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.
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).
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.
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.
--
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
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.
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.
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 --
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. ".
Maybe you pirate one of his e-books and you like it enough to buy the print version for the "feel."
Maybe you don't buy that one in print, but buy others either in paper or electronically because you like his writing.
Or maybe you decide he sucks as an author and never read anything of his again.
In any of these cases, what has he lost? Nothing. You weren't going to plop down $7 for his paperback anyhow.
The only way he loses is if you decide he is a great author, so you pirate all his books.
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.
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: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.
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."
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
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.
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.
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...
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
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· 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.
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.
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.
The only way he loses is if you decide he is a great author, so you pirate all his books.
Even then he doesnt, technically, lose, he just doesnt gain, it's as if you never read his first book to find out how good he was.
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: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?
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
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:Research
by
Decameron81
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· 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
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· 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?
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
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.
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.
There's another angle to this
by
HangingChad
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· 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
User-Friendly Copyright Laws
by
sig
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· 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.
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.
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:Research
by
fenix+down
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· 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.
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.
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.
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 --
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
Maybe you pirate one of his e-books and you like it enough to buy the print version for the "feel."
Maybe you don't buy that one in print, but buy others either in paper or electronically because you like his writing.
Or maybe you decide he sucks as an author and never read anything of his again.
In any of these cases, what has he lost? Nothing. You weren't going to plop down $7 for his paperback anyhow.
The only way he loses is if you decide he is a great author, so you pirate all his books.
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.
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...
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.
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."
...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
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.
"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...
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*
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
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.
X
The only way he loses is if you decide he is a great author, so you pirate all his books.
Even then he doesnt, technically, lose, he just doesnt gain, it's as if you never read his first book to find out how good he was.
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
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?
"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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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:
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...
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