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Why Only Music?
The Importance of writes "Last week, Slashdot readers provided a number of answers to the question "What is Music?" in the context of compulsory licensing. Now LawMeme asks another question about compulsory licenses: Why Only Music? Many compulsory licensing schemes have been proposed to cover music alone, but most of the arguments in favor of a compulsory license for music apply equally as well to other media types. Millions share movies, P2P can't be stopped, the MPAA hasn't provided legitimate alternatives for what consumers want, etc. If music should have a compulsory license, why shouldn't movies, software, ebooks and other media also be covered by compulsory licenses?"
I open up a brand new paperback and see a EULA, is the moment I destroy the human race. =/
Email is king when it comes to my desktop, and Evolution is the best I've found. I like the virtual folders, multiple accounts, search capabilities, speed, and looks. There is very little I don't like about Evolution. That's why it's number one with me.
Digital photos are big with me, too. That's why the GIMP, gPhoto, and GQview are all on my top ten list occupying the number 2, 6, and 8 spots.
For my word processing needs, I look to OpenOffice.org. I know. It's not as fast or as polished as StarOffice, but not only does it do everything I need an office suite to do, it's free. That makes it number 3 on my list.
I've been a fan of gnumeric for several years. It's still my favorite spreadsheet for Linux. It weighs in at number 4. Browsers are a different story. I've switched several times, most recently away from Galeon. These days it's Mozilla for me, and it ranks 5th overall.
Number 7 is a game. All work and no play, you know. This little jewel has been played about 75 million times since it was released earlier this year. It's not free as in speech, but Id made it free as in beer. Enemy Territory is great for killing. Time, that is.
My 9th and 10th picks are new apps. New to me, at least. Number 9 is tvtime, a really nifty Linux TV program with spectacular performance. Good enough to hook your game console's TV out up to your TV card and play at the PC, too. And in 10th spot, good enough to rank higher if only I used it more, is Scribus, the great new DTP program for Linux.
OK, those are my picks. Of course your own personal top ten are going to be driven by how you use your Linux desktop, not how I use mine.
Here are mine again, this time in order.
1. Evolution
2. the Gimp
3. OpenOffice.org
4. Gnumeric
5. Mozilla
6. Gphoto
7. Enemy Territory
8. GQview
9. tvtime
10. Scribus
If music should have a compulsory license, why shouldn't movies, software, ebooks and other media also be covered by compulsory licenses?
It's bad enough music having it, how would you feel about the BAA (Book Association of America) sending you emails?
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
The 'alternatives' process only started with music because that was by far the most popular media type being traded over P2P. Once a decent technology is available for licensing and viewing movies and ebooks, I'm sure they'll follow suit.
.maybe not the ebooks; nobody really cares about them anymore.
Err..
Why not licence breathing too!?
You will be.
I didn't understand the post, and having tried to read the article I understand it even less.
Granted most people look blank or think we must be insane to do this but we are experimenting with a new business model and it is very exciting!
And as we believe in the artists and they trust us because of our licensing freedom we think in the long term the relationship can only get stronger and more artists will want to join us.
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
>>the MPAA hasn't provided legitimate alternatives for what consumers want
I have a 2 megabit per second downstream internet connection. How long would a typical DVD quality movie take to download?
Two things you also need to remember.
1) most people are still using 56k because they don't care about/don't want to pay for broadband.
2) most people with broadband (average downstream is 1.5Mbps) would still be unable to get a movie to their computer in a reasonable amount of time.
Compulsory licensing, eh? What's that when it's at home?
Perhaps I haven't been following closely enough, but exactly who is to be compelled to license what, from whom? Is this a big license signed between big companies, or a little license signed by people who listen to music, or those who make it, or just those who download it, or is it a shrink-wrap license like you get with software? Is it free, or does someone pay for it? Who? How much? What does it all mean? Am I the only person who doesn't know? PLEASE MOM, I WANT TO KNOW? WHY? WHY?
Ahem.
MP3 are ripe for the picking, but DVDs (or even Divx rips) are not so easy. Once bandwidth and cheap media catches up, the story will change. Besides, everyone knows you have to take small steps. First you fight hard to get it approved for music only, then you argue it should be applied for other stuff because it's unfair that only music should be protected. After a few years, people will forget to ask whay any of it should be treated specially. It will all be absorbed into the cost of doing business.
