We need more legitimate copyright dependent artists (let's not argue artistic ability on this one) to hop onboard the bandwagon if anything's ever going to be changed about the copyright system. Good for Card.
I don't understand what you want changed. You want the ability to download music you haven't paid for? Clue me in.
-- "Sufferin' succotash."
Re:About time
by
XeresRazor
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· Score: 5, Insightful
No, I want the copyright laws changed back to the way they were before the 100 year lifetimes and worst of all, corporations being able to own the copyright to a creative work. I'm all for a corporation being able to own a patent but copyrights should belong to the artists that create the work, never to the company that distributes it. If the corporations couldn't own the copyright the artists would be able to distribute the music any way they want, and in multiple ways (exclusivity contracts not withstanding). A given artist could distribute their music through a record company (who would take a percentage of the income to cover production costs and overhead and a small profit), and at the same time could distribute some or all of their tracks via the internet, or a service like mp3.com, the point being the artist would maintain control, someone wants to use their song in a movie? Fine, they license it from the musician who takes the whol cut from the film company instead of the record company who's put no effort into it taking a large chunk. I also think the record studios charging so much for production costs is ludicrous as well. I have a feeling (I'll have to do some research to be sure) that a decent production studio could be setup on open source software and mostly commodity hardware for about the same if not less than the record labels charge to record an album in their studios. (I'll admit some of the hardware might be a bit spendy, mics, mixing boards etc, which is why people set up a studio and rent out time, still cheaper than what the recording studios charge I'm sure).
Yes, I not only want but actually have the right to download personal copies of music I haven't paid for around where I live, just as I have the right to record radio or television broadcasts for personal use, including copyrighted stuff I didn't pay for.
No, I want the copyright laws changed back to the way they were before the 100 year lifetimes and worst of all, corporations being able to own the copyright to a creative work.
I've heard this comment before, but there's an inherent problem with it: who owns the copyright of a work that's the product of a large number of artists combining their efforts? If John, Paul, George, and Ringo collaborate to write a song, you can't fairly assign copyright to just one of them, so it must be assigned to them as a group. But that group may very well be a corporation. You're stuck either denying them the right to copyright things that they worked on as a group (obviously unfair), forcing them to assign copyright to just one of the four (also obviously unfair), or let them copyright it as a corporation.
Even if you somehow prevent corporations from owning the copyright per se, you're never going to be able to prevent corporations from being able to have exclusive rights to the copyrighted material, which is just as good from their standpoint. Or are you going to suggest that artists shouldn't be allowed to sell exclusive rights to their works to corporations? If so, you'll have a hell of a time getting anything published, since almost all of the major publishers, record companies, movie studios, etc. are corporations.
--
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Re:About time
by
XeresRazor
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· Score: 2, Interesting
No, I'm perfectly fine with exclusive rights, I mentioned that in the last post, in an exclusive license the artist still has some control. a) they don't have to sign an exclusivity contract, they can release differnt versions of a disc through different publishers if they want to (and the publishers agreed) b) they can put time limit clauses in the contracts, either way the rights to the work remain with the artist, not the company that published it. As for the works created by a group, create a section of the copyright laws allowing a group to co-own a copyright by percentage, have allowances for dying members percentages to be partitioned out(after 5 years or so of course), allow all creators to sell the work at will but require any profits they make to be split according to the percentages set out in their copyright. All my point is that the copyrights need to go to the creators, not the creators employer or publisher.
I've finally figured it out. It's rather simple, isn't it?
We don't NEED publishers, record labels and their various executives anymore, do we? Self-publishing and self-recording is now simple and cheap to do. Digital downloading and print-on-demand have made it a snap.
So when you have the critical mass of artists realize this, and refuse to play the game any more, this whole problem is going to go away.
The CD isn't needed any longer, and print-on-demand publishers seem to do fine without requiring a large piece of the action.
The only people left crying in their Smirnoffs will be the industry crooks represented by RIAA et al.
-- Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Re:About time
by
Sphere1952
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Collective ownership. Each of the writers has full potency. Copyright is not by nature exclusionary.
Things can get a bit more complicated when the architect writes to basic structure; which is then filled in by others, but even then there is no excuse for turning to the notion of corporate ownership.
A corporation cannot write anything. Only people write things, and these people are generally not the same people as the people who own the corporation.
The member's of the beatles don't own jack on the copyrights of their materials. It's all owned by Michael Jackson. Well....mostly owned by Jacko.
--
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
Re:About time
by
Spy+Hunter
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· Score: 4, Interesting
How about making copyright non-transferrable? So if I write a song, Michael Jackson can never come in and buy the rights to it so I can't publish my own song, and if I write a song, no corporation can ever own the rights to it. I always will own the song. If my group writes the [song, book, code], we own it as a group, until the copyright expires.
I haven't thought this through a whole lot, and I realize that it would have a lot of kinks to work out. (How would anyone get permission to copy a song if they weren't the artist? Obviously the copyright holder would have to be able to sign contracts granting that permission, but that is the same as giving up ownership of the song if the contract is horrible enough. Maybe copyright holders could always retain the option to terminate any contract that gives someone else part of the copyright, or something. Or maybe copyright holders could simply not be able to enter into contracts that would forbid them from entering copying contracts with others.) But I think it's an interesting idea. What does Slashdot think?
I think what's wrong is not so much the copyright system as the exploitative relationship between publishers and artists. Any system can be abused. Under the same laws, in the same economy and the same "piracy-crazy" environment that is supposedly responsible for the music industry slump, independent labels and artists are doing better than ever [Christian Science Monitor article from April 2003, in case you missed it]. Rounder Records' income was up 50% in 2002 compared to 2001.
This despite the fact that their artists retain copyright, share the profit from each and every CD, and can't get exposure on corporate FM radio and music TV.
-- "This is not a sig." -- R.
Re:About time
by
Spy+Hunter
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Or are you going to suggest that artists shouldn't be allowed to sell exclusive rights to their works to corporations? If so, you'll have a hell of a time getting anything published, since almost all of the major publishers, record companies, movie studios, etc. are corporations.
I think you're looking at it the wrong way. Sure, if an artist went around *now* saying "I'm not giving exclusive rights to anyone" they wouldn't get published. However, that's only because there are other artists who *will* give exclusive rights. If no artist could give exclusive rights, then what would happen?
Let's just leave the Internet out of this for a second, since we're not even sure the old business models will work when the Internet is in the picture. Instead imagine a world without p2p and without exclusive publishing rights. Would music still be published? There would still be demand. Therefore, music would be published and sold. There would still be publishers. Artists could still sell copying rights to publishers. The only difference is, artists could move from publisher to publisher at will, or even use multiple publishers. What does this cause? Competition among publishers! Publishers competing with each other for artists, based on the merits of each publisher's service. Competition drives quality up and prices down. Artists could charge whatever they want for their own works, and the publishing costs would be very low because of competition, so they would get most of the profit.
What of the current music industry? Well, it is mostly advertising nowadays, I think. Publishing is a small part of it. So today's music publishers could just turn into advertising agencies for artists. I guess nothing would stop artists from signing stupid contracts with these advertising agencies, but you can't protect people from their own stupidity. At least under this system the music would always belong to the artist, and publishing would be cheap.
Wow, I must have missed reading the second paragraph of the grandparent post, where he deals with this exact question. Sorry. Feel free to mod this post down if you like, I made a better one below.
How about making copyright non-transferrable? So if I write a song, Michael Jackson can never come in and buy the rights to it so I can't publish my own song,...
But it's mine. Why can't I sell/assign/give away the rights if I want to?
Rounder you said? Pfeh. Alison Krauss regularly gets airplay on CMT. (Although admittedly she was an unknown when I first heard of her more than a decade ago...and I liked her then.)
And if you don't know who Alison Krauss and Union Station are...well, one of the guys in Union Station, Dan Tyminski, was the singing voice of George Clooney in "O Brother Where Art Thou".
Re:About time
by
Spy+Hunter
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Copyright is an abstract, arbitrary construct to start with. The whole idea of ownership of non-tangible things such as music is arbitrarily defined by copyright. Copyright can be defined however we want, according to what is best for society as a whole. If it is better to have non-transferable copyrights, then that should be how we do it. Perhaps the rights conferred by copyright shouldn't be referred to as "ownership" at all, because copyright should not be confused with the rights of ownership of tangible things. That causes errors in thinking.
I want the copyright laws changed back to the way they were before the 100 year lifetimes and worst of all, corporations being able to own the copyright to a creative work
I think this is a non-sequitor when talking about file sharing. IIRC, Metallica is one of the few bands to have control over their own copyrights, but nobody respected that when they started complaining about file sharing. As for the length of copyrights, if it were still 75 years or even 50 years (or life+50 or even life+25), it still wouldn't matter for the vast majority of file sharing. How many of the people downloading movies are downloading stuff from before 1950? How many of the songs people download are from before 1950?
As for corporations being able to own copyright, who else should own copyright on a movie that the corp put 50 million into and had one person write the script, two more make changes, a director to film it and another person to do the final editing?
How about "Fair Use"? The first place I'd point is not the flaming lawsuits (suing someone for money that you wouldn't have anyway if they'd done nothing wrong, and who is your main customer) but one of a few concentrated sources of evil in the world -- Microsoft.
Microsoft is trying to lock us into Windows Media Player in such a way that we both legally and technically cannot use any other program to play any file. Period.
This is so that your computer will not rip copyrighted cds, even though that is fair use. It means you are forced to use Windows, even though it is morally and should be legally fair use to use Linux mPlayer to play a dvd I own. It means a lot of inconveniences and a lot of being accused of piracy just trying to use a product you bought.
And by the way, TV and the VCR already do this, among other things. If I want a free movie, it's illegal to download it, even if I own it, but legal to videotape it if it's shown on TV. But it's illegal to make a copy of a videotape or DVD I own.
So what I want (and what Card wants) are some simple and sane rules that don't make it legal or easy to be a pirate, but do allow these slow, stupid industries to catch up to the current technology and profit from this instead of flop around madly trying to destroy it.
Imagine if they charged 10 cents a download. Imagine if the downloads could be at any quality you wanted, from 56k mp3 to vbr ogg to full quality flac. Would you buy any less cds? Maybe. Would they get more money? Probably.
I'd pay 10 cents for a song like "Because I got high", but I wouldn't pay $1 for the entire cd.
And by the way, what if that 10 cents went straight to the artist? I can see where the record companies would be pissed (since their job of doing nothing but promotional stuff with a huge profit margin and absorbing 80-90% of sales for no good reason would be destroyed) but the artists (the people we users are supposed to feel guilty about when we download a song) would probably get 10x the money on each song. Go figure.
You make it sound like the only way to increase the artists rights is to take them away.
We're not attempting to increase the rights of the artist. We're trying to increase the fairness of the industry so that artists in general will be better off. It is the case that taking away the same rights from everyone can leave everyone in a better situation. The only way to allow us to live life without the constant fear of being killed is to outlaw murder. Our "right" to murder has been taken away, but everyone benefits.
No, I want the copyright laws changed back to the way they were before the 100 year lifetimes and worst of all, corporations being able to own the copyright to a creative work. I'm all for a corporation being able to own a patent but copyrights should belong to the artists that create the work, never to the company that distributes it.
What about movies or other works created from a combined team of artists? Does each own a portion of the copyright? Logistically, how would one manage the distribution rights of the resulting work? While I partially share your loathing of the insidious use of copyright wrought by some companies, it is, like most things, not a black and white issue.
Re:About time
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
And if you don't know who Alison Krauss and Union Station are...well, one of the guys in Union Station, Dan Tyminski, was the singing voice of George Clooney in "O Brother Where Art Thou".
Wow... your band-mate was dubbed over part of Clooney's voice in some shitty movie. An impressive claim to fame, if there ever was one.
True, rounder is one of the bigger, higher profile indies now, been around for ages (remember George Thorogood?), and in fact has become one of the bigger players in the folk/bluegrass realm, and present-day Rounder is perhaps a not-so-representative example for the article to cite. But look back on their history. Started as an "anti-profit collective" serving neglected niche markets, they were blindsided by their own luck (Thorogood was the beginning, then Rounder found themselves sitting on a large zydeco/cajun catalog when it became a fad, same thing happened with blues and then more recently the bluegrass resurgence...) and have had their share of growing pains. Actually it's not luck, but taste and passion: they still support niche artists who sell only a few albums a year--they look for talent, not marketability--and I'm sure they are finding and nurturing more future gold mines. AND, along with the smaller indies, they are booming as much as the mainstream recording industry is sagging, if the article is accurate, in a poor economy.
btw, Allison Krauss has been on Rounder since she was 14 yrs. old! She's turned down numerous offers from major labels, so Rounder must have treated her pretty well these 12 years.
Sorry for the hurried blathering. The point is, that their dedication to supporting and disseminating quality music, no matter how obscure and unglamorous, brought them their success. Not media mogul success, but far more than the three Boston grad students who founded Rounder ever anticipated.
-- "This is not a sig." -- R.
Re:About time
by
SirSlud
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· Score: 2, Informative
Simply untrue. Current economics dictate that if I want to become popular, I'll need people around me supporting.. even online. If I pour my life into music, I need a webmaster, promoter.. distrobutors do fill a need that musicians have; the problem is that they shouldnt have as much control over the market as distributors currently do.
This is a common see-saw power cycle in the history of copyright law and the publication of artistic works.
The point isn't that I need somebody to market for me. The point is, the more marketers working for me, the more I can influence my ability to become popular and profitable. So the answer is to ensure that the markers are not so powerful as to garauntee their own jobs by rigging the utopian goal of a meritocracy in the music business.
RTFA. Card wrote about copyright law and simply used filesharing as his main example. Copyright law is the topic of discussion and if anything, filesharing is the nonsequitor.
You've got a good point about the corporate ownership of copyright though. A massively collaborative work like a big-budget movie is fundamentally different from a small group of friends (like a band) creating something together. I'm not sure it's an unsolvable problem, but I can't immediately think of a solution.
-- The original Howling Frog is a fictional character and has no UID.
I have a feeling (I'll have to do some research to be sure) that a decent production studio could be setup on open source software and mostly commodity hardware for about the same if not less than the record labels charge to record an album in their studios.
Let's talk about this.:) It's important.
First, talk about actual digital recording quality. I use an onboard sound system on my motherboard to do my recording because I don't have the money to buy a better sound card. The main problem I have has more to do with being in the case and on the motherboard than anything else. Anyway, it's got CD quality recording, stereo or mono (line in vs. mic in). One track at a time, of course. I get CD quality recordings out of post-production (I use that term lightly, none of my music has officially graduated to release status, yet). The main problems in these recordings are, right now, engineering problems. I.e. I'm not a very good sound engineer. However, in every track recorded, there's some interference from the playback. For example, in a vocal track, recorded with a playback of guitars, you will hear, very faintly, the guitars in the background. This interferes with the mix in the end, because it accumulates with each iteration where you playback a mix of the song and record another track on top of it. However, if you record only two tracks, the band without vocals, and the vocals separately, you eliminate the background noise almost completely. But that seriously limits what you can do with the mix. So, the solution is to get a high-end recording sound card, or one of those high-end USB boxes. It can get expensive to deal with this problem, and for my recordings (and many other low-budget artists) it's an acceptable tradeoff.
The next problem is the connections to the sound card. Using regular, cheap cables that you get to hookup your sound, you get some interference. You really need some good shielding, however, this problem is not as severe as I'm making it sound. Interference from this connection is less of a problem than the one I mentioned above. However, there is a problem with connecting instruments to this. My solution is to use a Fostex FD-8 hard drive recorder as a mixer, connecting through the line out on the FD-8. This allows me to hook up a raw guitar to the FD-8, or a good mic, and balances the resistance properly to the computer. So I get the highest-possible fidelity to the computer from the instrument. Without spending money on a general-purpose solution like a mixer, you wind up requiring the individual musicians to deal with this problem. I also have a Boss GT-3 that has a line out, so for guitar recordings I can plug directly into the computer and get good fidelity. But this doesn't solve the problem for vocals or drums. I can apply this solution to vocals if needed, or I can use a cheap-ass computer mic. I'd rather use the GT-3 if I have to.
The next problem is the room itself. If you get all your guys to plug directly into the mixer without requiring a mic, except for vocals, then this problem is solved. Many artists prefer to mic their amps when recording, however, and the room becomes a big problem. Your living room may not be a good room for this. The problem still exists for vocals, and using effects you can hide the problem sufficiently, for most applications.
Now let's talk about actual equipment. In order to be able to process sound, you need a pretty good processor, fast motherboard (ie front bus), and a fair amount of memory for caching. I do alright with a 800mhz Duron with 256MB DDR. However, it's not good enough for my tastes. A faster processor and more memory would really help, but the motherboard itself is good enough. My system, on the current market, could probly be assembled for around $500 (not including hard drives, and you do need a lot of hard drive space). Ideally, however, I'd have a sound card that recorded 32-bit float (I don't know that these are even available, settle with
But it's mine. Why can't I sell/assign/give away the rights if I want to?
While I agree with you in spirit, I disagree in practice. The reason I disagree in practice is because it's through this exact right that the existing recording industry binds musicians to something resembling slavery. When the largest content distributors are powerful enough to tell the little content creators that "Your stuff will not be distributed unless you sign away your rights", then the rights provided for in copyright law are no longer available to the content creator, and for all practical purposes don't exist. The purpose of granting a creator a temporary monopoly on their work is to preserve their rights to commercial exploitation. Having the relevant industry force a creator to sign away their copyright in order to achieve commercial exploitation means that they effectively no longer have their rights. The music industry has done an excellent job of showing us why copyright law is screwed up, and Disney has certainly done quite a bit to help them (not that the other movie companies are exempt from criticism, Disney's just the most recently notorious).
So, basically, if you're a musician in our society and you want to become rich and famous off your music, copyright law guarantees you the right to attempt to do so. But the industry itself takes away that right. You might get lucky signing with an independent label, but your chances are better with a major label. But many indy labels and all major labels force you to give up your rights to your music, and then license it back to you for performance. Since the industry manages to trump copyright law, for all intents and purposes (even though they work within copyright law), then I say that copyright law has failed, and needs to be rethought.
As for corporations being able to own copyright, who else should own copyright on a movie that the corp put 50 million into and had one person write the script, two more make changes, a director to film it and another person to do the final editing?
The original script writer should own his version of the script. A license should be secured to allow the people to make changes. Then, those two collectively own their changes, with the original script under license (can't be revoked, I don't think). The director should own copyright on his presentation of the script, and all the parts that he filmed. Collectively, the actors should own their parts. All of this is made under license from the scriptwriters, and licensed (in perpetuity, most likely) to the movie production company.
Riddle me this: Under the current system, if an actor plays a role in a public domain work, and that work gets copyrighted (note: they can copyright their presentation, but not the original work), such as Mel Gibson's portrayal of Hamlet, and then goes and does the same public domain work with a different company, plays the same role, and provides a similar interpretation (not possible for a clean-room interpretation, it's the same actor and the same role), then have they committed copyright infringement? If not, why not?
What about having a site where artists can submit there music for rating by listeners? Is this what mp3.com is meant to be? IMO there are plenty of great unsigned bands out there willing to give their music away for free (in mp3 format anyway)all we need is a decent system to sort out the wheat from the chaff. If this took off the RIAA would collectively shit themselves. If this type of site exists why isn't it working?
At this point I will insert a shameless plug for great MP3s you can listen to while you work - http://www.miaowmusic.com
We don't NEED publishers, record labels and their various executives anymore, do we? Self-publishing and self-recording is now simple and cheap to do.
Indeed. And yet musicians continue working with big corporations, and "being signed" on a major label is still regarded as something good for an artist. So what is the problem here ? Is it just that the artists are stupid ? Do big music companies hypnotize musicians into signing their contracts ?
The answer is that major labels do provide an invaluable service to musicians : exposure ! The bigger a company is, the more money it can use to advertise its "products" (in this case, the bands).
Of course it is possible to achive some degree of worldwide exposure without using the power of big labels (think Ani DiFranco). But this is more an exception than a rule (and even so, I doubt Ani DiFranco sold more than a few thousands albums out of the US).
Sure, P2P can be a very efficient promotional tool. But nothing can quite replace the deep pockets and professional know-how of EMI or Universal. If these companies didn't provide any valuable service, do you really think artists would give up the rights to their work so easily ?
Current economics dictate that if I want to become popular, I'll need people around me supporting.
So? Hire your own.
Why do you need a one-size-fits-all corporation to do this, when you can "outsource" to your heart's content?
I can hire a public relations firm, who work for ME, to do all the "connecting" that I want.
The method used by the entertainment industry is outmoded. It is based on a monopolistic creed that stipulates that all the contacts needed are in L.A., or whatever.
Sorry, but the infrastructure provided by digital channels far outstrips anything the Hollywood or New York distribution outlets were ever able to do.
I can write a book, have someone (who works for ME) edit the thing, put it on Amazon.Com and have it printed on demand by IUniverse or similar, and never need this corporate infrastructure that is bloated and vampiristic.
And I keep the majority of the profits, and the publicists, editors, printers-on-demand, and retail channels will all make their money, too.
Who won't make the money are the Vodka Gimlet-swilling pimps--er--lawyers who make up the old, outmoded monopoly that is the "entertainment industry."
-- Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Re:About time
by
Technician
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I think you're looking at it the wrong way. Sure, if an artist went around *now* saying "I'm not giving exclusive rights to anyone" they wouldn't get published. However, that's only because there are other artists who *will* give exclusive rights. If no artist could give exclusive rights, then what would happen?
Music isn't the only industry where someone tries to get a work for hire to get the copyright. Photography is very much driven by the photographers tring to own the copyright forcing you to buy all prints from them if you use their services. Instead of hiring a photographer for your wedding or event who will attmpt to control distribution, change the terms and take bids for a work for hire. You keep the negatives and copyright. Most photographers won't provide a bid. Stick to your guns and only hire photographers on your terms even if it costs more. Finaly it's legal to e-mail wedding photos to distant relatives in something not super compressed. It's kind of on the other foot wanting to retain copyright, but in some cases work for hire should be just that.
An example of a valid work for hire where the performer gets no copyright is a radio station hiring performers to do a station jingle. The station should pay the performers and the station should get the copyright and not have to pay a royalty each time the station has a station break.
Walt Disney learned this the hard way. His first cartoon mouse was Mortimer Mouse. After Walt changed jobs, he found the studio owned Mort. Walt wisely said never again! Walt Disney had to open his own studio in order to keep his creations from being owned by someone else. Bands should have learned from Walt Disney and ditched RIAA style studios/promoters.
I do think more bands should be self produced and find a distribitor/promoter that will promote the band for a fixed fee and/or a portion of the royalties while the band retains the royalty. If the promoter does a poor job, the band should have the right to fire the promoter and hire someone else. The RIAA model is obsolete.
-- The truth shall set you free!
Re:About time
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
[I]I think you're looking at it the wrong way. Sure, if an artist went around *now* saying "I'm not giving exclusive rights to anyone" they wouldn't get published. However, that's only because there are other artists who *will* give exclusive rights. If no artist could give exclusive rights, then what would happen?
[/I]
So what? It's a choice. If you want to remain "pure", you can release on an indie label and spend your time singing in coffee houses. Record companies ask for the exclusive rights in exchange for investing heavily in the artist. They pay for recording studios, management, promotion, and the vast majority of the acts that they sign up produce NO substantial sales. How many artists do you think Geffen records manages? Fewer than 5% produce 90% of their revenue. The record company is taking all the risk here (putting cash up front). Why shouldn't they get exclusive rights in return? If an artist doesn't like the contract, they can take their music elsewhere.
In some countries (e.g. in Russia) copyright is non-transferrable. You can sell some of the rights, but copyright (author's rights) belongs to you until the work passes into public domain.
Russia has other cool things about copyrights. For example, all films older than 30 years are already in the public domain. Want a 100% legal 300Gb HDD filled with "The Best of Hollywood (1900-1970)" for the price of HDD + 1$/movie? Drop me a note.:) Want to set up a 10$/month subscription server in Russia serving full DVD-quality films to users? Go ahead - it's 100% legal and beneficial to the society as a bonus. Want to make a music video using Disney's Bambi or Snowwhite? No problem and the best thing you don't have to pay a penny to Disney.:)
-- Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
We don't NEED publishers, record labels and their various executives anymore, do we? Self-publishing and self-recording is now simple and cheap to do. Digital downloading and print-on-demand have made it a snap.
Sure... if you're one of the privileged who owns a PC with a broadband connection. The rest of the entertainment-buying planet is SOL in your scenario.
But it's mine. Why can't I sell/assign/give away the rights if I want to?
It's only yours until the instant you share it with someone else. As long as it's still in your head (or hidden in a cupboard somewhere), it's yours. Once you share it with someone else, it's theirs too. And then if it's shared with everyone in the entire world, then it's everyone's.
Copyright is just an artificial limitation on this fundamental concept. It has no basis in any fundamental ideas - only the sophisticated idea of rewarding people for sharing quality stuff with everyone to encourage them to share more.
It is *definitely* not about helping huge corporations make a buck.
More importantly, I have the ability, and have had the ability to have music I didn't pay for since radio became a big deal. So has everyone else. What you're missing here is that this was inevitable, just as the RIAA and MPAA are inevitably doomed.
What I don't understand is what people like you want. Do you want the RIAA and MPAA to continue to occupy a wasteful, unnecessary capacity -- that of the distributor, which is no longer necessary and very quickly becoming unprofitable -- even though it's screwing you, and me, and everybody else?
The RIAA didn't make music. The MPAA didn't create film. They own one thing, and one thing only -- rights they never should have had in the first place. This filesharing situation is reality beating the crap out of them for being such colossal crooks in the first place.
There's nothing that can be changed legally that will save either whiny body. The crumbling institutions will continue to crumble. The stupid fascistic attempt to prevent people from doing something that they've been able to do for years, just not as quickly, will continue.
The question is whether you want the government backing these goons, whether you want Senate approval for these social whores who serve no useful purpose.
While I agree with you in spirit, I disagree in practice. The reason I disagree in practice is because it's through this exact right that the existing recording industry binds musicians to something resembling slavery.
I agree with you that copyright law needs rethinking, especially the length of protection. (Life of the author is OK, but the effectively perpetual term now in effect is simply silly) But preventing assignment of rights based solely on the ability of an industry to victimize copyright holders is the Nanny State at its worst.
Technology is enabling even the Average Joe to distribute his creative content without the necessity of a major distributor contract. It may be true now that "your chances are better with a major label", but that will not always be the case. And anyway, if someone wants to voluntarily accept such indenturement, I believe it is their God-given right to do so. It's a simple marketplace solution. Artists can wager their rights that a major corporation will increase their chances of success. Whether that is a good wager is up to the artist.
Nothing guarantees success.
-- Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
Doesn't work. Existing copyright law indicates that "intellectual property" can be signed away before it's even created.
Read the stuff you sign for the next job you work at. Look around hard enough and you'll find an intellectual property clause, which indicates that if you work on anything that the company feels is within the scope of their products/efforts/etc., even creative works, then the company owns it.
Translation: Writing a book at home? If the company decides they want it, it's theirs. Building an invention in your basement? If the company decides they want it, it's theirs. In theory, they could take ownership of your grocery list.
Sure, it won't happen. The question is -- do you think you can ever produce something that you will want to keep, and the company might want? Guaranteed they've got more lawyers than you do, so you're not going to win in court.
You have no choices if you've signed one of these things, you just don't have any intellectual property. Non-transferable just means that the company steals it and then it dies with them.
Didn't you read OSC's essay? If you did, you would have seen that from an insider's standpoint, sharing does not hurt the artists - in fact it drives sales by 'spreading the word' about popular works that otherwise would not see the light of day. By shutting down this aspect (that has always been part of the music landscape as long as I can remember - sharing 8 tracks, cassettes and records back in the 80s with friends).
He also painted a picture of the publishers and record companies for what they are: greedy corporations, intent on keeping the massive profit margins flowing regardless of the economic reality that the current market slump has imposed on the buying public.
Why do record companies refuse to sell individual tracks cheaply? Why do record companies, in the guise of the RIAA, attempt to scare us from ripping and sharing music? Why would publishers attempt to get writers to sign contracts making their months and years of work be considered 'work for hire' rather than copyright material?
One word: greed.
The cash cow is getting a clue, and has decided to leave the barn...
--
Lodragan Draoidh The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
It's especially potent to hear these words coming from an author. After all, libraries are "killing" the book publishing industry, aren't they? That would explain why there are so many new mall-sized bookstores opening up every year:)
As a game developer/player, reader, and music fan, I wholeheartedly agree with Card as well. It doesn't matter what industry you are in, there are some people who want something for nothing. But if you give the rest value for their dollar they'll return to you again and again because they want more, and know that rewarding you for your work by purchasing it will most likely result in your being able to provide what they want.
I haven't bought a music CD in ages, and not because I download the music. It's because CDs are overpriced, and I can't walk into a store and browse what I like because the stores carry mostly top40 crap these day. I think I've downloaded maybe 8 CDs in the last year. I now have purchased copies of all of them except one. When I can find a place that can get it in stock in less than 3 months, I'll be picking that one up to.
I want to see publishers get on the technology bandwagon and embrace it, not put a leash on it. Think of how much extra money Showtime could make if 'Dead Like Me' or other content was available as a 2 dollar download from a bit-torrent like P2P setup each week.
Valve's 'Steam' setup is a step in the right direction. In a few months we, as consumers, will see what aspects of the concept need to be tweaked and they will either listen to the buying public or go the way of the dodo and another publishing scheme will take their place.
We're in for a bumpy, ugly ride as corporations and politicians try to keep up to the technology that outpaces their concept of the known world around them. The entertainment industry has become top heavy with "old-school" business practices, and it will either have to roll with the punches or fall on it's face.
The sooner the new marketplace is here, the better.
Hmm. Maybe artists should be able to sign agreements giving perpetual distribution rights, as long as those rights aren't exclusive. The radio station and the bride/groom could get distribution rights, but the performer/photographer would still be able to do whatever he/she wanted with the jingle/photos.
Well, hey, while we've suddenly got control of the entire U.S. political machine, let's get rid of some other laws, too.
What I'm saying is that, were something placed into effect now that indicated they were no longer transferable, it wouldn't solve the problem. Hell, if we can pass a law saying that the corporation can't pre-own anything you do for them, the whole argument will dry up, because that's essentially the primary source of income for large corporations -- taking an innovation and automating/mass-producing it.
This is the reason that software as an industry threatens large corporations. The only thing large corporations have going for them in many cases is their distribution network and their ability to mass-produce. If I create some character, I have to contract (Tyco|Mattel) to make the dolls; if I want a game about that character, I can make it myself and distribute it freely. No longer am I hitched to some middleman jackass who can't rub two sticks together to make fire.
The primary source of income at one point in this modern society was being able to pump something out quickly. It won't be any more, and eventually people who make money will actually have to think of new clever things, instead of just producing a few billion copies of someone else's clever idea.
Well, hey, while we've suddenly got control of the entire U.S. political machine, let's get rid of some other laws, too.
I'm speculating here. This is all pie-in-the-sky stuff, total thought experiment type stuff. There's no way in hell that Congress is going to change copyright like this anytime soon. But we can dream, can't we?;-)
I'm not saying you could pass some law saying "copyrights are non-transferable" and that would be it. You would definitely need to go through current laws and legal practice and change a bunch of things to make a coherent system out of this idea of non-transferable copyrights. What I'm saying is let's imagine we could do this; what would happen?
Hell, if we can pass a law saying that the corporation can't pre-own anything you do for them, the whole argument will dry up, because that's essentially the primary source of income for large corporations -- taking an innovation and automating/mass-producing it.
It does appear that in some cases "work for hire" makes sense. That's why I proposed elsewhere in the thread that people could still sign binding contracts giving eternal distribution rights to entities, as long as those contracts weren't *exclusive*. The artist/whatever who came up with the song/idea would still "own" it, and be able to do whatever he/she wanted with it. This would allow people to hire workers, and be able to use the products of their work, while the workers still have rights in their work as well.
Also, just because a certain specific business model in use today might not work so well under this new system doesn't mean the new system is automatically bad. We must weigh the different business models possible under the new system and the benefit to society as a whole as well.
The principle I operate under in hypothetical conversations is always Based upon everything that currently exists, what if this? and it's served me well.
I bring it up because the non-exclusive copyrights thing is, when weighed against the considerable political clout of just about every single major corporation in the United States, just not possible. All of industry would need to crumble first, or undergo some sort of miraculous rebirth.
Look at it in physics -- this kind of thing is used for one-off questions. "Assuming no friction existed..." "Ignoring the effect of entropy..." Nobody seriously conjectures about the possibilities of lava lamps built if entropy didn't exist, because it does. I am desperate to come up with ideas and conjectures that have practical, realistic, understandable applications.
And I'm certainly not saying that if something doesn't work with a certain business model, it's bad. I'm saying that the businesses that operate under that model own the U.S. government, the whole damn thing. Lock, stock, and barrel. You have to imagine the people this would directly affect negatively wanting to do it to themselves, and it just won't happen. Reality principle.
In short: I find a law that prevents copyright transfer after creation more likely than a law that prevents work-for-hire, or a law that removes exclusivity.
Discussion about the perfect copyright law can still be useful even if it doesn't directly apply to the US. There are plenty of other countries in the world, and in the future more will be created. If they have a better idea about the what the ideal copyright system would look like, they can model their systems after it instead of reusing the US model. And if the US is still around at that hypothetical time when other countries are using this new copyright model, then maybe it will be more receptive to changing its own model.
Riddle me this: Under the current system, if an actor plays a role in a public domain work, and that work gets copyrighted [and later] provides a similar interpretation [for someone else,] have they committed copyright infringement?
Riddle me this: under your system, where the writer who turn the play into the movie script owns the copyright on script, and the director who directed the film owns copyright on his direction (including that of the actor), what changes? His similar interpretation is still arguably a derivative work of the writer and director's work.
Riddle me this: under your system, where the writer who turn the play into the movie script owns the copyright on script, and the director who directed the film owns copyright on his direction (including that of the actor), what changes? His similar interpretation is still arguably a derivative work of the writer and director's work.
Um, first, I don't think the director necessarily owns the copyright on the actor's performance. Like a rock band, I think the actor should have copyright on their own performance.
Second, the director's work is a derivative work of the writer's. He just owns copyright on his portion of the derivation. It's arguable whether or not it's a derivative work of the actors'. In order for it to work, there has to be a great deal of cross-licensing that could easily skyrocket movie costs, or bring them down, depending on how greedy the individuals get.
The problem with my proposed solution (which I only offered as a solution to the OP, I don't recall ever saying that I was for it) is it's complexity and dependency on bureaucracy. There's got to be a better way, but I haven't thought of it yet.
Well, that settles it then
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Funny
Now that we've got the opinion of a semi-famous author of the written word on the sharing of music files, that should pretty much close the discussion right there.
Now if we could only get Gary Coleman's take on this whole SCO thing...
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
DrEldarion
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· Score: 5, Insightful
While I can see your point, it's a lot more helpful than you'd think. ANY famous person is helpful to the cause, whether they're in the music industry or not.
Imagine if the cast of Friends spoke out against the RIAA - how many previously-uninformed people do you think would look into it more and take a stand?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
buffer-overflowed
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Moot. It's already getting wide coverage, hell my Grandfather knows about it and thinks it's ridiculous. Them suing a 12-year old girl really, really didn't help matters for them.
The RIAA is informing people quite well with their lawsuits, they're forcing it into the public eye. Mr. Card is pushing a few people towards the Anti-RIAA camp, but that's all... he's not going to generate enough noise to trump what the RIAA is doing.
-- The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
drayzel
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· Score: 1
I downloaded the Enders Game audio book last year. The reader sounded like a robot and it was abridged to the point where it was 1/4 the quality of the book. Glad I didn't pay for it.
I would have rented from the library, but all his stuff is on hold for months and months (I live in his boyhood hometown).
~Z
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
ryanr
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· Score: 1
It's not like writers don't have their work show up on Kazza et al as well. I periodically scan for my books, and I usually see them available.
In my case, I don't own the copyrights, so there's not a lot I can say about whether that's ok or not. If you assume it's hurting sales, then it also affects my royalty checks.
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
schnits0r
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· Score: 2, Insightful
ANY famous person is helpful to the cause, whether they're in the music industry or not.
Lars Ulrich spoke about his opinion of file sharing, but you weren't so appreciative about that famous persons opinion.
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yeah, but Lars Ulrich is a tool.
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
zakezuke
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· Score: 1
I'm thinking the last thing on Gary Coleman's mind is computing. Last thing I heard he was involved in a rather serious hit and run accident, though i'm having a hard time finding any info on him post 1999.
-- There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary.
SHUT UP!
There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
whoisjoe
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· Score: 1
whatchootalkinbout Willis?
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
xihr
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It may well be that it does make a difference, but it shouldn't. What if Card sided with the other side, would people still be valuing his opinion then?
Famous peoples' opinions on subjects for which they did not game their fame are just as relevant as the everyman in the street. And that is to say, not bloody much.
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
tuba_dude
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· Score: 1
I don't know, I was pretty happy. He looked like a fool and people started to hate him and what he was saying.
-- "The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
garyrich
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Yes, yes. +5 funny maybe, but at least -2 not insiteful. He's "a semi-famous author of the written word" but if you have read any amount of his work you would probably agree that he's also deeply interested in ethics. Ethics and ethical behaviour are at the core of most of his writing. I don't always agree with his opinions, but he thnks about these things clearly and usually not unduly influenced by his Mormon worldview. The postulates he start with are not mine, but he reason well from them.
Point being, I'll grant him some expertise in this area. He's thought about these issues long and hard. I doubt that Mr. Coleman has thought long and hard on any subject of more depth than why Todd got all the punany and he didn't.
-- -- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
peter_gzowski
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· Score: 1
ANY famous person is helpful to the cause, whether they're in the music industry or not.
I think this is only half right. I think Orson Scott Card coming out and saying he's pro-file- sharing is pretty much useless, as the only people who know who OSC is, or care what he has to say, are geeks, who are also pro-file-sharing (generally).
So, I would say any famous person who reaches an audience of the uninformed (wrt to the RIAA/mp3/file-sharing debate) is helpful to the cause.
-- "Now gluttony and exploitation serves eight!" - TV's Frank
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
Xerithane
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· Score: 1
My parents dont give a shit. It's sad. They now buy DVD audio discs, instead of CDs. It's even worse than CDs. When I try to tell them, they don't care. They'll vote against unfair laws, when they actually can. How often is that going to happen?
My mother is a huge Enders Series fan, and really enjoys Mr. Card's writing, so I'm hoping this could perhaps help her awareness of how skewed the situation is getting.
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
resin8
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· Score: 1
i'm having a hard time finding any info on him post 1999
Then you're not trying very hard. He's running for governor of California.
Google News search
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
BryanL
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· Score: 1
Not only that, but a well known Mormon has made the point. Maybe Orin Hatch (also a Mormon) will take some time to listen. Senators do make a difference.
Mine didn't, but they still have kids in the house. When I told them they would probably be sued if they didn't spend every moment watching my little bro on the computer and making sure he didn't download. A dateline episode really drove it home for them. Now they care, and they are pissed.
-- The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
wynterwynd
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· Score: 1
It's not like writers don't have their work show up on Kazza et al as well. I periodically scan for my books, and I usually see them available.
Welllll... while this is true, ebooks are not quite the same. Reading off a computer screen, especially a novel, can be very tiring after a while. Until digital paper or some other method of displaying digital print portably without eye strain is perfected and marketed, paper books will continue to be the readers' choice. With MP3s the quality is usually on par with CDs.
Darwin vs. RIAA - Adapt or die
-- "Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
ryanr
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· Score: 1
That's true, I fully agree with you there. I'd much rather read a book printed on paper, and keep it around, etc... I'd often like to have some reference or technical books in electronic format as well, for portability, cut-and-paste, and searchability reasons, but I'd usually be willing to get a second copy for that purpose. (Think the Perl Bookshelf CD-ROM.)
For someone intent on getting and enjoying a copy of a book without paying for it (the only situation to worry about) they don't have much choice besides e-books, do they? Not unless they want to steal from bookstores, or spend a lot of time in front of the photocopier.
