Orson Scott Card on mp3 File Sharing

drjkt writes "Author Orson Scott Card gives his take on mp3 file swapping." Some artists are getting the idea.

Comments

About time

[XeresRazor]

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

[Overly Critical Guy]

I don't understand what you want changed. You want the ability to download music you haven't paid for? Clue me in.

Re:About time

[XeresRazor]

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).

Re:About time

[rgmoore]

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.

Re:About time

[XeresRazor]

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.

Re:About time

[Illbay]

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.

Re:About time

[Sphere1952]

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.

Re:About time

[Spy Hunter]

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?

Re:About time

[Spy Hunter]

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

[Spy Hunter]

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:About time

[dvdeug]

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?

Re:About time

[SirSlud]

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.

Re:About time

[Technician]

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.

Re:About time

[danila]

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. :)

Well, that settles it then

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[DrEldarion]

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

[buffer-overflowed]

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.

Re:Well, that settles it then

[schnits0r]

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

[xihr]

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

[garyrich]

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.

Re:Well, that settles it then

[ArekRashan]

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.

That byline 'speaker-for-the-dumb'...

[Sheetrock]

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?)

Re:That byline 'speaker-for-the-dumb'...

[Nasarius]

*cough* http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=dumb

Re:That byline 'speaker-for-the-dumb'...

[vondo]

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'...

[Hettch]

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.

e-books

[kirkb]

So would he mind if I pirated his e-books, then?

Re:e-books

[vondo]

See his final arguments.

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.

Re:e-books

[Sheetrock]

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.

Re:e-books

[isorox]

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:e-books

[RickHunter]

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

[_avs_007]

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

[syrinx]

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!

Re:e-books

[Jardine]

The only way he loses is if you decide he is a great author, so you pirate all his books.

Shit, I just bought all the Ender books. Are you telling me I could have avoided paying money and just got copies of them? Damn.

Oh wait, I can't stand reading e-books. Never mind.

Re:best quote from the article

[kfg]

"I'm no grammar nazi but aren't you not suppose to start sentences with "And"?"

And your point is. . . ?

KFG

Not actually all that helpful

[nenya]

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.

I can't wait...

[Dr Reducto]

He said:
Tune in next week for part 2
I bet next week is going to be an even more scathing commentary.

Grateful Dead

[nucal]

"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

[jonbrewer]

"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...

Re:Grateful Dead

[silicon_id]

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.

Re:Grateful Dead

[bitrott]

Really, I assumed they just got stoned. Very thoroughly stoned.

Re:Grateful Dead

[hondo77]

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.

Re:Grateful Dead

[Ziest]

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?

Re:Grateful Dead

[nhavar]

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. :)

New Buzzword

[contrasutra]

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).

Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:

[xhabbo]

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:

[__aagmrb7289]

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:

[Wordplay]

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:

[andcal]

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).

Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:

[cpt kangarooski]

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.

Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true:

[cpt kangarooski]

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.

First, it is not property....

[Anonymous Coward]

" 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....

[cpt kangarooski]

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.

Orson Scott Card

[__aagmrb7289]

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...

Re:Orson Scott Card

[__aagmrb7289]

True, but if you keep giving the book away, it's nice to have a copy around...

Article is +5 Insightful

[herko_cl]

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>

interesting about this whole issue

[yajacuk]

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.

Wow...

[JoeLinux]

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.

Re:Wow...

[hamsterboy]

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..

[3seas]

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:Wait just a sec....

[nelsonal]

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.

Re:Research

[NotQuiteReal]

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?

Not just a good author...

[Xenius]

...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"?

Re:Not just a good author...

[DennisZeMenace]

"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:RIAA

[__aagmrb7289]

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 vast majority of recording artists ...

[burgburgburg]

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 ...

[CrackHappy]

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?

Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...

[MushMouth]

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 ...

[ummit]

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.

This is old, and you may have seen it already, but it's pretty compelling:
http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/problemwithmusic. html

Re:The vast majority of recording artists ...

[MushMouth]

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.

You are lending your only copy...

[Jack_Frost]

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.

One thing bothers me...

[Anonymous Coward]

--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.

Hollywood vs. Enron

[The Lynxpro]

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.

Re:Hollywood vs. Enron

[JayBlalock]

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.

He makes a good point

[theboy24]

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'd only point out that. . .

[kfg]

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:RIAA

[Xcott Craver]

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.

X

Hey, he's talking

[TLouden]

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?

E-Books-- See Baen.com

[Soulfader]

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

[swillden]

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...

Re:E-Books-- See Baen.com

[A55M0NKEY]

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.

Re:Blow me, Card

[Soulfader]

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?

Re:Blow me, Card

[rhakka]

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.

Can't you just smell it?

[computerlady]

"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.

Re:Tech-saavy?

[shadowcabbit]

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.

boohoo steve and sammy!

[jgilbert]

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!

[PhxBlue]

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?

Re:Research

[Decameron81]

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

good article, but..

[kaan]

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?

Re:Blow me, Card

[ComputerSlicer23]

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" ...

[Sweetshark]

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.)

Re:Research

[MushMouth]

There is this study (you need powerpoint to read it, doesn't that suck)

The people to listen to

[downix]

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.

More Obvious

[phriedom]

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.

Re:More Obvious

[MuParadigm]

"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.

There's another angle to this

[HangingChad]

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.

Re:Research

[tomhudson]

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).

But didn't

[bob670]

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.

User-Friendly Copyright Laws

[sig]

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

[gregmac]

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.

Thomas Babington Macaulay explained it in 1841

[Sphere1952]

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."

Re:Research

[Decameron81]

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

Re:Research

[fenix down]

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 term of copyright has been exploited.

[jbn-o]

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:best quote from the article

[Esion Modnar]

I'm no grammar nazi but aren't you not suppose to start sentences with "And"?

Yes, you're right. And since you're such the expert, how many novels have you written and published?

Artists need a union

[DavidBrown]

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.

Re:Research

[jedidiah]

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.

movie copyrights

[goatbar]

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

Exactly

[junkgoof]

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.

Re:Research

[kgbspy]

Theft? Where?!

Oh, you mean all those zeroes and ones on my computer that coalesce to form John Farnham mp3s??

Or maybe, JUST FREAKING MAYBE

[devphil]

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.

Discipline Global Mobile

[mbourgon]

(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."

Whoa! Give the studios their due.

[linkjunkie]

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!

Unimpressed

[cpt kangarooski]

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

Re:Unimpressed

[anticypher]

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

I'm not stealing...

[dark-br]

I just have an infinity number of monkeys using binary typewriters.

Favorite Artist Quote (from the second article)

[StringBlade]

"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]

Bracketed text mine.

Re:File-sharing Made Me Spend More Money On Music

[cmpalmer]

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.

Re:Hmm, writers and programmers...

[Mr.Spaz]

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.