The title of this article made me think that is was about the fact that only music can be purchased online. Why not movies (too much bandwidth) textbooks, magazines, photos etc. What about physical objects that you could print out? Imagine buying a new computer online and having it ten minutes later after you print it star trek style. Then you get to the real question: how do you keep the user from printing the computer again?
Why discuss this at all? This isn't about licensing any more. It's about ignoring copyrights and trademarks completely in favor of "we want it for free."
So why not just repeal the copyright laws? Why not repeal trademarks too? If you really want it all for free, then just repeal the law.
Of course that won't happen, because the reality is that there won't be any "it" to have for free without copyrights.
Without copyright and trademark law, 30% of the economy evaporates instantly.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Several major Hollywood studios have offered alternatives that allow people to rent movies online. In fact slashdot has ran a story about them before.
I, for one, welcome ou... just kidding. Up against the wall mother fudruckers!
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
There's no governing body (a la RIAA, MPAA) looking over software, so one company will have to step up for everyone.
The only one with enough money to do this would rather watch everyone suffer, since they can take the hit. Besides that, if you pirate Windows, having to use it is punishment enough.
"...the MPAA hasn't provided legitimate alternatives for what consumers want..."
In my view, this statement is almost laughable. What's the purpose of it? To justify theft? That's a very, very slippery slope indeed.
Because the RIAA lobbied, that's why.
Let's say I'm a software company, and I want to develop a tool that only a few hundred customers will have any use for. However, it's so valuable to them that they're willing to pay $100,000 to use it. It costs me $50 million to develop the tool.
Under current laws, I would invest the fifty million, and if I can sell 500 copies I'll cover my investment. But what if a compulsory licensing scheme says I have to sell it for $1,000? I'm not going to invest the 50 million, even though everyone would benefit.
I think these schemes would work well for movies or music, but software is different. People don't use movies and music to run their businesses (at least not in the same way).
Rank Presidents by th
this is just a test. please ignore this. (xy/zzy) "garcia" has serious issues.
II don't download music; I buy it from used CD stores! And if you pay cash they never ask for your license...
Why only music? WTF kinda stupid ass question is that.
You live in America, Slashdot is in America, and you ask why only music...
BECAUSE ONLY "popular" MUSIC HAS THE GREEDY RIAA.
Look at me, I'm using bad words and capital letters. I'm l33t.
Music is covered by copyright law. Anything above what you are allowed to do with copyright law would require a license.
Now... the software used or the services used to get digital music, those things have licenses... but not the media itself.
It's just.. the DMCA makes it illegal, often, in the US, to circumvent those schemes.... but the music itself is still covered by standard copyright rules.
>>the MPAA hasn't provided legitimate alternatives for what consumers want
http://www.movielink.com
Very simply put, because I don't want to pay for other people's right to steal, I don't want to underwrite the industry's estimates of what their failing business model, i mean, technology is costing them, and I don't want to be told that this is the alternative to allowing a puny entertainment industry to infringe upon my rights.
It's their problem, and it doesn't come out of my pocket, amortized or not, period. This is not a socialism. Stop pretending.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Should they be covered by compulsory licenses? Are they already covered? If not, why not. I'm sure the blind would appreciate it, authors not.
Wait a sec, the standing copywrite licenses are just fine, the problem is everybody following them, no?
Well if you emphasize everything, it will still be the same. Meaning, if everything get's a shiny new license, what will have changed? The licenses are just relying on you being a good good citizens or whatever anyway. What will change if everything forces the crud in your face when you open it's package. Your taught what copyrights mean in grade school, and will treat them as you will.
Perhaps it would serve only as a tool in the copywrite holders legal arsenal, which wouldn't be intirely a bad thing. So long as you follow the rules... slashdotters beware??? hehe
"Oh... There it goes... my brain stopped" - Ed from Ed, Edd, and Eddy.
It'd ludicrous to think of paying in advance a "tax" to the RIAA for blank media because we might use it to copy their music. Applying that logic to other areas, why not stipulate brief jailtime for anyone buying a knife, because they might use it to kill somebody?
Why would anyone would to apply this type of license to movies or ebooks? Think about it... the tracks on an audio cd don't really depend upon other tracks, meaning you can downloading (or license) one track and who cares right? You don't usually have to hear the other tracks to be able to enjoy a single track. Movies would be different, as would books... would you buy a part of a story? I don't think I would, and if I were going to have to purchase the entire movie or book to be able to buy a license for it, I'd rather go to a book store or a video store and purchase a real copy... Maybe I'm just looking at this wrong.. not seeing the true intent of the article?