For music, yes, CDs you would normally listen to with speakers, but with MP3s, you use speakers.:)
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
wynterwynd
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· Score: 1
For someone intent on getting and enjoying a copy of a book without paying for it (the only situation to worry about) they don't have much choice besides e-books, do they?
Yet I have heard rumors of these archaic buildings with collections of books that they scandalously lend out for free. These "lye berrys" must be stopped at once:)
-- "Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
zakezuke
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· Score: 1
i'm having a hard time finding any info on him post 1999
Then you're not trying very hard. He's running for governor of California. Google News search
I should say, with the exception of his bid for governorship, i'm having a hard time finding info on him post 1999. And you're right.... i'm not trying very hard! I'm not all that interested in Gary Coleman in general. In fact, the only reason I heard something about him in a hit and run is because I was making some tea, the tele happened to be on, and some entertainment news channel was running a story on him. My microwave takes 2min to brew tea, and I got my 2min worth of Coleman information.
-- There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary.
SHUT UP!
There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
He may have written one decent book 2 decades ago, but when it comes to authoring, I think his skills should be called into question. For example - "Figure the songwriters and performers are getting some ludicrously small percentage -- less than twenty percent, I'd bet" _isn't_ the kind of thing that anyone who isn't too lazy to do their research would say. Whilst technically correct, the figure is almost always less than 20%, he doesn't need to take any risks in "betting" that it's correct, if he simply researches. Common percentages are from 10% to 14%, for reference (but don't forget that the recording costs are borne by artists, not the labels, which means that they don't even see someof that percentage as it simply cancels loans made pre recording).
YAW.
--
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
ArekRashan
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· Score: 2, Funny
If you'd paid attention, you'd have noticed that he talked about 'work for hire'. The fact that recording artists must bear the costs of recording and thus creating their product is precisely why it should not be considered work for hire. In this light, the standard arrangement of transferring copyright of the material to the record label seems extremely unethical. You have better things to do than quibble about statistics, and you haven't seen part two yet, so shush.
By the way, Children of the Mind sucked ass. Big hairy donkey ass. I'd rather have a Tabasco enema than read it again. Mod this up so Card sees it.
Card, Children of the Mind was a piece of crap.
That having been said, Ender's Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon were pretty good.
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
Silburn_Luke
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· Score: 1
I take your point about famous people sounding off for the sake of it.
However Card is a writer who depends upon is more significant (especially if he is arguing against what 'conventional thinking' might expect him to argue).
Ditto for the various musicians quoted in the other article.
Yes, absolutely. Now show me where the post you replied to implies I believe otherwise. My complaint was about his sloppy research, not about the judgements about copyright ethics.
"Card, Children of the Mind was a piece of crap."
Hmmm, nope, no counter-argument from this camp.
YAW.
--
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
What?
I'm still waiting for the ogg-vorbis overlords.
-- --- You know it's bad when
bash-2.05a$ fortune
bash: fortune: command not found
That byline 'speaker-for-the-dumb'...
by
Sheetrock
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· Score: 2, Insightful
is just a bit insulting, isn't it? I thought the essay was very articulate and well-written, if short on details about how you can be friendly to filetraders and turn a profit with intellectual property (maybe part 2?)
--
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try. -- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Re:That byline 'speaker-for-the-dumb'...
by
imsabbel
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· Score: 1, Informative
well, i guess better dumb than dead....
(if you dont know, go to amazon an view cards books)
-- HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Re:That byline 'speaker-for-the-dumb'...
by
Nasarius
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· Score: 3, Informative
Re:That byline 'speaker-for-the-dumb'...
by
vondo
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· Score: 4, Informative
or "dumb" as in those who don't speak. But maybe that is giving the editors too much credit.
Re:That byline 'speaker-for-the-dumb'...
by
buffer-overflowed
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· Score: 1
Also a reference to one of his books.
-- The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Re:That byline 'speaker-for-the-dumb'...
by
Overly+Critical+Guy
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· Score: 1
That's micheal for you. He's well-known for interjecting a bit too much for many people's tastes.
I just don't like him because he cyber-squats Censorware.org for no reason.
-- "Sufferin' succotash."
Re:That byline 'speaker-for-the-dumb'...
by
Hettch
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Orson Scott Card is a well known author the the Ender's Game series which includes the book Speaker for the Dead hence the Speaker-for-the-Dumb instead of Dead. He's an incredible author, and along with half of the./ crowd i'd encourage you to read his works.
Re:That byline 'speaker-for-the-dumb'...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yea, taunt the mod-bomb... I bet you'd taunt happy fun-ball too.
Re:That byline 'speaker-for-the-dumb'...
by
Sphere1952
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· Score: 1
"dead....
(if you dont know, go to amazon an view cards books)"
Bhahahahah! Good.
Card has his head screwed on straight, although I've oonly read a bit of his writing on writing -- and since I don't really like fantasy I haven't read all of his works.
I think he realizes that what the corporations have done to copyright endangers his livelihood. How can he be safe when the copyright law has become so screwed up that the public will not stand for it anymore? His justifiable rights will be swept away along with the bullshit the RIAA has created.
Is this the same guy writing for a sci-fi action game for the XBox? (Sorry, forgot the name, but it was a big article in Game Informer a few issues back.)
I don't know about that but probably. He wrote my favorite book that I've ever read (and I'm sure over 70% of the people here have read it) Ender's Game. Go read it sometime:D
PS - The reason I say probably to your comment is Ender's Game is a Sci-Fi book, and I daresay he's good at writing Sci-Fi.
Orson Scott Card wrote the modern sci-fi classic _Ender's Game_ and its sequels/parallell novels. It's *really* good stuff. There are supposedly plans for a movie, I think... there was never anything concrete, and it might have changed, however. Never heard anything about an action game for the Xbox... if it's based on Ender's Game, however, a real-time strategy game would be more appropriate. (The interface might get ugly, though, since the stuff would have to take place in a full 3-D space...) Anyway, the main post links to his site (http://www.hatrack.com, the name comes from his other big series, a fantasy series). He also has some quasi-"historical fiction" books based on women of the Old Testament, and a number of other random books.
I'm fortunate enough to live about an hour away from his hometown, so I can attend the occasional speaking engagement/book signing...
-- The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Is this the same guy writing for a sci-fi action game for the XBox?
I don't know about any current and future games but I do know that he was one of the principle writers for LucasArts The Dig.
Re:Tech-saavy?
by
shadowcabbit
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· Score: 3, Informative
Yep, Card is doing work for a Brute Force-like game called Advent Rising. GameFAQs lists it as supposeldy being released early next year. I'd read that Card isn't doing plot scripting so much as dialogue writing or something along those lines, but I'm not sure now. In any event, the game sounds good on paper-- I hope it plays well.
This isnt the first game he's written. Lucasarts had him for at least 2 of their adverture classics, "The Dig" and "Monkey Island" (the fabulous insults were all written by him), and probably more that I never bothered to read the credits for.
I think his point is that we wouldn't need to put you in concrete storage for several years and fine you six figures if you downloaded Ender's Game. He'd still like you to pay for the book, but doesn't necessarily feel his great-grandchildren need to receive tiny royalty payments from his effort (well, in addition to the publishing houses continuing to reap profits for nearly a century.)
Refreshing attitude. If copyright was reformed to be meaningful in today's environment, where a reasonable profit can be realized in a much shorter time than when copyrights were first introduced due to the capability and speed of worldwide marketing/distribution, eliminating P2P of copywritten works may be a worthwhile trade for the people currently using it for piracy.
--
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try. -- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I'm pretty sure you were joking but, if you really didn't want to pay full price for his books, then try finding a local used-bookstore, most of the time they sell books for half price or thereabouts.. 2.50 for Ender's Game? Yeah!
-- Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
My God! I've checked one of his books out from the library and read it without buying the book! My God again! The printed book industry is going to collapse if this kind of thing keeps up.
Re:e-books
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Maybe you pirate one of his e-books and you like it enough to buy the print version for the "feel."
"I was going to buy Ender's Game, but it didn't come in a quilted 2-ply, so I just downloaded it instead. I'll stick with Charmin until he gets his act together."
And its worth pointing out that, in that last case, you're the type of person that would've pirated all his books anyway. If he hadn't had official eBooks, you or someone like you would've scanned and OCR'd them. So he loses nothing by providing them and actually gains a lot.
Re:e-books
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
He doesn't really expect you to by that one anyways
his main thing is most poeple who pirate most likely (yeah not definally but hey) wont buy the music anyways and it would be expected in book wise that you would want to by the other books he has published. or as in records other records that have been produced by that artist
Part of the problem with existing copyright laws that many people have a problem with is the lack of innovation and creativity that they generate.
Take a company like disney (who made many millions off of works such as "Snow White" to which the copyright had expired and caused them to become public domain).
If not for the current copyright law, they might actually be FORCED (gasp!) to create new and innovative works to keep their company alive rather than simply repackaging and redistributin their prior work that is locked under an iron-clad (and apparently ever-lasting) copyright to protect their revenue stream.
I have no problem with a copyright, but as another slashdot article said a while ago, authors need to be given a choice, especially with regards to technological copy-prevention techniques:
Choice #1: Iron-clad, unbreakable (ya, I know), encryption. Can't be copied by any means (I said I know!;P). Companies/authors who own the rights control all distribution and playback methods. For 5 years. After which, by law, any re-releases in any form must be without any copy protection technology.
Choice #2: Casual copy-protection - the equivilent of macrovision or current DVD technology, would have no law against bypassing copy protection. Sharing (ie: P2P) not permitted. 20 year copyright.
Choice #3: No protection against copying, could not be used for other commercial purposes without the permission of the author. Able to be copied/traded freely. Copyright of author + 20 years.
You may choose one option, no mixing and matching.
N.
-- "Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Or maybe you check a copy of his book out at the library? How much do authors make everytime I visit the library and "book-swap-paper-share-peer to peer - hazaa?"
Why aren't the big publishing houses targeting the local libraries?
By the same argument, were publishers ever critical of public libraries? There is no need for me to ever buy a book. I can check out any book on earth from the library for free... and its perfectly legal as far as I know. Yet I still buy books. Why? convenience? packaging? Doesn't this same argument hold for music?
Orson Scott Card has answered this question here. Here's a brief sample:
In short, I just don't think that publishing is going to be affected negatively by digital copying. That's why I used to make my manuscripts available online for free during the months between my writing the books and their publication. There were sometimes hundreds of downloads -- but as far as we know, most or all of the people who downloaded it went on to buy the book when it came out in print -- and during the months when the book was only available online, those who read those advance copies were helping sell the book when it did appear by talking about it with their friends!
His website also has the first couple of chapters from each of his novels, so go check out a couple of his books before you buy!
His next novel, Walking on Water is currently being serialized on his website. Probably only of interest to folks who have already read the previous books in the Alvin Maker series though.
Re:e-books
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
> Maybe you don't buy that one in print, but buy others either in paper or electronically because you like his writing.
The same holds for music. A few months ago, my best friend sent me a CD with rips of just about every album Radiohead had ever made. I didn't know much of their music. I thought I didn't like that band. All I knew were the 2 songs that are always played on the radio. (...) I listened to the mp3s, started to really like RH. In june, I bought their new album when it came out. I just bought concert tickets today to go see them. I'll probably buy myself their DVD for Christmas.
Yeah isn't it funny how all of the "great" Disney movies were nothing more than remakes of old stories, legends, etc that are in the public domain, and yet they are fighting tooth and nail to prevent their own works from ever going into the public domain?
But thats a whole nother' thread...
Anyways, I'm sure one could easily argue that sometimes people benafit from pirating. I'm sure if college kids didn't rampantly pirate MS Office and Windows, Microsoft wouldn't have the market share that it currently does, and these same kids wouldn't be "locked" into Office and other such software as adults.
Heck, in college I had a cracked version of Warcraft II that I played all the time. I loved that game so much what did I do later on? I bought StarCraft and WarCraft III.
Re:e-books
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Informative
They were very critical about public libraries...they lost that one thank god.
At least in Suburbia, USA (where our city passes every library initiative on the ballot every time), it's also true for : comic books, large softcover collections (far side/etc), newspapers, LPs, CDs, VHS, DVDs, AND software and PC games (evidentally they don't give a shit about EULAs). Granted there's no AutoCAD, or MS Windows/Office, but they have a decent selection. About the only thing they don't have is video games (they do have video game guide books sometimes however!)
Funnily enough I remember going into my local library, the day after Harry Potter came out on DVD. Every video store was completely rented out (when they had walls full of copies). 2 copies were just sitting in the DVD section, ready to be checked out at the library.
How about instead I produce a compendium of all his books and give it away, widely, to anybody who might want a copy?
Yeah! You could do it for other authors too. You could keep all the books in a central building, and people could get some kind of "card" that would allow them access to the books in your building, and then they could take them if they wanted, without even paying!
David Weber gives all his books for free on his website (or most of them) and it hasn't hurt his sales one bit. If anything it has helped him tremendously by getting new people to read and buy his books.
Is it any less logical than the record racketeers saying "we lost $100 billion dollars because people swapped some files"? The fact is, nobody actually knows what the impact of filesharing and other forms of copyright infringement are on bottom lines. Would MS be a monopoly today if they had fought vigorously against copyright infringement from day 1? I think not. But, like I said, nobody really knows.
And if your boss decides he's going to use your salary on expensive call girls and very smooth gin instead of depositing it in your bank account, technically you haven't lost anything. You just haven't gained.
Not the same (though close) because there's an important distinction here. Mr. Card doesn't sell his time -- he sells a product. When that product is distributed digitally or lent physically, he doesn't lose the ability to sell his product.
Selling your time -- essentially what you do when you accept a salary -- is different, because once time is given to something, it can't be recalled or sold to someone else.
Interesting that Card makes that distinction about how he works from a personal/legal standpoint to -- he licenses, but never gives up his copyright as a work for hire.
Actualy, if I have an electronic copy of anything I am much more likely to go and buy the actualy product. A good example of this is the H2G2 series. I have an electronic copy of the whole series and yet still purchased the full collection.
Likewise, I have every Billy Joel song I care to own on MP3s (aquired from Naptster et al) and I still buy his albums and DVDs.
-- T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Actually, he still stands to gain a bit then, because if you liked his books that much then maybe, just maybe, you might tell someone else about them no? That person then will need a copy, and they may choose to pay for it...
Re:e-books
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Why aren't the big publishing houses targeting the local libraries?
Some of them have been and still are targeting the library system of the USA. Many would love to kill libraries once and for all as they would be the only source of new books to read. They also want to kill the used book stores. Don't think that they haven't tried and aren't still trying to shut down libraries and used book stores.
Well, he used to give full-text editions away for free from his web site (stopping only under pressure from bookstores) so my guess would be that he wouldn't mind that at all. His (documented in his own words on his own site) attitude is that it's good marketing.
OSC isn't a recent convert to enlightened copyright policy...he's been on our side for a long time now.
Anyways, I'm sure one could easily argue that sometimes people benafit from pirating. I'm sure if college kids didn't rampantly pirate MS Office and Windows, Microsoft wouldn't have the market share that it currently does, and these same kids wouldn't be "locked" into Office and other such software as adults.
I think MicroFocus made a huge blunder when they released their COBOL workbench with a dongle, and at the same time, Microsoft had VB without one. People may have pirated VB at home, but they were learning it, getting used to it and convincing their managers to use it.
Naw. Then only one copy can be read at a time. I'm just saying, anybody interested in his work, here's a CD with all of it. No need for the library to buy copies, no need for the bookstore to stock them.
You heard about his work "through the grapewine" (friends, press, TV, etc.), you couldn't bother to go to the bookstore, so you just downloaded one of his creations (book / song). You like it, you download the rest. You don't like it, you delete the file and it's over. In any case, the guy doesn't reap any money at all.
I'm sorry, but I tend to think that today, this is the most common use of p2p - at least for music. Maybe this is less true for books, because reading stuff on a screen (or even on an e-book) is still not as comfortable as the good old paper codex.
But as far as music is concerned, p2p makes things so much easier and more conveninent (and cheaper !), it's just obvious that the artist will see less money coming at the end. No one denies that, not even people in the article. What they say is that the RIAA are just making fools of themselves. The basic idea is: "We can't suppress it, so let's try to find a way to use it". This is what the RIAA doesn't seem to get.
Thomas Miconi =============
Re:e-books
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
My brother downloaded all his books there were at the time (all except shadow puppets). However, he happend to be in a bookstore for some reason, and he saw Ender's Shadow there, and bought it. Even though he had the book in a digital format.
Well he has lost the gain he would have made had you purchased the remainder of his books. Sure he isn't out of pocket, but you are stealing his potential profit.
Well they are, aren't they? The difference is that McDonalds are not breaking the law in the process, and nor are they deriving a 'free' benefit.
Forget the whole gain/loss scenario for a minute, and think from the other direction. Why should somebody get a free benefit from infringing copyright? If you cannot get a copy legally, why should you be allowed to have a copy at all?
But getting back to the loss of potential profit, think of it on a bigger scale. If one person pirates a CD or an eBook or whatever then the author has not actually lost money (as would be the case if they removed a physical item, for which cost went into the materials) and they have only lost the potential sale of one CD. No big deal right, that is nothing. Now what if everyone just pirated it? They still haven't actually lost money, but they have made none either. There is potential for profit, but it has not been realized. If I were an author in that situation I would be pissed...
That isn't to say I think all pirating is inherently evil - a lot of people who do pirate, then purchase the CD, and in any case the word of mouth etc... works for the benefit of the artist. However you cannot say that there is no cost to piracy, that nobody loses anything - the fact they the artist did not make any money is effectively the same as if they had earnt it, but then lost it.
Actually, if you look at his site (under OSC Library), you will see that you can read at least the first chapter of most of his books online (including the first few chapters of Crystal City, his next book which isn't even published yet).
What a great way to let readers get a *real* taste of the book (Amazon's five pages doesn't usually do that).
-- --
Qirien, Academy of Defenestration
"Who do you want to defenestrate today?"
You don't have to agree to a copywrite to be bound by it.
In the boss's case, he is breaking a contract.
In the downloader's case, he is infringing copywrite.
In both cases, someone is getting shafted by doing work that isn't payed for by the people benefiting.
And as an aside to the moderators: Just because my opinion pisses you off doesn't make it flamebate. It is intended as a serious continuation of the conversation. I'm tired of people flippantly announcing that they shouldn't have to pay for something they use, and I want to put it in a context that they understand: What if they didn't get paid for work they did? How would they feel?
See downloading the music isn't the actual crime though. It's the distribution that infringes on copyright. That's why, it isn't illegal to buy a bootleg movie, but it is illegal to make one. It's also one of the reasons why the RIAA is going after only the people distributing music and not the people downloading it.
-- T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Well, he sure as heck loses the ability to sell his product to you. If you've been following the conversation, you'll see we've been talking about someone who has downloaded his entire book collection and read it without paying.
Now, what makes you special. If it's ok for you to download his entire collection and read it, then it must be ok for everyone to do it.
Now, nobody pays him, or it they do pay him, it's out of charity and good will. Is it fair to make Mr. Card work for your charity?
You download a file, that's copying the data from their hard drive to yours. Don't kid yourself, it's illegal.
The RIAA is going after sharers because it is easy for them to target the worst offenders. They just need to check your machine to find 500 shared songs, and they know you're not a one time downloader. Much harder to track people from the other side.
not really that much harder to track in reverse, and capable of giving you a much larger base to shoot at.
-- T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Re:e-books
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Open up a newsreader (that old non-graphic NNTP stuff) and go to alt.binaries.e-books. Card's novels are among the most frequently posted there, and he _knows_ they are.
You might also want to read what Eric Flint has to say about it on Baen's (the publisher's) site.
Re:best quote from the article
by
kfg
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· Score: 4, Funny
"I'm no grammar nazi but aren't you not suppose to start sentences with "And"?"
What never gets covered is how RIAA members violate copyright themselves. See my journal.
I'd be very curious to see how many others are being screwed in this manner. Where's my 150,000 x 6?
Re:best quote from the article
by
rylin
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· Score: 1
You "shouldn't", just like you shouldn't use double-negatives, unless you have to.
Not actually all that helpful
by
nenya
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Card's essay might be useful for someone who hasn't been paying attention to the discussion for the past five years, but other than that it's really nothing new. Others have said more and said it better.
Still, it's nice to see a content creator saying these things.
He said:
Tune in next week for part 2
I bet next week is going to be an even more scathing commentary.
Re:I can't wait...
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Or, hopefully, a solution. Card is right on many counts (particularly the greed of labels), but there's still that nagging fact that copying music in order to save money is still theft, no matter the reasons or how little gets to the content producer. (Jim Bob couldn't actually afford to pay for that Corvette anyway, so I guess it's ok that he jacked it.)
Reason Magazine had an interesting recent article on intellectual property rights. (http://www.reason.com/0303/fe.dc.creation.shtml)
-A content producer-
Re:best quote from the article
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
You are never supposed to use double negatives, that's for sure.
Wait just a sec....
by
twoslice
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
Here's a clue: Movie studios have, for decades, used "creative accounting" to make it so that even hit movies never manage to break even, thus depriving the creative people of their "percentage of profits." A few have dared to sue, but most figure that it isn't worth the ill will. (The sentence "You'll never work in this town again" runs through their minds.)
Wow! you have to be pretty creative to have Gigli make a profit. I bet I could count the house on one hand for Gigli! and those people walked into the wrong theater!
--
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Re:Wait just a sec....
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nelsonal
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· Score: 3, Informative
No the trick comes from shifting the cost of J-Lo and Ben's limo's wardrobe assistant and such on to a very successful movie, so the first time actor who signed for a percentage of the profits in exchange for a smaller up front payment. The trick is to know that no movie ever makes a profit, and that you want a small cut of gross not net.
-- Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Besides stopping all of the stupid overlord jokes before they could start, this post was moderated down to (-1 off-topic) 47 seconds from the time of post. The moderation system works!
"They're protecting an archaic industry," said the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir. "They should turn their attention to new models."
The Dead always got it - they made far more money touring than by selling records. Letting fans record concerts and swap tapes created a lot of good will and good publicity.
Re:Grateful Dead
by
jonbrewer
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· Score: 4, Insightful
"The Dead always got it - they made far more money touring than by selling records."
Maybe what they "got" was that jamming in front of a great crowd was far better than making a lot of money...
It's times like these that I wish for a Score:10, Insightful.
-- Space for rent, inquire within
Re:Grateful Dead
by
silicon_id
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Maybe what they "got" was that jamming in front of a great crowd was better AND made them a lot of money.
Of course if you look at how Phish is making money by selling soundboard quality recordings of their live shows, I think it's a good bet that they "get" it too.
Really, I assumed they just got stoned. Very thoroughly stoned.
Re:Grateful Dead
by
hondo77
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· Score: 2, Informative
The Dead made plenty of money, are very business-savvy, and are actually fiercely protective of their IP. You can trade recordings, just not sell them.
-- I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Re:Grateful Dead
by
Ziest
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The Dead always got it - they made far more money touring than by selling records. Letting fans record concerts and swap tapes created a lot of good will and good publicity.
Phish also gets it. They have always let fans tape and trade their shows. In Feburary of this year that launched a website (livephish.com) where you can buy and download a soundboard recording, in MP3 or in FLAC, of the entire concert for $9.95 (MP3) or $12.95 (FLAC). The recordings are posted within 2 or 3 days after the concert. The online catalog lists every concert they have done so far this year.
In July there was an article in, I think, the New York Times where the Phish web site manager said that the site had had over 1 million sales. Do the math. This is from a non-mainstream band. When was the last time you saw Phish on MTV? Think about this; Phish played 2 nights at The Shoreline in Mountian View, Ca. Both nights were sold out. The Shoreline holds, I guess, 30,000 people. Using this web site they get to re-sell the concert without splitting the proceeds with BGP (Bill Graham Presents) and TicketBastard. Do you think the music industry is missing something?
-- Another day closer to redwood heaven
Re:Grateful Dead
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yes. Phish and the Grateful Dead 'get it.' Unfortunately their audience has to take strong drugs to tolerate their 'music.'
Look up 'Altamont' and the Grateful Dead. Ask yourself why they hired the Hell's Angels and then just 'hung out' being 'cool' while the Hell's Angels murdered an audience member. It's widely known as 'the death of hippie.' The birth of an ugly commercialism.
Re:Grateful Dead
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Guess what? Its not -just- the Grateful Dead making money touring. Look at any band that doesn't own their own studio like Madonna or the 'Stones.
The recording companys pay DICK for a contract, you HAVE to tour to pay for the -privelage- of recording an album for a recording company. The BAND pays for the studio time, studio musicians (when needed/used, etc.) AND the staff/recording engineer. The record company doesn't pay SHIT.
If bands were at all smart, I blame the bands for the most part on this point, DON'T SIGN a CONTRACT! Just use home recording equipment, rip the tracks to MP3, and release it yourself on Kazaa or some other file sharing net. Once its out there, then tour.
The recording companys are NOT doing you any favors, why give them money on your time, energy, and passion?
My favorite quote:
'What is your time worth?' or 'What is your passion worth?'.
Ask any professional; a doctor, lawyer, or even electrician. When you contract for service from someone, they don't do it for free, why the hell should you??
The recording company provides a service, you are NOT their employee, don't sign a contract to be one.
Re:Grateful Dead
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Look up 'Altamont' and the Grateful Dead. Ask yourself why they hired the Hell's Angels and then just 'hung out' being 'cool' while the Hell's Angels murdered an audience member. It's widely known as 'the death of hippie.' The birth of an ugly commercialism.
Nice troll. You were, what?. Minus 20 (-20) in 1969. Any quick check on music history will show that the Stones wanted to hire the Hell's Angels. The Dead tried to talk them out of it. In fact, the Dead never played Altamont because when they got their in the late afternoon, the Angels were out of control, they even had taken to beating up on Jack Cassidy, the bass played for the Jefferson Airplane. Jerry Garcia later sardonicly described that afternoon as "A nice afternoon in hell". Check you facts _BEFORE_ you troll. Dude, I hear your mom calling. Time to take out the garbage.
I'm talking about the Metallicas of the world who make millions and do a couple of shows a week and spend the rest of the time hanging out.
I believe that touring is a good way for a band to earn their keep. The kind of touring you're talking about is for smaller bands who are still trying to get established; bigger bands could definitely stand to do more touring if they need to make up for napster-esque "losses".
Yes, I have toured, back when I had a garage band, King Lazy Bones. And it was hard and we made no money. But if I was making millions and only had to do one show a week, I'd choose that over my main gig any day.
They're protecting an archaic industry," said the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir. "They should turn their attention to new models."
The Dead always got it - they made far more money touring than by selling records. Letting fans record concerts and swap tapes created a lot of good will and good publicity.
...and now have an enormous variety of "tracks" to select from when releasing "official bootlegs" of
portions of live shows, Dick's Picks. Which is a real boon to those of us who were too busy studying
and working to go on tour in the 70's, 80's and early 90's. (The best show I went to was
Holleder Stadium, Rochester, NY, 1979. Best
Fire on the Mountain ever. Second best was a Red Rocks
show I went to while on a supercomputing assignment at NCAR in 84. My code was running in the
batch queue, and fresh results waiting the next morning....aaaah.
Gone are the days... Not to mention the legendary Barton Hall shows at Cornell...)
One of the quirks of the RIAA/ASCAP/BMI "system" however, is that while swapping tapes is considered
fair use by the Dead-- swapping MP3's of the same music will get you busted by the RIAA even if the artists
themselves would prefer to "look the other way" -- the Dead were able to "look the other way" at
their own concerts, but, basically, the RIAA has a chance to stick their big ugly noses into it when
it's online.
So, it would be really neat to see at least a portion of the Dead's catalogue
released under a Creative Commons license, so those of us who play music
on actual musical instruments might have the chance to release our interpretations--
"Sugaree" deadicated
to Mr. Darl McBride, for example, or a version of
"Ship of Fools" deadicated to the Microsoft Corporation.
For a more positive example which has a more realistic chance of
being released under a Creative Commons license, John Perry Barlow
could CC "The Music Never Stopped" to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his
publication of
The Economy of Ideas and the inception of the the EFF .
Re:Grateful Dead
by
nhavar
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· Score: 2, Interesting
How about what they got was that doing what you love and other people love for you to do is rewarding both emotionally and financially. You both win.:)
-- "Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Well although they loved jamming in front of great fans, you can't say they choose that over "making a lot of money".
Financially the Grateful Dead was an extremely successful band. If someone can make as much money as them while literally giving their music away for free, how can anyone not question the current RIAA business model?
-- If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Re:Grateful Dead
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Financially the Grateful Dead was an extremely successful band. If someone can make as much money as them while literally giving their music away for free, how can anyone not question the current RIAA business model?
I think the key here is that most of the music from the RIAA sucks. Theres so many one hit wonders and girls who have virtually no skill other than being able to put on tight clothes so they can show their tits off on MTV.
The Dead always got it - they made far more money touring than by selling records.
Some artists like touring and giving concerts. Others don't. Not to mention music styles where concerts are just a bad idea (purely computer-based music comes to mind).
Not to mention the fact that for most musicians, making real money out of touring and concerts means giving 2/300 gigs a year. Even for artists who are impressive on stage, this is not always an option.
I don't think people like Bjork or even Radiohead (who explicitly accept song swapping - up to a point) would have been better off in a world without records/copyrights/labels at all.
Yer correction was mostly right, except that it was Marty Balin, lead singer for the Jefferson Airplane, who the Angels punched out, not Jack Casady, bass player (quite possibly the finest bass player on the planet).
-- There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Re:Grateful Dead
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
That's great for the Dead -- they made a kind of music that could draw a crowd. But some kinds of music do not lend themselves to live performance, and even if they do, they might not tap into the relatively narrow demographic that is *willing* to go out to a live show, or perhaps the fans are just spread too thinly around the world. The market for music like this often must be reached through recordings, or not at all.
Not every musician can make money by touring; but that does not mean that their music has any less artistic merit. In fact, the opposite tends to be true. Great art seldom has mass popularity.
Re:Grateful Dead
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yet another incredibly myopic person who thinks that all music comes from "bands," and that all bands can "tour."
Maybe what they "got" was that jamming in front of a great crowd was far better than making a lot of money...
Let's see: In 1994 they made $52.4 million in tour revenue. In 1993 they made $45.6 million in tour revenue. In 1993 they made $34.7 million in tour revenue.
Yeah, they never made a lot of money...;-)
New Buzzword
by
contrasutra
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Well, I think we're getting another "Google".
People use "google" as a term for "search online" now, and I fear "MP3" will become the term for "digital music". As we all know, there are other formats, and I don't want to be looked down upon just because I choose OGG.
Hell, there are OGGs on Kazaa, so its not just a piracy thing.
Then again, wouldn't it be great if "MP3" was the term for "pirated music", and OGG was "legal" digitial music (ah, OSS dreams).
erm, I'm afraid you're too late -- when is the last (first?) time you've heard a non-geek talk about digital music and not mean MP3s? I haven't heard a non-geek even refer to it as digital music -- just MP3s.
Actually, MP2 was first. I started fiddling around with MP2 compression, using the 'reference implementation' source code that was (probably still is) downloadable from the MPEG consortium. I thought 'this is cool. I can rip CD Audio (only with a select few CDROM drives at first, though- most drives blocked CDDA extraction in those days) and 'compress' it, and fit a bunch of albums on one CD.' I thought to myself 'that would be cool and could make a lot of money.'
I'm sure I'm not the only person who was fooling around with it back then on Linux but who sat back and didn't take action to 'cash in' on it like a few others did.
It's sadly true that mp3 has gained such a momentum and support in the market that the chances for another file format to gain a similar status are rather slim and far away.
Support for other formats such as Ogg Vorbis is fortunately slowly growing. For example Winamp which is probably the most popular media player for Windows (apart from Windows' own built-in player) has supported Ogg Vorbis in the standard install since version 2.80. And that version is old, at least over a year IIRC.
So the player support is beginning to be there. It's a question of, as you mentioned, getting people to actually use the other formats when encoding.
I found it ironic that all of the audio for the PC release of Halo is in Ogg format. I wonder if the XBox version is this way too? I found it humerous.
--
You may disagree, but to be blunt, you're wrong. -tgd
yeah, but back then it wasnt public. I remember encoding audio cds with a beta of the original dos command line encoder from frauenhofer. one track took around a hour to compress an my old 486...
Because my HD was to small to rip a cd, i made a batch with luditrac: Rip track1, encode track1, delete track1.wav, rip track2.....
Funny. Now my array could store 1000 cds
-- HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
xhabbo
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This was a well written and timely article by one of my favorite authors. But I winced at one particular sentance:
"If you got together with a few of your neighbors and each of you bought different CDs and then lent them to each other, that wouldn't even violate copyright."
Is this true? Certainly it can't be if the only distinction of violating the copyright is geographical distance. Can give anyone give any answers?
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
__aagmrb7289
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· Score: 5, Informative
This is true. Read the rest - it is the fact that you keep a copy of the music while others also have a copy that violates the copyright. That's why it is "copy" right. Anyway, handing the CD over means you don't have it, right?
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
"If you got together with a few of your neighbors and each of you bought different CDs and then lent them to each other, that wouldn't even violate copyright."
What if he said, "If you got together with a few of your neighbors and each of you bought one of my books, and then lent them to each other, that wouldn't even violate copyright", would that make it clearer for you?
Even the public library lends CDs.
sigh. You've been brainwashed already.
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
nelsonal
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· Score: 1
Lending is probably legit under fair use, so long as no copies are made. It's copyright, not lendingright or useright no matter how much some may wish it to be.
-- Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
TexVex
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· Score: 1
It would be a violation of COPYright if you ripped or copied each other's CD. But merely lending the CD is not illegal. No COPYing is going on.
--
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
sirmob
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· Score: 1
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that the deal here is that, as card says, you are keeping your *own copy* when you fileshare. They would probably still try to nail you for it, but if you actually sent someone an MP3 rip of your CD and then destroyed your CD, it wouldn't break copyright (the reason that doesn't apply to software is because the liscence you "sign" tries to take away exactly that right)
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
xhabbo
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· Score: 1
So its perfectly legal to store the song in our memory (brain) and broadcast it (hum or sing tour ourselves) yet it's illegal to store it on our computer memory (hard drive... I only used "memory" for the sake of the analogy). So... When are brain drives shipping?
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
Vaevictis666
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· Score: 1
The distinction is that with file sharing, you don't lose the ability to use the file.
If I buy a CD, and loan it to a friend, that is legal. If I buy a CD, burn a copy of it, and give that to a friend, that violates copyright (because I don't have the right of reproduction)
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
__aagmrb7289
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· Score: 1
Nope, this isn't true - it's not legal to store the song in our brain's memory either...*sigh*
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
Wordplay
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· Score: 2, Informative
The distinction comes down to whether you're keeping a copy of it when you lend it out. Right of first sale has pretty much established that you can resell the media (with the content on it). What you can't do is copy the content for yourself then resell the media or conversely, keep the media but give away the content.
If you want the book analogy, you can't photocopy the book then lend it to your friend (lending is just a temporary case of selling for free), allowing you both to read it simultaneously.
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
andcal
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Certainly it can't be if the only distinction of violating the copyright is geographical distance
The only distinction between what he described and internet file sharing isn't only geographical distance. Two main differences immediately spring to mind:
1) Digital file sharing can't even begin until the song or book or whatever is copied. What Card described (lending a CD to someone you know) doesn't necessarily include anyone copying the song. Just because you assume that each borrower would copy the CD doesn't mean everyone would, or that it's what Card meant.
2) The number of songs (movies, books, or whatever) I can obtain by borrowing a CD from an acquanitance is considerably less than the number of songs (books, movies, etc) that I can obtain a copy of via the internet. I guess that is why makes borrowing from acquaintances fair (as in fair use).
-- --something witty
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
Dr+Caleb
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· Score: 1
If you got together with a few of your neighbors and each of you bought different CDs and then lent them to each other,
It doesn't say anything about copying. You must have assumed that your friends were going to copy the CDs right after. That would be a violation in the US.
Just lending the CDs is fair use. . . like letting other people read your copy of the paper after you're done.
I suppose if you e-mailed the ripped tracks, with a promise to delete them after your friend heard them, it might be a greyer area of the law, but sharing them with the world is indeed a violation in the US.
-- "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
TwistedGreen
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· Score: 1
If you lend someone a CD, you're not actually making a copy.
If send someone an MP3 of a CD, you are making a copy.
It has nothing to do with geographical distance.
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
mojoviper
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· Score: 1
IANAL, neither is Card. I'm not positive but I think you're right on this. In fact I believe that/technically/ playing music that you bought on a physical media on a boom box (think 80's, big shiny things) in public violates the copyright as well, any one can hear it and they did not pay for the honor of being able to hear it. 'Course that means half the tricked out cars in suburbia are mobile violation centers...
He was talking a bit fast and loose with the specific details, but he did make a point that, at least amongst people I consort with, many people are saying 'Thank [insert deity or force of choice here], someone said it, and they have name recognition!' He didnt end the war, nor will he most likely be the Jimmy Carter of this whole thing either; but he firmly stated his position, publicly no less, and should be applauded for that if nothing else.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimum eruditionis habes sed iliud latine dici non potest.
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
cpt+kangarooski
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· Score: 5, Informative
CDs are a terrible example. I'll get into why in a minute. For now, let's use books.
Yes, if you got together with others and each bought different books and lent them to one another, you would not violate copyright laws. Let's look at precisely why this is so.
17 USC 106 states in short that only the copyright holder may distribute copies of his copyrighted work. This explicitly includes lending.
17 USC 501 tells us that to violate any of the exclusive rights of the copyright holder, such as those in 106 is to infringe.
Fortunately, you're saved by 17 USC 109, which carves out an exception to the broad 106 right to distribute, and permits people who lawfully acquire a copy of a work to resell, or lend it out as they see fit. Because 106 as modified by 109 no longer makes this activity exclusive to the copyright holder, it's not an infringement under 501.
So you can lend books. You can lend any copyrighted matter. At least, as long as it falls under 109!
Unfortunately, two special interest groups had strong enough lobbies to get exempted from 109. The music industry, and the software industry. The exemptions can be found in 109(b)(1)(A). (the general first sale provision itself is 109(a))
There is NO FIRST SALE RIGHT FOR SOUND RECORDINGS OR COMPUTER SOFTWARE insofar as 1) this only pertains to rental, lease or lending -- you can still sell this stuff used if you lawfully acquired it, 2) this only pertains to sound recordings, or computer software that is not embodied in hardware, or that is not intended for use on a limited purpose computer for game playing (i.e. console games), 3) there are some exceptions for libraries with regards to this, but most of us are not a real library.
So you actually would be infringing copyrights to lend a CD to a friend, provided that a court construes "lending" in the statute to be the same kind of lending, which on the face of it, seems to be inescapable.
Fortunately, if it's just between friends, you're unlikely to get _caught_, and if you're not caught, do you really care if it's illegal?
Now, you could further claim that lending it to a friend is a fair use, under 17 USC 107, but that requires an analysis of the SPECIFIC FACTS under the fair use test, a form of which is given in the section. Note that ALL PURPORTED FAIR USES MUST BE ANALYZED, NO EXCEPTIONS. The examples given in 107 aren't broad exceptions, they're examples of the kinds of uses Congress _imagined_ would probably suffice. News reporting has been held unfair before, for example, so don't take anything for granted.
So this is nonprofit (good), with non-factual works (bad), distributing the entire work (bad), with the effect on the market of making a sale less likely to the person who borrowed it since he can just borrow it (and perhaps make an unactionable infringement per 17 USC 1008 IF HE COMPLIES WITH THE STATUTE FULLY AS DEFINED IN 17 USC 1001 which no one ever reads) and not have to pay to enjoy it. OTOH it's rather de minimis since the lending circle is quite small, presumably.
I think it would be fair, but it's actually a borderline case given how the test works.
That's why the example using CDs is not very good.
On the whole, it pays to look through the copyright statute (17 USC) rather than listen to what a lot of the/. crowd has to say.
