receive royalties from paid performances of their works. That's what the system's for! But giving royalties to those not involved in the artistic creation of the music (either its composition or its performance) strikes me, and many others, as wrong. Yes, this goes against what the law says. But the situation is the same as with other objections to copyright law: a large number of people believe the law is unjust, but cannot change it because the current political system favors business over individuals. (Keep in mind the chilling statistic that more Americans have used Kazaa than voted for Bush Junior.) So, having no other recourse, people lose respect for the law... which is a dangerous thing. When I buy the sheet music to a composition which is not itself protected by copyright, I should be able to do whatever the hell I want with the knowledge I gain from that music. (Copying it is another issue, of course.) If I discover a new, patentable invention using data obtained with (say) gas chromatography, I do not and should not have to share income from the patent with the inventor of the gas chromatograph. (And, yes, I realize that patents are different from copyrights. It's an example.) Interesting sidenote. In music history, the professor told the following story: The Church had a tradition concerning a 100-200-year-old piece (I forget which) that the score should never be released outside the church, so that no performance could occur without the Church's permission. Mozart, with his incredible memory, attended a church service at which the piece was performed, went home, and copied out the score. The professor's opinion, and that of everyone in the class, was that he had done a Good Deed for Music and for Humanity by making a beautiful piece of music available to everyone. Nowadays he'd be prosecuted. Music needs an equivalent to Project Gutenberg: downloadable, public-domain scores. There is no reason for public-domain information to cost more than the price of compilation and reproduction, which in today's society is essentially zero.
"Seriously though, we live in a democracy "
Err, actually, we live in a republic:
Why is there always some idiot who spouts this crap!! (And get modded up no less!)
Not only do a lot of slashdot readers not live in a republic but the words republic and democracy are not incompatible with one another.
The USA has a presidency rather than a monarchy, that makes it a republic, the government is elected by the people that makes it a democracy (a representative democracy to be more precise). This is not hard to understand.
"Republic" and "democracy" are not alternatives to one another. A country can be both or neither or either one but not the other.
Iraq, pre-war, was a non-democratic republic.
The UK is a democratic monarchy.
Saudi Arabia is a non-democratic monarchy.
The USA is a democratic republic.
And Brannon & Braga will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
If 9 years later those images that I took go into the public domain, I will be forever working to maintain a barely-decent level of income.
Man, I feel your pain. If I don't go out and work today I won't get paid next week either.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Yeah. Or trying to play some games on a tablet pc without a cd-rom. Maybe I should send an email to Microsoft to see if they can work on "convincing" developers to forego the needed CDs.
Bah. Who am I kidding? I'm just a speck of crap on Microsoft's shoe anyway, at least to them. I'll just continue with the CD cracks.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
Which law? The original law created by the founders of the U.S.A, or the mangled version of the law that exists today?
If the law of the land instead said that meat-work is valuable and brain-work is worthless, you would be a poor factory worker in sweatshop economy.
He's not saying it is worthless, but he is saying that giving an author control of copyrights to a work as an incentive to create more works needs to be re-evaluated. I haven't come up with an altrernative method, but personally I would like information to spread more rapidly than it does now, with no restrictions. For "art", the value of this is doubtful, but for useful information such as works that teach people "how to" do something, it is easy to see the benefit to the country as a whole. For instance, I come up with a new algorithm that makes not only one application more efficient, but also a slew of other applications more efficient if the knowledge of it were spread. So, which is more beneficial, my putting artificial restrictions (monetary or otherwise ) on the spread ( copying ) of the algorithm, or letting it be copied freely to make applications more efficient as quickly as possible?
Add to that the fact that many musician complain about recording companies, that even if the manufacturing costs have dropped, the cost of music has increased (the cost of books has DROPPED).
This claim is often repeated on slashdot, but is it actually true ? I remember being in high-scool (1990), and I purchased cassette tapes for anywhere between $8 and $11. A CD would have cost a few dollars more (I think about 12-14), so I didn't buy CDs. Today, a CD is between $11 and $18. So I don't think the price in CDs has jumped substantially relative to the cost of living. As for books getting cheaper, when was the last time you tried to buy a text book ? I don't think this claim is correct either.
Where do you shop? I pay $22 on the average per CD.
And you can add to that the fact that many songs are unavailable at stores because the recording companies found that these were too old or that there is no interrest in these.
Whine, whine, whine. Go to a specialty music store, or buy from Amazon (very good range).
From my experience, many works are out of print and no one but the copyright holder has the ability to make them available, thanks to copyright laws. Yes, you can search used/specialty shops for the original, But what if you cannot find it. What if you can only find a copy of it on a file-sharing system because one of the few holders of the original media has chosen to share it? You forgot to handle that case.
Add to that the wories like protected-CD (well... these are not really CD as they don't conform to the standard), mandatory messages on DVD, Zone system on DVD, ... which dissappear when you've a copy... These are incentive to copy... and signs that there is some abuse of the market system...
I agree with you and the creator of the CD standard ( Panasonic ) also agrees with you. They are putting pressure on this companies to label their CD's appropriately ( i.e. impaired CD, non-compliant CD )but it hasn't stuck yet. The DVD region system is definitely an artificial price-fixing tool to sell the same product at different prices based on the local market, while preventing buyers to purchase item from outside of their market for the purpose of saving money. In this way, the seller makes more money and the buyer is stuck with a product that may not work if they relocate themselves to another market. Not to mention the fact that they might not be able to give it as a gift or trade to someone in another market ( region ).
Sorry if this is a little sloppy, the cost for making a post while pressed for time. Hopefully this port fleshes out this thread ( and one that is beneficial ).
I can't afford a sig!
My understanding was that the poster was attacking the notion of copyright in general, and arguing that copyright is an outdated concept. I would argue that in the case of the original constitutional law, it is not outdated, and in case of the "mangled version", it is wrong-headed in places more than it is "outdated".
He's not saying it is worthless, but he is saying that giving an author control of copyrights to a work as an incentive to create more works needs to be re-evaluated.
I think if you don't allow the author to control distribution through EULAs or copyrights, you do end up devaluing brain work.
I haven't come up with an altrernative method, but personally I would like information to spread more rapidly than it does now, with no restrictions.
Well, that's the problem. You can't have it both ways. If you have "no restrictions", how are the creators of such works compensated ?
but for useful information such as works that teach people "how to" do something, it is easy to see the benefit to the country as a whole. For instance, I come up with a new algorithm that makes not only one application more efficient, but also a slew of other applications more efficient if the knowledge of it were spread.
You're discussing patents here. This is not the same as copyrights. I was specifically discussing copyrights. In principal, I'm not opposed to the idea of patents, but unfortunately, the current patent system is horribly botched.
Where do you shop? I pay $22 on the average per CD.
amazon.com, for example. Most of the CDs I buy, excluding those where the artist is deceased, are $15-$18. I'm talking about CD prices in the US.
From my experience, many works are out of print and no one but the copyright holder has the ability to make them available, thanks to copyright laws. Yes, you can search used/specialty shops for the original, But what if you cannot find it. What if you can only find a copy of it on a file-sharing system because one of the few holders of the original media has chosen to share it? You forgot to handle that case.
That's a corner case. I believe examples like this can be used to argue for copyright reform, but I don't think it makes a very convincing case for abolishing copyright.