...don't start giving them ideas!
Chris Mattern
Defeating the stupid idiot lameness filter
If music should have a compulsory license, why shouldn't movies, software, ebooks and other media also be covered by compulsory licenses?"
Whatever : GNUArt covers all.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
So that hearing-impaired people can hate them too...
(Sorry, had to be done
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
"...the MPAA hasn't provided legitimate alternatives for what consumers want..."
What exactly does that mean?
"Online" move distribution? Already sort of have that via PPV from the cable co. Granted, the service would be improved by providing more selections, but it's pretty good right now.
Rent the movie before I (maybe) buy it? Blockbuster is less than a mile from my house.
Own the movie and watch it as many times as I want? A quick trip to suncoast, or amazon.com takes care of that.
Am I missing something? What else do you want (besides free movies, that is)?
Copyrights haven't been around forever. In fact, they are a very recent invention of American society. The IDEA of copyright has been around, though. The idea is what is important. Right now, copyright laws are being abused by copyright holders to take people's money without offering services that justify the price (i.e. RIAA et. al.). It's OBVIOUS that we don't want to get rid of the idea of copyright. We want to modify its current unfair manifestation in law.
They have provided a decent process. It's called getting DVDs from amazon.com, and not only does it work with slow modems, but it comes with a COMPLIMENTARY BACKUP!
If you were as confused as I was reading the article, check this out:
It gives a good overview of what "compulsory licensing" means:
Forget the whales - save the babies.
It's suddenly occurred to me that I no longer want the responsibility of music.
I like listening to music, but I don't want to worry about whether or not I'm legally allowed to rip it for myself.
I don't want to worry whether or not I'll have to disable autoplay in order to rip a CD. I don't want to worry whether or not I'm violating the DMCA if I say something, do something, or copy something.
I don't want to have to worry about whether or not the RIAA will come busting into my house because I've downloaded -- apparently -- legal MP3s from emusic.com. I don't want to worry whether or not they'll think they're illegal.
Art and enjoyment aren't supposed to be like this. I can go into a library, check out a book, read it, and return it. I can pick up a magazine, read it, put it back on the table.
I can go into coffee shop, read a paper, leave it on the table, and not worry about whether or not (a) my privacy has been compromised and (b) I'm doing something illegal. I can just go and do it.
Music is just not worth it. It's become larger than itself and owning it -- using it -- has become too much of a responsibility. I don't want to break the law, but I probably have. But I don't want to deal with worrying about whether or not I might have broken the law. I just want to listen to it. I could give a shit about DRM and licensing.
It's too much responsibility. I give up. The RIAA wins. I won't buy any more or listen to anymore.
There. You happy now, Craig? Hilary, you happy? Jack, maybe you wanna chime in about movies, too?
Go ahead.
Uh, Ren, isn' that "You Eediot!"
See the subject, now you have given the evil ones an idea! How stupid could that be? Very stupid IMNSHO.!
The author never stops to consider whether compulsory licenses are a good thing, instead attempting to find as many forms of content to apply them to as possible.
I don't accept that compulsory licences on music are a good thing, and I *know* they would be bad for software. Compulsory license regimes create a single large collection agency that gets to rake in money for doing nothing, and dole out money to every content creator in the related industry.
What if you write software and don't want to have all payments go through a fee-stealing middleman who allocates payments based upon rigged marketshare numbers? (See Arbitron and Payola)
What if you don't want to pay a tax (on income? on broadband connections? on filesharing software?) in order to continue to subsidize the corrupt middlemen in inefficient industries, and to compensate for the "stealing" (perceived or real) that someone else wants to do? What if the compulsory tax is estimated based upon the RIAA's guess of how many songs were downloaded each day over all filesharing networks? Nevermind whether the downloaded songs had already been paid for once, twice, or a dozen times by the same user.
Compulsory licenses should not be viewed as an ideal way to obtain free access to all of the content that corporations want to lock up indefinitely in closed formats. They are an occasionally necessary evil in relationships between one bloated industry and another (see broadcasters and RIAA).
--kirby
I don't want to steal music, video, software, or anything else really. What I *do* want is a clear resolution to the "problem" that the failing industries of America seem to have created.
When I purchase some bit of media, do I *own* it, like we've all assumed for the last couple of centuries... or have I purchased the *rights* to use the content?