-- --
This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
TWooster
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· Score: 1
It was once proposed that a company be formed that purchases a bunch of CDs. People then 'invest' in the company, so they own a part of the company, which in turn owns the CDs. Then they are all shared "owners" of the CDs. Now, what I'm not sure about is whether or not you'd have to "check a song out" ala a library in order to play it or if it wouldn't be considered copying to let anyone play a song at any time.
So here's my question: What is the granularity of copyright law? Obviously no larger than an album, but how about one 44 thousandth of a second? Sampling rate?
This is my idea. I purchase a CD, rip the songs to MP3 (within my rights, obviously), and then set up some software which would check out 1/44,000th of a second to people who request it. In this way, I'd stream to them the entire song on demand, with perhaps a little bit of a delay if someone else is accessing that 1/44,000th of a second. Now, since now two 1/44,000th of that song would be at use at a given time, would it be in violation of copyright? I don't see how it could be.
Or, better yet, set it up like a software license ("you may have this program installed on 100 computers, but only one copy of the software may be in use at any time"). That is the songs are located locally, they just vie for that 1/44,000th to start playing their songs. If all songs are played at exactly the same rate, it could be inferred that they would never overlap with someone else's playing, and that the song (or rather, portions thereof) would never be in use someplace else. Thus it hasn't been copied.
Now, combine this with the shareholder scenario and you have a good system of song distribution without copyright infringement. Right..?
Tell me why, besides logistical reasons, this would not work?
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
Beolach
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· Score: 1
There is NO FIRST SALE RIGHT FOR SOUND RECORDINGS OR COMPUTER SOFTWARE insofar as 1) this only pertains to rental, lease or lending -- you can still sell this stuff used if you lawfully acquired it, 2) this only pertains to sound recordings, or computer software that is not embodied in hardware, or that is not intended for use on a limited purpose computer for game playing (i.e. console games), 3) there are some exceptions for libraries with regards to this, but most of us are not a real library.
So you actually would be infringing copyrights to lend a CD to a friend, provided that a court construes "lending" in the statute to be the same kind of lending, which on the face of it, seems to be inescapable.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't the exception "2) this only pertains to sound recordings, or computer software that is not embodied in hardware..." be interpreted in a manner to allow lending a CD? The physical media is hardware that (in many cases) embodies the recording. This would allow the lending of a physical CD (and the embodied recording), but not "unembodied" pure data, such as p2p filesharing.
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Uh, yeah, its true.
Its NOT the same as fileswapping. If you are swapping a CD, the CD has to physically change hands. there is only 1 CD.
For fileswapping, the file doesn't physically move. Only a COPY does. Guess what, you STILL have the ORIGINAL FILE on your HD. THATS the BIG deal with RIAA. To be legal, the file would have to be deleted after it was transfered to the new computer. On EACH sharing, it would have to be deleted after it was swapped, then you won't get raped by RIAA.
Think before you post sport.
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
akpoff
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· Score: 1
Take a walk over to your local public library to see borrowing and shared property in action. I've been (legally) borrowing print, audio and digital media for years. Ben Franklin started the first library by coaxing a group of gentlemen to share their books in commmon. This first library was private. Even to a man of his financial means there were limits to his budget and ability to collect and store the full embodiment of the marketplace of ideas.
It's a shame that as a culture we're forgetting what OSC noted -- copyright is a limited monopoly. Ideas however communicated are not property. As many have noted that while you can give, sell or lose physical items ideas can only be shared. We lose a bit more ground every time we let others equivocate by labelling trademarks, copyrights and patents "intellectual property". Lawrence Lessig sadly realized too late that we lost Eldred in part because the debate was cast in terms of "property" and in the US property is almost as sacrosanct as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
If we're to restore balance in this debate we must talk about ideas and creativity in terms of "license" not property.
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
Graff
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· Score: 1
Correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't the exception "2) this only pertains to sound recordings, or computer software that is not embodied in hardware..." be interpreted in a manner to allow lending a CD?
An excellent point but I think you are parsing that statement incorrectly. You are parsing it this way:
this only pertains to (sound recordings, or computer software) that is not embodied in hardware
When the standard legal interpretation for these sort of statements is this way:
this only pertains to (sound recordings), or (computer software that is not embodied in hardware)
It has to do with the placement of the comma. Since there is a comma between the two items the first one ends at the comma. If it was stated like this you might have a better arguement:
this only pertains to sound recordings or computer software that is not embodied in hardware
By the way, thanks to the grandparent of this comment. I had read through the copyright statute and didn't pick up on 17 USC 109(b)(1)(A). It would have helped me out in an earlier discussion of the law. You live, you learn...
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
cpt+kangarooski
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· Score: 1
It was once proposed that a company be formed that purchases a bunch of CDs. People then 'invest' in the company, so they own a part of the company, which in turn owns the CDs. Then they are all shared "owners" of the CDs.
Companies don't work like that. Due to the number of people you want, and some other issues such as incurring liabilities, what you'd basically have to have for the company's form is a corporation. But corporations are their own entities; owning stock in a corporation doesn't entitle the shareholder to stuff the corporation owns. It owns its own stuff in its own name.
Example: If I am a shareholder in Coca-Cola (and a lot of people are) I can't just demand free drinks. I don't own any of their inventory just because I own part of the company itself.
So here's my question: What is the granularity of copyright law? Obviously no larger than an album, but how about one 44 thousandth of a second? Sampling rate?
This is my idea. I purchase a CD, rip the songs to MP3 (within my rights, obviously), and then set up some software which would check out 1/44,000th of a second to people who request it. In this way, I'd stream to them the entire song on demand, with perhaps a little bit of a delay if someone else is accessing that 1/44,000th of a second. Now, since now two 1/44,000th of that song would be at use at a given time, would it be in violation of copyright? I don't see how it could be.
No, you'd be infringing in several different ways simultaneously, in fact.
Here's a good rule of thumb: are you being a clever bugger, achieving a result that is clearly intended to be forbidden by the law by employing a loophole that can be argued about? (e.g. the 'granularity' thing) If so, you'll lose. Judges _HATE_ people who think they're this clever. They will go to extreme lengths to shut you down, and they will not side with you.
There are some exceptions, but generally that's how things are.
Incidentally, what you proposed is quite reminiscent of mp3.com's attempt to do the same thing. They lost in court.
-- --
This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
swv3752
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· Score: 1
It is technically illegal to do a public performance of a copyright work without a license. So singing in the shower (presumably private) is ok, but humming on the bus is not. This is why restaurants do not sing Happy Birthday.
-- Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
swv3752
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· Score: 1
Lending as a legal term refers to letting someone have the use of an item for a limiting time in return for renumeration. The example given above is more of a barter arrangement, hence it would be a resale.
-- Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
nhavar
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· Score: 1
And thus you point out a great problem with the provisions of law - the need for interpretation.
To an extent interpretation is needed to help with growth and change and to apply law to new situations. This keeps us from needing to continually update laws. Unfortunately it also ties us up in the court system, keeps people from pursuing business ventures, leads to millions of frivolous lawsuits, and lands many people in jail or fined for things that they just did not understand were wrong.
The laws are obtuse and often strung together in such a way that it's impossible to decipher what the intent of the law truly is. This might be because of the times in which laws were written. Maybe the fact that our system of notation just keeps appending things on to the end instead of keeping true revision records. Or the fact that laws are interpreted by precendents from earlier court decisions and thus a "standard" interpretation is repeated over and over as "fact".
If a law gets passed and then gets clarification in the court system no one goes back and re-writes the law for easier reading. So where the examples you show above might today read better as:
this only pertains to two properties:
Sound recordings - analog or digital regardless of storage media type or recording method.
Computer software not embodied(embedded) in hardware (i.e. computers, rom, flash memory, or other circuit/chip type electronic devices).
In todays electronic documents we may also be able to hyperlink more specific terms like "embedded" to define them either in context or in general. Unfortunately I don't see us reorganizing our method of creating laws any time in the next hundred years. There's no QA process and no Bugtraq available for that.
-- "Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
cpt+kangarooski
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· Score: 1
If it is a barter though, remember that people will not have an obligation to return the 'borrowed' CDs.
At any rate, the problem is that Congress undertook it to specifically exempt in the same statute nonprofit lending libraries (i.e. most libraries, which lend to patrons, instead of keeping everything at the library), which would seem to imply that either Congress was confused and wanted to cover the ALA's ass, or Congress did mean for lending to include the ordinary act of lending without renumeration.
And of course, what of non-monetary renumeration? The Act has been amended so that trading of infringing copies can count as being monetary, IIRC. The idea being to crack down on warez sites that traded warez but where no money passed hands. Could impact this situation.
-- --
This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
Graff
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· Score: 1
And thus you point out a great problem with the provisions of law - the need for interpretation. ... If a law gets passed and then gets clarification in the court system no one goes back and re-writes the law for easier reading.
100% spot-on. It is the morass of case law that really defines how the law is interpreted. Of course the volumes of the case law is so confused that the law is often up for the highest bidder (the one who can afford the best searches) and the lowest common denominator (the particular interpretation that fits their desires). If the law was revised with every case, kind of like some sort of good versioning system, then the law would be more evenly applied and therefore more just.
Justice is lost
Justice is raped Justice is gone Pulling your strings Justice is done Seeking no truth Winning is all Find it so grim, so true, so real
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
cpt+kangarooski
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Well, please note that the fault here lies with me. The statute in question is pretty clear. I just didn't paraphrase it very well.
That said, there are sufficient rules of statutory interpretation that the problem isn't really as bad as you make it sound. Most statutes are pretty clear, particularly when coupled with their definitional portions (which laypeople often neglect to read) or the rule that when in doubt, the plain dictionary sort of meaning is usually what's intended.
Or the fact that laws are interpreted by precendents from earlier court decisions and thus a "standard" interpretation is repeated over and over as "fact".
It is a fact. At least assuming that the precedent is binding.
If a law gets passed and then gets clarification in the court system no one goes back and re-writes the law for easier reading.
Well... bear in mind that if Congress messed with this, there'd very likely be a substantive change to the law while they were at it. Better to let that sleeping dog lie.
But there are 'hyperlinks' of a sort to help with this issue. There are annotated statute books that list cases that have impacted a law, typically with a brief explanation of how. And there are Shepard's books which track the entire history of laws or cases, prior to the particular point in time you're looking up, and afterwards, so that you can check to see what happened.
But 1) to a large extent, only lawyers really care about this (though they care a great deal) so most people aren't familiar with it, and 2) the government doesn't maintain these resources itself, so there's limited public access to them.
Personally, I think it would be a good idea for the government to supplant West and Lexis, but it would entail an awful lot of work, cost a fortune to start up and maintain, and they're apparently not interested.
-- --
This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:
by
Thuktun
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· Score: 1
This is true. Read the rest - it is the fact that you keep a copy of the music while others also have a copy that violates the copyright.
Crap, I was just reading an article on this yesterday, but now I can't find it.
The article claimed it was technically legal to:
Make a copy of your music CD
Loan that CD to a friend
Your friend copies the CD
Your friend returns the CD to you.
but that it was illegal for you to actually make a copy and give it directly to your friend, even though the results are essentially the same.
I really wish I could remember where I was reading that.
First, it is not property....
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Insightful
" turn a profit with intellectual property (maybe part 2?)"
The first thing to realize is that it is not "property". Abuse of the word "property" to describe it lends to such other language abuses as calling duplication and creation of new material "theft".
Call it "copyrighted material" if anything.
Re:First, it is not property....
by
alex_ant
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· Score: 1
You're right, it's NOT property. It's INTELLECTUAL property, which is a type of property, and it's a type of property because the law says it is, the same way it says your possessions are your property.
Re:First, it is not property....
by
cpt+kangarooski
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· Score: 2, Insightful
But it doesn't say that it's property at all. Copyright laws as a rule don't refer to the term IP. They just call it copyright.
Given that IP is a general term encompassing obviously non-property oriented fields, such as trade secrets (which aim to stem unfair competition, and are entirely unlike and unrelated to property) you're clearly misusing it.
Personally, as someone who's seriously been studying this stuff for years now, the best thing to do is not even use the term IP. If you want to discuss copyrights, or patents, or trademarks, or trade secrets, or publicity rights, or whatever, just refer to the particular thing you're talking about accurately. None of them are really related to one another -- it's a dumb idea to act as if they all are just facets of the same thing.
-- --
This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Re:First, it is not property....
by
Sphere1952
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· Score: 1
"Personally, as someone who's seriously been studying this stuff for years now, the best thing to do is not even use the term IP."
I only use the term IP in order to tell them to take their IP out of my face and give me back my freedom to speak. In that context it is a perfectly reasonable term.
Actually, the term IP does have some slight usefulness within commerce. The problem is that this notion has extended its reach far beyond where the idea belongs. It has no place in the public consciousness.
--
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
Orson Scott Card
by
__aagmrb7289
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Anyone else constantly impressed with this guy? As someone who owns 90% of the fiction he's created, and who has read more like 95% (and I've bought Ender's Game somewhere near 50 times), I obviously appreciate his abilities as a storyteller. And now he writes a coherent, fair statement regarding the state of "piracy", etc. in the movie/music business, and it just gets better. Hoorah for Mr. Card! Keep them coming...
Not me. What do you people see in Ender's Game? All I see is paper-thin, cliched characters; predictable story ideas recycled throughout the history of SF; and plot "twists" without any believability.
I'm convinced that the sole reason why so many people seem to like his work is because they have fond memories of reading it in junior high. To a kid, this stuff is fun, but it's hardly good literature.
--
How can we continue to believe in a
just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Article is +5 Insightful
by
herko_cl
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Having actually RTFA, I think his take on the problem is quite good. It's not like we haven't read this on Slashdot a thousand times before, but the real deal is that it's a known, mainstream author that's publishing this kind of thing.
"In other words, the people complaining about all the internet "thieves" are, by any reasonable measure, rapacious profiteers who have been parasitically sucking the blood out of copyrights on other people's work.
And I say this with the best will in the world. In fact, these companies have expenses. There are salaries to pay. Some of the salaries are earned. ".
I like the way he puts it <grin>
-- No.sig for you! ONE YEAR!
Re:Article is +5 Insightful
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Ummm... this guy is not a "known, mainstream author".:\
Re:Article is +5 Insightful
by
Buzz_Litebeer
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· Score: 1
Actually Orson Scott Card is a known mainstream author, in some high schools his book "Enders Game" is taught to students, as well as in some college classes.
In fact, Enders Game is an extremely popular book, even outside of regular sci fi reading, you can even find large print "childrens" versions (same story differnet package) at bookstores.
If you mean by "mainstream" that he isnt on television, then you might be right, but if you mean "mainstream" as being "well read by a LOT of people, more than say 2 million" then yes he is mainstream.
-- If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Re:Article is +5 Insightful
by
YetAnotherDave
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· Score: 1
>in some high schools his book "Enders Game" is taught to students, >as well as in some college classes
where?
That book was both more enjoyable and more thought-provoking than any novel I remember having assigned in school...
One thing this guy doesn't understand is that the RIAA isn't a mere publisher. They actually involve themselve's quite a bit in how an album sounds and is marketed. In most cases they even provide the producers that are responsible for the "sound" (the bassline, rythm etc) that the artist then sings their song over. Also, most of the time it isn't the artist/group/whatever that is actually editing the cuts and making "tracks".
The RIAA isn't a publisher, nor are they an editor, etc. They are a consortium of individual companies that have formed to protect their industry's "interests". If you want to restate this as something the companies themselves do, fine - I don't have enough information to argue. But please, this does NOT describe the RIAA.
One thing this guy doesn't understand is that the RIAA isn't a mere publisher. They actually involve themselve's quite a bit in how an album sounds and is marketed.
But then, on the flip side of the coin, the downloaders are involved quite a bit in manufacturing and distribution, which are supposedly a large portion of the cost of a CD.
I mean, if you download an MP3 and put it on a disc, you are paying for the shipping, the CD blank material, the equipment to do the burning, the electricity, etc and so forth. You're covering all the costs except for royalties to the copyright holders, and NRE costs for the album's production, and I suppose marketing.
Oddly, the RIAA does not subtract these costs when computing these amounts of money they claim is stolen from them.
One thing this guy doesn't understand is that the RIAA isn't a mere publisher. They actually involve themselve's quite a bit in how an album sounds and is marketed.
Riiight - and boy do they do a good job on those boy bands...
ok. So replace RIAA in my post with "companies the RIAA is representing"?
--
bite my glorious golden ass.
Re:RIAA
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
F U D...
'nuf said.
interesting about this whole issue
by
yajacuk
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· Score: 5, Insightful
What I find interesting about this whole issue with mp3's and the RIAA is that for years now, the RIAA and it's affiliates have contributed to the destruction of the morals in the US. By selling music that teach nothing more then violence, indiscriminate sex, and foul language. Now they come after their very consumers and ask them about their morals, amazing. When they were talking about child porn being found on Kazza, I wondered if they ever bothered to look at the Britney Spears video clips they were putting out.
Re:interesting about this whole issue
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Man, and here I thought they were selling MUSIC, not political rhetoric.
Re:interesting about this whole issue
by
Brandybuck
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· Score: 1
Right on. These are the guys who promoted violent music as mainstream. They made billions selling songs about killing policemen, raping girlfriends, and calling their mothers whores. Then they have the temerity to call us thieves for downloading a song sample.
There's nothing more disgusting than an immoral person complaining about someone else's morality.
-- Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Re:interesting about this whole issue
by
frycarson
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· Score: 1
the RIAA and it's affiliates have contributed to the destruction of the morals......selling music that teach nothing more then violence, indiscriminate sex, and foul language
Lets not forget all the rap talking about robbing liquor stores and breaking into houses. And drug use... The RIAA needs to accept that most of their music sucks, the economy is down (compared to the Clinton years) and people just can't afford to blow money on less then great music (well, some can, but the doesn't mean they will). But then again what do I know, I'm not a media conglomerate out to make money, I'm just a poor college student who wishes he didn't live in AmeriKa.
Fry Carson, AmeriKa looks 13373r
Re:interesting about this whole issue
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Are you saying it can't be both, or have you just had an epiphany?
Re:interesting about this whole issue
by
maeka
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· Score: 1
When they were talking about child porn being found on Kazza, I wondered if they ever bothered to look at the Britney Spears video clips they were putting out.
Are you seriously stating that some Britney Spears tease of a video has ANY resemblance to child porn? I hope you were being hyperbolic, for as disgusting as some RIAA members actions might be, they don't begin to compare to child porn. And do you honestly think "the RIAA and it's affiliates have contributed to the destruction of the morals in the US"? How do you destroy morals? Have your morals degraded due to their behavior? Or have only the morals of all the people out there without your amazing powers of resistance been degraded?
Re:interesting about this whole issue
by
Galvatron
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· Score: 1
I don't think he was saying that Britney Spears videos ARE child porn, but many of them do depict a minor in a sexual manner. No doubt people within the music industry encouraged her to market herself in such a manner. They are advocating the viewing of 16-year-olds as sexually available. I think the original poster has a good point, the RIAA is not responsible for child porn, but they're certainly not figures who we should be taking moral advice from.
-- "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Re:interesting about this whole issue
by
dabadab
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· Score: 1
"I don't think he was saying that Britney Spears videos ARE child porn, but many of them do depict a minor in a sexual manner."
Bullshit. Pedofilia is about having sexual desires for pre-puberty children and it does not have anything to do with some legal age bounderies. Now, Britney Spears does not really looks like a 10 year old girl, does she? (In fact, when I first saw her I thought she's over 20)
-- Real life is overrated.
Re:interesting about this whole issue
by
Galvatron
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· Score: 1
Unfortunately, the law, and society as a whole, disagrees with you. Videos of 16-year-olds performing explicit acts is considered child porn throughout the USA. "She looked like she was over 18" is not considered an excuse, either.
-- "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Suddenly I'm filled with all sorts of chocolately goodness...recording artists coming out and saying that maybe suing your customers might not be the best idea to get customer loyalty.
Double wow. I never knew Mr. Card was a recording artist. (/me alt-tabs to kazaa...)
Hamster
I've said it before and I'll say it again..
by
3seas
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Maybe I should write it into a song...
But the fact remains that as the old hat of the record industry is, it subsidizes the failures with profits from teh successes where the internet in file swapping can be used to help a new band establish their worth to machinery of the record industry that is still actually useful to the promotion of a band or artist.
This is no good for the artists.
time to remove the fat and greed of the middle man non-artist...
Re:I've said it before and I'll say it again..
by
cschmidt
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· Score: 1
Zeppelin already did: "The song remains the same..."
--
Who am I to blow against the wind?
-- Paul Simon
Re:best quote from the article
by
Garrett+Combs
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· Score: 0
Irony? Yes, I think so.
-- Insert witty Slashdot sig here.
Re:Research
by
NotQuiteReal
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· Score: 3, Insightful
A) You didn't cite the study.
B) That doen't mean if they didn't trade music that they would buy it.
Of course, they are avoiding paying for it. They either don't think it is worth the retail price, or they can't afford it.
People who have lots of money spend it on crap all the time, hell, I even hear rich people buy Porche's to crash them, for safety test purposes.
Hmmm, I wonder if Bill Gates has illegal MP3 files?
-- This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Not just a good author...
by
Xenius
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· Score: 5, Insightful
...also a reasonably intelligent guy, unlike the Record execs.
"The record companies swear that it's making a serious inroad on sales, and they can prove it. How? By showing that their sales are way down in the past few years."
First off, anyone whose taken any intro psych class knows that the RIAA's data is bull. Hell, even those who haven't know it. All they are showing is correlational data. Whoopdie doo, cd sales are down while "piracy" is up. Watch me publish correlational data that shows quality of music is down and sales of cds are down. They haven't proven jack.
"It couldn't possibly be because (a) most of us have already replaced all our old vinyl and cassettes, so all that windfall money is no longer flowing in, or (b) because the record companies have made some really lousy decisions as they tried to guess what we consumers would want to buy."
Because Mr Card is publishing an article that will probably be viewed by many, he had to censor himself. What b) really means is that big record companies are trying to force-feed crap to the masses. How many boy-bands do we really need? How many no-talent implant laden morons do we really need singing "I'm not that innocent"?
-- - Xenius
Re:Not just a good author...
by
bennomatic
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· Score: 1
:: also a reasonably intelligent guy, unlike the Record execs.
I disagree. Record execs must be somewhat intelligent in order to get away with murder like they do...
Re:Not just a good author...
by
DennisZeMenace
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· Score: 4, Insightful
"It couldn't possibly be because (a) most of us have already replaced all our old vinyl and cassettes, so all that windfall money is no longer flowing in, or (b) because the record companies have made some really lousy decisions as they tried to guess what we consumers would want to buy."
I think one greatly underestimated reason for the loss of CD sales is the advent of ClearChannel. I personally call ClearChannel the "cancer of music".
Many of us "perceive" that the overall quality of available music is down. I sincerely doubt that musicians around the world have suddently lost their creativity. But the fact that music (as in culture) is controlled vertically by a handful of monopolies is what is creating this perception. And ClearChannel is one of the main culprit: their near-monopoly over radio stations means there's a greater chance you'll keep hearing the same stuff over and over again. Same things with concerts. All major venus are literally locked down and controlled by ClearChannel which "pushes" artists to them. In theory venues are free to choose their performers, in partice they often have to yield to external pressure. All this leads to lack of diversity and global music homogenization.
And really, the essence of music is diversity.
DZM
Re:Not just a good author...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
if record execs aren't the intelligent ones, how come they're the ones with all the money?
And hypocritical, too. I don't see anything wrong with artists not owning the rights to their works. I mean, how many of you programmers out there create "works for hire" in which you assign the copyrights to the company you work for? Musicians shouldn't be any different. If they are self-employed, they own their music. If they are employed by a company, the company owns the music. You can't argue with that, reallly, unless now you programmers are demanding that you own the rights to software you wrote or designed. Somehow I don't think that is happening.
Re:Dumb argument, really.
by
Ranger+Rick
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· Score: 1
The thing is, the way record contracts are made, they're basically saying that you are an employee, when you're in actuality just a self-employed person selling made-to-order music to them.
The way things are currently laid out, it would be like saying I'm employing McDonalds because I bought a cheeseburger.
A programmer is paid a salary and works according to
specifications provided by his employer, using company
resources. An author or artist is not salaried and does
not use company resources or work to spec.
--
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Re:Dumb argument, really.
by
jbottero
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· Score: 1
The thing is, the way record contracts are made, they're basically saying that you are an employee, when you're in actuality just a self-employed person selling made-to-order music to them.
Yes.
The way things are currently laid out, it would be like saying I'm employing McDonalds because I bought a cheeseburger.
No, that does not make sense. It's more like being a subcontractor. You are being paid for work on something that you have agreed to give up certain rights to, and you are not an employee.
Re:Dumb argument, really.
by
TheAwfulTruth
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· Score: 1
That is not really true. The pay sceme is slightly different. But the money is paid all up front and the resources of the studio are frequently used, or you can use some of that pay to have it done somewhere else, even in your own mini studio if that's what you want to waste the money on. But the bottom line is, the studio is virtually always paying YOU to make music. And the spec is, it must sell (Which means actually some more specs). So though the details are slightly different, the effect is the same. Most musicians are paid work for hire.
-- Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
To me those differences are bigger than you make them
out to be.
The music itself is created without company resources. The
production and distribution are the expensive resources
that the company can provide, and many companies treat
use of those resources as a loan that will be paid back.
I acknowledge that some music is created to spec, and I
think a lot of people would agree with me that such music
is valueless junk - and the people paid to perform it should
not be considered artists as they are not creators.
--
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Re:Dumb argument, really.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I don't know if you'd be sympathic towards it, but that copyright that no longer belongs to you, becomes attached to you.
Going on and becoming famous in other areas (perhaps TV, movies, etc), you're going to still be in the public eye. 10 years later on a talk show someone is going to ask you to sing one of your old songs, putting you on the spot. You, of course, know that it is NOT your song, and you have NO RIGHT AT ALL to publically perform it. What the hell do you do?
Granted none of that is a guarantee, and you can always beg your way out of it. But it's one of the many dangers involved, one of the many ways it screws a PERSON, and not an artist out to make money
The vast majority of recording artists ...
by
burgburgburg
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· Score: 3, Informative
make no money off of their recordings with labels (and never did, even pre-P2P). The record companies pay an "advance", then charge the artist for studio time, promotion, pressing, advertising, creation of videos, transportation, lawyers fees, etc. And of course, the artist has to pay back the advance. Recording is usually a debt trap.
The majority of those that make a profit at all do so from performances and direct sales to fans of merchandise. The more people they can get to the concerts, the better off they are. This is why artists make videos and lobby to get them in rotation. This is why they try to influence radio stations to add them to rotations. This is why they give away promotional copies to influential people (DJs, trendsetters, etc.) and to large crowds at events (at record stores, etc.) This is why they lobby (and pay) to have songs included in the soundtracks of video games. They believe that more people hearing their music will mean more people willing to pay to see them perform.
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...
by
MushMouth
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· Score: 1
This is simply a bullshit myth, give the sources for said study.
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...
by
coyote-san
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· Score: 1
You've got to be kidding. Several artists have discussed their contracts in great detail, and it's well known that the worst thing for new artists is to have a massive runaway success on their first album because they'll sell ten million albums yet end up millions in debt to the studio. Ask TLC, or Expose, or....
-- For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...
by
CrackHappy
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If this is a myth, why don't you prove it? He also never stated that there was a "study" on it.
Personally, having seen a little bit of information on how recording studios deal, most especially with new artists, if that artist is not PHENOMENALLY successful, they are going to be in debt for some time. One hit wonders are lucky if they manage to break even in the end.
I don't know how much of that is true or not. I would love to see someone provide a link to a reputable study or article or some piece of research that really proves or disproves these myths.
Anyone?
-- 1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Capitalization really works:
i helped my uncle jack off a horse
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...
by
I'm+Spartacus!
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· Score: 1
The original post made the assertion. The burden of proof belongs to him. This supposed "fact" is stated everytime someone wants to try and justify music piracy. It's about time for these people to put their cards on the table and defend this position. Simply trotting out an artist or two that holds the same view does not prove anything. Anecdotal evidence is interesting, but not sufficient when you're talking about an entire industry.
-- "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."
-- Ambrose Bierce
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...
by
MushMouth
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· Score: 2, Informative
Name these artists that are so average that they are like "most musicians".
Read what Steve Albini has to say about it. Sure the record company he speaks of sucks, but does the artist make any money touring? Read what Coco the Electric Monkey Wizard and The Brannock Device of Man or Astroman? have to say about the Finances of playing live.
Plus these guys are actually in the top 10% of the bands out there, the average band is something that you see opening for these guys.
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...
by
ummit
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I would love to see someone provide a link to a reputable study or article or some
piece of research that really proves or disproves these myths.
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...
by
MushMouth
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· Score: 1
One more thing that Albini fails to mention is the Mechanical Royalty which is $0.08 per track sold, thus if the CD has 10 tracks there is a total Royalty of $200,000 -2% to the Harry Fox Agency paid directly to the song writers, if they happen to be in band then that is where a majority of their income comes from.
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...
by
MushMouth
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· Score: 1
In this example touring nets "the band" $15,750 in the hole, however Albini fails to mention the Mechanical Royalty which would be at today's rates $0.08 per track sold, if we say 10 tracks per disk, and 250,000 discs sold, we get a mechanical of $200,000 which goes directly to the song writers (not to the record company)! If they are in the band, then that is where a majority of their profits comes from.
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...
by
MushMouth
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· Score: 2, Informative
You can also see what Neko Case has to say about internet "Sharing". On the back of her "Canadian Amp" LP she states that these tracks are not for sharing on the internet as we have families too.
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...
by
angle_slam
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· Score: 1
Yes, "several artists" have made that assertion. But what are these people doing with million dollar houses and tons of cars. They are making some money, despite what is usually pushed as being fact.
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...
by
mjh
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· Score: 1
What? So basically you're saying that the anecdotal evidence being the ONLY evidence is insufficient? If there were evidence to the contrary, I'd agree with you. But without any evidence to the contrary, the eye witness evidence trumps your hypothesis. No matter how well educated of a guess it is, it's still a guess. When it doesn't match the eye witness account of someone who's been in the system, then you have to throw your guess out.
And to that end I provide for you the eye witness account of a musician who's been part of the RIAA: Courtney Love
-- Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...
by
MushMouth
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· Score: 1
First of all in that speech she says that she expects money from napster as they are stealing from her, its somewhere around page 3, secondly she doesn't anywhere say that she only makes money touring, and third since much of that rant is an exact copy of Steve Albini's Years older baffler rant "some of your friends are already this fucked" You should read the original, which actually spells out the finances of a fictionaly band touring 8 weeks, net profit for the band is a $15,750 loss. and fourth she fails to mention the money that she gets from publishing AKA mechanical royalties which pay out regardless if the band recoups. The major labels suck, but many of the smaller ones who don't suck and bands are getting the shaft.
BTW Albini's rant was written when the Butthole Surfers left Touch and Go and went to Capitol and work with Ministry, one of Steves least favorite bands, he was pissed.
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...
by
mjh
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· Score: 1
Ok. To sum up: you don't like the article. You think there's a better article. Fine. That's not my point. My point is that the guess of something being a myth is just a guess until subtantiated with evidence. And that guess may be a reasonable guess until it comes into opposition with the testimony of an eye witness, at which point the guess is exposed for what it is: a guess.
And as far as what Courtney says in that speech, she says that she's a service provider who works on tips. And that napster is an effecient distribution mechanism for getting her closer to her audience. Who, when comparing the sound quality of an MP3 with what she can provide them, will choose to leave her a tip in order to get the better quality. She's NOT afraid of napster. She's rallying against the real pirates: the RIAA who, not only have taken her songs without paying her for them, but they're making an enormous profit off of that theft.
-- Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...
by
MushMouth
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· Score: 1
Did you read the article? I didn't say I didn't like it, I said it does not say that P2P is acceptible to courtney, nor does it say that she makes any money touring. The other article which she ripped off actually gives REAL NUMBERS and they make it clear that touring makes not money!
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...
by
3.5+stripes
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· Score: 1
Man or Astroman is great, but they hardly played gigantic venues, every show I've been to had at most a thousand people, often much much less.
--
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Re:best quote from the article
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Actually, it's a stylistic issue. While it is not technically proper to start a sentence with a co-ordinating conjunction, neither is it true error. Beginning a sentence with "And" or "But" provides mild transition between thoughts to give a more coherent development. It is actually a very nice technique, avoiding wordiness while creating flow. So, yes, it's fine!
You are lending your only copy...
by
Jack_Frost
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Which is perfectly within your First Sale and Fair Use rights. No new copy has been created, thus there is no question of a copyright violation.
The situation is quite a bit different if you burn a copy for each of your friends in the neighborhood.
It's a legitmate question. Would he mind of people just went and pirated all of his e-books.
Your response, btw works equally well in response to people who pirate mp3 files. They could get off their asses and go and buy the album in a used cd store instead of downloading it. Why don't they?
They could get off their asses and go and buy the album in a used cd store instead of downloading it. Why don't they?
How do you know they don't? I'm sure there are a plenty of people who just download and don't buy (I know a few) but most of the people I know download and buy, they download more than they purchase, but how much they spend overall hasn't really changed.
Record sales in America have gone down but the country isn't in the best economic situation so I don't think it's sensible to jump to conclusions, here in the UK album sales are rising desipite broadband p2p user numbers rising.
There isn't really any conclusive evidence at the moment concerning how filesharing affects purchasing, the record industry hasn't lost anywhere near the number of sales where they can be sure how much it is hurting them.
Would he mind of people just went and pirated all of his e-books.
I think he addresses this point in the article: copying mp3s would be a serious problem "if that became the primary way music was published." So long as most who people who are willing to pay for a book prefer hard copies, then why would OSC care if you pirated his books? He's right on the money when he demolishes the "lost sales" argument:
First, most of the people who are getting those free MP3s would not be buying the CDs anyway. They're doing this in order to get far more music than they can actually afford. That means that if they weren't sharing MP3s online, they would simply have less music -- or share CDs hand to hand. It does not mean that they would have bought CDs to get the tunes they're downloading from Napster-like sharing schemes.
That's why I laugh at their estimates of "lost sales."
Presumably, or at least hopefully, he would apply the same logic to his own work.
Whether or not that person would buy the music or not is irrelevant. Why should you have access to something that costs money when you aren't willing to pay for it? Simple. You shouldn't. This "it's not stealing 'cuz I wasn't going to buy it" argument is just rationalizing theft.
-- "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."
-- Ambrose Bierce
Yeah except if you walk into a store and walk out with a CD without paying for it, the store owner had paied for that CD, meaning basically somebody loses something. When you download an MP3 that you otherwise wouldn't have paid for in any format, nobody actually loses money, they just don't gain it.
But why should you or I or anyone else give a damn wether or not sombody else is getting something for free undeservingly? If it truly has no impact on the lives of the rest of us, then why should John Q. Pirate answer to anyone but karma and his own conscience? Why the hell should you care? Mind your own business and don't worry what the other guy might be getting away with.
-- "Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
One thing bothers me...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
--He says that 'only' 52 years of copyright was unfair.
And the most obnoxious feature of the law was that some authors outlived their copyright. Their most popular works would go into public domain while they were still alive and counting on the income. It's like revoking someone's Social Security at age 72, just because they had the temerity not to die when demographics predicted they would.
Its like he expects to do some work once and then profit from it for the rest of his life. Guess what... the rest of us don't get that! Patents don't last NEARLY that long... so why should a writer get rights to his work for the rest of his life, while an inventor enjoys the rights for a limited time?
The way society and economics work, you have to keep producing and contributing to reap the benefits. lifetime profits should not be guaranteed in my opinion.
lifetime profits should not be guaranteed in my opinion.
Well, nobody is guaranteeing profits per se, just the rights to the work.
-- http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Re:One thing bothers me...
by
malkavian
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· Score: 1
Because, within about 10 years, the royalties you get on a book are peanuts. It's a small stream of money that pays the bills while you write the next book. Just think, from the Author's side... Wouldn't it be nice to be paid monthly, even if you don't do much that month, or if your project turns into a flop, or any other amount of things. That safety net isn't there. Also, I don't believe the publisher has any author's pension schemes. The book rights are the author's pensions. Their investment in their future. They don't do many books, they shortly end up not being able to pay the rent. They do lots of good sellers, they have the equivalent of a full time job with constant income while they write more, and then at the end, get to retire with a modest income until they push up daisies.
And how you can class patenting a '1 click shop' idea and holding it for 25 years, against the year or two it takes to write a decent book (all the revisions etc).. If time and effort were commensurate with half the patents we see today, copyright would last a couple of centuries.
I can understand what you were trying to say in your post, but I think you missed considering the lesser income long term, and the having to survive to write more. It's not regular big bucks from a one book wonder.
Re:One thing bothers me...
by
drsmithy
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· Score: 1
--He says that 'only' 52 years of copyright was unfair.
Have to agree, this aspect of his article jarred with me as well.
Personally, I can't think of any reason why copyrights need last any longer than the time taken to recoup "development costs". Similarly, I can't think of any reason why they shouldn't expire immediately upon the holder's death. There's no reason why descendants should be receiving direct benefits from their ancestors "IP".
Hollywood vs. Enron
by
The+Lynxpro
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· Score: 4, Insightful
What I found funny about Mr. Card's article was the following truism:
Here's a clue: Movie studios have, for decades, used "creative accounting" to make it so that even hit movies never manage to break even, thus depriving the creative people of their "percentage of profits."
Hollywood uses "creative accounting" to diminish revenue sharing with their creative talent in order to actually maximize their profits. Warner Bros. took a lot of flack over how they claimed "Batman" never was profitable, yet for some reason, they made a sequel. Or for example, Paramount claiming "Coming to America" never made a profit either when sued. Yet on the other hand, you have companies such as Enron and Worldcom who use "creative accounting" to inflate their profits. Wow, isn't that ironic?
I guess the moral of the story is, when you overstate profits, investors lose confidence and your company goes bankrupt; run a Hollywood movie studio, claim you never make a profit, and you stay in business forever.
-- "Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Re:Hollywood vs. Enron
by
JayBlalock
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I guess the moral of the story is, when you overstate profits, investors lose confidence and your company goes bankrupt; run a Hollywood movie studio, claim you never make a profit, and you stay in business forever.
Oh, they post end-of-the-year profits, alright. And plenty of them. What they DO try to do, whenever possible, is bury profits on a film-by-film basis.
Like, say a studio has two sci-fi movies coming out in one year, and they're cross-marketing them in some way. So Movie A comes out first, does well enough in the box office, and nets $10 million in profits. They turn turn around, sink that $10 million into the ad budget of Movie B, and claim NO profits on Movie A. (instead, they have $10 million in unused advertising budget which can be put in the "wins" column at the end of the year - but it's not attached to Movie A any more)
This is a simplified example, but not overmuch. They pull that trick ALL THE TIME. Remember Stan Lee suing Sony over Spiderman? They did exactly that on him - sank all the movie profits into the merchandising budget (if memory serves) and counted the whole thing as one big mass from which he got absolutely nothing.
-- Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Re:Hollywood vs. Enron
by
Esion+Modnar
·
· Score: 1
They turn turn around, sink that $10 million into the ad budget of Movie B, and claim NO profits on Movie A.
Of course, the studios that do this are scum. If I make a profit in the stock market on, say, Cisco Systems, and then turn around and sink the profit from that into some other stock that tanks, then at the end of the year I can cancel one against the other, but my original profit from Cisco still stands as a profit line item. And if I had promised somebody a percentage of my profit on Cisco, and not my total profits for the year, then I would still be on the hook for it. Morally and legally. If I make a profit on Movie A, it doesn't matter where I spent that profit, whether it is another movie budget or a years supply of tacos.
But apparently these studios lack (big surprise!) morals. You probably can't throw a rock in Hell without hitting a studio exec.
--
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
"You probably can't throw a rock in Hell without hitting a studio exec."
No but it sure would be fun to try for a few hours.
-- "Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Re:Hollywood vs. Enron
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
They turn turn around, sink that $10 million into the ad budget of Movie B, and claim NO profits on Movie A.
Your logic's a little flawed -- if they sink (spend) $10 mil for ads for Movie B, their profit is $0 for Movie A + B.
I think creative accounting referred in the article refers to not actually spending to $10 mil, but showing on accounting books that the money was spent.
As a huuuuuuge Orson Scott Card fan who's grown disturbed and depressed over his increasingly rabid right-wing views (clothed in the guise of "Oh but I'm actually a Democrat") I'm astonished to find an op-ed piece of his which I substantially agree with.
---
Wordforge writing contest - $100 in prizes - get your entry in before 28 September 2003
Yeah, Card is kinda like sausage. Enjoy but if you look behind the scenes you may not like what you find. Best to just enjoy.
-- I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
He makes a good point
by
theboy24
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· Score: 3, Interesting
One thing that has troubled me with this whole fiasco is that in nearly all mainstream press and discusion there has been no question of the "lost sales" statistics. I do realise that many of the multi-nats in the RIAA own a lot of the press but you would think that after awhile someone, at least me, would want the RIAA to prove that, someone was actually going to spend money on the song/cd that was downloaded. It doesnt really make it right but if people are downloading becasue they're not going to pay, then the RIAA doesn't have a real claim to have lost anything.
-- I must bid you farewell.......
"walks out amid the gunfire"
Nobody questions it because it's obvious--if albums are freely available online, people won't see a need to purchase it when it's already right there. Hence, lost sales.
The "I buy a CD if I like all the mp3s I have from it" argument is bogus and is composed of a very small minority.
The "I buy a CD if I like all the mp3s I have from it" argument is bogus and is composed of a very small minority.
YES! So true. But suppose CDs cost a reasonable $5 or $8, not a rediculous $12 to $15? Would people buy more to be able to own a better recording? I think so...
Re:He makes a good point
by
gsperling
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· Score: 1
I'm not so sure about that. If I rip my MP3s with CRCs and use a high-quality VBR, and there is absolutely NO jitter, that's about as close to the original as one can get. Sure it's still a copy, but it would take even the most distinguished of ears to prove flaws with that version... Right?
You *may* be in the minority, tech wise, as far as ripping MP3s goes.. Remember, we are talking here about collage students with disposable income...
Re:He makes a good point
by
gsperling
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· Score: 1
That's very possible, albeit quite probable. How many people actually read the command-line options of RazorLame and come up with:
%s %d -b 160 -p -m j -q 1 -V 1 -B 256 --add-id3v2
But, who am I to wonder, anyways? =)
I'd only point out that. . .
by
kfg
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· Score: 4, Insightful
If I fix someone's car I don't expect to derive continuing income from it. More to the point, I certainly don't expect that my descendents should derive an income from it. I rather expect that they should have to fix someone else's car to earn money.
If I do wish my descendents to have an easy life why don't I just invest my earnings to create a trust fund for them?
I have no problem with authors making a decent income for their work, but I also have no problem with them having to continue to produce works to maintain themselves and their heirs.
Just like everyone else.
50 years has always seemed both a fair and ample copyright duration to me, protecting both the rights of the author and the public.
KFG
Re:I'd only point out that. . .
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Funny
Funny, I'd always thought that they extended copyright past death a few years to keep people who wanted a song to go public domain from assassinating the artist.
But maybe that's just me.
Re:I'd only point out that. . .
by
IthnkImParanoid
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· Score: 1
I'll go a step further and say that 50 years is too long. Card says in the article that prior to 1978 artists would loose the copyright while still depending on it for income, and suggested this was unfair. It was the only major point of disagreement I had with that article.
How is it unfair to loose a source of income that was created 50 years ago? What other profession has this option? Artists make great contributions to society, but surely no more than inventors. Hell, a dedicated group of programmers could write something groundbreaking and massively popular, and it would be obsolete without further work in a couple years.
I see no reason why 15-20 years is not ample.
-- It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
Re:I'd only point out that. . .
by
kfg
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· Score: 1
Well, like I said, I consider 50 as ample. This is not to say that I consider it ideal.
If I had my druthers I'd make it 15 years renewable once for another 15.
This allows fair time to show the work is marketable; and if it is maintain your monopoly for a while.
On the other hand it allows an acceleration of the process of becoming public domain in those cases where it isn't worth the author's time and effort to fill out a form and pay another ten bucks to maintain his monopoly.
After that, well, write something new Sparky. Even Joseph Heller, the most lethargic novelist known to man, managed to wobble out a new novel every decade or so.
Pop songs can be cranked out on an assembly line, and obviously are. I really don't see why the authors/owners of "Sugar, Sugar" and "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy I've got Love in my Tummy" deserve a sinecure for life. ..And Beyond!
KFG
Re:I'd only point out that. . .
by
Merk
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· Score: 1
And the most obnoxious feature of the law was that some authors outlived their copyright. Their most popular works would go into public domain while they were still alive and counting on the income. It's like revoking someone's Social Security at age 72, just because they had the temerity not to die when demographics predicted they would.
That's what I was thinking when I read the above section. If someone was still counting on income from something they created 50 years ago, they deserve what they get. There are all kinds of professions where your useful span is only a few years, and if you expect to retire off the money you make in that profession you have to be smart about what you do with the money.
Besides that, and author knew when their copyright protection ended. They could readily plan for that day. On the other hand, athletes never know when they'll suffer a career-ending injury. Their career might be over in their first week of professional play, or they might play for 15 seasons.
I think 30 years is a much more reasonable length of copyright for writing. It's not like people are going to wait around 30 years before they buy the book! If your brilliance isn't recognized till 35 years after you write something, tough luck!
I think computer programs should have an even shorter copyright, no more than 5 years. A book (unless it's about computers) is just as relevant in 30 years, but a computer program is most likely almost obsolete in 5 years. Wouldn't it be better for the world if you could usefully improve on a program when the copyright expired, rather than it simply being something interesting in a museum? Wasn't that the whole point of copyrights and patents, that when the monopoly expired they'd go into the public domain so that people could improve on them?
Re:I'd only point out that. . .
by
chl
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· Score: 1
If I fix someone's car I don't expect to derive continuing income from it. More to the point, I certainly don't expect that my descendents should derive an income from it.
On the other hand, why should the price of my creation depend on how long I live?
chl
Re:I'd only point out that. . .
by
retinaburn
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· Score: 1
This is an inaccurate argument. If you put a lot of time, effort and money (and perhaps talent) into creating the car, then should you profit from your work. Sure. Should manufactures get to stop paying for your design after you are dead, maybe. If you fix a song, or a script, do you get royalties. Nope, not even a credit often.
Re:I'd only point out that. . .
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I guess that's the difference between an artist and an artisan.
Re:I'd only point out that. . .
by
danila
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· Score: 1
I would say (if we start from a blank page) it's much more reasonable to pay artists approximately for the period it takes them to create the next product. And unless you spend decades creating a monumental masterpiece, like LOTR, you don't deserve being paid for 50+ years. As your example with fixing cars shows, that just doesn't make any economic sense. So in my opinion, 50 years is more than fair, actually it's unfair to the public, because public domain loses too much.
-- Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Targeting the Wrong Demographic?
by
Eberlin
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· Score: 1
The justification that mp3 "sharing" is ok based on the notion that anyone trading mp3s would not have been in the demographic to buy a cd anyway strikes me as odd.
As a consumer, it bothers me greatly everytime I purchase something and someone mentions that they got the same product for a lesser price. I believe that makes me a bad shopper. So if I buy a cd and someone can get it at a cheaper price, I feel cheated. (on an off-topic note, American consumers who buy MS software at full price should feel this cheated after MS price cuts in other countries)
What some suggest (me included) is an increased value on those music CDs. I mean for 2 bucks more, you can get a DVD which has 2hrs of high quality audio/video, support for various languages, and often has lots of bonus features. Maybe if more musicians created DVDs or CDs with their music, some live performances or interviews, or at least a couple of music videos -- more people would want to buy instead of downloading songs for free.
Re:Targeting the Wrong Demographic?
by
FooAtWFU
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· Score: 1
"Maybe if more musicians created DVDs or CDs with their music, some live performances or interviews, or at least a couple of music videos -- more people would want to buy instead of downloading songs for free."
GAH! I don't know about you, but if they started putting those things on every CD they sold, then a whole bunch of legacy CD players would probably throw a fit. I had a hard enough time getting Wield Al's _Running with Scissors_ to play on my PC, with its extra video clip, and ended up just ripping it to better get at the music.
-- The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Re:Targeting the Wrong Demographic?
by
Eberlin
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· Score: 1
True, I had problems with that particular CD on an NT system but if I recall correctly, it played ok on a Win2K box. Also, there were mega apologies about the cd not working on some computers. I'm hoping they've learned to get past that.
In other news, I got the Poodle Hat video to play on my RH9 machine where he mentions the "value added" thing and takes a shot at downloaded music.
Re:Targeting the Wrong Demographic?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Hey -- Can you e-mail me that video or put it on an FTP server so I can download it? Thanks.
Re:Targeting the Wrong Demographic?
by
gehrehmee
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· Score: 1
As a consumer, it bothers me greatly everytime I purchase something and someone mentions that they got the same product for a lesser price.
They didn't get the same product.
They got (generally) a lower-quality version of the recording, with no packaging, cd liner, etc. They didn't get a hard copy of the music that's likely to last quite long (it's easier in my experience to accidentally wipe a hard drive than to accidentally destroy a cd, and don't get me started on CDR's).
What specific value you place on all that is up to you.
-- "You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship
underpants don't help" -- Calvin
-- How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Hey, he's talking
by
TLouden
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· Score: 3, Interesting
about kids like me and my friends. And would you believe it, he's right. I never buy CDs. My friends buy some of them that they like. Many of my friends have the CD and an 'ilegal' mp3 version. Why? Because an mp3 player is still $50+ and doesn't, at that price, hold much music. So they have a CD version of everyting for school and travle and then an mp3 version for when they use the computer and want to listen to all their favorite songs. Well now, that doesn't hurt the recording companies now does it? What apperently hurts the company is when they download the music they didn't buy. But guess what happens when the do that. They either delete it if they don't like it or get the CD. So now how is this bad?
silly slashdot can't do no-text comments? bah, shows how much I post here.
Try before you buy is one part of trading music to avoid paying for it. Of course, if the music sucks, it should get deleted (some people collect, but that's a different matter, if ya ask me). If the music is enjoyed, there's a chance the album would get downloaded, as well as others by that artist and similar music, and so on.
There has been little mention of this in the whole RIAA vs P2P/Traders issue. *shrug* It happens with games (well, they tend to also offer demos) and it happens with music (where demos tend to be 15-30 second clips of horrid quality streaming music through Amazon and the like).
Ah well, I can type until I'm blue in the fingers on such matters, but it's irrelevant. (;
E-Books-- See Baen.com
by
Soulfader
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· Score: 4, Informative
I don't know about OSC, but a lot of other sci-fi authors have clued in to the fact that exposure sells books.
The Baen Free Library offers a ton of books from sci-fi/fantasy publisher Baen Books for free in a variety of electronic formats. Baen has also been offering CD-ROMs in some of their hardcovers which contain more books not available on their website. The most recent of David Weber's Honor Harrington series, for example, contains the entire series in electronic format. Best of all, you can copy them and distribute them however you like--you just can't sell them.
Try searching for "honorverse disk" at Google and see what you get. Many people (myself included) put the CDs up on their web server for convenience.
It's hideously effective, incidentally. I've bought about 25 Baen paperbacks in the last two years, and several hardbacks--one of them just for the CD, though I rather enjoyed the book, too, as it turned out.
Re:E-Books-- See Baen.com
by
superpenguin
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· Score: 1
The Honorverse CD is actually only the first CD Baen has put out. There's been another one since then that was packaged with John Ringo's "Hell's Faire." (You can get the contents of this CD here) This, together with their free online library have actually generated purchases by myself, as I discovered some new authors (definitely read Keith Laumer if you haven't -- there are some of his works available on the Baen Free Library and these CDs) and I also like to support a publisher with this approach.
Re:E-Books-- See Baen.com
by
Daniel_Staal
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· Score: 1
(Taken out of the frameset at Prime Palaver #6. (Not a direct link.))
-- 'Sensible' is a curse word.
Re:E-Books-- See Baen.com
by
swillden
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The Baen Free Library offers a ton of books from sci-fi/fantasy publisher Baen Books for free in a variety of electronic formats
The philosophy behind the Free Library is also very interesting. Check out Eric Flint's essay on the home page of the Free Library. I especially like his conclusion:
The reason I'm not worried about the future is because of another simple truth. One which is even simpler, in fact -- and yet seems to get constantly overlooked in the ruckus over online piracy and what (if anything) to do about it. To wit:
Nobody has yet come up with any technology -- nor is it on the horizon -- which could possibly replace authors as the
producers of fiction. Nor has anyone suggested that there is any likelihood of the market for that product drying up.
The only issue, therefore, is simply the means by which authors get paid for their work.
That's a different kettle of fish entirely from a "threat" to the livelihood of authors. Some writers out there, imitating Chicken Little, seem to think they are on the verge of suffering the fate of buggy whip makers. But that analogy is ridiculous. Buggy whip makers went out of business because someone else invented something which eliminated the demand for buggy whips -- not because Henry Ford figured out a way to steal the payroll of the buggy whip factory.
Is anyone eliminating the
demand for fiction? Nope.
Has anyone invented a gadget which can
write fiction? Nope.
All that is happening, as the technological conditions under which commercial fiction writing takes place continue to change, is that everyone is wrestling with the impact that might have on the way in which writers get paid. That's it. So why all the panic? Especially, why the hysterical calls for draconian regulation of new technology -- which, leaving aside the damage to society itself, is far more likely to hurt writers than to help them?
The future can't be foretold. But, whatever happens, so long as writers are essential to the process of producing fiction -- along with editors, publishers, proofreaders (if you think a computer can proofread, you're nuts) and all the other people whose work is needed for it -- they will get paid. Because they have, as a class if not as individuals, a monopoly on the product. Far easier to figure out new ways of generating income -- as we hope to do with the Baen Free Library ? than to tie ourselves and society as a whole into knots. Which are likely to be Gordian Knots, to boot.
This is from a guy who makes his living writing fiction.
It's hideously effective, incidentally. I've bought about 25 Baen paperbacks in the last two years, and several hardbacks--one of them just for the CD, though I rather enjoyed the book, too, as it turned out.
Just a suggestion: do not under any circumstances buy an e-Book or other device that makes reading electronic books more convenient and nicer than paper books. If you make that first mistake, do NOT make the second mistake of looking into the Baen webscription program... <shudder>... I've spent *way* too much money on books since I did that. A half-dozen books for $15 -- it's just too much of a bargain to refuse... but there are four YEARS of such monthly bargains to buy...
-- Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Re:E-Books-- See Baen.com
by
A55M0NKEY
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It's true, reading books online sucks.
I've bought books that are downloadable for free from the Gutenburg Project because I can read them in bed and are easier on my eyes. A paperback costs 6 bucks. A e-book reader costs at least 50 bucks. Which would you leave on the floor in front of the toilet?
Authors need not be paranoid about publishing online. It will let lil' kids with $1.00 / week allowances read them online without a trip to the library, and someone that has never read one of the author's books decide if they like the story, but anyone that was going to buy the book still will, and it may cause someone who read the first chapter to become addicted enough to the story to buy the dead tree version to read the rest.
--
Eat at Joe's.
Re:E-Books-- See Baen.com
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
It's true, reading books online sucks.
I don't find that.
I find reading black text on a white background is what sucks.
I can read and enjoy page after page after page of grey text on a black background.
Of course, this only applies to computer monitors, where black is the absence of glaring monitor light. On paper, certainly, black text on white is very readable. Might this be why you prefer to read books?
do not under any circumstances buy an e-Book or other device that makes reading electronic books more convenient and nicer than paper books
Just out of curiosity, what ebook reader and ebook format do you use? I've been using a Sony Clie SJ22,and it been working rather well, except in sunlight. I am currently reading Destiny's Shield from the Baen Free library using the MobiPocket reader software.
Re:E-Books-- See Baen.com
by
swillden
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· Score: 1
I have a Rocket e-Book, which I just sent in to be replaced from the last stocks of Gemstar REB1100 e-Books. They're fantastic, but apparently there's not enough demand to keep them in business:-(
-- Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
It was basically highway robbery -- the companies demanded that either the writers sign their names to a lie and give up all their rights, or the company wouldn't publish it.
I love how electing to not do business with somebody, is "robbery."
Maybe referring to copyright violation as "piracy" isn't all that weird after all.;-)
-- As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It wasn't "electing to not do business with somebody" that was the robbery, it was what would happen if you did elect to do business with them. In order for them to publish the writer's book, the writer was required to relinquish all claims to the copyright (rightfully theirs) to the publisher.
it was/is _doing_ business that was the robbery, fraud and all other things nasty(you give them your rights as if you were on hire by signing contract that says so, which isn't true since you weren't employed to write the stuff) for the sake of making a living. basically it wouldn't go through in many other fields of employment because it screws the 'employed' too much. it's like mcdonalds employees having to pay for the burgers that get thrown into the garbage(while being told to have them ready for incase somebody comes in, in effect pushing the risk of doing business to the employed, otherwise than just the risk of getting sacked too). it's a ridiculous system and not meant to be so (but it seems there's always willing authors for the established systems to screw over, which is the problem and which can bit them in their own ankles now that the publishing is really just publicity, as you can publish for quite cheap on the internet).
one could think of p2p as the pirate radio of the 2000's(well, it would fit in with the whole piracy ideology).
and yeh bit your flame.
-- world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Re:Blow me, Card
by
Soulfader
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Are you producing something that can be enjoyed by the clients of your work over and over again?
Perhaps you are selling your work too cheap. If he produces something that people are willing to pay for, more power to him. It is a sweet deal. What's preventing you from doing the same?
I don't care about MP3s...
by
jostern
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
when will you make the Enders Game movie??????
Re:Blow me, Card
by
rhakka
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If you want to talk a publisher into *paying*, not loaning, artists lump sums of money to buy or create works, then go for it. But until the risk is shifted from the artists, why should someone else get the money for selling his works when he took the risk and spent his time creating it for NOTHING? Does your job require you to go sometimes years either without pay or on "advances" that you owe in return that will only be recouped by the distribution channels that also produce your work into useable forms? Assuming, of course, that you do in fact sell mass quantities to pay back the advances?
Risk and reward.
Not exactly the most balanced view.
by
Elwood+P+Dowd
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· Score: 1
I don't mean this essay in particular, I mean Orson Scott Card.
He's a smart guy, and he has his heart in the right place, and I think he's correct about this issue. However, he seems completely impaired when it comes to seeing both sides of a debate.
Read some of his other essays at random, and I think you'll see what I mean. Once he gets it in his head that some group/thing/whatever is in the right, he'll uniformly agree with all their arguments. Not exactly reasonable (or persuasive) rhetoric.
--
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Re:Not exactly the most balanced view.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I don't mean this essay in particular, I mean Orson Scott Card.
He's a smart guy, and he has his heart in the right place, and I think he's correct about this issue. However, he seems completely impaired when it comes to seeing both sides of a debate.
Read some of his other essays at random, and I think you'll see what I mean. Once he gets it in his head that some group/thing/whatever is in the right, he'll uniformly agree with all their arguments. Not exactly reasonable (or persuasive) rhetoric.
The same could be said about the vast majority of slashdot posters. Well, except for the part about being smart.
Re:Not exactly the most balanced view.
by
Elwood+P+Dowd
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· Score: 1
I didn't mean to imply that anyone here on/. is worth reading instead of him.
--
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Can't you just smell it?
by
computerlady
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· Score: 3, Insightful
"The focus of the industry needs to shift from Soundscan numbers to downloads," said Draiman. "It's the way of the future. You can smell it coming. Stop fighting it, because you can't."
Yes, yes, yes. And the focus of the industry also needs to shift from labels to artists. Artists are finally, albeit slowly, shrugging off that "plantation mentality" that had them convinced they couldn't make it without the big labels. End result is more, not less, music.
-- computerlady - a brand new Slash-daughter - alone, but no longer invisible, in the/. world
Re:Blow me, Card
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Software programmers are very similar to music entertainers, and I can see why someone probably initially marked this post as flamebait. This is a true fact though. Nobody who builds hardware/durable goods is appreciated anymore. It's a one time deal and we're out having to design something else in order to stay alive. So right now it seems that in the states, the best jobs to get 1. entertainment industry (do once, sell 10000000x) 1b. Software (You *should* be supporting your work, where I don't see music writers supporting their work.(or the need to, thats why it's better)) 2. Services (virtually no variable cost) 3. Disposable goods (you sell them another one after it breaks) 4. worst of all, durable goods... tough business to be in, must profit a lot per sale else it isn't worth it.
Nobody wants to do category 4 anymore, and all being outsourced... uggghh... oh well, i'll be flamebait now.
Agreed. But I've got something to suggest...
by
bennomatic
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· Score: 1
How about if, after a song has been sold X number of times, or licensed for Y radio/TV commercials, gotten Z amount of paid radio play or been in Q movies or television shows, the record company cuts its sale/licensing fees and cuts the price of the song accordingly.
Example: Jewel's new song, "Intuition" is in a commercial for a Gilette razor. I'm sure Gilette paid huge duckets for that. Now if I want to buy the song from ITMS, for example, Jewel's cut should be the same (approx $0.10), and Apple's, for serving it (approx $0.35), but the record company has made enough money on it, so maybe if they cut $0.50 out of the remaining cut for the record company and just took $0.04, making the price $0.49, I think that would be reasonable.
Come to think of it, I'm sure that Jewel made a bunch of money herself from the Gilette promotion, so maybe she should cut her take to $0.02 or so, just on that song, making the total cost $0.41.
He thinks all the money goes to cost of media, artist, and record label. That sounds right, because the people who package, inventory, ship, receive, stock, price, and ring up the CD work for free.
[Homer]
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
"...your ideas are intriguing to me, and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter."
"free" music increase artists' profits
by
kipple
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· Score: 0
First: assume that music could be downloaded for "free" from any website. Second: enable users to donate an euro (or a dollar..) for every song they download IF THEY WANT TO Third: develop a way to "pay" for those one-euro donations; it could be done with e-money Fourth: e-money should be bought with real cash.
Here's the plot: a) a user goes to a music store, buys a data CD containing X amount of "credits" b) those credits are unique codes; those are sent (securely) to an artist for a donation c) the user downloads art (music, movies, etc) and keeps it/share it/whatever d) if the user has no internet access, the music store should download the music (maybe have it stored locally) and charge the user a small fee for the media d-1) users can still donate if they like the artist e) radio stations could download the same music and play it; they won't have to pay high royalities for it, so they could play better music f) websites should be used to show which songs are most downloaded g) artists will get far more money than they get now (think about it - 1 euro every 5/6 CD "sold" is WAY more than they get now) h) artists will get money for concerts i) music will get better overall j) we won't have multibillion-artists bitching about their make-up all day long
the downside of that is that the music "industry" that provides people "what they should like" would die.
if you like it, talk about it with everyone you want.
-- --
There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers.
(adapted from D. Bach)
Re:"free" music increase artists' profits
by
MushMouth
·
· Score: 1
Artists are already being paid $0.08 a track sold via Mechanical Royalty (paid directly to the songwriter), on a 10 track album that is $0.80 per album sold, many are more than 10 tracks, and they are paid accordingly.
Orson Scott Card is a genius writer. His works will be to our day as Shakepeare's were to his day, with the Ender series of books being the crown of his work (despite the relativism that infected the last three books of Ender's life).
That said, he's looking at the music industry from a writer's point of view. Notice how he calls a 52 year copyright term "obnoxious." The very best thing about this article is that such a respected author has recognized the shit that's being thrown at all of the tech community and most of the rest of America by the RIAA. This is good news, but still short of what I would've liked to have seen.
The cost of production for an album or a book has been dropping for a very long time, totally due to the advancements in technology we've seen in the last 50 years or so. Home computers are already found in many, many households across the USA (I'll drop that qualification from here on out. The USA is where this battle is being fought, so I'll restrict myself to talking about the USA). State of the art publishing software can be found for _free_ for anyone who knows to look for it (TeX). The same will eventually be said about audio mixing software. Using the internet as a distribution tool, artists are already able to cut the large companies completely out of the loop, and in the future the number of artists doing this will only increase. Unless the existing industry does something about it (since this is in reply to an author's article, I pulled a page out of the Robert Jordan playbook with the incomplete sentence).
This is the crux of the issue. As Card mentions in his article, the Entertainment Industry in general is full of liars and cheaters. The actions they've taken so far to stop "piracy" could be aimed at doing what they say, but they will also destroy the future of artists being able to control their own work from creation to distribution. Given the history of the Entertainment Industry, I'm inclined to believe the latter goal is correct.
Let's just look at one of the (many) facts... Why has Universal Music been on the market for nine months without a buyer? Maybe they have a magic crystal ball and are predicting the future, you insensitive clod?
Short copyright is incentive for continue creation
by
muppet
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· Score: 1
The article notes that the "annoying thing" about copyright when it was only 56 years is that the author could outlive his monopoly on the work.
But that's intentional. That's the incentive for the author not just to sit back and milk one cow until it's dead, but to keep creating new stuff to further enrich the culture. Oh, and the enriching the culture bit requires things to go public domain.
Ya know there are time i just want to mod the story up:)
boohoo steve and sammy!
by
jgilbert
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Artists are feeling the downturn in sales, too. "My record royalties have dropped 80 percent since 1999," said Steve Miller, whose greatest hits album has been a perennial best-seller since its 1978 release. "To me, it's one of the weirdest things that's ever happened to me because people act like it's OK."
Recording artists have watched their record royalties erode over the past few years ("My Van Halen royalties are history," said vocalist Sammy Hagar), but, in fact, few musicians earn the bulk of their income from record sales.
I find these comments offensive. No more royalties from 20+ years ago. Damnit! I'm not working any more, I should be getting paid still! If sales were sky rocketing after the copyright expired (oh wait, that apparently will never happen again) I could see the argument, but the vast majority of money is made when a CD or whatever first comes out. "What have done for me lately?" comes to mind. If I stop working I don't get paid anymore, if you stop working you don't get paid anymore. That's the way it works.
Meanwhile you have a bunch of half-wits on MTV cribs showing there multi-million dollar mansions. How exactly does this produce any insentive to create something new and interesting? Granted, in most cases its not really a loss. You have people that are basically set for life if they use some minute amount of common sense off of 1 CD release. Of course, they're probably really making money of f being famous. I sure Britney made a crap load more off of promoting pepsi than she ever did from CD sales.
I really didn't mean to blather on this much, my bad. Basically, you aren't making royalties from incredibly old albums (shocker), write some new stuff. You still need income? Here's a thought, write some new stuff. If people don't like it, get a different job. Boo hoo, what about my dependents, they can't live off my name for the rest of their lives. Here's a tip, learn to manage your fucking money! Everyone in the real world has various mechanisms to provide for their families, maybe you should look into them.
BTW, I do agree artists are screwed by the record companies and it's about time they started standing up and taking some responsibilities for their own situation and actions.
jason
Re:boohoo steve and sammy!
by
I'm+Spartacus!
·
· Score: 1
Your post amounts to nothing more than class warfare. Who are you to decide when artists should no longer be paid for their work? If people decide that a 20 year old album is worth paying for, why shouldn't the artist be compensated for it?
> You still need income? Here's a thought, write > some new stuff.
Why? So that can get traded on KaZaa too?
-- "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."
-- Ambrose Bierce
Re:boohoo steve and sammy!
by
Crashmarik
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· Score: 1
Seeing as I had to buy Steves greatest hits as a CD solely because I could no longer get needles for my recod player, I am not exceptionaly surprised or distressed.
Hmmmm. So, Sparticus, let me guess your real name. Is it Lars?
--
"No beer until you finish your tequila!"
-Leela's Dad
Re:boohoo steve and sammy!
by
PhxBlue
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I find these comments offensive. No more royalties from 20+ years ago. Damnit! I'm not working any more, I should be getting paid still!
Orson Scott Card is old enough to remember when you could get a retirement outside of working for the government. If government workers are entitled to getting money after they've stopped working, why should authors' or artists' entitlement be any less?
-- !#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Re:boohoo steve and sammy!
by
rollingcalf
·
· Score: 1
> "Your post amounts to nothing more than class warfare. Who are you to decide when artists should no longer be paid for their work? If people decide that a 20 year old album is worth paying for, why shouldn't the artist be compensated for it?"
Who are you to decide when people can or can't make copies of a CD they paid for?
Copyright means somebody can go to jail or be fined or sued for playing background music in a restaurant, singing a song in public, or making copies of an album for friends and family. Don't forget that while copyright is an incentive for the artist, it comes at the expense of other people who are legally restrained from doing things they would otherwise be free to do.
There isn't an artist or author on earth who would have decided NOT to create whatever they created if copyright expired in only 20 years. But there are some (albeit a very tiny percentage, because almost nobody continues to make any money after the first 5 years of publication) who have STOPPED producing because they are still collecting money from old work and have no incentive to create anything new.
-- ---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
Re:boohoo steve and sammy!
by
I'm+Spartacus!
·
· Score: 1
No one here is talking about making a copy of a CD he owns. We're talking about mass trading of music that no one has paid for. No one is going to throw you in jail for singing "Happy Birthday". Be reasonable! And why should you be able to make copies for family and friends? It's not your music, is it?
I'll disregard your assertion that no artist would not create music if copyright expired in 20 years because you are not in a position to ask every artist on earth that question.
-- "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."
-- Ambrose Bierce
Re:boohoo steve and sammy!
by
rollingcalf
·
· Score: 1
>"And why should you be able to make copies for family and friends? It's not your music, is it?"
It's my CD, I paid for it. Why should any record label or artist be able to stop me from making copies of the bit pattern on my CD? It isn't their CD, is it?
It's only copyright law creating the artificial restriction that stops me from copying the patterns of bits on my CD. I am willing to live with that to the extent that it gives an incentive for artists to create, but no longer than is necessary. Nobody writes a book or song expecting it to provide any significant income 20 years in the future.
-- ---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
It's really nice to finally see someone with published works on the side of the people. The point, counter-point arrangement of the article made perfect sense and cleared up a lot of things for me, and I hope it will do the same for record execs.
I still just can't believe that the RIAA is suing these broke 12-year-olds and college students. Hopefully that will come to an end soon.
Re:Research
by
Decameron81
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I don't know about "people" but I can surely tell you why I use kazaa.
The problem is I'm not rich. I can't spend all that money on CDs. If I were to spend $15 each time I like a new song I would be quite poor by now. I DO buy CDs, just not as often as I would like to listen to the music I download. And this wasn't any different before napster, because to be honest, I didn't care about music before it. I never cared too much about listening to the radio or watching MTV, but I do care now about downloading random songs from the Internet to listen to them.
The big music companies are just being silly. They should be offering online services with very low prices so that people can download the music they want, and they would get the money the desire so much. That, together with a simple and secure system for people to pay for the service, and I will be glad to switch to it.
And they should stop claiming I am causing a loss in profit, because I simply don't have all the money they want from me.
Decameron
-- diegoT
good article, but..
by
kaan
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Overall, this is a fairly well written piece. For those who have not yet RTFA, I'd say it's worth your time.
One thing that was not mentioned here, and something that I've been wondering about, is the impact on new CD sales (both real and perceived) that's due to the huge popularity of purchasing used CDs from music stores. Clearly, a record company can only make money if the consumer purchases a new CD. But if I spend my $15-20 on a CD, then sell it to FooBar Music Shop for $6, then you come along and pick it up for $10, we've got a CD purchase that has been diverted from a brand new product to a second-hand one. I only know a handful of folks who really grab music from file sharing networks, but I know a zillion people who have spent a lot of money on a nearly-new CD for $8.
I'm pretty sure that the RIAA has been ignoring any discussion of this trend because there's nothing they can do about it, and therefore they can't drum up support against it. But I suspect this behavior of buying used CDs is responsible for much more of the "slump in CD sales" than we know.
Anyone have any numbers, info, or insights on this?
The RIAA probably DID try to crack down on used music. You may recall that Garth Brooks spoke out against used CD sales. Result? A bunch of people had a "brooks-b-que" in which they burned their garth brooks CDs (oh good, toxic smoke. I hope they got cancer from it) to show that they would in fact never be purchased on the used market - and they pleged never to buy another one of his albums again. It all got a fair amount of publicity, and I haven't heard shit about garth brooks since, though he does seem to be getting fatter every time I see a picture of him, so apparently his publicity faux pas hasn't hurt his ability to put food on the table.
-- "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There's a little legal matter called the "Doctrine of First Sale", that means that once you've bought a product, it's yours to sell to others as you wish.
So the **AA can't do anything about the sales of used CDs / DVDs, which is why they haven't tried.
There's some interest in how this doctrine should apply to digital downloads, because there is no physical element involved in such transactions.
But the real reason the sales of CDs have been dropping worldwide is that they are overcharging in a declining market. Until they address this issue, they will continue to lose sales.
-- oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
The other thing you need to consider is that if you regularly sell your CDs to the used music shop for $6, you'll likely buy more new CDs than you would otherwise.
Try being an author then... Seems like you picked the wrong line of work if you wanted recurring revenue for the hours you work. Actually, if you we're clever, you could sell the same 8 hours over, and over again. If you say worked on something and sold the results of your work.
If you did a lot of research into lets say, software engineering, and sold the results of that research, you could sell that lots of times. You only did the research once. However, you could sell them repeatedly. My sister does consulting as a Web consultant. She worked really hard to write a content engine. She fills the engine, and then bills people at 75% of the rate a custom built site would cost. 10% of the work, 75% of the money.... You probably think that's unfair too. It's entirely possible however that she would have never made a dime off the engine.
It's how the economics of Card's job is structured. Tell you what, why don't you start a publishing company, then tell the authors they have to show up to your cubical farm for 8 hours a day and write their books there. You pay them an hourly wage, so they get paid, once and only once. Then you come back in a couple of years and tell me how it turns out (I'll bet nobody wants to work for you, or at least no author worth publishing, if they do, they'll quit immediatly after earning a reputation).
The economics of being an author is very different then the economics of working as a programmer, or as a janitor, or whatever it is you do for an hourly rate. Shocking, shocking I tell you. It's entirely possible Card could work for a year on a book, and never see a dime (okay, maybe that's only true for a new author). Being an author is very risky. Your hourly job is less risky. You show up, you do whatever it is you do, and you get paid. Next you'll be telling me it's not fair that somebody makes more money they you do, because you work just as hard as they do. You earn what you negociate to earn. You don't like your deal, re-negociate.
Kirby
German Fun Punk Band "Die Aerzte" ...
by
Sweetshark
·
· Score: 2, Funny
did get the idea too it seems. Their new CD will be released without copy protection. From a recent TV-interview (translation mine):
Interviewer: You new CD is released without copy protection... Farin Urlaub: Yes, we though we could release the copy protection seperately and cash in twice...
Bjorn (Sorry for getting a bit OT.)
Uh, dude...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Why should I sympathize with Card?
Card was not being serious when he called this part of copyright law obnoxious, and he certainly wasn't saying that he agrees with copyright law, much less that he thinks it's too lax. You don't need to sympathize with him, he's sympathizing with us - what you do need is a sarcasm detector.
Re:Research
by
MushMouth
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
There is this study (you need powerpoint to read it, doesn't that suck)
The deal is, if you've created something that people are willing to pay for, then why should other people be able to benefit from it and not you?
I once met the guy who wrote the book "Escape From Alcatraz". He was about 70 years old and was cashing a check at the grocery store where I worked as a teenager. He explained that a few copies a week get sold to tourists who visit the jail, and, so he continues to get a little portion of that revenue. He wrote the book, people still want the book; why should anyone be able to sell it and keep all the profits to themselves?
Some artists even use that power for good. Peter Gabriel donated the rights to his song "Come Talk to Me" to an environmental group, which then licensed it to MCI for a commercial, enabling them to lobby to save thousands of acres of rainforest. Trust me; it's a good thing. And if you don't think artists should get copyright protection for years, well, then you certainly shouldn't be behind the record companies getting it instead.
The people to listen to
by
downix
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The artists, the authors, the guys that do the work. The record companies deserve to make a buck, but it's become nothing but a scam, a giant pyramid scheme. You "opt in" and you can't get out, if you're a recording artist or a writer.
I think what the record companies fear the most is not the P2P swappers, but that some unknown, unsigned band will step up, and thanks to P2P swapping, outsell EVERYTHING the record companies produce, thereby rendering them worthless. In the P2P environment we have today, it is not only possible, it is inevitable.
"If you got together with a few of your neighbors and each of you bought different CDs and then lent them to each other, that wouldn't even violate copyright."
Is this true?
This sometimes called the doctrine of first sale: after the record company (music store) sold you the CD, you can re-sell it, lend it to friends, etc. -- just like with a book. As long as you don't have a ripped file (or copy of the CD) that you're playing at the same time that you're friend is playing the CD, no copyright violation. (If you're not playing it at the same time as your friend, you may still be ok under the "one backup copy" provision, but that's less cut and dry.)
-- Unlimited growth == Cancer.
HE WAS BEING FACETIOUS
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
This is like the 3rd or 4th post now saying gee, what an ass, he thinks it's unfair that copyright expires so soon!
Hello, McFly, he's KIDDING. Quit focusing on this one paragraph and take the article as a whole. Does this really sound like a guy who thinks copyrights aren't restrictive enough?
I think the real reasons can be derived straight from the RIAAs own numbers:
1) THEY RELEASED FEWER ALBUMS
2) THEY RAISED PRICES DURING A RECESSION
and perhaps less importantly, but still a factor, 3) They stopped selling CD singles.
Music has always been crappy, so I don't think that is the big reason. Supply and demand and availability of substitutes are the fundimental forces of a marketplace.
But guess what happens when you choke supply? Someone else fills it, and independant label music sales are UP, perhaps more than RIAA sales are down, which would actually be a net gain in music sales.
-- Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Re:More Obvious
by
MuParadigm
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· Score: 2, Insightful
"2) THEY RAISED PRICES DURING A RECESSION"
And corallary:
2A) They raised prices for technology when tech. prices are going down. Which makes CD's *too* *damn* *expensive*. Especially when you can get a DVD, hours of entertainment, with loads of extras, for only marginally more money. For your entertainment buck, you get a lot more on a multi-hour DVD than a one hour CD.
Anyone know where here can I read Metallica's musings on ebooks, the Sklyarov/Adobe case, etc? Or perhaps Bill Gates' thoughts (if there are any left) regarding copyrighted building codes?
RIAA is upset
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Boohoo, RIAA is realizing that the record labels aren't the only way to get exposure for their artists! Oh dear, what will happen next, artists releasing their works on the 'net without using recording labels at all??? Oh the horror!
. <--- crying the world's smallest tear for the RIAA
Oh dear, what will happen next, artists releasing their works on the 'net without using recording labels at all???
Not artists that MAKE A LIVING from their music!
There's another angle to this
by
HangingChad
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
It's more than just file swapping music under copyright, it's also the Internet as an enabler for independent groups to make money without the support of big labels.
You can set up a pretty decent home recording studio these days for a couple grand. A really nice one for maybe five or six thou. Okay, maybe not a true professional studio but damn close enough for all but a highly trained ear. That's within the range of people willing to scrimp and save for it. You can get a master CD copied with jewel cases and inserts for around a dollar each in lots of 1,000.
If you have friends with DVX1000 or VX2000 and a carload of gear you can add music videos to go with the songs. Okay, not as good as film but still nice looking on a computer monitor or big screen TV if it's shot right. Vertical integration at a price point that's affordable.
I think it's that more than file trading that's the real worry. Those that are persistent, post a really good web site, offer a few songs for download have a chance at making money...and keeping most of it. Without ever setting foot in a major label. I think music has the potential to shift to a ground up industry faster than film.
Two challenges with that: One is air play. As long as Clear Channel is in bed with the big labels on the payola merry go round you're not going to hear many unsigned bands on the air. Hence the fight against Internet radio. The other challenge is the signal to noise ratio. Weeding out the bad music and letting the really talented float above the fray.
Still, those are solvable. I bet a handful of people with the time, talent and a few grand in gear could get together today and build themselves a new star.
-- That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Unless you're in Canada, where it's legal:-) Kind of makes up for the ass-reaming/price gouging the labels have done to the consumer over the years.
But Orson points out something interesting: many bands were obliged to sign "work-for-hire" contracts, even though both parties (the record label and the band) knew that they (the artists) were not employed as work-for-hire. Seems to me that the artists should be able to sue and get their copyrights back, as such contracts are not valid (contrary to public morals: eg: lies).
Re: Good Article & Used CD stores
by
gsperling
·
· Score: 1
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. Both articles are VERY well written, and I'm ecstatic to see some high-profile artists being quoted. Assuming the quotations are authentic (no pgp signatures) I have a lot of respect for those artists.
I'm really not sure why the RIAA hasn't come down on Used CD stores as much as they have with online file swappers...
There is a local used-cd store in my neighborhood. I purchase CDs there quite regularly. In talking with one of the teenagers who work there, I discovered he had a laptop with him, connected to an external hard drive. I pointed at it, laughed, and he nodded his head.
You draw your own conclusions from that.
TOO BAD THE SLASH MODS DON'T GET IT!
by
jbottero
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· Score: 0, Troll
It's really too bad that the Slash Mods classifiy as "troll" or "flamebait" anything that they don't agree with, even if it is a valid point. And the parent raises a valid point. When you code for "The Man", he owns your work. When you make music for "The Man", he owns your work, and thus can do with it what He pleases.
Re:Agreed. But I've got something to suggest...
by
ryanr
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· Score: 1
Because Jewel has absolutely no say in the matter, it's up to her record label. They tend to be not so generous.
I'm going out and buying
by
Sphere1952
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· Score: 1
Another copy of Ender's Game.
Sure, I've already read it three times. My sone's already read it over a dozen times. But you can't really have enough copies of Ender's Game.
--
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
Re:Agreed. But I've got something to suggest...
by
XeresRazor
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· Score: 1
The problem with this logic is the record company getting a larger cut than the artist who created the music, let's say $.20 for the artist, $.25 for the company serving the file, and $.04 for the greedy record company to pay their bureaucracy that's contributed nothing to the actual production and distribution of said song.
Courtney Love say all this and more in that Salon interview a couple years ago? And what did it get her except cut lose from her record contract?
We all know what the obivous answer is, just like we all know things like big government squanders our tax dollars and the Patriot Act is used to subvert due process. The problem is that we have to act as a group, put aside our self interest for an indefinite period, to force the change.
If the artist stop releasing new "product" for the RIAA to push and only play live to make a living, if music buyers stop making any purchases until prices drop/product improves/delivery methods change, and if pirates stop downloading for a week (call it a proclaimed week of silence) to let the music industry know that we get it, that might at least get their attention. It's tough to kill a bloated, greedy monster of this size.
Why would author care if a musician's IP is being stolen? Oh, right. Slashdot will post any anti-RIAA rhetoric.
User-Friendly Copyright Laws
by
sig
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I find Card's description of the old copyright system troubling. He says that the old system was bad because it only granted a monopoly for 52 years before the the work fell into the public domain and whines that he or his descendants might not die before that happened. This is ridiculous. The section of the Constitution (Article I, Section 8) that gives congress permission to create copyright law says that the purpose is to encourage "progress in science and the useful arts." Nowhere does is say anything about providing a welfare system for authors who get lazy and squander their earnings and their nidhoggic progeny.
If your dad was a plumber, would you expect that a leaky pipe he fixed 50 years ago would buy you a new house today? Why should copyright holders and their descendants be any different. If authors plan on maintaining a lifestyle after they get older, they should get a 401k like everyone else.
The framers decided that 14 years, extensible to 28 was long enough to encourage authors to keep science and the arts progressing, while still keeping the public domain well stocked with good material so that other authors could do their bit to advance science and the useful arts. The system enacted by Congress in 1978, and more recently with the Sonny Bono Copyright term extension act is so unbalanced that not only is it unconstitutional, its stagnating the intellectual development of our society.
Re:User-Friendly Copyright Laws
by
Obiwan+Kenobi
·
· Score: 1
If your dad was a plumber, would you expect that a leaky pipe he fixed 50 years ago would buy you a new house today? Why should copyright holders and their descendants be any different.
Because the plumber didn't invent the pipe he fixed.
Re:User-Friendly Copyright Laws
by
drinkypoo
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· Score: 1
I don't see why you think you have a right to something someone else created. There is a certain amount of merit to things becoming the property of the masses once they become a cultural icon. Mickey Mouse is the prime example of this; to a lesser degree you can point to other things such as Bart Simpson, Bob's Big Boy, and hell, even the Michelin Man. I think it is reasonable for a person to hold a copyright until they die. However it should not be part of their estate, I don't think. If you commercialize it, and you want to provide for your descendants, invest some of your earnings. I don't think that's unreasonable. But I do think it is unreasonable for the creator of a work to have to live to see their work despoiled by an ungrateful world. Since killing people when their earliest copyright expires is impractical, expiring copyright when they expire would seem to make sense.
As for a commercial entity's ownership of a copyright, it makes sense to have it never expire necessarily, but to have the copyright fees start at some small amount, and double every year. As we know because we think of things in binary all the time, if we started with a penny, the tenth payment would still only come to $10.24. The twentieth payment, however, would come to $10,485.76. The thirtieth would be $10,737,418.24. So this very effectively limits copyright length. At some point it becomes financially unrealistic, forcing companies to invent new icons to replace those which must be phased out.
If you think copyrights should be longer than that, then just give people some number of years free. I think ten years is sufficient. You could also move to some other scale, rather than doubling, but doubling is so nice and simple and universally understood that I think it is an ideal solution. You could also start with a higher fee than one cent, of course.
-- "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:User-Friendly Copyright Laws
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
" I don't see why you think you have a right to something someone else created."
Because we, the people, grant them a limited monopoly on that creation. In return for that, their creation is given to the public domain after that limited period.
In addition, (for example) Bart Simpson isn't a wholly original creation. He is derived from society, from the works of others, etc.
I think he was being sarcastic. His analogy about the 72 year old person having their Social Security revoked "just because they had the temerity not to die when demographics predicted they would" makes this a little clearer, because obviously, it's not anyones to perogative to die at any time.
Nice points.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
they are.
RIAA + Success = No RIAA
by
gregmac
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Think of the backlash if the RIAA is 'successful' in their current endavours to end illegal copying and filesharing. Here I define 'successful' as having such a strong effect in stopping people from downloading music, that sales of CD burners go down (no one is copying and/or burning their own CD's), sales of MP3 players go down (no one wants to even rip CD's to mp3 for fear of being sued). (and yeah, I know that won't happen because there's many legitimate uses, but bear with me for a second).
Now, suddenly, the $500billion electronics industry that makes CD burners and MP3 players is going to be seeing declining sales. And the $50 billion record industry sales went up a couple billion. Which industry do you think has more power?
The whole situation is pretty strange. Consider that Sony Electronics makes something like $40 billion a year. And Sony Entertainment makes around $4 billion. Sony Entertainment is a record company, and part of the RIAA. Sony Electronics makes CD burners, MP3 players, Car CD players that can play MP3's, Computers, and various other electronics used in these 'illegal' copying pratices. Do you think AOL-TW makes more money from their record company division, or their ISP division (that allows people to download using p2p)?
Maybe someone can shed some light on who's making these decisions in the RIAA and why these companies are allowing it to do what it's doing.
-- Speak before you think
Re:RIAA + Success = No RIAA
by
Boombastic
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· Score: 0
I think Sony is a part of the RIAA due to their music line.
Offtopic???
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
WTF!! Do you have to be fucking stupid to be a moderator? Is there some kind of signup sheet on Slashdot that says "I am stupid make me a moderator"???
Re:Blow me, Card
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Hey retard
As an author you get a percentage of profit/revenue on each item sold. You don't get recurring payments for the same book you sell to the same person once.
... But it is definitely not a resolution. Just because the artists "speak out" against the RIAA's practices doesn't the RIAA gives a damn. When the artists start pressuring their respective labels to break away from the RIAA, that's when they will make a difference.
Also, a shameless plug (apologies for the terrible server): My letter to the RIAA
-- Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff tha-- MICRO$OFT IS THE DEVIL!!1
If CDs cost $5 each, how many would you own?
by
jbottero
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· Score: 1
Common sense says that at least some of the people downloading music would have otherwise bought the CD. But as has been pointed out over and over again here, if the CD didn't cost so fucking much, people would probably rather own the CD. Just think of how many CD's you might own if they only cost $5? Probably many more times the value of any "lost" income from lowering the price.
I'm not sure I want a system that requires any band that wants to make money to go on huge long tours rather than sell a lot of records. The Beatles couldn't have thrived in a system like that. Any system that allows a bunch of nomadic stoners to thrive and not the greatest band ever causes me concern.
This "make money touring" idea seems very constraining to me. It seems like it will produce a lot of music that will get old fast. How many young handsome men in tight-fitting heavily-worn secondhand clothing making songs out of major chords and covering their stratocasters in hip stickers can one really take? (Don't answer that ladies/gay men) I've had it up to my neck with MP3-friendly indie rock bands, and their spoiled twat fans who go to the concerts and peer carefully around them to make sure they're not making themselves look uncool by being more into the music than anyone else. These bands ran out of names (not to mention songs) long ago (Neutral Milk Hotel? That's not a name, you cunts), so they might as well just refer to themselves by numbers now, since that's all they really are - small little unique but insignificant numbers in a sea of more insignificance. When will another Bob Dylan, Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana - any band that a fairly large culture can get behind and identify with - happen again? The answer looks bleak. The real explanation to the problem is very long and complicated, but I don't see how widespread MP3 distribution of music can do anything but diffuse, jade, and deaden the cultural excitement that music can invoke. Geeks on slashdot tend to look at this in only one way - their analytical, accountant-style way that tries to look for math-like solutions to problems. But music - especially the reasons we humans like music so much! - is more complicated than that and can't really be analyzed on this level.
One thing that's happening is that bands are stuck in several abusive relationships these days. One (some aren't at this stage yet) is with their blood-sucking record company, another is with their fans. (I'll only go into the one with the fans because the r.c. one is obvious.) A band's primary goal in being a band - even if they say it isn't, with very few exceptions - is to be liked and to be famous. The band realizes it can't get famous without being heard, so it tries to record more, and play more shows to get the word out, and sell CDs at the concerts etc. But they soon learn this doesn't work, because there is too much competition. Music is a market, and any individual band is small beans. So they see that their fans like MP3s and they say, uh, ok, yeah, we like MP3s too! MP3s, yeah man, cool stuff. Hehheh. And they release their songs in MP3 and give all their fans full access to them via the "band blog" or whatever. Basically what they do is whore themselves in every way possible in an effort to compete, and they all end up losing, and the "consumer" wins BIG TIME (in the short-term). Of course, now the consumer is suffering because music is starting to suck, reason being, the consumer is impeding the mechanisms - however flawed those mechanisms might be - by which music reaches mass culture.
Here is what music needs today (or at least here is one thing that would help): For bands to grow backbones. They need to stand up on stage and say, alright, you spoiled thick rimmed glasses-wearing fucks, you're welcome for coming, we're going to play you 12 songs tonight that are all fucking incredible, and if you don't like them, you can go fuck yourselves, because seeing us is a privilege, not a right, and frankly, at $20 a head, you got a great deal. And if I ever catch one of you punks illegally copying OUR MUSIC without our permission, I'll put this 'ere guitar in your crotch. Maybe this sounds funny, but the first talented band to come along with good songs and adopt this strategy of asserting itself - I guarantee it will be bigger than Nirvana was. Do I expect this to happen? No, I pretty much expect more "yes sir, we'll give you the music you like sir, yes you can have MP3s sir, yes we like to give our MP3s away sir!" But I can dream.
Yup. What a shame for you that OSC won the "allowed to be an author" lottery, and you didn't. Tough break that you're stuck in the "only permitted to work 40 hours a week for wages" class.
If only there were a system that would somehow allow anyone who wants to write to submit their work to various publishers to see if it were fit for public consumption.
Me? I'm the weirdo who does both, holds a standard job, and writes instead of all that sleeping.
Competition for teen $$$$$
by
zerofoo
·
· Score: 1
I propose one other possible explanation for the music industry downturn:
I've got a 15 year old sister and she works after school to pay for all these little things. 10 years ago kids didn't have to choose between so many forms of entertainment. What used to be spent on CDs is now divided amongst the things listed above. Therefore, less to spend on CDs.
Anyone who doesn't see that is a moron. But that's just my stupid little opinion.
> And if you don't think artists should get > copyright protection for years, well, then you > certainly shouldn't be behind the record companies > getting it instead.
Pardon me, but didn't the artist sign their rights to the music away when they signed that contract?
-- "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."
-- Ambrose Bierce
Re:best quote from the article
by
schnits0r
·
· Score: 1
actually, I believe according to the MLA you are allowed to start sentances with "and". Also, "Can" and "may" are also interchagnable.
"I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living."
--
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
Re:Research
by
Decameron81
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
You miss the point. I download songs to try and find stuff that is worth a purchase. To be honest I don't care if you consider that like a theft, but that's the way I decide what songs are worth my bucks.
I would also like to point out a few points:
1 - The fact that I get or not the song from the internet is irrelevant. I am not stealing since I am not depriving someone from stuff he has, nor profits he could make. How can someone steal bits? Even those are just copied into my box!
2 - To prove me that I am doing something wrong you would have to show me how I am hurting somebody. I'm not reselling the music I download, nor even uploading it online... just downloading. A theft to me is what I explained on point 1.
3 - I am actually helping the corps make some better publicity of their songs by actually downloading what I find and buying those CDs I trully like. Otherwise they would be loosing a profit. So to put that in their words, I would be committing a crime if I didn't do so (hehehe).
Just think about it, Decameron
-- diegoT
Re:best quote from the article
by
jbottero
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· Score: 1
No, I think here at Slashdot, you satrt with "Ummm..." and follow with something that essentially states "you are an idiot".
Who's stealing from whom?
by
ScottSpeaks!
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· Score: 1
One of the key points to be gleaned from Card's essay is that the record labels are (morally speaking) stealing from the artists themselves by requiring them to sign over all rights to their songs. Personally, I don't feel that gives me the moral right to steal the material from them, however.
To some extent I blame the artists for signing those incredibly horrible Work Made For Hire contracts in the first place. If they stopped signing away all their rights, and this soulless monster known as RIAA could be removed from the question, attention could then be focused on the core issues surrounding copyright: (A) the right of creators to profit (or not: their choice) from their work (as embodied in the file-swapping/piracy phenomenon), and (B) the right of the public to (at some point) claim that material as shared property (as embodied in Disney & friends' purchase from Congress of perpetual copyright extensions).
Re:Research
by
fenix+down
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Your excuse does NOT justify downloading bucketloads of mp3s "because I can't afford to buy CDs".
Why not?
Maybe if he stops buying CDs at the rate he would ordinarially and buys other things instead, but otherwise he's not even so much as affecting anyone other than himself.
For me, it rendered fine on OO.o 1.1RC3 on W2K (I've got OXP for when I need it - and I think I'd rather use it - it took 5 minutes to load the presentation in OO.o).
I just got done listening to a couple of Card novels on MP3. I bought the books over a year ago but haven't gotten the time to read them. I put them on my MP3 player and listened while working around the house. Whenever I do this, I go buy a copy of the book I'm listening to, if I don't already have it. Unlike music, books are still an awesome deal for the money. I don't want to cheat the artist, I just want the info in the form that I can use best.
Re:best quote from the article
by
kfg
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· Score: 1
"No, I think here at Slashdot, you satrt with "Ummm..." and follow with something that essentially states "you are an idiot"."
Ummmmmmm. . . Yeah, right Sparky. Whatever.
KFG
The term of copyright has been exploited.
by
jbn-o
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· Score: 4, Interesting
From the article:
Until 1978, copyright only lasted 52 years in the U.S. -- and then only if you remembered to renew it. There were other technical lapses that could result in the inadvertent loss of copyright -- it wasn't really user-friendly.
Sure it was, once you realize that copyright was never meant to grant a copyright holder perpetual income. Copyright was meant to be an incentive to publish, part of a bargain with the public. So a limited term of copyright (which we don't have today thanks to retroactive term extension) that expires well within someone's lifetime (which we also don't have today) were both good things. Mark Twain fought this and we (as a society) are better off for his not having gotten his wish in his lifetime. If the term of copyright was then what it is now, we wouldn't have as many of his works to share (we might not have any, they might all be tightly controlled by his estate like Mitchell or Gershwin's estate handles their works). You don't spur society to publish more work by granting them everlasting power to deem how the work can be disseminated and built upon.
I think it's reasonable to say far more works would have been lost to time because nobody could legally preserve them by copying them (a time-honored means of saving knowledge for future readers). The Public Domain Enhancement Act (H.R. 2601) attempts to restore a more reasonable effective term of copyright without violating on the Bern treaty. I encourage everyone to contact their congresspeople to co-sponsor this act.
Once you recognize that nobody makes ideas in a vacuum and we all base everything we think and do on the work of others, you get to a point where you begin to question the underlying assumptions of copyright and anyone who pitches copyright as property (a prejudicial term, at the least). I wonder about a far shorter term of copyright and whether society would benefit from not allowing certain expressions to not have copyright power at all (such as non-free software which remains non-free even after it would enter the public domain because the source code for the program is never revealed).
Re:The term of copyright has been exploited.
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
"I wonder about a far shorter term of copyright and whether society would benefit from not allowing certain expressions to not have copyright power at all (such as non-free software which remains non-free even after it would enter the public domain because the source code for the program is never revealed)."... and your agenda is revealed.
No.
You don't get the source if they don't want to release it.
Just like when a book author writes a book and they do a few thousand hours research, you don't get all that research, you just get the end product. Nor do you get an electronic copy in full mark-up.
Nor, when you get a CD do you get full tabs, sheet music, whatever.
Applying copyright in order to push a specific political agenda is plain wrong.
In fact, it's an attept to do exactly what so many here accuse the RIAA of doing, enforcing a business-model into profit by law.
Bands make more money from touring Re:Grateful De
by
WolfWithoutAClause
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· Score: 1
The point is that the money they make from T-shirts and stuff like that is cash in hand, not some small percentage from the labels- plus a biggish cut of the gate, plus they sell more albums after the concert too.
I know its great that a famous author is writing about this topic. His thoughts are clear, focused, and his point is strong. He shows the RIAA for what it is and shows why they are completely wrong. But here is something to keep in mind, what an analyst was saying on CNBC about the financial side, that the RIAA no longer cares about their public image. Their public image is right up there with Microsoft, so like Microsoft, they only are looking for profits.
Suing anyone and everyone is their tactic. If they get most people to stop sharing then they may be able to claim a short term victory. The only thing that can stop them in the US is if our Congress acts against them. Let's hope public image and voter sentiment makes copyright issues a more important topic in the next year. Otherwise it won't matter if a dozen mainstream authors and big artists come out.
Hope someone can help me with a site cite, but for years, the major labels have been releasing less new work and more repackagings of previously released material. They not only noticed this market, but are deep into it.
[wait, here's one link, George Zieman's analysis of RIAA accounting at azoz.com]
-- "This is not a sig." -- R.
Re:Agreed. But I've got something to suggest...
by
bennomatic
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· Score: 1
Larger, but not as much larger than it already is. It's still at least somewhat fairer to the buying public...
The economics of being an author is very different then the economics of working as a programmer, or as a janitor, or whatever it is you do for an hourly rate. Shocking, shocking I tell you. It's entirely possible Card could work for a year on a book, and never see a dime (okay, maybe that's only true for a new author). Being an author is very risky.
The economics are only different because authors, like musicians, are screwed royally by publishers. If Mr. Card had seen more of the revenue from his book sales, he wouldn't be so dependent on royalties extending to the end of his life. He would have made enough to save for a decent retirement like the rest of the working world. Oh yeah.. and his work would all be in the public domain, as the copyright system originally intended. It's hard to blame him, though.. he's just a victim of the same system. Once again, a case for eliminating the middlemen through technology. How about this novel idea (ok, bad pun):
- Write a really good book. Put the first chapter or three online as a teaser. - Sell it yourself for $2 per copy online, but without any stupid DRM restrictions. Most people are not going to P2P-swap material that cheap anyhow. If any do, who cares.. they probably wouldn't have bought it otherwise. - Re-release it as public domain after 500,000 copies are sold. People who paid enjoy the fact that they were patrons of an art now benefitting all of society. - Retire a millionaire or repeat the process as desired. Capitalism at its finest!
It may be argued that publishers are needed to gain enough recognition to sell sufficient copies, however I believe this is another notion made obsolete by modern technology of instant communication and the social factors that surround it. This is especially true for established authors and artists, but it even works for newcomers. How many paid advertisements have you seen for homestarrunner.com? Yet that site gets tens of millions of hits and is growing steadily in popularity. Even if they only sell t-shirts and related merchandise, it proves that popularity can be home-grown.
Only the biggest bands make money touring, most bands who write their own songs make their money from publishing AKA mechanical royalties which pay $0.08 a track sold.
It is dishonest to share music
by
SiliconEntity
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· Score: 1
The music creators are voluntarily transferring their copyrights to the record companies. Despite Card's colorful language, no one forces them to do this or to agree to the record companies' terms. The creators choose this course (over, say, trying to sell their music on the net themselves) because they see it as the most advantageous for their own situation.
When you purchase the CD, you are implicitly agreeing to respect the copyright. That limitation is, in effect, a condition of the sale. The record companies, acting as the agents of the music creators, are saying, buy this only if you agree not to redistribute the music or violate any other copyrights.
Once you have bought a CD, you are bound by your promise. You have agreed not to redistribute the contents. If you then share the music online, you are behaving dishonestly. You took something of value in exchange for your promise, and you are going back on your word. You are showing yourself to be a liar who breaks his promises.
All unauthorized file sharing is built upon a foundation of dishonesty. This is the real problem with the popularity of P2P networks. They are further eroding the morals and standards on which our culture was built. There was a time when a person was judged by whether his word was good. This judgement provides a basis for trust and cooperation. Without this foundation of honesty, our complex technological civilization will suffer.
There is no honor among thieves, nor among liars. Join me in refusing to participate in P2P filesharing networks that are built around lies and deceit. Boycott those who would throw away their good name for a few hours of music. Reclaim your honor!
Re:It is dishonest to share music
by
wynterwynd
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· Score: 1
Copyright 2003, RIAA. All rights reserved. Public transcription or distribution of this propaganda is prohibited and may be punishable by a fine of up to $150,000, 20 years in prison, and the severe beating of your family.
-- "Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
Re:It is dishonest to share music
by
Teancum
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· Score: 1
First thing: Although it would seem like a "voluntary act" to reassign copyright, the problem is that when the only game in town is to assign copyright to the major labels, it is the only thing that a typical artist can do. Admittedly there are now other approaches, but it still is an issue to bring up.
Also, when I buy a CD, I have made no other promise other than to obey state and federal laws. Period. Otherwise all I am buying is a hunk of plastic that may have some value to me beyond the junk CD-ROM I got from AOL.
That said, I am constantly letting people know that I can't stand large-scale copyright piracy. My father-in-law does some contracting in China and occasionally hits the Beijing street markets for software, movies, and music. He brought Star Wars: The Phantom Menance on VCD about a year before it came out retail in the USA. He got several other games, and even gave me a few as Christmas presents. I basically tossed the discs straight into the garbage can and told him I would not accept pirated discs... I mean it. My own financial welfare is based on people recognizing the effort that going into copyrighted works.
Artists need a union
by
DavidBrown
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It's a risk. If the artists try to unionize, the labels will likely dump many artists and replace them with emerging groups hungry for a record contract. But, if the major artists get together and form a strong economic block, they could carry the rest of the artists along with them. Such a union could establish by force a just, time-limited, standard recording contract that respects the rights of the artist.
Or, with enough money, they can make their own labels. As I understand it, this is how United Artists started. Back in the day, Hollywood was ruled by the studio system, in which actors were more or less owned by their studios in the same manner that recording artists are owned by labels today. United Artists, the Screen Actors Guild, and other groups helped break the studio system, and now actors are guaranteed compensation at a minimum rate under standard SAG contracts, and are also allowed to take their talent anywhere they want. There is no particular reason why recording artists cannot do this, especially when it's much less expensive to record an album than it is to produce a motion picture.
Of course it does. MTV and music radio has gone WAY downhill in the last 15 years. For many people, neither is a useful sampling medium anymore. So instead of "getting something for nothing" from MTV, people have migrated to P2P networks.
The net effect is identical.
Subsequently, the moral conclusions and legal consequences should be identical.
-- A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If he produces something that people are willing to pay for, more power to him. It is a sweet deal.
Yes. Too sweet. The deal (copyright term) is set by Congress, but they're not supposed to subsidise authors, they're supposed "to promote progress of the sciences". When they extend copyright they diminish the public domain and this loss must be properly compensated by encouraging new works. Of course this balance act will not allow for life-long copyright terms.
-- Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Yet another person that just doesn't get it
by
geekee
·
· Score: 1
I find it hilarious that this guy thinks artists are being ripped off because they voluntarily sign over copyright, or don't get published/produced. People go to the recording industry/pulishers because they are unwilling to mortgage their home on their music/writing career. So they go to the industry, who risk a lot of capital on their work, and are surprised that this company wants the rights to their work as well as the lion's share of the profits. The deserve this since they're taking all the risk. If you're that great, you can get a better deal elsewhere. But if your some random talent, your odds of making it are poor, and the industry may never recover its investment. Don't like it, don't sign up, like the author said. Go to a bank instead, and see if they'll from you the money to start your career. See what kind of luck you have there. PLease stop this nonsense however that the recording/publishing industry serves no purpose but to exploit artists. There the ones that give artists a chance in the 1st place.
I don't give a damn about what other people use it for but I use it to pirate software and download porn.
--
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
movie copyrights
by
goatbar
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Wow. What an excellent essay.
I've been getting more and more pissed everytime I go to a movie and see this damn intro about the carpenter who is loosing work because of pirates. As long as movies keep getting made, he has got a job. If someone pirates something, that just takes out of the the actors and studios monster profits, right? This guy gets his paycheck and then is off the job once the movie is made. It's insulting.
I'm sitting here staring at my collection of LEGAL dvd, vhs, cd, and tape media wondering just how much money I've spent in my life on these morons? I'm just a student, so it's a big percentage of my income that goes to the entertainment industry. I wish I could know that creative people got most of my money.
I personally quit filesharing recently... I used it to find new music that was worth my money. Now I'm less likely to buy a new CD if I haven't downloaded a least a couple good songs first.
-k
Not completely off topic... ok, yes completely...
by
fenix+down
·
· Score: 1
Plus he's a Republican. I figured he'd be a conservative from his fiction, but reading through his other articles, he's pretty solidly pro-Bush and anti-Dixie Chicks. He's a pretty good political writer though. It's not all that surprising, but it's really jarring to see how much more coherent he is than 90% of the political columns I see. I mean, he actually has a train of thought, that's light-years ahead of anything the NYT or the Wall Street Journal's put out in the last 5 years. Too bad I disagree with almost every one of his opinions except the mp3 one.
Even better, now two of my favorite political writers are Card and this guy.
since i don't believe in this whole 'dont buy cds' boycot (ppl want to listen to new music) how about sending a message to the recordcompanies by making ONE independent artist really really famous??
ideas:
buying his stuff directly from him
sending one song (the supposed 'hit') to every radiostation you can think of (multiple times under different names if need arises)
asking for that artist at play-by-demand radio/tv-shows
post about that artist on every messageboard you can find
let your non-/. savvy friends subconsiously listen to this song all the time
etcetc.
Pretty soon this one artist (with his one 'hit') will be a force to recon with. Any thoughts?
Oh and it doesn't matter if you like the artist/song or not, just that it is a little bit mainstreamish so that the public could also like it after a lot of airtime.
The point is, there has never been (AFAIK) an actual focussed effort to promote ONE artist and song to get the point across..
Ok, if the entire slashdot crowd bought an album from Ima Indy Musicmaker it still wouldn't be a splash in the bucket compared to the amount of money the RIAA is making off of N'Sync, or Britney Spears. Frankly, the music corportations wouldn't even notice most likly. (Or they would offer said independent artst a contract with a 2bil advance just to get his service for life, so make sure you choose an intelligent artist with a backbone)
sending one song (the supposed 'hit') to every radiostation you can think of (multiple times under different names if need arises)
90% of radio stations won't play the song without permission from music coorprations. The music corps force them into this in order to keep their damnable monopoly.
asking for that artist at play-by-demand radio/tv-shows
Um, I'm sure he'd love to, but do you own the telivision channel, or does TimeWarner or an affiliate?
post about that artist on every messageboard you can find
That will get you responces from people like me who are terminaly pessimistic, and little more.
let your non-/. savvy friends subconsiously listen to this song all the time
You might get them intrested, untill they go to BigCDStoreInTheMall and can't find the song. Then they'll forget about when some new prefab superstar hits the scene.
I thought that was funny, "multiple times under different names if need arises". That would happen pretty soon, radio people going "Oh no, another tape from Joe Bloke and his latest hit, put it in the trash bin". So then you would flood them with the same song, under a different name and singer. Oh wait, that's not what you meant?
Put your money we're your mouth is.... If the economics are there, then do it. Economics is like evolution, it works really, really hard at killing off the weak and inefficient. If you are correct, the economics of publishing are ineffecient, turning it on it's head will do a favor for the world. My guess is that, once the playing field is leveled in music, and in publishing, the number of people who make a living wage relative to the number of people who get wildly rich will be in line with Janitors, Teachers, Car Mechanics, programmers, Grocery store workers, real estate agents. Yes, some of them will make it big. Some of them will make a decent living. Some of them will barely scrape by. It'll be the end of the multimillion dollar advances to Hillary Clinton, Stephen King, and Anne Rice. It'll just be hum-drum job. Which isn't such a bad deal.
Remember, it was authors who signed up for the deal, so they signed up to get screwed. If they could get a better deal any way, they would have. Publishing is currently as effecient as anybody has managed to make it. Music might be a cartel, but publishing I'm betting isn't.
I agree with him on this issue (to a degree, copyright used to be 17 years, not 52), but not on much else. He is quite reactionary.
I looked at some of his other articles on the site and he argues:
The supreme court should not have struck down anti-sodomy laws (says controlling reproduction is normal government function, constitution does not apply, presonal rights and freedoms aren't)
Israel is completely in the right, Palestine completely in the wrong
The press is blatantly liberal except for talk radio
Saddam supported Al-Qaeda, it's obvious, and we had to invade
Religion and family trump free thought and speech
He is the voice of reason and everyone else is obviously wrong and bad
Universities are fascistically liberal and excessively politically correct.
OK, he's right about that last one.
A few of the articles are interesting, most of them just show how far-right the people who don't consider themselves far-right have gone in the US.
OK, I'm exaggerating. There are some articles that show the common sense he seems to think permeates the whole site. Most of it reads to me like the the comments of the little old midwestern ladies who said "what harm can it do to tell people about Jesus" to justify the religious literature given out in Afghanistan. There are sane reasons to disagree, you don't hear them on American TV (but you do on the BBC and the CBC), and it's not because the American press is a liberal fiefdom.
-- You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
I doubt it...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
All they are doing is a PR move to make it seem that they care about their "fans," and in reality they hope action is taken against those who illegaly share their music.
They don't care, just as long as they don't have it end up like they support the suing of a 12 years old parent's.... Oops wait I forgot, this is slashdot so let me change it to the propagandacally correct "proverty stricken 12 year old smart honor student who didn't know she was doing something wrong and breaking the law."
Cool! I can just download Card's books for free.
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
While I can see your point, it's a lot more helpful than you'd think. ANY famous person is helpful to the cause, whether they're in the music industry or not.
Cool! I don't have to buy Card's books anymore. I can just download all of them for free off of Freenet, Kazaa, etc.
Any (minimal) chance that I might actually feel guilt over taking the product of another person's labor without compensation has been completely eliminated! Thanks!
If there was a "friends" episode where Joey or Chandler was busted for swapping Mp3's and fined a huge sum. In my minds-eye, it would make a really cool episode, but with the attitude of hollywood towards filesharing (heck, people bootleg friends episodes too) I doubt it would fly.
From the article, my emphasis: And the most obnoxious feature of the law was that some authors outlived their copyright. Their most popular works would go into public domain while they were still alive and counting on the income.
I beg your pardon?! The law says (said) "copyright expires after 52 yrs" yet the author is surprised that it actually does?
There's plenty of financial institutions willing to take some of his money in return for a guaranteed monthly payment when he comes of age. If he wants Congress to do this for him it's fine with me, but copyright law is the wrong place to do it. Rather, copyright is supposed to "promote science" - that won't happen through nuking the public domain in the service of authors with lacking predictive skills. It's bad enough as it is with the PD being nuked in the service of mouse-infested corporations.
-- Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
It's all about who controls the content
by
duck_prime
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· Score: 1
a lot of other sci-fi authors have clued in to the fact that exposure sells books.
The Baen Free Library offers a ton of books from sci-fi/fantasy publisher Baen Books for free in a variety of electronic formats. [...] Many people (myself included) put the CDs up on their web server for convenience.
Try scanning in some Baen book that they haven't released in that fashion and put that on your website. Wait, and let the hilarity ensue.
Point being, these Baen CDs are released, shared if you will, in an orderly fashion, controlled by the publisher. This is light-years away from the "file-sharing" crowd, who seem to be asserting that it is the consumer who gets to decide what gets released free to the world.
Maybe the Baen library will end up a huge success and make them scads of money. Shouldn't it be their choice to release it? After all, it's their risk.
Re:It's all about who controls the content
by
Guido+von+Guido
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· Score: 1
By their inaction, the individual members of the RIAA have allowed file swapping to become popular. Had they had a reasonably offering around the time Napster was popular, they might have been able to preempt the file swappers. Then they might have some control
Oh, you mean all those zeroes and ones on my computer that coalesce to form John Farnham mp3s??
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Re:Hollywood vs. Enron vs. U.S gov
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Even better is the fact that the U.S. government also keeps it's books Enron style. (I guess it's the American way.) That's why most Americans don't understand the Social Security and medicare problems that are coming just down the road. The true costs are all hidden.
Invalid Form Key: Chances are Slashdot's software sucks.
Why patents, and not copyrights? Are inventions any less worthy than music or text? OSC said that it was 'an expensive moral quibble' not to sign work for hire papers. He gets paid less because he does not sign his rights away. If some movie studio decides to make a movie out of one of his works, then it's a windfall for him - he's prolly smart enough to demand gross points instead of net points like Stan Lee.
But if nobody ever makes a movie out of an OSC book, that's money he lost. He is risking money he could otherwise have because he thinks someday his copyrights may be worth more than he ever made off his books. The publishers are willing to pay more if an author signs a work for hire statement because they know there is a chance to make money from a movie in the future. They are willing to pay more to buy the copyright than to merely license the work.
--
Eat at Joe's.
So what is the Cliff Robertson story?
by
Adam_Trask
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· Score: 1
Anyone care to fill me in?...tia!
Or maybe, JUST FREAKING MAYBE
by
devphil
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· Score: 2, Informative
Call me a crazy dreamer, but I believe that's a play on one of his most popular titles, Speaker For the Dead. When/. talks to/about book authors, the "dept" line is almost always a riff on their books... pretty straightforward.
-- You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Re:Grateful Dead (follow-up)
by
stanwirth
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· Score: 1
Here are the terms under which you can swap Grateful Dead MP3's
It's very similar to the Creative Commons license -- makes sense, since
they pretty much pioneered and popularised the concept. So...if it were
formalised under Creative Commons licensing, then the whole Grateful Dead catalog
could go into the CC-registered database--for your furthur fair use and enjoyment.
I met Orson Scott Card
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
You all should be so lucky; he's a profoundly intelligent and wise individual. I've never read any of his books, but hearing him just talk about politics and religion for half an hour made a believer out of me.
Good to see more of the same common sense in this article.
music oligopoly/ US Senate helps
by
Danny+Rathjens
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· Score: 1
A "handful of monopolies" would be an "oligopoly". One of my favorite words for some strange reason, 8^)
Incidentally, you will be happy to learn that the senate just struck down the new FCC rules that allowed further conglomeration of media industries: http://www.iht.com/articles/110190.html
Discipline Global Mobile
by
mbourgon
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· Score: 2, Interesting
(from their web site: www.disciplineglobalmobile.com)
The motto of Discipline Records is:
"The phonographic copyright in these performances is operated by Discipline Records on behalf of the artists, with whom it resides. Discipline accepts no reason for artists to give away such copyright interests in their work by virtue of a "common practice" which is out of tune with the time, was always questionable and is now indefensible."
-- "Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Re:Cool! I can just download Card's books for free
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
You know, that's actually a little funny, because I DID download all his books off the internet, and then read them on my PDA instead of buying them. Ha!
Orson Scott Card is the MAN
by
KanshuShintai
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· Score: 1
<3 Orson Scott Card. He is my HERO! (And one of the best authors, and my favorite author of all time.) Everything that his pen writes is so true. Even now there is nothing that I've read by him that I've disagreed with.
It'd be nice if he'd stand up before some appelate courts to argue the case of the filesharing and p2p if ever someone stands up to the RIAA. His rhetoric is all we need to get the government to open their ears and realize that we've got it right. Maybe he'd be able to get the copyright laws changed.
Re:Orson Scott Card is the MAN
by
kellererik
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· Score: 1
I completely agree regarding Orson Scott Card, but the rest is wishful thinking. As long as the the lobby groups are able to buy politicians at will ( here in Germany they were able to buy even the reigning communists) nothing will happen. They bought most of the EU legislators as well, BTW.
my 2 cents
RIAA has no more cookies to steal.
by
Agent+R
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· Score: 1
Many artists painted the record industry as a bloated, overstuffed giant with too many mouths to feed and too many middlemen to pay, selling an overpriced, often mediocre product.
Gee, ya think??
The RIAA did not initiate these lawsuits to defend artists' rights, the musicians say, but to protect corporate profits.
Considering the RIAA is NOT made up of any of the musicians but CEOs and lawyers who can't stop putting their hand in the cookie jar. (Then whine when the cookies are gone. RIAA: "WHAA! These eville internet kidz stole our cookies! WHAA!".)
Most acts maintain Web sites, and virtually every one features some free downloads. Country Joe McDonald said he posts more than 50 tracks available for free downloads on his site, countryjoe.com.
Now this is an excellent idea. This is what all the artists should be doing to get people interested in their music. And it allows the artists to make contact directly with the fans and bypass all those shady promoters and middlemen. (Are you hearing this RIAA!?! Either you change your business model or go the way of the dinosaur. Actually, don't change, I'd rather see the big record companies just fade away.)
-- !@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
Oh, please. This one time I do have to stand up and say whoever modded it as troll is an idiot. That was not a troll. It was just me giving my opinion.
-- "Sufferin' succotash."
Whoa! Give the studios their due.
by
linkjunkie
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I agree with most of what you say, but I have to take issue with the cost of a "Decent" studio.
I have a computer based home studio set up. It wasn't cheap. It was obsolete in months (actually, it was probably obsolete before I put it together!) But most importantly, it doesn't compare to the Pro quality stuff I've heard! Much of the equipment is expensive BECAUSE it's not standardized and in fact could not be standardized.
Much of the equipment can and has been built "on a chip" very cheaply, yet still does not retain the quality that the PRO gear has.
The difference is barely noticable until you stack all of these things on top of each other. Track after track after track of minutely lower quality gear shows up in the final mix. I've looked into Open source software for studio gear, and would LOVE it if it would happen. Unfortunately it's nowhere near even the lower end home studio gear that I have. Why is the quality of even the low end gear lower? Manufacturers of the lower cost gear tend to cut corners on vital components (the AD/DA converters not being made of gold, for instance)that are not noticeable to the human ear on (lets say)16 tracks, but become very noticeable on (lets say)32-64 tracks, not to mention the master. The prices of alot of this equipment has come down significantly in the last 10-15 years, and I wouldn't doubt that producers are taking a cut, But I assure you that it's far from open source on commodity hardware. If I'm wrong, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me, it would make my year. Hell for that matter, I'll experiment with anything you find and try it out just on the hope!
I don't listen to the radio or watch MTV/MuchMusic
by
_Shorty-dammit
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· Score: 1
I do, however, download songs (I'm in Canada, so nyah) and listen to them. It's my radio. It's radio to many other people. If I find some stuff I like, I go buy the CD and make my own good quality MP3s (see www.hydrogen-audio.org for the EAC/LAME alt-preset standard goodness) for listening to in the car's MP3 player, where I do most of my listening. We all know the vast majority of MP3s out there for download sound like crap. When I find something I'll listen to again and again, I go buy the CD, I can justify buying it when I like it. Getting harder to justify though, with how insane dynamic compression on CDs these days, though. It's a shame when you have to run each and every new CD through Cool Edit Pro's clipped peak restoration plugin just to safeguard your tweeters.
The Root of the Problem
by
wynterwynd
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· Score: 1
I have one real problem with the current CD paradigm of music distribution, and it boils down to the fact that I don't want half of the songs that are so generously included on the album. I end up having to pay 15 bucks for one song I like, all too often never playing the other tracks because they're thrown-together crap. This isn't always the case, but it seems more and more CDs are like this. Sure, occasionally I found another non-single song I liked on the album but I don't like being forced to buy all the rough for the one diamond in it. And CD-singles aren't always available for the songs I want.
When I buy books, I don't have to buy most of an author's collection to get the one book I want.
When I buy art, I don't have to buy the artist's entire portfolio for one painting.
When I buy a game, I don't have to buy the whole series the game is based on.
Why is the music industry different in this respect?
Single-song purchasing via downloads I fully support and I think Apple's initiative in this is a step towards the future of music.
-- "Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
Aah! My eye!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I'm not supposed to get jigs in it!
lending
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
"If you got together with a few of your neighbors and each of you bought different CDs and then lent them to each other, that wouldn't even violate copyright."
The following is printed on the cover of my copy of The Velvet Underground's self-titled album (in CD format):
"Copywrite 1996 Polygram Records, Inc. . .. Unauthorized copying, reproduction, hiring, LENDING, public performance and broadcasting prohibited."
Emphasis mine.
What exactly is "yours"?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
"But it's mine."
What's yours. Describe it. I can't fathom how you think you can "own" a tune or an idea. The very idea is so farfetched that it stretches the boundaries of common sense.
Its like looking at an Escher painting and then saying "Well, you see, the hands are all drawing each other. I completely understand".
Card should stick to fiction. I wasn't impressed by his argument, and the number of errors in it don't speak well to his fundemental understanding of the issue.
Copyright is a temporary monopoly granted by the government -- it creates the legal fiction that a piece of writing or composing (or, as technologies were created, a recorded performance) is property and can only be sold by those who have been licensed to do so by the copyright holder.
This is untrue in several respects.
Firstly, there is no legal fiction that works are property, nor is there any legal fact that works are property. Creative works are not property. The copy in which a work is embodied certainly may be, but copies are distinguishable from the works they incorporate. Copies are not pieces of writing, or composing, or performances; those are works. Copies would be books, sheet music, or CDs embodying the works.
Furthermore, Card ignores 17 USC 109 (and a few related provisions) by making the erroneous claim that resale is limited to authorized persons. If he's ever set foot in a used bookstore, he'd know that his statement is simply incorrect.
And of course, he's ignorant of the history of protection afforded to sound recordings -- they were ineligible for copyrights until the early 1970's, long, long after the technology for recording performances had arisen. Edison cylinders are positively 19th century, for christ's sake!
In exchange for the private monopoly of copyright, when it expires the work is then free for anyone to perform or print or record.
Mm... this is an odd way to phrase this. I don't often see the copyright quid pro quo expressed from the author's point of view, and it seems rather lacking.
If we assumed that there was nothing more to it than this, there would be no copyrights; why would the public grant a copyright preventing them from freely making and enjoying copies so as to enjoy the public domain later, when by not granting copyrights they could enjoy the public domain now?
The missing element is progress. The reason copyrights are granted is so that we promote the _end_ of progress of knowledge generally by the _means_ of encouraging authors to create works which are of limited help towards the aim of progress during the copyright term, but are of maximal help towards that aim once the term expires.
We musn't grant these things because we feel like it or to help out authors or something. That would be really dumb for several reasons.
Until 1978, copyright only lasted 52 years in the U.S. -- and then only if you remembered to renew it.
56 years. A term of 28 years that could be renewed by the copyright holder in the last year (if he remembered -- if it was worth it to him, which it often was NOT) for another 28 years.
The term before that was 42 years (28+14), and before that was 28 years (14+14).
There were other technical lapses that could result in the inadvertent loss of copyright -- it wasn't really user-friendly.
User-friendliness is not a requirement of copyright law. To a degree it might be useful -- if copyrights are so difficult to acquire that they are not an incentive to authors, that's a problem. OTOH, if they are an incentive to authors, they needn't go so far as to fawn over authors.
Inadvertent losses of copyright are good. They ensure that works are not protected by law, yet are so worthless that their copyright holders don't care to maintain them. Such works should be in the public domain; the author doesn't seem to care, but there is still a deterring effect on the public that should be remedied. If action were required for this to occur, it would never be forthcoming; lazy copyright holders would hold onto their copyrights on the off chance that they'd be worth something later, and because it would cost money to get rid of them, but it's free to sit on them.
Similarly, if authors can't afford it, it implies that the work is a commercial f
-- --
This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Re:Unimpressed
by
anticypher
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· Score: 2, Informative
A work is ONLY a work for hire if it is created by an employee in the scope of his employment, or under certain circumstances which rarely apply.... Card -- being only an author AFAIK -- probably only would've encountered this if he were comissioned to create a part of a collective work (e.g. a sf anthology) and signed an agreement to that effect. Just writing something, unless he's an honest to god employee...
You are missing his point, since its clear you have never dealt with book publishers in the last 20 years. Section 101 of the 1976 Copyright Act defines WfH, and the european equivalent was made to match the US, despite no mention of Work-for-Hire in the Berne Convention. WfH was left out of Berne, because all authors thought it a bad idea, and addressed under the section on Moral Rights. Berne did not go far enough and specifically state that WfH should be outlawed in national copyright laws, because the US had already had it for almost 70 years.
Most large publishers require authors to sign an agreement declaring their work was really done as a Hired Work, and forfeit all associated rights. Don't want to sign their contract? Then go find a different publisher. There are a few good publishing houses which will allow you to keep the copyright, Nolo Press is a good one for authors rights, but all the big ones claim all works as their own.
I've written a couple of books, the last has not (yet) been published because I spent several years of my time putting all my creativity and ideas into it and I refuse to give up my rights to greedy publishers. The earlier works were all just technical books, and I didn't much care for holding the rights because the publishers waved a big check and guaranteed to keep my name as author. But after that one big check, no more income. If one of the books had become a best seller (not unlikely), then the publisher would have made a fortune, and I would have only my initial payment. If you look at the copyright page in O'Reilly books, the copyright is always assigned to the publisher, not the authors.
Look at Ender's Game, and the copyright is to Card, because he signed away his rights on a bunch of earlier stuff to earn enough of a name to find a publisher willing to let him keep his rights. The same holds with the Harry Potter books, the first one JK Rowling had to sign over all the rights to the publisher, but subsequent books she kept the copyrights, so she sees no futher income from the first book past her one payment, but has become the highest earning woman in Britain from the later books. Her first publisher is making a fortune off her first book and doesn't ever give her any of it.
That is the way the law has been twisted by greedy businesses, and its not going to get better until our MEPs and CongressCritters act in the interests of the individual again. Rants by Card and other respected artists, even if slightly mis-informed, can only help to educate the only people who can change the law back towards the public good.
the AC
-- Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
You are missing his point, since its clear you have never dealt with book publishers in the last 20 years.
Actually, I have, but not as an author.
101 of the 1976 Copyright Act defines WfH, and the european equivalent was made to match the US, despite no mention of Work-for-Hire in the Berne Convention. WfH was left out of Berne, because all authors thought it a bad idea, and addressed under the section on Moral Rights. Berne did not go far enough and specifically state that WfH should be outlawed in national copyright laws, because the US had already had it for almost 70 years.
First off, I hate the Berne Convention. I think copyright laws are best when they best serve the purposes of the nation that enacts them. Harmonization is bullshit -- it doesn't serve the public in any way whatsoever, and I frankly do not believe that it provides an incentive to authors that could possibly make up for the awful harms it causes. I completely believe that the US should pull itself out of all international copyright treaties, and just do what is best for us. The Senate had the right idea during the roughly hundred years that it refused to tolerate the Berne Convention. It was a huge mistake to agree to it.
Secondly, I don't really care what authors think is a good idea. I care about what best serves the public interest. These may or may not be in harmony with one another.
I really don't have a problem with employee works within the scope of employment being works for hire. Just the other day I was involved in a discussion of patent law, and I proposed that (this was in a discussion of the best mode requirement) employers should be considered to be inventors for inventions created by their employees in the scope of their employment.
Given the common practice of requiring employees and contractors to assign their rights anyway, it would merely make things clearer, and in that context at least, fix up the issue of disclosure of the best mode known to the inventor.
If we did not have works for hire, may I ask you whether a) you think assignments wouldn't still exist and more or less end with the same result, and b) what you would classify something like a movie as, given the number of people who helped author it? A joint work with hundreds of co-authors? That's impractical for the same reason that we don't have commons.
As for moral rights, they're bullshit. There's no public purpose that's served by them, and there are numerous public harms. We need to get rid of 106A, and then make sure that such non-utilitarian doctrines never darken our shores again.
Most large publishers require authors to sign an agreement declaring their work was really done as a Hired Work, and forfeit all associated rights. Don't want to sign their contract? Then go find a different publisher.
Mm. Well, I would imagine that the contract actually does two things, though I'd appreciate it if you could post the relevant language so we can all have a look.
First, it probably makes the claim that it's a work for hire under the two definitions in 17 USC 101. But because this is not amazingly difficult to challenge in court -- since a mere claim of employment doesn't necessarily make it so, and courts will look at the actual circumstances -- there is secondly probably an assignment clause as well, to cover the publisher's ass.
Anyway, what's the problem with this? It would be a bad idea to compel publishers to do business with authors on terms that were not mutually agreed upon. Same goes for most business relationships: employees frequently have to sign non-competes, non-disclosures, assignments, etc.
If you don't like it, I encourage you to start up your own publishing house, to self-publish, or to go to a vanity press.
I just don't see the problem.
I've written a couple of books, the last has not (yet) been published because I spent several years of my time putting all my creativity and ideas into it and I refuse to g
-- --
This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
File-sharing Made Me Spend More Money On Music
by
code-e255
·
· Score: 1
File-sharing made me spend more money on music.
In the last 6 years or so (I only got the Internet about 3 years ago, btw), I didn't buy any music. Not a single penny! (And that would have been the same even if I wouldn't have had the Internet to download music).
I'm the kind of dude who listens to music but who doesn't love music enough to spend his money on it. So regardless of the fact that I can get a lot of music for free, I just don't spend money on music. Another reason, I guess, why I don't spend money on music is because it's hard for me to buy the stuff I like. Mainstream music shops don't sell my type of music.
But there have been a few exceptions in the last two months. I found some really cool psy/goatrance tunes on Usenet which I liked so much that I bought some CDs (4 in total) via a online shop! Without the freedom of the Internet, I would have never discovered this type of music, and I wouldn't have spend any money on it.
Re:File-sharing Made Me Spend More Money On Music
by
cmpalmer
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I will have to agree with this.
As OSC said, my largest number of CD purchases were when the "changeover" occurred and I replaced quite a few albums/cassettes with their CD equivalents. After that, my CD purchases declined.
I don't think I've bought any CD's in the last year or two where I hadn't listened to a few tracks in MP3 format already. This isn't just new songs -- I've got "old" MP3's that led me to seek out the CD's they were on.
In one case (The Old 97's), I was at a client site in their server room and they were playing a few tracks that I really liked. I asked for a copy of those tracks and listened to them a while longer. I had never heard of the band before. Eventually, I bought all of their CD's.
Yes, I still have a few MP3's to which I don't have a purchased backup, but they are of songs that I *would not purchase* whether I had the MP3 or not. No lost sales there.
Other than that, OSC's (and other/.ers postings) that CD sales are hurt more by (a) people already having what they want of older stuff, (b) music being targeted at the segment of the population most likely to "pirate" it, (c) young people's money being divided up with DVDs, console games, GB games, computer time/software, etc.
I have never been a "file sharer" (in the Napster/Kazaa sense) and I don't intend to be. I've said dozens of times (and I still agree) that if I could buy a high-quality track that I could play on any hardware I have (three computers, a PocketPC, a MP3 player, several CD/DVD players) for ~$0.99 (without a subscription commitment), then that is the way I would buy *ALL* of my music. If I could buy a track for the price of a soft drink (without copy protection) *I'm* not going to upload it to Kazaa or Usenet -- I spent my $0.99 on it, you can go buy your own.
-- --
stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
So... if my CDs become damaged or lost...
by
hal9k
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· Score: 1
Shouldn't the record companies replace them for only the cost of the media? After all, I am buying the right to listen to that intellectual property. I'm surprised no one's filed a lawsuit over this...
Put your money we're your mouth is.... If the economics are there, then do it.
I would if I was an author. My piece of the economic pie is Open Source based consulting. I develop and service free software. In the future I may write a book or service manuals related to software I develop. If my income stream is lacking, I'll try the approach I mentioned. I certainly will not sign any publishing deal where I get $2 of a book that retails for $20, however.
If they could get a better deal any way, they would have. Publishing is currently as effecient as anybody has managed to make it.
Once an easy-to-read (perhaps 200-300 dpi) display technology is readily available in convenient form factor, paperback books will quickly disappear. At this point, that's the only thing keeping authors from doing online-only publishing themselves. Books are easier on the eyes. When that changes, so will the business model.
52 years not long enogh?
by
ChaosDiscord
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· Score: 1
Until 1978, copyright only lasted 52 years in the U.S....
And the most obnoxious feature of the law was that some authors outlived their copyright. Their most popular works would go into public domain while they were still alive and counting on the income. It's like revoking someone's Social Security at age 72, just because they had the temerity not to die when demographics predicted they would.
It's a good article, but this is a really strange side-trek into weirdville.
It's like revoking Social Security? No, it's like getting fired from your job because you haven't done any work in 52 freaking years. If you're 72 and your copyright expired, that means you wrote the work when you were 20. Do you think you might have created something else of value in the intervening 52 years?
The vast majority of the value of any creative work is realized in the first few years. After that it rapidly tapers off to almost nothing. Works that have measurable value after 52 years are few and far between. If an author is relying on that to cover his retirement, he might as well invest in the lottery. If you do get lucky and write one of those few works that will still have value after 52 years, the work certainly paid off quite well years before, save some then.
Van Halen should have saved their money
by
Viking5150
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· Score: 1
("My Van Halen royalties are history," said vocalist Sammy Hagar)
Perhaps he wouldn't have to worry about the royalties if he would have managed the money he made from sales of over 50 million CDs better.
Re:best quote from the article
by
Valar
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· Score: 1
What makes that bad? Where did that rule come from? It's a class thing, like most things in grammar. When your teachers told you that you shouldn't do that, they were trying to tell you to quit talking like you're poor. Ok, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but most linguists agree that grammatical rules that don't clarify meaning arise from social issues, not language ones.
OSC, you just got yourself a sale. I've read a few of your books, liked some of them, liked some of them less, but an article like this one deserves reward.
Can't wait for part two.
I'm not stealing...
by
dark-br
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· Score: 2, Funny
I just have an infinity number of monkeys using binary typewriters.
i recall the prercentage of profit
by
frankmanowar
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· Score: 1
in the music business (and this dates back to a Guitar World, or some other guitar rag article from 1998) that the artists who publish records on major labels are lucky if they even see 1% of the sale price of a record... which is considerably lower than Card guesses at, but certainly add more fuel to the fire.
--
"Other bands play, but Manowar KILLS"
Hard to stop this information age...
by
autonobartek
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· Score: 1
Imagine trying to stop signals originating in one side of your brain from reaching the other.
That is equivalent of trying to stop information sharing in this ever more connected age.
Until Microsoft releases.HEAD in the year 3030, with DRM so you can bioport with the sentient Earth that Bill Gates has uploaded himself to as overlord.
Hmmm, that's debatable. I think that paper books will stay around, and I think that print on demand will revolutionize the book business. That's just me however. It solves a lot of inventory and sales predition problems which should increase profits greatly. I think that might solve a lot of the "middle man" problem in the book business. The author of the book hires an editor and somebody to electronically typeset the book. They then request Amazon, B&N to list it, and possible online themselves on a contingency basis. It costs Amazon, virtually $0 to have the book, and they don't have to worry about printings or availability. You can print your copy on demand at the local store, or Amazon can print it to you at their closest warehouse and ship it to you. It'd be pretty cool.
I think there are too many people who like the utility of paper bound books. It'll take a long, long time to get an application tuned to the point that it is easy to use, and as useful to me as a paper bound book. The only things that I find enticing are, backup copies, being able to lug my entire book collection with me, and the ability to electronically search every book I have for a set of keywords. Even then, whenever I buy an electronic copy of a book, I always end up buying the paper copy anyways.
Copyright (C) 2003 by Orson Scott Card.
nice way to end it all, eh?
Re:best quote from the article
by
shfted!
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· Score: 1
I hate to say it, but you are by far the funniest guy on slashdot. That, or your comments are extremely insightful. I wish I could mod all your posts +6!
-- He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
business industry natural updating-new consumers
by
chanio
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· Score: 1
I think that this commercial way of living was not chosen by all the people. It is the result of advertising. Now, it is the turn of some excecutives to get dissmissed by the consumers for incompetence. New ways of earning money is going to be created by new generations of businessmen. People should choose to have a voice in this new commerce. And should reject any creation of new monopolies. This is a good chance for making good changes! (if it is possible to get something good from progress)
-- Rwe obliged 2 save our future by choosing:O3 hole-greenhouse effect instead of accepting everydays gossip-nonsense chat?
I have a very candid question here, so please be gentle...
With improvements in DRM and better compression, there should be a new way to be present on the internet, all the while protecting copyright.
Why don't record companies (or the artists themselves in fact) just circumvent the CD business altogether and make their new productions only available for sale on the Web, using a DRM protected format? This way *nobody* can ever make a copy of the song unless the seller allows it explicitly.
Apple's iTunes has all the needed technology, they could start offering songs that aren't available anywhere else.
Everybody wins: the seller saves on packaging and distribution, the consumer gets a better price, the artist presumably gets a bigger chunk of the pie, especially if the artist IS the seller as well (it shouldn't be very expensive to implement iTunes-type technology, or am I missing something?). The losers: the HMVs of this world...
One objection could be that buyers also want to have the songs on CD, but then again we've already shifted from vinyls to cassettes to CDs, maybe the next shift is to iPod type devices?
Is this already implemented by a music label or an artist? I know of musicians like Prince who have made some of their music available on the Web only, but I don't think they have sold that music using DRM.
-- "In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
Re:new business model?
by
t_allardyce
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· Score: 1
The reason is because audio DRM is fundamentally flawed and will absolutely not work. Even if it means recording the song from an analog output, it will always be possible (and more often than not, you dont even need to go that far, the DRM will be cracked in a matter of time to the stage where a one-click program will allow even non-technical people to break a track!) It only takes one copy of a track to be let loose and every single person in the world can potentially get it.
-- This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
It's really this simple:
by
hhknighter
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· Score: 1
I bought one of the Linkin Park CDs: Why? Cuz I like almost 80% of the songs on the CD
I didn't buy one of the Creed CDs: Why? Cuz I only liked 2-3 songs on the entire album.
I didn't buy one of Justin Timberlake CDs: Why? Cuz I hate every single song on there.
I didn't buy one of Britney Spear CDs: Why? Cuz I hate every single song and $15+ is too expensive for a mini-poster/photo album
When there are compliation CDs, where I can choose which song I want on the CD, I will gladly pay for that CD. CDs created by Recording Studios/Companies will sound better than an average mp3 (not an audiophile, but I hear the difference).
When something like this is avail, I would imagine a mounting popularity. This will not STOP piracy. But when something like this is avail to you, what possible excuse can you use other than "willingly pirate?"
Fantastic Article
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
He concisely proves all three major points about the problems with the law suits so far:
1. Record Companies are loathsome in their business practices, and often rob their talent.
2. Simple Economics: Some willing to pay nothing for a product wouldn't necessarily buy that product at $20 - simple supply and demand: the higher the price, the lower the volume
3. Bad vibe: Poor quality works, from subpar musicians, along with the negative vibes of the lawsuits killed interest. Napster created interest in many smaller, more talented acts, and diverted attention away from the pimp's top hoes.
You don't need publishers
by
rsilvergun
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· Score: 1
but Britney Spears does. So do all the other talentless hacks out there. If anything, the Record Companies won't want anything to do with anyone with genuine talent. If Britney gets uppitty, she can be replaced. She has no leverage at all.
There's another problem with getting rid of the publishers, and can be summed up in one phrase I cringe whenever I here:
"I like all kinds of music"
If I ask someone what they listen to, 8 out of 10 times that's the first thing out of their mouth. To me, it sounds like they have no real taste in music. I don't mean bad taste, I mean no taste whatsoever. That's why crap like M&M and Britney Spears are so popular. Most people don't really care what they listen too. Whatever gets the most advertisement is going to reach the largest group of people then. Artists who want want to reach that large group (and who want to make a living off their music) will still be drawn to the RIAA's members.
Then again, maybe I'm being too pesimistic. Be nice if I was.
-- Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Re:You don't need publishers
by
TiggsPanther
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· Score: 1
But I do "like all kinds of music". That doesn't however, mean I actually like all examples of all kinds. And it sure as ehck doesn't mean I'm a slave to advertising. It just means I have rock, rap, pop and classical in my CD rack.
I mainly like rock music and some dance tracks these days. But that doesn't stop me from recognising that some of them are total trash.
But I also like some things from all genres. but I also can't (on the whole) can't stand mass-marketed "pop", and more often than not I tend to ignore the advertising.
If (big if...) I buy a Britney Spears CD, it'll be because I genuinely enjoy the music on the disc. If I don't like the music, then even a multi-million advertising campaign won't persuade me to part with my cash.
Just wanted to point out that "I like all kinds of music" doesn't necessarily come from people who'll follow the adverts like sheep.
-- Tiggs "120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
Re:You don't need publishers
by
Sabalon
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· Score: 1
but Britney Spears does. So do all the other talentless hacks out there. If anything, the Record Companies won't want anything to do with anyone with genuine talent. If Britney gets uppitty, she can be replaced. She has no leverage at all.
That just made me think of Led Zeppelin. Of course they were HUGE. The record company knew it, and they knew it as well. Of course, you could't do like Britney and just replace them with someone else.
That gave Led Zeppelin a lot of leverage to dictate how their contract was going to be done...which gave them a helluva lot more of the sales than most artists. I really can't think of an artist today that would have that kind of pull. Perhaps Dave Matthews - then again I'm a living anacronism, stuck in the 80's.
"For the artists, my ass," said Draiman of Disturbed. "I didn't ask them to protect me, and I don't want their protection."
The artists dont like the RIAA. They are after money. The greedy moneysuckers.
but hey its the american way
DOWN WITH THE RIAA
Copyright is a temporary monopoly granted by the government -- it creates the legal fiction that a piece of writing or composing (or, as technologies were created, a recorded performance) is property and can only be sold by those who have been licensed to do so by the copyright holder.
Does this guy have a clue? IANAL, but even I know that copyright has nothing to do with property rights.
Copyrighted material is not anyone's property, but only the copyright holder has the right to copy it. Hell, the word "copyright" itself is the best description of what it means, and still we get this BS about "property" and the rights to sell.
-- The months are just too short. I can count the number of days on one hand.
How about game mods then, Card?
by
danro
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· Score: 1
Interesting, but...
Isn't this the same Orson Scott Card who told the Homeworld mod community they couldn't make a "Ender's Game" mod to that game?
I realize this isn't the exact same thing, and I am glad he has these refreshing views about copyright and filesharing, but I wish he could extend it to cover fan-art as well.
That said, he is well within his rights to deny them. It's his creation after all, and I guess he should have the final say.
--
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
You can keep a copy too, legally
by
Per+Abrahamsen
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· Score: 1
That's fair use.
Favorite Artist Quote (from the second article)
by
StringBlade
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"For the artists, my ass," said [David] Draiman [of Disturbed]. "I didn't ask them to protect me, and I don't want their protection." [said about the RIAA]
Kids have something else to do with their time than listen to music. It isn't just about downloading, it is that their is more competition for something that is limited - people's free time.
Hmm, writers and programmers...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Dont they do the same type of thing? Create a work of art, or simply a 20 line article or a 20 line script to automate backups. What I find funny is, Card explains how it should be unacceptable to sign a contract giving over the right to a work of writing to the publish company. Yet, hasnt this become an industry standard in the IT world. If you are hired by a company to write code, when you leave that position the belongs to that company. Why do WE as IR professionals accept that, but authors dont.
I've always thought about, but accepted it as many of you probably have. Why do we?
Re:Hmm, writers and programmers...
by
Mr.Spaz
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The way I've always looked at this is that developers aren't really "making art." I know some people vehemently dispute that, and it's their perogative to do so, but the situation has always seemed to me to be that programmers are in fact more like mechanics or engineers. They're using widely available parts and tools to construct a "machine" to perform a task or number of tasks. The programmer is the producer and the company they work for the consumer. The difference from a typical producer/consumer relationship is simply that the company pays the producer a salary to make the product instead of buying the finished works at once.
On the other hand; an author is creating something unique to them. Be it a work of imagination or a recounting of experiences, no one else can claim that what the author produces is theirs, nor can they make an identical product from standardized tools. Language is ostensibly a tool, but to break the argument down to that level creates problems on both sides.
The idea here is that (technically), anyone can be instructed on how to write programs to perform certain functions, but an author of creative works is possessed of a less tangible talent that is not something anyone could have.
1. Wait 100 years for all Britney, Christina, NSuck and BSB song copyrights to expire.
2. Remake their songs and copyright your version.
3. ???
4. Profit!
--
Isn't it interesting how you come to recognize posters based solely on their sigs???
If only it DID belong to the artists
by
snyps
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· Score: 1
Copyright is a set of laws to protect intelectual property. This includes all intangable work such as liturature, music, software. These rules are designed though to protect the growing industries not the individule artist, these laws are not protecting artists they are protecting corporate "gold diggers" pocket books and need to be rewritten so the artist gets a fair amount of the prophet.
Re:If only it DID belong to the artists
by
druxton
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· Score: 1
...artist gets a fair amount of the prophet.
Would that be an arm, a leg, or something smaller, and which prophet did you have in mind?
Re:Research
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
And they should stop claiming I am causing a loss in profit
They aren't, necessarily. They are claiming that file sharing *in general* is causing a loss in profit. Although I think this is obvious, apparently a lot of people just don't get it: You, as an individual, are not a representative sample of everyone who uses Kazaa. And while the RIAA might not be losing any potential sales because of *your* specific behavior, there is no question that *other* people are out there downloading things that they certainly would have paid for, in the absence of p2p.
I will add, though, that if you are sharing *any* copyrighted files with other people, then you *are* potentially causing a loss in sales. If someone downloads an mp3 from you, and consequently sees no further need to buy the CD, you do bear some responsibility for killing the sale.
"1 - The fact that I get or not the song from the internet is irrelevant. I am not stealing since I am not depriving someone from stuff he has, nor profits he could make. How can someone steal bits? Even those are just copied into my box!"
You are depriving someone of the money they woudl have got had you actually PAID for the music you stole.
Simple as that.
-- People should not be afraid of their governments -
Governments should be afraid of their people.
Have you ever been in serious contract negotiation? I mean, even like to buy a car or something? There are people who do this sort of thing all the time (i.e. car salesmen and record company execs) and people who don't (your average car buyer and your average musician getting their first contract).
People who are used to doing this sort of thing are very good at portraying a contract as being totally benign, and just ignore this paragraph! Those silly lawyers require it, but it doesn't really apply to you... Next thing you know, the majority of people who sign contracts do so without having really read or understood them.
Yes, it's everybody's responsibility to do so, but, gosh, when you bought your last car, did you REALLY read the whole warranty agreement? How about the agreement for the extended warranty that you paid another $800.00 for? And what about the loan terms? Are there pre-payment penalties in case you pay your car off early to save on interest? If you did, you're in the minority.
So even though it is the signor's responsibility to understand what they are signing, it's also true that the people writing the contract shouldn't be writing unethical terms in just because they can get someone to sign. If my auto loan contract required that I give my first born son to the loan agent, there is no way in heck I would let that be enforced, even if it was my fault that I didn't see it in the contract.
In theory, everyone reads their contracts. In practice, they don't, but people still deserve protection from predatory business people.
People have always been busy. But for many teens, music is part of their identity and their peer group is defined by what music they like. If you like cool music, it makes you cool. What music they like in turn influences what clothes they wear. I don't think this has changed significantly in the last 30 years. Have you seen any factual studies to support your assertion that kids are listening to music less? Are car audio sales down? Are MP3-player sales growing?
Thats why I'm sticking to the simplest reason: supply and demand, because it doesn't require any big social change, and the numbers are there to back it up.
-- Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
If we take a a day, I can do a number of different free time activities. I can do sport, I can watch DVD, I can watch TV and even, listen to music. Add various internet related activities and then there is competition for time. Yes, I can ICQ whilst listening to music but in general I would be doing less music.
My teenage son is just as likely to go to his room to watch a video, play a computer game, ICQ as to listen to music. I understand he isn't the only one.
MP3 sales may be growing, but they are a replacement medium. Overall, audio is less important than it was - another tell-tale is that the audio areas of electronics shops is shrinking. Car audio sales are not down because it is difficult to surf the net or watch a video whilst driving.
But none of that has changed in the last 3 years and major-label record sales have.
ICQ is a substitute for the phone or face-to-face; DVD is a substitute for VHS; the Internet as we know it is about 8 years old; Videogames have been mainstream since Atari was new. When I was a teen, videogames, the phone, comic-books, books, girls, car-models, sports, etc. all competed with listening to music just as it does today.
I don't see any convincing evidence that audio is less important than it was 3 years ago. The size of the department in the store tells me that more people are buying equipment on the internet, not that overall audio equipment sales are down.
Your assertions are based on anecdotes without data, my assertions are based on real numbers from the RIAA.
-- Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
My premise is that when you have a choice between activities A,B or C and then D comes along then the first three will suffer. Nobody has endless free time. This is economics, the supply is inelastic.
I have given up believing the RIAA numbers since their ridiculous complaints about hurt to their members. However, sales that they have been screaming about are an indicator. They have been dropping.
As for sales via the Internet,well mail order was always competition - yes, one medium can replace the other. But from my point of view (father of two kids), listening to music just isn't so important now.
The big chnge in the last three years is the widespread adoption of flat-rate Internet which doesn't tie up a phone line. There is little parental pressure to stop surfing as it is a utility. Buying music is something that costs even though it can be replayed at leisure. CDs are outrageously priced compared to other media, and ianother rcent factor is that many people have a lower disposable income.
Yes, there is a lot of good music out there. But it is kind of interesting that my son prefers a lot of older stuff which I already have in my collection. He is as likely to watch a video as to listen to music if he has guests over. DVD is easier to use than VHS (playable on all modern computers, no rewind, fast access) and he definitely prefers it.
My daughter is more into obscure music (Eastern European bands, and I don't mean Tatu), but that is hot amongst her friends. What she likes is almost impossible to find on Kazaa (at least in the West).
Of course, I see their friends as well and whilst music isn't dying, the age that kids seem to tire of so-called pop is dropping and their tastes go to other things.
You are depriving someone of the money they woudl have got had you actually PAID for the music you stole.
Not really, because I decide what CDs are worth a purchase by downloading those songs. It's as simple as if I can't check myself the songs in the album before purchase, I won't be buying that CD at all. It's also as simple as if I don't like the songs I won't be buying it either, so I can't see how you can state that I COULD buy a CD I never listened to.
Maybe you think that people should trust the recording companies on what they're trying to sell them, but I prefer to personally check that when possible. Maybe you think it's morally wrong too, but I find morality can be quite customizable these days, most of the times to suit the needs of those up high. Telling me that what I'm doing is wrong is arguable... and to be honest I keep thinking I am doing the recording industry a favour by advertising their music to my own self.
" It's as simple as if I can't check myself the songs in the album before purchase, I won't be buying that CD at all."
I guess you have never set foot inside a music store for many many years then, otherwise you would know that it is perfectly possible to check any CD before buying it. I do that quite often if it is a CD of which I am unsure.
Tell me - when you download a CD and decide it is not worth buying, do you delete ALL of the tracks from your system? Including the track(s) you did like?
-- People should not be afraid of their governments -
Governments should be afraid of their people.
"I guess you have never set foot inside a music store for many many years then, otherwise you would know that it is perfectly possible to check any CD before buying it. I do that quite often if it is a CD of which I am unsure."
CD stores in Italy, which is where I live, don't offer that service, although I agree they should. And no, I don't go too often to music stores as I only go there when I know what I am going to buy.
"Tell me - when you download a CD and decide it is not worth buying, do you delete ALL of the tracks from your system? Including the track(s) you did like?"
Just to make it clear and easy... I buy all the CDs I can afford, when I like them. The problem is I can't afford to buy many with my current budget, and I honestly see no harm in downloading a song I couldn't possibly afford. As I stated before mine is just a copy of the song, and not something I stole (as in "deprive someone of it").
Now that said, no, I don't delete all the songs from the CDs I don't like, and if they were to offer the songs I like from that CD into a single, rest assured that I would put that CD into my list of stuff to buy.
My whole point in this thread was saying how it's not necessary true that everyone downloading songs is actually causing a "loss in profits".
Decameron
-- diegoT
Copyright was chiefly for the public's benefit.
by
jbn-o
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· Score: 1
Your post is more likely to be read if it is not made anonymously. Slashdot makes it very easy to skip past "Anonymous Coward" posts.
Just like when a book author writes a book and they do a few thousand hours research, you don't get all that research, you just get the end product. Nor do you get an electronic copy in full mark-up.
I understand you don't get these things with the work today, but I'm addressing how copyright should work, not how it works now. Simply restating the status quo doesn't justify the status quo.
Publishing research for a computer program is entirely different from publishing source code when the program enters the public domain. Research that leads to something is different from seeing the preferred form for modifying the work. But different kinds of works are hard to discuss simultaneously because they are put together differently and function differently in the world. With books, for instance, you already have a good deal of the material that comes closest to being the analog of computer source code--the work itself. I would consider requiring the distribution of electronic markup for the book, however. With computer programs there is a different situation. It is possible to obscure the source code in such a way that one effectively denies the public the opportunity to do the modifications that the public should be allowed to do with a PD computer program.
Applying copyright in order to push a specific political agenda is plain wrong.
Then you must not like copyright at all because that is what copyright originally set out to do in the US--give authors an incentive to write and publish more work. In exchange, the government gives up some of the public's natural rights. The question is which of the possible ways to strike the copyright bargain is the best way for the public (because that is who copyright was built to benefit).
In fact, it's an attept to do exactly what so many here accuse the RIAA of doing, enforcing a business-model into profit by law.
But it's okay to deny the public the ability to modify the PD work fully because it may somehow interfere with commercial gain? I say no, when a work enters the public domain modifying the work should no longer be the exclusive domain of the former copyright holder. This means distributing source code when the work enters the public domain.
One possible method is to reduce copyright privileges in stages, and observe the results. By seeing if and when measurable diminutions in publication occur, we will learn how much copyright power is really necessary to achieve the public's purposes. We must judge this by actual observation, not by what publishers say will happen, because they have every incentive to make exaggerated predictions of doom if their powers are reduced in any way.
The entire essay is well worth anyone's time to read because it is so useful in debunking people's arguments which try to justify placing the publisher's copyright privilege at the same level of importance as the public's (or above that of the public). RMS makes it quite clear why this is wholly wrong and misguided.
So you freely admit to theft - you are downloading and keeping songs which you like an for which you have zero intention of paying.
You are stealing.
That is a fact, plain and simple. You are obtaining the song for free, despite the FACT that it has not been made available for free by the copyright owners and despite the fact that you are supposed to PAY for the song.
THAT is where you are comitting theft - depriving "them" of the money you owe them in exchange for having a copy of the song.
-- People should not be afraid of their governments -
Governments should be afraid of their people.
He's got the right idea on Microsoft, too
by
bee
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· Score: 1
Within Iran itself, the people are coming to detest more and more the meaningless rigidities of religious rule. Being ruled by clerics is like being ruled by Microsoft -- somebody decides what's right for everybody and from then on no variation is permitted.
But -- again as with Microsoft -- while the people already trapped within the system are furious with the incompetence, blindness, and sheer meanness of their rulers, Iran's rulers are looking to expand their defective system into new territory.
-- At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Call it as you like, just don't expect me to believe in your morality. I see the offense represented by my actions as great as the offense anyone else takes part of when they photocopy a part of a book they don't own. If that's the kind of theft you are trying to prevent from happening then go on with your objective. I have a feeling the world won't be cleaner when dangerous book-copiers start paying big bucks too or going to jail. I mean... am I supposed to sue you because you quoted my copyrighted posts?
I'm wondering what you are protecting tho. If it's your morality then I can easily show you how mine can be totally different. If you're defending your country's laws I can easily show you how laws are not always fair. Especially those made to protect people that most of the time don't deserve protection.
Decameron
-- diegoT
Please pass this on to any uninformed friends
by
binarybum
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· Score: 1
This is a great article to arm people that haven't yet had a chance to hear the other side of the RIAA's arguement with intelligent fodder. It's well written and reveals quite nicely how topsy turvy the RIAA's logic is despite the fact that it's working -- a lot of people truly feel guilty or wrong even about copying a CD from someone of an album they own on cassette.
Even the story about the young child getting arrested has been perversed into the RIAA's favor. The other day I overheard a mother telling her young daughter to "watch out how much music you download because they're arresting little girls now." That's like telling a kid the boogie man really IS in her closet!
This might even be a good article to exerpt from when writing your congressmen about music copyright issues and the RIAA's abuse of power.
-- ôó
How about the original copyright terms?
by
Deven
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· Score: 1
If I had my druthers I'd make it 15 years renewable once for another 15.
How about the original copyright term of 14 years, renewable once for another 14 years? Imagine that, the Founding Fathers had the right balance from the start!
--
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible."- Alan Kay
And the most obnoxious feature of the law was that some authors outlived their copyright. Their most popular works would go into public domain while they were still alive and counting on the income.
Gosh, how obnoxious. It's just like how I painted this guy's garage only fifty years ago, and already he's stopped paying me! I was counting on that income! How am I supposed to support myself if people don't keep paying me for work I did long, long ago?
--
"It sure was strange to see something on Usenet about me that didn't involve Klingon gang rape." -- Wil Wheaton
no-text comments? They are easy...
by
Clockwurk
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
Re: wanted with the jingle/photos.
by
Technician
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· Score: 1
I beg your pardod? Umm say your wedding photos included a less than modest garter shot. I want to own the copyright. I don't want the photographer including the photo in his on line resume. The work for hire should be just the work for hire, the photographer should have sold the copyright with the prints and negatives. I think more is needed in protection than just a standard model release form.
-- The truth shall set you free!
Re: wanted with the jingle/photos.
by
Spy+Hunter
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· Score: 1
This is not a problem that should be solved by work for hire. If what you want is protection for people whose photos are taken, then you should think about how to provide that instead of using a totally different legal concept. What if someone you didn't hire takes an unflattering picture of you? You're just as screwed even with work for hire. Instead, the people whose pictures are taken should have joint ownership of the copyright with the photographer. If the photographer wants to distribute the photos then, he'll have to get a model release form saying that you approve of distribution by him.
Slashdot Mirror
We need more legitimate copyright dependent artists (let's not argue artistic ability on this one) to hop onboard the bandwagon if anything's ever going to be changed about the copyright system. Good for Card.
Now that we've got the opinion of a semi-famous author of the written word on the sharing of music files, that should pretty much close the discussion right there.
Now if we could only get Gary Coleman's take on this whole SCO thing...
What? I'm still waiting for the ogg-vorbis overlords.
--- You know it's bad when
bash-2.05a$ fortune
bash: fortune: command not found
is just a bit insulting, isn't it? I thought the essay was very articulate and well-written, if short on details about how you can be friendly to filetraders and turn a profit with intellectual property (maybe part 2?)
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Is this the same guy writing for a sci-fi action game for the XBox? (Sorry, forgot the name, but it was a big article in Game Informer a few issues back.)
Zodiac Survey
So would he mind if I pirated his e-books, then?
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
"I'm no grammar nazi but aren't you not suppose to start sentences with "And"?"
And your point is. . . ?
KFG
I'd be very curious to see how many others are being screwed in this manner. Where's my 150,000 x 6?
You "shouldn't", just like you shouldn't use double-negatives, unless you have to.
Card's essay might be useful for someone who hasn't been paying attention to the discussion for the past five years, but other than that it's really nothing new. Others have said more and said it better. Still, it's nice to see a content creator saying these things.
He said:
Tune in next week for part 2
I bet next week is going to be an even more scathing commentary.
You are never supposed to use double negatives, that's for sure.
Wow! you have to be pretty creative to have Gigli make a profit. I bet I could count the house on one hand for Gigli! and those people walked into the wrong theater!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Besides stopping all of the stupid overlord jokes before they could start, this post was moderated down to (-1 off-topic) 47 seconds from the time of post. The moderation system works!
The Dead always got it - they made far more money touring than by selling records. Letting fans record concerts and swap tapes created a lot of good will and good publicity.
Well, I think we're getting another "Google".
People use "google" as a term for "search online" now, and I fear "MP3" will become the term for "digital music". As we all know, there are other formats, and I don't want to be looked down upon just because I choose OGG.
Hell, there are OGGs on Kazaa, so its not just a piracy thing.
Then again, wouldn't it be great if "MP3" was the term for "pirated music", and OGG was "legal" digitial music (ah, OSS dreams).
This was a well written and timely article by one of my favorite authors. But I winced at one particular sentance:
"If you got together with a few of your neighbors and each of you bought different CDs and then lent them to each other, that wouldn't even violate copyright."
Is this true? Certainly it can't be if the only distinction of violating the copyright is geographical distance. Can give anyone give any answers?
" turn a profit with intellectual property (maybe part 2?)"
The first thing to realize is that it is not "property". Abuse of the word "property" to describe it lends to such other language abuses as calling duplication and creation of new material "theft".
Call it "copyrighted material" if anything.
Anyone else constantly impressed with this guy? As someone who owns 90% of the fiction he's created, and who has read more like 95% (and I've bought Ender's Game somewhere near 50 times), I obviously appreciate his abilities as a storyteller. And now he writes a coherent, fair statement regarding the state of "piracy", etc. in the movie/music business, and it just gets better. Hoorah for Mr. Card! Keep them coming...
Having actually RTFA, I think his take on the problem is quite good. It's not like we haven't read this on Slashdot a thousand times before, but the real deal is that it's a known, mainstream author that's publishing this kind of thing.
"In other words, the people complaining about all the internet "thieves" are, by any reasonable measure, rapacious profiteers who have been parasitically sucking the blood out of copyrights on other people's work. And I say this with the best will in the world. In fact, these companies have expenses. There are salaries to pay. Some of the salaries are earned. ".
I like the way he puts it <grin>
No
One thing this guy doesn't understand is that the RIAA isn't a mere publisher. They actually involve themselve's quite a bit in how an album sounds and is marketed. In most cases they even provide the producers that are responsible for the "sound" (the bassline, rythm etc) that the artist then sings their song over. Also, most of the time it isn't the artist/group/whatever that is actually editing the cuts and making "tracks".
bite my glorious golden ass.
What I find interesting about this whole issue with mp3's and the RIAA is that for years now, the RIAA and it's affiliates have contributed to the destruction of the morals in the US. By selling music that teach nothing more then violence, indiscriminate sex, and foul language. Now they come after their very consumers and ask them about their morals, amazing.
When they were talking about child porn being found on Kazza, I wondered if they ever bothered to look at the Britney Spears video clips they were putting out.
Suddenly I'm filled with all sorts of chocolately goodness...recording artists coming out and saying that maybe suing your customers might not be the best idea to get customer loyalty.
Maybe I should write it into a song...
But the fact remains that as the old hat of the record industry is, it subsidizes the failures with profits from teh successes where the internet in file swapping can be used to help a new band establish their worth to machinery of the record industry that is still actually useful to the promotion of a band or artist.
This is no good for the artists.
time to remove the fat and greed of the middle man non-artist...
Irony? Yes, I think so.
Insert witty Slashdot sig here.
B) That doen't mean if they didn't trade music that they would buy it.
Of course, they are avoiding paying for it. They either don't think it is worth the retail price, or they can't afford it.
People who have lots of money spend it on crap all the time, hell, I even hear rich people buy Porche's to crash them, for safety test purposes.
Hmmm, I wonder if Bill Gates has illegal MP3 files?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
...also a reasonably intelligent guy, unlike the Record execs.
"The record companies swear that it's making a serious inroad on sales, and they can prove it. How? By showing that their sales are way down in the past few years."
First off, anyone whose taken any intro psych class knows that the RIAA's data is bull. Hell, even those who haven't know it. All they are showing is correlational data. Whoopdie doo, cd sales are down while "piracy" is up. Watch me publish correlational data that shows quality of music is down and sales of cds are down. They haven't proven jack.
"It couldn't possibly be because (a) most of us have already replaced all our old vinyl and cassettes, so all that windfall money is no longer flowing in, or (b) because the record companies have made some really lousy decisions as they tried to guess what we consumers would want to buy."
Because Mr Card is publishing an article that will probably be viewed by many, he had to censor himself. What b) really means is that big record companies are trying to force-feed crap to the masses. How many boy-bands do we really need? How many no-talent implant laden morons do we really need singing "I'm not that innocent"?
- Xenius
And hypocritical, too. I don't see anything wrong with artists not owning the rights to their works. I mean, how many of you programmers out there create "works for hire" in which you assign the copyrights to the company you work for? Musicians shouldn't be any different. If they are self-employed, they own their music. If they are employed by a company, the company owns the music. You can't argue with that, reallly, unless now you programmers are demanding that you own the rights to software you wrote or designed. Somehow I don't think that is happening.
The majority of those that make a profit at all do so from performances and direct sales to fans of merchandise. The more people they can get to the concerts, the better off they are. This is why artists make videos and lobby to get them in rotation. This is why they try to influence radio stations to add them to rotations. This is why they give away promotional copies to influential people (DJs, trendsetters, etc.) and to large crowds at events (at record stores, etc.) This is why they lobby (and pay) to have songs included in the soundtracks of video games. They believe that more people hearing their music will mean more people willing to pay to see them perform.
Actually, it's a stylistic issue. While it is not technically proper to start a sentence with a co-ordinating conjunction, neither is it true error. Beginning a sentence with "And" or "But" provides mild transition between thoughts to give a more coherent development. It is actually a very nice technique, avoiding wordiness while creating flow. So, yes, it's fine!
Which is perfectly within your First Sale and Fair Use rights. No new copy has been created, thus there is no question of a copyright violation.
The situation is quite a bit different if you burn a copy for each of your friends in the neighborhood.
It's a legitmate question. Would he mind of people just went and pirated all of his e-books.
Your response, btw works equally well in response to people who pirate mp3 files. They could get off their asses and go and buy the album in a used cd store instead of downloading it. Why don't they?
--He says that 'only' 52 years of copyright was unfair.
And the most obnoxious feature of the law was that some authors outlived their copyright. Their most popular works would go into public domain while they were still alive and counting on the income. It's like revoking someone's Social Security at age 72, just because they had the temerity not to die when demographics predicted they would.
Its like he expects to do some work once and then profit from it for the rest of his life. Guess what... the rest of us don't get that! Patents don't last NEARLY that long... so why should a writer get rights to his work for the rest of his life, while an inventor enjoys the rights for a limited time?
The way society and economics work, you have to keep producing and contributing to reap the benefits. lifetime profits should not be guaranteed in my opinion.
What I found funny about Mr. Card's article was the following truism:
Here's a clue: Movie studios have, for decades, used "creative accounting" to make it so that even hit movies never manage to break even, thus depriving the creative people of their "percentage of profits."
Hollywood uses "creative accounting" to diminish revenue sharing with their creative talent in order to actually maximize their profits. Warner Bros. took a lot of flack over how they claimed "Batman" never was profitable, yet for some reason, they made a sequel. Or for example, Paramount claiming "Coming to America" never made a profit either when sued. Yet on the other hand, you have companies such as Enron and Worldcom who use "creative accounting" to inflate their profits. Wow, isn't that ironic?
I guess the moral of the story is, when you overstate profits, investors lose confidence and your company goes bankrupt; run a Hollywood movie studio, claim you never make a profit, and you stay in business forever.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
As a huuuuuuge Orson Scott Card fan who's grown disturbed and depressed over his increasingly rabid right-wing views (clothed in the guise of "Oh but I'm actually a Democrat") I'm astonished to find an op-ed piece of his which I substantially agree with.
---
Wordforge writing contest - $100 in prizes - get your entry in before 28 September 2003
a world in progress...
One thing that has troubled me with this whole fiasco is that in nearly all mainstream press and discusion there has been no question of the "lost sales" statistics. I do realise that many of the multi-nats in the RIAA own a lot of the press but you would think that after awhile someone, at least me, would want the RIAA to prove that, someone was actually going to spend money on the song/cd that was downloaded. It doesnt really make it right but if people are downloading becasue they're not going to pay, then the RIAA doesn't have a real claim to have lost anything.
I must bid you farewell....... "walks out amid the gunfire"
If I fix someone's car I don't expect to derive continuing income from it. More to the point, I certainly don't expect that my descendents should derive an income from it. I rather expect that they should have to fix someone else's car to earn money.
If I do wish my descendents to have an easy life why don't I just invest my earnings to create a trust fund for them?
I have no problem with authors making a decent income for their work, but I also have no problem with them having to continue to produce works to maintain themselves and their heirs.
Just like everyone else.
50 years has always seemed both a fair and ample copyright duration to me, protecting both the rights of the author and the public.
KFG
The justification that mp3 "sharing" is ok based on the notion that anyone trading mp3s would not have been in the demographic to buy a cd anyway strikes me as odd.
As a consumer, it bothers me greatly everytime I purchase something and someone mentions that they got the same product for a lesser price. I believe that makes me a bad shopper. So if I buy a cd and someone can get it at a cheaper price, I feel cheated. (on an off-topic note, American consumers who buy MS software at full price should feel this cheated after MS price cuts in other countries)
What some suggest (me included) is an increased value on those music CDs. I mean for 2 bucks more, you can get a DVD which has 2hrs of high quality audio/video, support for various languages, and often has lots of bonus features. Maybe if more musicians created DVDs or CDs with their music, some live performances or interviews, or at least a couple of music videos -- more people would want to buy instead of downloading songs for free.
"Genre busting DJ Moby"
That really made the article for me.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
about kids like me and my friends. And would you believe it, he's right. I never buy CDs. My friends buy some of them that they like. Many of my friends have the CD and an 'ilegal' mp3 version. Why? Because an mp3 player is still $50+ and doesn't, at that price, hold much music. So they have a CD version of everyting for school and travle and then an mp3 version for when they use the computer and want to listen to all their favorite songs. Well now, that doesn't hurt the recording companies now does it? What apperently hurts the company is when they download the music they didn't buy. But guess what happens when the do that. They either delete it if they don't like it or get the CD. So now how is this bad?
-Tim Louden
silly slashdot can't do no-text comments? bah, shows how much I post here.
Try before you buy is one part of trading music to avoid paying for it. Of course, if the music sucks, it should get deleted (some people collect, but that's a different matter, if ya ask me). If the music is enjoyed, there's a chance the album would get downloaded, as well as others by that artist and similar music, and so on.
There has been little mention of this in the whole RIAA vs P2P/Traders issue. *shrug* It happens with games (well, they tend to also offer demos) and it happens with music (where demos tend to be 15-30 second clips of horrid quality streaming music through Amazon and the like).
Ah well, I can type until I'm blue in the fingers on such matters, but it's irrelevant. (;
The Baen Free Library offers a ton of books from sci-fi/fantasy publisher Baen Books for free in a variety of electronic formats. Baen has also been offering CD-ROMs in some of their hardcovers which contain more books not available on their website. The most recent of David Weber's Honor Harrington series, for example, contains the entire series in electronic format. Best of all, you can copy them and distribute them however you like--you just can't sell them.
Try searching for "honorverse disk" at Google and see what you get. Many people (myself included) put the CDs up on their web server for convenience.
It's hideously effective, incidentally. I've bought about 25 Baen paperbacks in the last two years, and several hardbacks--one of them just for the CD, though I rather enjoyed the book, too, as it turned out.
Maybe referring to copyright violation as "piracy" isn't all that weird after all. ;-)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Perhaps you are selling your work too cheap. If he produces something that people are willing to pay for, more power to him. It is a sweet deal. What's preventing you from doing the same?
when will you make the Enders Game movie??????
If you want to talk a publisher into *paying*, not loaning, artists lump sums of money to buy or create works, then go for it. But until the risk is shifted from the artists, why should someone else get the money for selling his works when he took the risk and spent his time creating it for NOTHING? Does your job require you to go sometimes years either without pay or on "advances" that you owe in return that will only be recouped by the distribution channels that also produce your work into useable forms? Assuming, of course, that you do in fact sell mass quantities to pay back the advances?
Risk and reward.
I don't mean this essay in particular, I mean Orson Scott Card.
He's a smart guy, and he has his heart in the right place, and I think he's correct about this issue. However, he seems completely impaired when it comes to seeing both sides of a debate.
Read some of his other essays at random, and I think you'll see what I mean. Once he gets it in his head that some group/thing/whatever is in the right, he'll uniformly agree with all their arguments. Not exactly reasonable (or persuasive) rhetoric.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
"The focus of the industry needs to shift from Soundscan numbers to downloads," said Draiman. "It's the way of the future. You can smell it coming. Stop fighting it, because you can't."
Yes, yes, yes. And the focus of the industry also needs to shift from labels to artists. Artists are finally, albeit slowly, shrugging off that "plantation mentality" that had them convinced they couldn't make it without the big labels. End result is more, not less, music.
computerlady - a brand new Slash-daughter - alone, but no longer invisible, in the
Software programmers are very similar to music entertainers, and I can see why someone probably initially marked this post as flamebait. This is a true fact though. Nobody who builds hardware/durable goods is appreciated anymore. It's a one time deal and we're out having to design something else in order to stay alive. So right now it seems that in the states, the best jobs to get
1. entertainment industry (do once, sell 10000000x)
1b. Software (You *should* be supporting your work, where I don't see music writers supporting their work.(or the need to, thats why it's better))
2. Services (virtually no variable cost)
3. Disposable goods (you sell them another one after it breaks)
4. worst of all, durable goods... tough business to be in, must profit a lot per sale else it isn't worth it.
Nobody wants to do category 4 anymore, and all being outsourced... uggghh... oh well, i'll be flamebait now.
Example: Jewel's new song, "Intuition" is in a commercial for a Gilette razor. I'm sure Gilette paid huge duckets for that. Now if I want to buy the song from ITMS, for example, Jewel's cut should be the same (approx $0.10), and Apple's, for serving it (approx $0.35), but the record company has made enough money on it, so maybe if they cut $0.50 out of the remaining cut for the record company and just took $0.04, making the price $0.49, I think that would be reasonable.
Come to think of it, I'm sure that Jewel made a bunch of money herself from the Gilette promotion, so maybe she should cut her take to $0.02 or so, just on that song, making the total cost $0.41.
Just a thought... my $0.02, if you will.
The CB App. What's your 20?
He thinks all the money goes to cost of media, artist, and record label. That sounds right, because the people who package, inventory, ship, receive, stock, price, and ring up the CD work for free.
"...your ideas are intriguing to me, and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter."
First: assume that music could be downloaded for "free" from any website.
Second: enable users to donate an euro (or a dollar..) for every song they download IF THEY WANT TO
Third: develop a way to "pay" for those one-euro donations; it could be done with e-money
Fourth: e-money should be bought with real cash.
Here's the plot:
a) a user goes to a music store, buys a data CD containing X amount of "credits"
b) those credits are unique codes; those are sent (securely) to an artist for a donation
c) the user downloads art (music, movies, etc) and keeps it/share it/whatever
d) if the user has no internet access, the music store should download the music (maybe have it stored locally) and charge the user a small fee for the media
d-1) users can still donate if they like the artist
e) radio stations could download the same music and play it; they won't have to pay high royalities for it, so they could play better music
f) websites should be used to show which songs are most downloaded
g) artists will get far more money than they get now (think about it - 1 euro every 5/6 CD "sold" is WAY more than they get now)
h) artists will get money for concerts
i) music will get better overall
j) we won't have multibillion-artists bitching about their make-up all day long
the downside of that is that the music "industry" that provides people "what they should like" would die.
if you like it, talk about it with everyone you want.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Orson Scott Card is a genius writer. His works will be to our day as Shakepeare's were to his day, with the Ender series of books being the crown of his work (despite the relativism that infected the last three books of Ender's life).
That said, he's looking at the music industry from a writer's point of view. Notice how he calls a 52 year copyright term "obnoxious." The very best thing about this article is that such a respected author has recognized the shit that's being thrown at all of the tech community and most of the rest of America by the RIAA. This is good news, but still short of what I would've liked to have seen.
The cost of production for an album or a book has been dropping for a very long time, totally due to the advancements in technology we've seen in the last 50 years or so. Home computers are already found in many, many households across the USA (I'll drop that qualification from here on out. The USA is where this battle is being fought, so I'll restrict myself to talking about the USA). State of the art publishing software can be found for _free_ for anyone who knows to look for it (TeX). The same will eventually be said about audio mixing software. Using the internet as a distribution tool, artists are already able to cut the large companies completely out of the loop, and in the future the number of artists doing this will only increase. Unless the existing industry does something about it (since this is in reply to an author's article, I pulled a page out of the Robert Jordan playbook with the incomplete sentence).
This is the crux of the issue. As Card mentions in his article, the Entertainment Industry in general is full of liars and cheaters. The actions they've taken so far to stop "piracy" could be aimed at doing what they say, but they will also destroy the future of artists being able to control their own work from creation to distribution. Given the history of the Entertainment Industry, I'm inclined to believe the latter goal is correct.
The article notes that the "annoying thing" about copyright when it was only 56 years is that the author could outlive his monopoly on the work.
But that's intentional. That's the incentive for the author not just to sit back and milk one cow until it's dead, but to keep creating new stuff to further enrich the culture. Oh, and the enriching the culture bit requires things to go public domain.
Ya know there are time i just want to mod the story up:)
Artists are feeling the downturn in sales, too. "My record royalties have dropped 80 percent since 1999," said Steve Miller, whose greatest hits album has been a perennial best-seller since its 1978 release. "To me, it's one of the weirdest things that's ever happened to me because people act like it's OK."
Recording artists have watched their record royalties erode over the past few years ("My Van Halen royalties are history," said vocalist Sammy Hagar), but, in fact, few musicians earn the bulk of their income from record sales.
I find these comments offensive. No more royalties from 20+ years ago. Damnit! I'm not working any more, I should be getting paid still! If sales were sky rocketing after the copyright expired (oh wait, that apparently will never happen again) I could see the argument, but the vast majority of money is made when a CD or whatever first comes out. "What have done for me lately?" comes to mind. If I stop working I don't get paid anymore, if you stop working you don't get paid anymore. That's the way it works.
Meanwhile you have a bunch of half-wits on MTV cribs showing there multi-million dollar mansions. How exactly does this produce any insentive to create something new and interesting? Granted, in most cases its not really a loss. You have people that are basically set for life if they use some minute amount of common sense off of 1 CD release. Of course, they're probably really making money of f being famous. I sure Britney made a crap load more off of promoting pepsi than she ever did from CD sales.
I really didn't mean to blather on this much, my bad. Basically, you aren't making royalties from incredibly old albums (shocker), write some new stuff. You still need income? Here's a thought, write some new stuff. If people don't like it, get a different job. Boo hoo, what about my dependents, they can't live off my name for the rest of their lives. Here's a tip, learn to manage your fucking money! Everyone in the real world has various mechanisms to provide for their families, maybe you should look into them.
BTW, I do agree artists are screwed by the record companies and it's about time they started standing up and taking some responsibilities for their own situation and actions.
jason
Charmin is not quilted. Perhaps you want Northern.
Lasers Controlled Games!
It's really nice to finally see someone with published works on the side of the people. The point, counter-point arrangement of the article made perfect sense and cleared up a lot of things for me, and I hope it will do the same for record execs.
I still just can't believe that the RIAA is suing these broke 12-year-olds and college students. Hopefully that will come to an end soon.
I don't know about "people" but I can surely tell you why I use kazaa.
The problem is I'm not rich. I can't spend all that money on CDs. If I were to spend $15 each time I like a new song I would be quite poor by now. I DO buy CDs, just not as often as I would like to listen to the music I download. And this wasn't any different before napster, because to be honest, I didn't care about music before it. I never cared too much about listening to the radio or watching MTV, but I do care now about downloading random songs from the Internet to listen to them.
The big music companies are just being silly. They should be offering online services with very low prices so that people can download the music they want, and they would get the money the desire so much. That, together with a simple and secure system for people to pay for the service, and I will be glad to switch to it.
And they should stop claiming I am causing a loss in profit, because I simply don't have all the money they want from me.
Decameron
diegoT
Overall, this is a fairly well written piece. For those who have not yet RTFA, I'd say it's worth your time.
One thing that was not mentioned here, and something that I've been wondering about, is the impact on new CD sales (both real and perceived) that's due to the huge popularity of purchasing used CDs from music stores. Clearly, a record company can only make money if the consumer purchases a new CD. But if I spend my $15-20 on a CD, then sell it to FooBar Music Shop for $6, then you come along and pick it up for $10, we've got a CD purchase that has been diverted from a brand new product to a second-hand one. I only know a handful of folks who really grab music from file sharing networks, but I know a zillion people who have spent a lot of money on a nearly-new CD for $8.
I'm pretty sure that the RIAA has been ignoring any discussion of this trend because there's nothing they can do about it, and therefore they can't drum up support against it. But I suspect this behavior of buying used CDs is responsible for much more of the "slump in CD sales" than we know.
Anyone have any numbers, info, or insights on this?
If you did a lot of research into lets say, software engineering, and sold the results of that research, you could sell that lots of times. You only did the research once. However, you could sell them repeatedly. My sister does consulting as a Web consultant. She worked really hard to write a content engine. She fills the engine, and then bills people at 75% of the rate a custom built site would cost. 10% of the work, 75% of the money.... You probably think that's unfair too. It's entirely possible however that she would have never made a dime off the engine.
It's how the economics of Card's job is structured. Tell you what, why don't you start a publishing company, then tell the authors they have to show up to your cubical farm for 8 hours a day and write their books there. You pay them an hourly wage, so they get paid, once and only once. Then you come back in a couple of years and tell me how it turns out (I'll bet nobody wants to work for you, or at least no author worth publishing, if they do, they'll quit immediatly after earning a reputation).
The economics of being an author is very different then the economics of working as a programmer, or as a janitor, or whatever it is you do for an hourly rate. Shocking, shocking I tell you. It's entirely possible Card could work for a year on a book, and never see a dime (okay, maybe that's only true for a new author). Being an author is very risky. Your hourly job is less risky. You show up, you do whatever it is you do, and you get paid. Next you'll be telling me it's not fair that somebody makes more money they you do, because you work just as hard as they do. You earn what you negociate to earn. You don't like your deal, re-negociate.
Kirby
did get the idea too it seems. Their new CD will be released without copy protection. From a recent TV-interview (translation mine):
... ...
Interviewer: You new CD is released without copy protection
Farin Urlaub: Yes, we though we could release the copy protection seperately and cash in twice
Bjorn
(Sorry for getting a bit OT.)
There is this study (you need powerpoint to read it, doesn't that suck)
Finally, somebody noticed that sales might be down because the boomers have finished upgrading their vinyl & cassette collections to CD.
I once met the guy who wrote the book "Escape From Alcatraz". He was about 70 years old and was cashing a check at the grocery store where I worked as a teenager. He explained that a few copies a week get sold to tourists who visit the jail, and, so he continues to get a little portion of that revenue. He wrote the book, people still want the book; why should anyone be able to sell it and keep all the profits to themselves?
Some artists even use that power for good. Peter Gabriel donated the rights to his song "Come Talk to Me" to an environmental group, which then licensed it to MCI for a commercial, enabling them to lobby to save thousands of acres of rainforest. Trust me; it's a good thing. And if you don't think artists should get copyright protection for years, well, then you certainly shouldn't be behind the record companies getting it instead.
The CB App. What's your 20?
The artists, the authors, the guys that do the work. The record companies deserve to make a buck, but it's become nothing but a scam, a giant pyramid scheme. You "opt in" and you can't get out, if you're a recording artist or a writer.
I think what the record companies fear the most is not the P2P swappers, but that some unknown, unsigned band will step up, and thanks to P2P swapping, outsell EVERYTHING the record companies produce, thereby rendering them worthless. In the P2P environment we have today, it is not only possible, it is inevitable.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
"The problem is I'm not rich. I can't spend all that money on CDs"
Boo hoo.
You can't afford to buy loads of CDs, so just do without.
Your excuse does NOT justify downloading bucketloads of mp3s "because I can't afford to buy CDs".
Theft because you "can't afford to buy" is never justified (with the exception of food to stave off starvation, but that hardly applies here).
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
This is like the 3rd or 4th post now saying gee, what an ass, he thinks it's unfair that copyright expires so soon!
Hello, McFly, he's KIDDING. Quit focusing on this one paragraph and take the article as a whole. Does this really sound like a guy who thinks copyrights aren't restrictive enough?
I think the real reasons can be derived straight from the RIAAs own numbers:
1) THEY RELEASED FEWER ALBUMS
2) THEY RAISED PRICES DURING A RECESSION
and perhaps less importantly, but still a factor, 3) They stopped selling CD singles.
Music has always been crappy, so I don't think that is the big reason. Supply and demand and availability of substitutes are the fundimental forces of a marketplace.
But guess what happens when you choke supply? Someone else fills it, and independant label music sales are UP, perhaps more than RIAA sales are down, which would actually be a net gain in music sales.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Anyone know where here can I read Metallica's musings on ebooks, the Sklyarov/Adobe case, etc? Or perhaps Bill Gates' thoughts (if there are any left) regarding copyrighted building codes?
. <--- crying the world's smallest tear for the RIAA
You can set up a pretty decent home recording studio these days for a couple grand. A really nice one for maybe five or six thou. Okay, maybe not a true professional studio but damn close enough for all but a highly trained ear. That's within the range of people willing to scrimp and save for it. You can get a master CD copied with jewel cases and inserts for around a dollar each in lots of 1,000.
If you have friends with DVX1000 or VX2000 and a carload of gear you can add music videos to go with the songs. Okay, not as good as film but still nice looking on a computer monitor or big screen TV if it's shot right. Vertical integration at a price point that's affordable.
I think it's that more than file trading that's the real worry. Those that are persistent, post a really good web site, offer a few songs for download have a chance at making money...and keeping most of it. Without ever setting foot in a major label. I think music has the potential to shift to a ground up industry faster than film.
Two challenges with that: One is air play. As long as Clear Channel is in bed with the big labels on the payola merry go round you're not going to hear many unsigned bands on the air. Hence the fight against Internet radio. The other challenge is the signal to noise ratio. Weeding out the bad music and letting the really talented float above the fray.
Still, those are solvable. I bet a handful of people with the time, talent and a few grand in gear could get together today and build themselves a new star.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
But Orson points out something interesting: many bands were obliged to sign "work-for-hire" contracts, even though both parties (the record label and the band) knew that they (the artists) were not employed as work-for-hire. Seems to me that the artists should be able to sue and get their copyrights back, as such contracts are not valid (contrary to public morals: eg: lies).
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. Both articles are VERY well written, and I'm ecstatic to see some high-profile artists being quoted. Assuming the quotations are authentic (no pgp signatures) I have a lot of respect for those artists.
...
I'm really not sure why the RIAA hasn't come down on Used CD stores as much as they have with online file swappers
There is a local used-cd store in my neighborhood. I purchase CDs there quite regularly. In talking with one of the teenagers who work there, I discovered he had a laptop with him, connected to an external hard drive. I pointed at it, laughed, and he nodded his head.
You draw your own conclusions from that.
It's really too bad that the Slash Mods classifiy as "troll" or "flamebait" anything that they don't agree with, even if it is a valid point. And the parent raises a valid point. When you code for "The Man", he owns your work. When you make music for "The Man", he owns your work, and thus can do with it what He pleases.
Because Jewel has absolutely no say in the matter, it's up to her record label. They tend to be not so generous.
Another copy of Ender's Game.
Sure, I've already read it three times. My sone's already read it over a dozen times. But you can't really have enough copies of Ender's Game.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
The problem with this logic is the record company getting a larger cut than the artist who created the music, let's say $.20 for the artist, $.25 for the company serving the file, and $.04 for the greedy record company to pay their bureaucracy that's contributed nothing to the actual production and distribution of said song.
We all know what the obivous answer is, just like we all know things like big government squanders our tax dollars and the Patriot Act is used to subvert due process. The problem is that we have to act as a group, put aside our self interest for an indefinite period, to force the change.
If the artist stop releasing new "product" for the RIAA to push and only play live to make a living, if music buyers stop making any purchases until prices drop/product improves/delivery methods change, and if pirates stop downloading for a week (call it a proclaimed week of silence) to let the music industry know that we get it, that might at least get their attention. It's tough to kill a bloated, greedy monster of this size.
Why would author care if a musician's IP is being stolen? Oh, right. Slashdot will post any anti-RIAA rhetoric.
I find Card's description of the old copyright system troubling. He says that the old system was bad because it only granted a monopoly for 52 years before the the work fell into the public domain and whines that he or his descendants might not die before that happened. This is ridiculous. The section of the Constitution (Article I, Section 8) that gives congress permission to create copyright law says that the purpose is to encourage "progress in science and the useful arts." Nowhere does is say anything about providing a welfare system for authors who get lazy and squander their earnings and their nidhoggic progeny.
If your dad was a plumber, would you expect that a leaky pipe he fixed 50 years ago would buy you a new house today? Why should copyright holders and their descendants be any different. If authors plan on maintaining a lifestyle after they get older, they should get a 401k like everyone else.
The framers decided that 14 years, extensible to 28 was long enough to encourage authors to keep science and the arts progressing, while still keeping the public domain well stocked with good material so that other authors could do their bit to advance science and the useful arts. The system enacted by Congress in 1978, and more recently with the Sonny Bono Copyright term extension act is so unbalanced that not only is it unconstitutional, its stagnating the intellectual development of our society.
they are.
Now, suddenly, the $500billion electronics industry that makes CD burners and MP3 players is going to be seeing declining sales. And the $50 billion record industry sales went up a couple billion. Which industry do you think has more power?
The whole situation is pretty strange. Consider that Sony Electronics makes something like $40 billion a year. And Sony Entertainment makes around $4 billion. Sony Entertainment is a record company, and part of the RIAA. Sony Electronics makes CD burners, MP3 players, Car CD players that can play MP3's, Computers, and various other electronics used in these 'illegal' copying pratices. Do you think AOL-TW makes more money from their record company division, or their ISP division (that allows people to download using p2p)?
Maybe someone can shed some light on who's making these decisions in the RIAA and why these companies are allowing it to do what it's doing.
Speak before you think
WTF!! Do you have to be fucking stupid to be a moderator? Is there some kind of signup sheet on Slashdot that says "I am stupid make me a moderator"???
Hey retard
As an author you get a percentage of profit/revenue on each item sold. You don't get recurring payments for the same book you sell to the same person once.
... But it is definitely not a resolution. Just because the artists "speak out" against the RIAA's practices doesn't the RIAA gives a damn. When the artists start pressuring their respective labels to break away from the RIAA, that's when they will make a difference. Also, a shameless plug (apologies for the terrible server): My letter to the RIAA
Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff tha-- MICRO$OFT IS THE DEVIL!!1
Common sense says that at least some of the people downloading music would have otherwise bought the CD. But as has been pointed out over and over again here, if the CD didn't cost so fucking much, people would probably rather own the CD. Just think of how many CD's you might own if they only cost $5? Probably many more times the value of any "lost" income from lowering the price.
I'm not sure I want a system that requires any band that wants to make money to go on huge long tours rather than sell a lot of records. The Beatles couldn't have thrived in a system like that. Any system that allows a bunch of nomadic stoners to thrive and not the greatest band ever causes me concern.
This "make money touring" idea seems very constraining to me. It seems like it will produce a lot of music that will get old fast. How many young handsome men in tight-fitting heavily-worn secondhand clothing making songs out of major chords and covering their stratocasters in hip stickers can one really take? (Don't answer that ladies/gay men) I've had it up to my neck with MP3-friendly indie rock bands, and their spoiled twat fans who go to the concerts and peer carefully around them to make sure they're not making themselves look uncool by being more into the music than anyone else. These bands ran out of names (not to mention songs) long ago (Neutral Milk Hotel? That's not a name, you cunts), so they might as well just refer to themselves by numbers now, since that's all they really are - small little unique but insignificant numbers in a sea of more insignificance. When will another Bob Dylan, Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana - any band that a fairly large culture can get behind and identify with - happen again? The answer looks bleak. The real explanation to the problem is very long and complicated, but I don't see how widespread MP3 distribution of music can do anything but diffuse, jade, and deaden the cultural excitement that music can invoke. Geeks on slashdot tend to look at this in only one way - their analytical, accountant-style way that tries to look for math-like solutions to problems. But music - especially the reasons we humans like music so much! - is more complicated than that and can't really be analyzed on this level.
One thing that's happening is that bands are stuck in several abusive relationships these days. One (some aren't at this stage yet) is with their blood-sucking record company, another is with their fans. (I'll only go into the one with the fans because the r.c. one is obvious.) A band's primary goal in being a band - even if they say it isn't, with very few exceptions - is to be liked and to be famous. The band realizes it can't get famous without being heard, so it tries to record more, and play more shows to get the word out, and sell CDs at the concerts etc. But they soon learn this doesn't work, because there is too much competition. Music is a market, and any individual band is small beans. So they see that their fans like MP3s and they say, uh, ok, yeah, we like MP3s too! MP3s, yeah man, cool stuff. Hehheh. And they release their songs in MP3 and give all their fans full access to them via the "band blog" or whatever. Basically what they do is whore themselves in every way possible in an effort to compete, and they all end up losing, and the "consumer" wins BIG TIME (in the short-term). Of course, now the consumer is suffering because music is starting to suck, reason being, the consumer is impeding the mechanisms - however flawed those mechanisms might be - by which music reaches mass culture.
Here is what music needs today (or at least here is one thing that would help): For bands to grow backbones. They need to stand up on stage and say, alright, you spoiled thick rimmed glasses-wearing fucks, you're welcome for coming, we're going to play you 12 songs tonight that are all fucking incredible, and if you don't like them, you can go fuck yourselves, because seeing us is a privilege, not a right, and frankly, at $20 a head, you got a great deal. And if I ever catch one of you punks illegally copying OUR MUSIC without our permission, I'll put this 'ere guitar in your crotch. Maybe this sounds funny, but the first talented band to come along with good songs and adopt this strategy of asserting itself - I guarantee it will be bigger than Nirvana was. Do I expect this to happen? No, I pretty much expect more "yes sir, we'll give you the music you like sir, yes you can have MP3s sir, yes we like to give our MP3s away sir!" But I can dream.
Yup. What a shame for you that OSC won the "allowed to be an author" lottery, and you didn't. Tough break that you're stuck in the "only permitted to work 40 hours a week for wages" class.
If only there were a system that would somehow allow anyone who wants to write to submit their work to various publishers to see if it were fit for public consumption.
Me? I'm the weirdo who does both, holds a standard job, and writes instead of all that sleeping.
I propose one other possible explanation for the music industry downturn:
DVDs, high-speed internet, cellular phones, game-boy advance, X-box, Playstation.
I've got a 15 year old sister and she works after school to pay for all these little things. 10 years ago kids didn't have to choose between so many forms of entertainment. What used to be spent on CDs is now divided amongst the things listed above. Therefore, less to spend on CDs.
Anyone who doesn't see that is a moron. But that's just my stupid little opinion.
-ted
According to a research at an English University, people who insist on being paid under the table do so to avoid paying taxes.
the same who complained about poor record sales due to ...
> And if you don't think artists should get
> copyright protection for years, well, then you
> certainly shouldn't be behind the record companies
> getting it instead.
Pardon me, but didn't the artist sign their rights to the music away when they signed that contract?
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce
actually, I believe according to the MLA you are allowed to start sentances with "and". Also, "Can" and "may" are also interchagnable.
-------
Support Indy Music. Buy
A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 5TH OF FEBRUARY 1841
"I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living."
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
You miss the point. I download songs to try and find stuff that is worth a purchase. To be honest I don't care if you consider that like a theft, but that's the way I decide what songs are worth my bucks.
I would also like to point out a few points:
1 - The fact that I get or not the song from the internet is irrelevant. I am not stealing since I am not depriving someone from stuff he has, nor profits he could make. How can someone steal bits? Even those are just copied into my box!
2 - To prove me that I am doing something wrong you would have to show me how I am hurting somebody. I'm not reselling the music I download, nor even uploading it online... just downloading. A theft to me is what I explained on point 1.
3 - I am actually helping the corps make some better publicity of their songs by actually downloading what I find and buying those CDs I trully like. Otherwise they would be loosing a profit. So to put that in their words, I would be committing a crime if I didn't do so (hehehe).
Just think about it,
Decameron
diegoT
No, I think here at Slashdot, you satrt with "Ummm..." and follow with something that essentially states "you are an idiot".
To some extent I blame the artists for signing those incredibly horrible Work Made For Hire contracts in the first place. If they stopped signing away all their rights, and this soulless monster known as RIAA could be removed from the question, attention could then be focused on the core issues surrounding copyright: (A) the right of creators to profit (or not: their choice) from their work (as embodied in the file-swapping/piracy phenomenon), and (B) the right of the public to (at some point) claim that material as shared property (as embodied in Disney & friends' purchase from Congress of perpetual copyright extensions).
Your excuse does NOT justify downloading bucketloads of mp3s "because I can't afford to buy CDs".
Why not?
Maybe if he stops buying CDs at the rate he would ordinarially and buys other things instead, but otherwise he's not even so much as affecting anyone other than himself.
For me, it rendered fine on OO.o 1.1RC3 on W2K (I've got OXP for when I need it - and I think I'd rather use it - it took 5 minutes to load the presentation in OO.o).
I just got done listening to a couple of Card novels on MP3. I bought the books over a year ago but haven't gotten the time to read them. I put them on my MP3 player and listened while working around the house.
Whenever I do this, I go buy a copy of the book I'm listening to, if I don't already have it. Unlike music, books are still an awesome deal for the money. I don't want to cheat the artist, I just want the info in the form that I can use best.
"No, I think here at Slashdot, you satrt with "Ummm..." and follow with something that essentially states "you are an idiot"."
Ummmmmmm. . . Yeah, right Sparky. Whatever.
KFG
From the article:
Sure it was, once you realize that copyright was never meant to grant a copyright holder perpetual income. Copyright was meant to be an incentive to publish, part of a bargain with the public. So a limited term of copyright (which we don't have today thanks to retroactive term extension) that expires well within someone's lifetime (which we also don't have today) were both good things. Mark Twain fought this and we (as a society) are better off for his not having gotten his wish in his lifetime. If the term of copyright was then what it is now, we wouldn't have as many of his works to share (we might not have any, they might all be tightly controlled by his estate like Mitchell or Gershwin's estate handles their works). You don't spur society to publish more work by granting them everlasting power to deem how the work can be disseminated and built upon.
I think it's reasonable to say far more works would have been lost to time because nobody could legally preserve them by copying them (a time-honored means of saving knowledge for future readers). The Public Domain Enhancement Act (H.R. 2601) attempts to restore a more reasonable effective term of copyright without violating on the Bern treaty. I encourage everyone to contact their congresspeople to co-sponsor this act.
Once you recognize that nobody makes ideas in a vacuum and we all base everything we think and do on the work of others, you get to a point where you begin to question the underlying assumptions of copyright and anyone who pitches copyright as property (a prejudicial term, at the least). I wonder about a far shorter term of copyright and whether society would benefit from not allowing certain expressions to not have copyright power at all (such as non-free software which remains non-free even after it would enter the public domain because the source code for the program is never revealed).
Digital Citizen
The point is that the money they make from T-shirts and stuff like that is cash in hand, not some small percentage from the labels- plus a biggish cut of the gate, plus they sell more albums after the concert too.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I know its great that a famous author is writing about this topic. His thoughts are clear, focused, and his point is strong. He shows the RIAA for what it is and shows why they are completely wrong. But here is something to keep in mind, what an analyst was saying on CNBC about the financial side, that the RIAA no longer cares about their public image. Their public image is right up there with Microsoft, so like Microsoft, they only are looking for profits.
Suing anyone and everyone is their tactic. If they get most people to stop sharing then they may be able to claim a short term victory. The only thing that can stop them in the US is if our Congress acts against them. Let's hope public image and voter sentiment makes copyright issues a more important topic in the next year. Otherwise it won't matter if a dozen mainstream authors and big artists come out.
Here's hoping.
Hope someone can help me with a site cite, but for years, the major labels have been releasing less new work and more repackagings of previously released material. They not only noticed this market, but are deep into it.
[wait, here's one link, George Zieman's analysis of RIAA accounting at azoz.com]
"This is not a sig." -- R.
Larger, but not as much larger than it already is. It's still at least somewhat fairer to the buying public...
The CB App. What's your 20?
Yes, you're right. And since you're such the expert, how many novels have you written and published?
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
That's exactly the point. I think the artists should be getting those royalties, not the record companies.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Sorry the link didn't come through, here it is. Note that there are several follow-up articles to this December 2002 piece.
"This is not a sig." -- R.
The economics of being an author is very different then the economics of working as a programmer, or as a janitor, or whatever it is you do for an hourly rate. Shocking, shocking I tell you. It's entirely possible Card could work for a year on a book, and never see a dime (okay, maybe that's only true for a new author). Being an author is very risky.
The economics are only different because authors, like musicians, are screwed royally by publishers. If Mr. Card had seen more of the revenue from his book sales, he wouldn't be so dependent on royalties extending to the end of his life. He would have made enough to save for a decent retirement like the rest of the working world. Oh yeah.. and his work would all be in the public domain, as the copyright system originally intended. It's hard to blame him, though.. he's just a victim of the same system. Once again, a case for eliminating the middlemen through technology. How about this novel idea (ok, bad pun):
- Write a really good book. Put the first chapter or three online as a teaser.
- Sell it yourself for $2 per copy online, but without any stupid DRM restrictions. Most people are not going to P2P-swap material that cheap anyhow. If any do, who cares.. they probably wouldn't have bought it otherwise.
- Re-release it as public domain after 500,000 copies are sold. People who paid enjoy the fact that they were patrons of an art now benefitting all of society.
- Retire a millionaire or repeat the process as desired. Capitalism at its finest!
It may be argued that publishers are needed to gain enough recognition to sell sufficient copies, however I believe this is another notion made obsolete by modern technology of instant communication and the social factors that surround it. This is especially true for established authors and artists, but it even works for newcomers. How many paid advertisements have you seen for homestarrunner.com? Yet that site gets tens of millions of hits and is growing steadily in popularity. Even if they only sell t-shirts and related merchandise, it proves that popularity can be home-grown.
That was GREAT!
what?
And we all know that Locke always takes the hard stance against the RIAA, and a neutral stance against Microsoft.
Only the biggest bands make money touring, most bands who write their own songs make their money from publishing AKA mechanical royalties which pay $0.08 a track sold.
The music creators are voluntarily transferring their copyrights to the record companies. Despite Card's colorful language, no one forces them to do this or to agree to the record companies' terms. The creators choose this course (over, say, trying to sell their music on the net themselves) because they see it as the most advantageous for their own situation.
When you purchase the CD, you are implicitly agreeing to respect the copyright. That limitation is, in effect, a condition of the sale. The record companies, acting as the agents of the music creators, are saying, buy this only if you agree not to redistribute the music or violate any other copyrights.
Once you have bought a CD, you are bound by your promise. You have agreed not to redistribute the contents. If you then share the music online, you are behaving dishonestly. You took something of value in exchange for your promise, and you are going back on your word. You are showing yourself to be a liar who breaks his promises.
All unauthorized file sharing is built upon a foundation of dishonesty. This is the real problem with the popularity of P2P networks. They are further eroding the morals and standards on which our culture was built. There was a time when a person was judged by whether his word was good. This judgement provides a basis for trust and cooperation. Without this foundation of honesty, our complex technological civilization will suffer.
There is no honor among thieves, nor among liars. Join me in refusing to participate in P2P filesharing networks that are built around lies and deceit. Boycott those who would throw away their good name for a few hours of music. Reclaim your honor!
It's a risk. If the artists try to unionize, the labels will likely dump many artists and replace them with emerging groups hungry for a record contract. But, if the major artists get together and form a strong economic block, they could carry the rest of the artists along with them. Such a union could establish by force a just, time-limited, standard recording contract that respects the rights of the artist.
Or, with enough money, they can make their own labels. As I understand it, this is how United Artists started. Back in the day, Hollywood was ruled by the studio system, in which actors were more or less owned by their studios in the same manner that recording artists are owned by labels today. United Artists, the Screen Actors Guild, and other groups helped break the studio system, and now actors are guaranteed compensation at a minimum rate under standard SAG contracts, and are also allowed to take their talent anywhere they want. There is no particular reason why recording artists cannot do this, especially when it's much less expensive to record an album than it is to produce a motion picture.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
Of course it does. MTV and music radio has gone WAY downhill in the last 15 years. For many people, neither is a useful sampling medium anymore. So instead of "getting something for nothing" from MTV, people have migrated to P2P networks.
The net effect is identical.
Subsequently, the moral conclusions and legal consequences should be identical.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If he produces something that people are willing to pay for, more power to him. It is a sweet deal.
Yes. Too sweet. The deal (copyright term) is set by Congress, but they're not supposed to subsidise authors, they're supposed "to promote progress of the sciences". When they extend copyright they diminish the public domain and this loss must be properly compensated by encouraging new works. Of course this balance act will not allow for life-long copyright terms.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
I find it hilarious that this guy thinks artists are being ripped off because they voluntarily sign over copyright, or don't get published/produced. People go to the recording industry/pulishers because they are unwilling to mortgage their home on their music/writing career. So they go to the industry, who risk a lot of capital on their work, and are surprised that this company wants the rights to their work as well as the lion's share of the profits. The deserve this since they're taking all the risk. If you're that great, you can get a better deal elsewhere. But if your some random talent, your odds of making it are poor, and the industry may never recover its investment. Don't like it, don't sign up, like the author said. Go to a bank instead, and see if they'll from you the money to start your career. See what kind of luck you have there. PLease stop this nonsense however that the recording/publishing industry serves no purpose but to exploit artists. There the ones that give artists a chance in the 1st place.
Vote for Pedro
I don't give a damn about what other people use it for but I use it to pirate software and download porn.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
I've been getting more and more pissed everytime I go to a movie and see this damn intro about the carpenter who is loosing work because of pirates. As long as movies keep getting made, he has got a job. If someone pirates something, that just takes out of the the actors and studios monster profits, right? This guy gets his paycheck and then is off the job once the movie is made. It's insulting.
I'm sitting here staring at my collection of LEGAL dvd, vhs, cd, and tape media wondering just how much money I've spent in my life on these morons? I'm just a student, so it's a big percentage of my income that goes to the entertainment industry. I wish I could know that creative people got most of my money.
I personally quit filesharing recently... I used it to find new music that was worth my money. Now I'm less likely to buy a new CD if I haven't downloaded a least a couple good songs first.
-k
Plus he's a Republican. I figured he'd be a conservative from his fiction, but reading through his other articles, he's pretty solidly pro-Bush and anti-Dixie Chicks. He's a pretty good political writer though. It's not all that surprising, but it's really jarring to see how much more coherent he is than 90% of the political columns I see. I mean, he actually has a train of thought, that's light-years ahead of anything the NYT or the Wall Street Journal's put out in the last 5 years. Too bad I disagree with almost every one of his opinions except the mp3 one.
Even better, now two of my favorite political writers are Card and this guy.
ideas:
Pretty soon this one artist (with his one 'hit') will be a force to recon with.
Any thoughts?
Remember, it was authors who signed up for the deal, so they signed up to get screwed. If they could get a better deal any way, they would have. Publishing is currently as effecient as anybody has managed to make it. Music might be a cartel, but publishing I'm betting isn't.
Kirby
I looked at some of his other articles on the site and he argues:
OK, he's right about that last one.
A few of the articles are interesting, most of them just show how far-right the people who don't consider themselves far-right have gone in the US.
OK, I'm exaggerating. There are some articles that show the common sense he seems to think permeates the whole site. Most of it reads to me like the the comments of the little old midwestern ladies who said "what harm can it do to tell people about Jesus" to justify the religious literature given out in Afghanistan. There are sane reasons to disagree, you don't hear them on American TV (but you do on the BBC and the CBC), and it's not because the American press is a liberal fiefdom.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
All they are doing is a PR move to make it seem that they care about their "fans," and in reality they hope action is taken against those who illegaly share their music.
They don't care, just as long as they don't have it end up like they support the suing of a 12 years old parent's.... Oops wait I forgot, this is slashdot so let me change it to the propagandacally correct "proverty stricken 12 year old smart honor student who didn't know she was doing something wrong and breaking the law."
Cool! I don't have to buy Card's books anymore. I can just download all of them for free off of Freenet, Kazaa, etc.
Any (minimal) chance that I might actually feel guilt over taking the product of another person's labor without compensation has been completely eliminated! Thanks!
If there was a "friends" episode where Joey or Chandler was busted for swapping Mp3's and fined a huge sum. In my minds-eye, it would make a really cool episode, but with the attitude of hollywood towards filesharing (heck, people bootleg friends episodes too) I doubt it would fly.
From the article, my emphasis:
And the most obnoxious feature of the law was that some authors outlived their copyright. Their most popular works would go into public domain while they were still alive and counting on the income.
I beg your pardon?! The law says (said) "copyright expires after 52 yrs" yet the author is surprised that it actually does?
There's plenty of financial institutions willing to take some of his money in return for a guaranteed monthly payment when he comes of age. If he wants Congress to do this for him it's fine with me, but copyright law is the wrong place to do it. Rather, copyright is supposed to "promote science" - that won't happen through nuking the public domain in the service of authors with lacking predictive skills. It's bad enough as it is with the PD being nuked in the service of mouse-infested corporations.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Point being, these Baen CDs are released, shared if you will, in an orderly fashion, controlled by the publisher. This is light-years away from the "file-sharing" crowd, who seem to be asserting that it is the consumer who gets to decide what gets released free to the world.
Maybe the Baen library will end up a huge success and make them scads of money. Shouldn't it be their choice to release it? After all, it's their risk.
Theft? Where?!
Oh, you mean all those zeroes and ones on my computer that coalesce to form John Farnham mp3s??
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Even better is the fact that the U.S. government also keeps it's books Enron style. (I guess it's the American way.) That's why most Americans don't understand the Social Security and medicare problems that are coming just down the road. The true costs are all hidden.
Invalid Form Key: Chances are Slashdot's software sucks.
But if nobody ever makes a movie out of an OSC book, that's money he lost. He is risking money he could otherwise have because he thinks someday his copyrights may be worth more than he ever made off his books. The publishers are willing to pay more if an author signs a work for hire statement because they know there is a chance to make money from a movie in the future. They are willing to pay more to buy the copyright than to merely license the work.
Eat at Joe's.
Anyone care to fill me in?...tia!
Call me a crazy dreamer, but I believe that's a play on one of his most popular titles, Speaker For the Dead. When
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Here are the terms under which you can swap Grateful Dead MP3's It's very similar to the Creative Commons license -- makes sense, since they pretty much pioneered and popularised the concept. So...if it were formalised under Creative Commons licensing, then the whole Grateful Dead catalog could go into the CC-registered database--for your furthur fair use and enjoyment.
You all should be so lucky; he's a profoundly intelligent and wise individual. I've never read any of his books, but hearing him just talk about politics and religion for half an hour made a believer out of me.
Good to see more of the same common sense in this article.
A "handful of monopolies" would be an "oligopoly".
One of my favorite words for some strange reason, 8^)
Incidentally, you will be happy to learn that the senate just struck down the new FCC rules that allowed further conglomeration of media industries: http://www.iht.com/articles/110190.html
(from their web site: www.disciplineglobalmobile.com)
The motto of Discipline Records is:
"The phonographic copyright in these performances is operated by Discipline Records on behalf of the artists, with whom it resides. Discipline accepts no reason for artists to give away such copyright interests in their work by virtue of a "common practice" which is out of tune with the time, was always questionable and is now indefensible."
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
You know, that's actually a little funny, because I DID download all his books off the internet, and then read them on my PDA instead of buying them. Ha!
Author Max Barry of Jennifer Government fame has an article on his site that takes these ideas further, extrapolating the file-sharing trend to its logical(?) conclusion: the end of copyright as we know it.
Interesting to see another content provider on this subject... like Card, he doesn't seem especially worried about people pirating his books.
I should buy some cement.
<3 Orson Scott Card. He is my HERO! (And one of the best authors, and my favorite author of all time.) Everything that his pen writes is so true. Even now there is nothing that I've read by him that I've disagreed with.
It'd be nice if he'd stand up before some appelate courts to argue the case of the filesharing and p2p if ever someone stands up to the RIAA. His rhetoric is all we need to get the government to open their ears and realize that we've got it right. Maybe he'd be able to get the copyright laws changed.
Many artists painted the record industry as a bloated, overstuffed giant with too many mouths to feed and too many middlemen to pay, selling an overpriced, often mediocre product.
Gee, ya think??
The RIAA did not initiate these lawsuits to defend artists' rights, the musicians say, but to protect corporate profits.
Considering the RIAA is NOT made up of any of the musicians but CEOs and lawyers who can't stop putting their hand in the cookie jar. (Then whine when the cookies are gone. RIAA: "WHAA! These eville internet kidz stole our cookies! WHAA!".)
Most acts maintain Web sites, and virtually every one features some free downloads. Country Joe McDonald said he posts more than 50 tracks available for free downloads on his site, countryjoe.com.
Now this is an excellent idea. This is what all the artists should be doing to get people interested in their music. And it allows the artists to make contact directly with the fans and bypass all those shady promoters and middlemen. (Are you hearing this RIAA!?! Either you change your business model or go the way of the dinosaur. Actually, don't change, I'd rather see the big record companies just fade away.)
!@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
Oh, please. This one time I do have to stand up and say whoever modded it as troll is an idiot. That was not a troll. It was just me giving my opinion.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I agree with most of what you say, but I have to take issue with the cost of a "Decent" studio.
I have a computer based home studio set up. It wasn't cheap. It was obsolete in months (actually, it was probably obsolete before I put it together!)
But most importantly, it doesn't compare to the Pro quality stuff I've heard!
Much of the equipment is expensive BECAUSE it's not standardized and in fact could not be standardized.
Much of the equipment can and has been built "on a chip" very cheaply, yet still does not retain the quality that the PRO gear has.
The difference is barely noticable until you stack all of these things on top of each other.
Track after track after track of minutely lower quality gear shows up in the final mix.
I've looked into Open source software for studio gear, and would LOVE it if it would happen. Unfortunately it's nowhere near even the lower end home studio gear that I have.
Why is the quality of even the low end gear lower?
Manufacturers of the lower cost gear tend to cut corners on vital components (the AD/DA converters not being made of gold, for instance)that are not noticeable to the human ear on (lets say)16 tracks, but become very noticeable on (lets say)32-64 tracks, not to mention the master.
The prices of alot of this equipment has come down significantly in the last 10-15 years, and I wouldn't doubt that producers are taking a cut,
But I assure you that it's far from open source on commodity hardware.
If I'm wrong, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me, it would make my year.
Hell for that matter, I'll experiment with anything you find and try it out just on the hope!
I do, however, download songs (I'm in Canada, so nyah) and listen to them. It's my radio. It's radio to many other people. If I find some stuff I like, I go buy the CD and make my own good quality MP3s (see www.hydrogen-audio.org for the EAC/LAME alt-preset standard goodness) for listening to in the car's MP3 player, where I do most of my listening. We all know the vast majority of MP3s out there for download sound like crap. When I find something I'll listen to again and again, I go buy the CD, I can justify buying it when I like it. Getting harder to justify though, with how insane dynamic compression on CDs these days, though. It's a shame when you have to run each and every new CD through Cool Edit Pro's clipped peak restoration plugin just to safeguard your tweeters.
I have one real problem with the current CD paradigm of music distribution, and it boils down to the fact that I don't want half of the songs that are so generously included on the album. I end up having to pay 15 bucks for one song I like, all too often never playing the other tracks because they're thrown-together crap. This isn't always the case, but it seems more and more CDs are like this. Sure, occasionally I found another non-single song I liked on the album but I don't like being forced to buy all the rough for the one diamond in it. And CD-singles aren't always available for the songs I want.
When I buy books, I don't have to buy most of an author's collection to get the one book I want.
When I buy art, I don't have to buy the artist's entire portfolio for one painting.
When I buy a game, I don't have to buy the whole series the game is based on.
Why is the music industry different in this respect?
Single-song purchasing via downloads I fully support and I think Apple's initiative in this is a step towards the future of music.
"Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
I'm not supposed to get jigs in it!
"If you got together with a few of your neighbors and each of you bought different CDs and then lent them to each other, that wouldn't even violate copyright."
.
The following is printed on the cover of my copy of The Velvet Underground's self-titled album (in CD format):
"Copywrite 1996 Polygram Records, Inc. . .
Unauthorized copying, reproduction, hiring, LENDING, public performance and broadcasting prohibited."
Emphasis mine.
"But it's mine."
What's yours. Describe it. I can't fathom how you think you can "own" a tune or an idea. The very idea is so farfetched that it stretches the boundaries of common sense.
Its like looking at an Escher painting and then saying "Well, you see, the hands are all drawing each other. I completely understand".
Card should stick to fiction. I wasn't impressed by his argument, and the number of errors in it don't speak well to his fundemental understanding of the issue.
Copyright is a temporary monopoly granted by the government -- it creates the legal fiction that a piece of writing or composing (or, as technologies were created, a recorded performance) is property and can only be sold by those who have been licensed to do so by the copyright holder.
This is untrue in several respects.
Firstly, there is no legal fiction that works are property, nor is there any legal fact that works are property. Creative works are not property. The copy in which a work is embodied certainly may be, but copies are distinguishable from the works they incorporate. Copies are not pieces of writing, or composing, or performances; those are works. Copies would be books, sheet music, or CDs embodying the works.
Furthermore, Card ignores 17 USC 109 (and a few related provisions) by making the erroneous claim that resale is limited to authorized persons. If he's ever set foot in a used bookstore, he'd know that his statement is simply incorrect.
And of course, he's ignorant of the history of protection afforded to sound recordings -- they were ineligible for copyrights until the early 1970's, long, long after the technology for recording performances had arisen. Edison cylinders are positively 19th century, for christ's sake!
In exchange for the private monopoly of copyright, when it expires the work is then free for anyone to perform or print or record.
Mm... this is an odd way to phrase this. I don't often see the copyright quid pro quo expressed from the author's point of view, and it seems rather lacking.
If we assumed that there was nothing more to it than this, there would be no copyrights; why would the public grant a copyright preventing them from freely making and enjoying copies so as to enjoy the public domain later, when by not granting copyrights they could enjoy the public domain now?
The missing element is progress. The reason copyrights are granted is so that we promote the _end_ of progress of knowledge generally by the _means_ of encouraging authors to create works which are of limited help towards the aim of progress during the copyright term, but are of maximal help towards that aim once the term expires.
We musn't grant these things because we feel like it or to help out authors or something. That would be really dumb for several reasons.
Until 1978, copyright only lasted 52 years in the U.S. -- and then only if you remembered to renew it.
56 years. A term of 28 years that could be renewed by the copyright holder in the last year (if he remembered -- if it was worth it to him, which it often was NOT) for another 28 years.
The term before that was 42 years (28+14), and before that was 28 years (14+14).
There were other technical lapses that could result in the inadvertent loss of copyright -- it wasn't really user-friendly.
User-friendliness is not a requirement of copyright law. To a degree it might be useful -- if copyrights are so difficult to acquire that they are not an incentive to authors, that's a problem. OTOH, if they are an incentive to authors, they needn't go so far as to fawn over authors.
Inadvertent losses of copyright are good. They ensure that works are not protected by law, yet are so worthless that their copyright holders don't care to maintain them. Such works should be in the public domain; the author doesn't seem to care, but there is still a deterring effect on the public that should be remedied. If action were required for this to occur, it would never be forthcoming; lazy copyright holders would hold onto their copyrights on the off chance that they'd be worth something later, and because it would cost money to get rid of them, but it's free to sit on them.
Similarly, if authors can't afford it, it implies that the work is a commercial f
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
File-sharing made me spend more money on music.
In the last 6 years or so (I only got the Internet about 3 years ago, btw), I didn't buy any music. Not a single penny! (And that would have been the same even if I wouldn't have had the Internet to download music).
I'm the kind of dude who listens to music but who doesn't love music enough to spend his money on it. So regardless of the fact that I can get a lot of music for free, I just don't spend money on music. Another reason, I guess, why I don't spend money on music is because it's hard for me to buy the stuff I like. Mainstream music shops don't sell my type of music.
But there have been a few exceptions in the last two months. I found some really cool psy/goatrance tunes on Usenet which I liked so much that I bought some CDs (4 in total) via a online shop! Without the freedom of the Internet, I would have never discovered this type of music, and I wouldn't have spend any money on it.
Shouldn't the record companies replace them for only the cost of the media? After all, I am buying the right to listen to that intellectual property. I'm surprised no one's filed a lawsuit over this...
Lawyers? (heh)
Put your money we're your mouth is.... If the economics are there, then do it.
I would if I was an author. My piece of the economic pie is Open Source based consulting. I develop and service free software. In the future I may write a book or service manuals related to software I develop. If my income stream is lacking, I'll try the approach I mentioned. I certainly will not sign any publishing deal where I get $2 of a book that retails for $20, however.
If they could get a better deal any way, they would have. Publishing is currently as effecient as anybody has managed to make it.
Once an easy-to-read (perhaps 200-300 dpi) display technology is readily available in convenient form factor, paperback books will quickly disappear. At this point, that's the only thing keeping authors from doing online-only publishing themselves. Books are easier on the eyes. When that changes, so will the business model.
It's a good article, but this is a really strange side-trek into weirdville.
It's like revoking Social Security? No, it's like getting fired from your job because you haven't done any work in 52 freaking years. If you're 72 and your copyright expired, that means you wrote the work when you were 20. Do you think you might have created something else of value in the intervening 52 years?
The vast majority of the value of any creative work is realized in the first few years. After that it rapidly tapers off to almost nothing. Works that have measurable value after 52 years are few and far between. If an author is relying on that to cover his retirement, he might as well invest in the lottery. If you do get lucky and write one of those few works that will still have value after 52 years, the work certainly paid off quite well years before, save some then.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
("My Van Halen royalties are history," said vocalist Sammy Hagar)
Perhaps he wouldn't have to worry about the royalties if he would have managed the money he made from sales of over 50 million CDs better.
What makes that bad? Where did that rule come from? It's a class thing, like most things in grammar. When your teachers told you that you shouldn't do that, they were trying to tell you to quit talking like you're poor. Ok, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but most linguists agree that grammatical rules that don't clarify meaning arise from social issues, not language ones.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
OSC, you just got yourself a sale.
I've read a few of your books, liked some of them, liked some of them less, but an article like this one deserves reward.
Can't wait for part two.
I just have an infinity number of monkeys using binary typewriters.
in the music business (and this dates back to a Guitar World, or some other guitar rag article from 1998) that the artists who publish records on major labels are lucky if they even see 1% of the sale price of a record... which is considerably lower than Card guesses at, but certainly add more fuel to the fire.
"Other bands play, but Manowar KILLS"
Imagine trying to stop signals originating in one side of your brain from reaching the other.
.HEAD in the year 3030, with DRM so you can bioport with the sentient Earth that Bill Gates has uploaded himself to as overlord.
That is equivalent of trying to stop information sharing in this ever more connected age.
Until Microsoft releases
I think there are too many people who like the utility of paper bound books. It'll take a long, long time to get an application tuned to the point that it is easy to use, and as useful to me as a paper bound book. The only things that I find enticing are, backup copies, being able to lug my entire book collection with me, and the ability to electronically search every book I have for a set of keywords. Even then, whenever I buy an electronic copy of a book, I always end up buying the paper copy anyways.
Kirby
Copyright (C) 2003 by Orson Scott Card. nice way to end it all, eh?
I hate to say it, but you are by far the funniest guy on slashdot. That, or your comments are extremely insightful. I wish I could mod all your posts +6!
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
I think that this commercial way of living was not chosen by all the people. It is the result of advertising. Now, it is the turn of some excecutives to get dissmissed by the consumers for incompetence.
New ways of earning money is going to be created by new generations of businessmen.
People should choose to have a voice in this new commerce. And should reject any creation of new monopolies.
This is a good chance for making good changes! (if it is possible to get something good from progress)
Rwe obliged 2 save our future by choosing:O3 hole-greenhouse effect instead of accepting everydays gossip-nonsense chat?
I have a very candid question here, so please be gentle...
With improvements in DRM and better compression, there should be a new way to be present on the internet, all the while protecting copyright.
Why don't record companies (or the artists themselves in fact) just circumvent the CD business altogether and make their new productions only available for sale on the Web, using a DRM protected format? This way *nobody* can ever make a copy of the song unless the seller allows it explicitly.
Apple's iTunes has all the needed technology, they could start offering songs that aren't available anywhere else.
Everybody wins: the seller saves on packaging and distribution, the consumer gets a better price, the artist presumably gets a bigger chunk of the pie, especially if the artist IS the seller as well (it shouldn't be very expensive to implement iTunes-type technology, or am I missing something?). The losers: the HMVs of this world...
One objection could be that buyers also want to have the songs on CD, but then again we've already shifted from vinyls to cassettes to CDs, maybe the next shift is to iPod type devices?
Is this already implemented by a music label or an artist? I know of musicians like Prince who have made some of their music available on the Web only, but I don't think they have sold that music using DRM.
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
I bought one of the Linkin Park CDs: Why? Cuz I like almost 80% of the songs on the CD
I didn't buy one of the Creed CDs: Why? Cuz I only liked 2-3 songs on the entire album.
I didn't buy one of Justin Timberlake CDs: Why? Cuz I hate every single song on there.
I didn't buy one of Britney Spear CDs: Why? Cuz I hate every single song and $15+ is too expensive for a mini-poster/photo album
When there are compliation CDs, where I can choose which song I want on the CD, I will gladly pay for that CD. CDs created by Recording Studios/Companies will sound better than an average mp3 (not an audiophile, but I hear the difference).
When something like this is avail, I would imagine a mounting popularity. This will not STOP piracy. But when something like this is avail to you, what possible excuse can you use other than "willingly pirate?"
He concisely proves all three major points about the problems with the law suits so far:
1. Record Companies are loathsome in their business practices, and often rob their talent.
2. Simple Economics: Some willing to pay nothing for a product wouldn't necessarily buy that product at $20 - simple supply and demand: the higher the price, the lower the volume
3. Bad vibe: Poor quality works, from subpar musicians, along with the negative vibes of the lawsuits killed interest. Napster created interest in many smaller, more talented acts, and diverted attention away from the pimp's top hoes.
but Britney Spears does. So do all the other talentless hacks out there. If anything, the Record Companies won't want anything to do with anyone with genuine talent. If Britney gets uppitty, she can be replaced. She has no leverage at all.
There's another problem with getting rid of the publishers, and can be summed up in one phrase I cringe whenever I here:
"I like all kinds of music"
If I ask someone what they listen to, 8 out of 10 times that's the first thing out of their mouth. To me, it sounds like they have no real taste in music. I don't mean bad taste, I mean no taste whatsoever. That's why crap like M&M and Britney Spears are so popular. Most people don't really care what they listen too. Whatever gets the most advertisement is going to reach the largest group of people then. Artists who want want to reach that large group (and who want to make a living off their music) will still be drawn to the RIAA's members.
Then again, maybe I'm being too pesimistic. Be nice if I was.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Of course,I'm sure that movie never got out of the red, either.
Looks good for your age..
"For the artists, my ass," said Draiman of Disturbed. "I didn't ask them to protect me, and I don't want their protection." The artists dont like the RIAA. They are after money. The greedy moneysuckers. but hey its the american way DOWN WITH THE RIAA
Doctors do Massage in Longview WA now, who knew?
From the article:-
Copyright is a temporary monopoly granted by the government -- it creates the legal fiction that a piece of writing or composing (or, as technologies were created, a recorded performance) is property and can only be sold by those who have been licensed to do so by the copyright holder.
Does this guy have a clue? IANAL, but even I know that copyright has nothing to do with property rights.
Copyrighted material is not anyone's property, but only the copyright holder has the right to copy it. Hell, the word "copyright" itself is the best description of what it means, and still we get this BS about "property" and the rights to sell.
The months are just too short. I can count the number of days on one hand.
Interesting, but...
Isn't this the same Orson Scott Card who told the Homeworld mod community they couldn't make a "Ender's Game" mod to that game?
I realize this isn't the exact same thing, and I am glad he has these refreshing views about copyright and filesharing, but I wish he could extend it to cover fan-art as well.
That said, he is well within his rights to deny them. It's his creation after all, and I guess he should have the final say.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
That's fair use.
Bracketed text mine.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Kids have something else to do with their time than listen to music. It isn't just about downloading, it is that their is more competition for something that is limited - people's free time.
See my journal, I write things there
Dont they do the same type of thing? Create a work of art, or simply a 20 line article or a 20 line script to automate backups. What I find funny is, Card explains how it should be unacceptable to sign a contract giving over the right to a work of writing to the publish company. Yet, hasnt this become an industry standard in the IT world. If you are hired by a company to write code, when you leave that position the belongs to that company. Why do WE as IR professionals accept that, but authors dont.
I've always thought about, but accepted it as many of you probably have. Why do we?
1. Wait 100 years for all Britney, Christina, NSuck and BSB song copyrights to expire. 2. Remake their songs and copyright your version. 3. ??? 4. Profit!
Isn't it interesting how you come to recognize posters based solely on their sigs???
Copyright is a set of laws to protect intelectual property. This includes all intangable work such as liturature, music, software. These rules are designed though to protect the growing industries not the individule artist, these laws are not protecting artists they are protecting corporate "gold diggers" pocket books and need to be rewritten so the artist gets a fair amount of the prophet.
I will add, though, that if you are sharing *any* copyrighted files with other people, then you *are* potentially causing a loss in sales. If someone downloads an mp3 from you, and consequently sees no further need to buy the CD, you do bear some responsibility for killing the sale.
My point was that the artist made the decision to sign that contract. If they want to give away their rights, so be it.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce
"1 - The fact that I get or not the song from the internet is irrelevant. I am not stealing since I am not depriving someone from stuff he has, nor profits he could make. How can someone steal bits? Even those are just copied into my box!"
You are depriving someone of the money they woudl have got had you actually PAID for the music you stole.
Simple as that.
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
People who are used to doing this sort of thing are very good at portraying a contract as being totally benign, and just ignore this paragraph! Those silly lawyers require it, but it doesn't really apply to you... Next thing you know, the majority of people who sign contracts do so without having really read or understood them.
Yes, it's everybody's responsibility to do so, but, gosh, when you bought your last car, did you REALLY read the whole warranty agreement? How about the agreement for the extended warranty that you paid another $800.00 for? And what about the loan terms? Are there pre-payment penalties in case you pay your car off early to save on interest? If you did, you're in the minority.
So even though it is the signor's responsibility to understand what they are signing, it's also true that the people writing the contract shouldn't be writing unethical terms in just because they can get someone to sign. If my auto loan contract required that I give my first born son to the loan agent, there is no way in heck I would let that be enforced, even if it was my fault that I didn't see it in the contract.
In theory, everyone reads their contracts. In practice, they don't, but people still deserve protection from predatory business people.
The CB App. What's your 20?
People have always been busy. But for many teens, music is part of their identity and their peer group is defined by what music they like. If you like cool music, it makes you cool. What music they like in turn influences what clothes they wear. I don't think this has changed significantly in the last 30 years. Have you seen any factual studies to support your assertion that kids are listening to music less? Are car audio sales down? Are MP3-player sales growing?
Thats why I'm sticking to the simplest reason: supply and demand, because it doesn't require any big social change, and the numbers are there to back it up.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
You are depriving someone of the money they woudl have got had you actually PAID for the music you stole.
Not really, because I decide what CDs are worth a purchase by downloading those songs. It's as simple as if I can't check myself the songs in the album before purchase, I won't be buying that CD at all. It's also as simple as if I don't like the songs I won't be buying it either, so I can't see how you can state that I COULD buy a CD I never listened to.
Maybe you think that people should trust the recording companies on what they're trying to sell them, but I prefer to personally check that when possible. Maybe you think it's morally wrong too, but I find morality can be quite customizable these days, most of the times to suit the needs of those up high. Telling me that what I'm doing is wrong is arguable... and to be honest I keep thinking I am doing the recording industry a favour by advertising their music to my own self.
Decameron
diegoT
" It's as simple as if I can't check myself the songs in the album before purchase, I won't be buying that CD at all."
I guess you have never set foot inside a music store for many many years then, otherwise you would know that it is perfectly possible to check any CD before buying it. I do that quite often if it is a CD of which I am unsure.
Tell me - when you download a CD and decide it is not worth buying, do you delete ALL of the tracks from your system? Including the track(s) you did like?
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
"I guess you have never set foot inside a music store for many many years then, otherwise you would know that it is perfectly possible to check any CD before buying it. I do that quite often if it is a CD of which I am unsure."
CD stores in Italy, which is where I live, don't offer that service, although I agree they should. And no, I don't go too often to music stores as I only go there when I know what I am going to buy.
"Tell me - when you download a CD and decide it is not worth buying, do you delete ALL of the tracks from your system? Including the track(s) you did like?"
Just to make it clear and easy... I buy all the CDs I can afford, when I like them. The problem is I can't afford to buy many with my current budget, and I honestly see no harm in downloading a song I couldn't possibly afford. As I stated before mine is just a copy of the song, and not something I stole (as in "deprive someone of it").
Now that said, no, I don't delete all the songs from the CDs I don't like, and if they were to offer the songs I like from that CD into a single, rest assured that I would put that CD into my list of stuff to buy.
My whole point in this thread was saying how it's not necessary true that everyone downloading songs is actually causing a "loss in profits".
Decameron
diegoT
Your post is more likely to be read if it is not made anonymously. Slashdot makes it very easy to skip past "Anonymous Coward" posts.
I understand you don't get these things with the work today, but I'm addressing how copyright should work, not how it works now. Simply restating the status quo doesn't justify the status quo.
Publishing research for a computer program is entirely different from publishing source code when the program enters the public domain. Research that leads to something is different from seeing the preferred form for modifying the work. But different kinds of works are hard to discuss simultaneously because they are put together differently and function differently in the world. With books, for instance, you already have a good deal of the material that comes closest to being the analog of computer source code--the work itself. I would consider requiring the distribution of electronic markup for the book, however. With computer programs there is a different situation. It is possible to obscure the source code in such a way that one effectively denies the public the opportunity to do the modifications that the public should be allowed to do with a PD computer program.
Then you must not like copyright at all because that is what copyright originally set out to do in the US--give authors an incentive to write and publish more work. In exchange, the government gives up some of the public's natural rights. The question is which of the possible ways to strike the copyright bargain is the best way for the public (because that is who copyright was built to benefit).
But it's okay to deny the public the ability to modify the PD work fully because it may somehow interfere with commercial gain? I say no, when a work enters the public domain modifying the work should no longer be the exclusive domain of the former copyright holder. This means distributing source code when the work enters the public domain.
I think RMS' advice in his essay on misinterpreting copyright regarding how to strike a new copyright bargain is helpful:
The entire essay is well worth anyone's time to read because it is so useful in debunking people's arguments which try to justify placing the publisher's copyright privilege at the same level of importance as the public's (or above that of the public). RMS makes it quite clear why this is wholly wrong and misguided.
Digital Citizen
So you freely admit to theft - you are downloading and keeping songs which you like an for which you have zero intention of paying.
You are stealing.
That is a fact, plain and simple. You are obtaining the song for free, despite the FACT that it has not been made available for free by the copyright owners and despite the fact that you are supposed to PAY for the song.
THAT is where you are comitting theft - depriving "them" of the money you owe them in exchange for having a copy of the song.
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
From his column on April 28 this year:
Within Iran itself, the people are coming to detest more and more the meaningless rigidities of religious rule. Being ruled by clerics is like being ruled by Microsoft -- somebody decides what's right for everybody and from then on no variation is permitted.
But -- again as with Microsoft -- while the people already trapped within the system are furious with the incompetence, blindness, and sheer meanness of their rulers, Iran's rulers are looking to expand their defective system into new territory.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Call it as you like, just don't expect me to believe in your morality. I see the offense represented by my actions as great as the offense anyone else takes part of when they photocopy a part of a book they don't own. If that's the kind of theft you are trying to prevent from happening then go on with your objective. I have a feeling the world won't be cleaner when dangerous book-copiers start paying big bucks too or going to jail. I mean... am I supposed to sue you because you quoted my copyrighted posts?
I'm wondering what you are protecting tho. If it's your morality then I can easily show you how mine can be totally different. If you're defending your country's laws I can easily show you how laws are not always fair. Especially those made to protect people that most of the time don't deserve protection.
Decameron
diegoT
This is a great article to arm people that haven't yet had a chance to hear the other side of the RIAA's arguement with intelligent fodder. It's well written and reveals quite nicely how topsy turvy the RIAA's logic is despite the fact that it's working -- a lot of people truly feel guilty or wrong even about copying a CD from someone of an album they own on cassette.
Even the story about the young child getting arrested has been perversed into the RIAA's favor. The other day I overheard a mother telling her young daughter to "watch out how much music you download because they're arresting little girls now." That's like telling a kid the boogie man really IS in her closet!
This might even be a good article to exerpt from when writing your congressmen about music copyright issues and the RIAA's abuse of power.
ôó
If I had my druthers I'd make it 15 years renewable once for another 15.
How about the original copyright term of 14 years, renewable once for another 14 years? Imagine that, the Founding Fathers had the right balance from the start!
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
Gosh, how obnoxious. It's just like how I painted this guy's garage only fifty years ago, and already he's stopped paying me! I was counting on that income! How am I supposed to support myself if people don't keep paying me for work I did long, long ago?
"It sure was strange to see something on Usenet about me that didn't involve Klingon gang rape." -- Wil Wheaton
I beg your pardod? Umm say your wedding photos included a less than modest garter shot. I want to own the copyright. I don't want the photographer including the photo in his on line resume. The work for hire should be just the work for hire, the photographer should have sold the copyright with the prints and negatives. I think more is needed in protection than just a standard model release form.
The truth shall set you free!
This is not a problem that should be solved by work for hire. If what you want is protection for people whose photos are taken, then you should think about how to provide that instead of using a totally different legal concept. What if someone you didn't hire takes an unflattering picture of you? You're just as screwed even with work for hire. Instead, the people whose pictures are taken should have joint ownership of the copyright with the photographer. If the photographer wants to distribute the photos then, he'll have to get a model release form saying that you approve of distribution by him.
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