If I OWN the media in question, then it's mine. I can do whatever the hell I want with it, provided that I don't resell it, or try to claim it as my creation. If I buy a screwdriver, I have every right to use it as a hammer -- despite what the Hammer Consortium wants me to do! If I own a CD, then I have every right to turn it into mp3's and stick them on my hard drive using a non Microsoft-Endorsed OS if I like.
If, on the other hand, I'm purchasing the rights to USE the content, then the media is simply a delivery mechanism. I want the RIAA to mail me CD's of all the vinyl records I own, and the MPAA to mail me DVD's of all my video tapes. I'm willing to pay shipping, and a small reasonable fee to cover materials. Oh, and those CD's that got scratched, I want replacements for those too since they were supposed to last for 20 years.
The industry seems to think they can take the best of both worlds, so we don't really own anything at all. THAT is why I don't buy CD's anymore. It's bad enough to spend $15 on a disc which should cost about $7... but to then have it be unusable in half the players out there, and be told that if I rip it to mp3 format I'm considered a thief... one doesn't insult one's customers if one wishes them to remain customers.
I don't see much point to downloading full DVD's over the net... but downloading digitized TV shows that your local cable monopoly refuses to carry is useful, and downloading older rips of things that aren't available is very handy. If Paramount were to make Enterprise available for download at $2 an episode (or thereabouts), I'd be happy to grab it from the source and avoid the variable quality rips, and slow connections... but they don't. I see it as a natural evolution of asking someone to tape a show and mail it to you for the same reasons.
Compare that to other types of copyrighted material (such as books) in which the delivery vehicle (paper) provides added value for which the pirate lacks suitable infrastructure to duplicate.
Digital movies will likely follow when piracy surges for them, and software already carries compulsory licenses so it's a little late to ask why not for that one.
<bart
Boo-hoo. I don't wanna pay for nuttin' no more.
Don't let them know! the last thing they need is an idea
goodness, i hope nobody reads this site. sheesh.
I do not believe that people should be charged money for intellectual property such as music or programs (however charging for the material that programs, and music are stored on [ie: CD's] is ok, as is charging for the service of performing the music or offering tech support for the program. It also stands to reason that I'm completely against fining any person or persons for obtaining intellectual property such as music, movies, e-books, or programs. (For what it's worth I also I believe that the internet should is a resource that should be free to people, the same way that air is.) The thought that a person can own an idea is really just baffling to me, ideas are not material possessions; like food, clothing, homes, cars etc, and IMO can't be treated the same way. Ideas, weather they are music, medicine, or programs should IMO be treated as open source software. After they are expressed it becomes fair game for the people who know how, to modify, and interpret the idea, or to incorporate it into other ideas. Basically both ideas and open source soft wear become stronger the more (as in number of people) work on them. People who take ideas and turn them into intellectual property (IE: copyrighting and selling them) are working for their own personal gain rather than for the growth of the human spices, when we get rid of intellectual property (copyrights) I believe that we
Note: this has been posted by r.future (a person who spends way to much time on the internet!)
I've never created any music, so compulsory licensing for music would involve me telling other people what to do, which is good.
I have written fiction and software, so compulsory licensing for those media might involve other people telling me what to do, which is bad.
I hope that clears things up for everyone.
No need for thought provoking ruminations here, folks. The answer is:
Because it's a fuckin' pain in the ass.
You know what?
In a few years, maybe less, when bandwidth increases the movie studios will be moaning that their copyright is being widely impinged too, and they want a slice of the pie. Obviously there is not enough to cover both, so we have to pay *more* tax to cover the movie studios as well. More money changing hands is also more taxes for governments too, so the corporates and governments go laughing off to the bank while the users are left worse off.
Needless to say, I don't like this concept at all. When the automobile came along, the makers of horse drawn carriages had to either adapt and make coachwork for autos, or died. Here we are, a century or so later and it's the turn of the media industry to be put through the wringer. The choices are the same; adapt or die - the sooner they realise that legislation and taxation is only prolonging the issue and start adaptating (or not), the better.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
seems similar to something i've said already
Well, it is probably correct that the problems of making money from content are similiar regardless of the type of content (talking about creative content here, not information or knowledge).
Nonetheless, there are unique aspects to each type of creative content. For example, music gains more value by repeated listening, while books or movies really only need to be read once (talking about fiction, not textbooks, etc).
(That is why, for example, I have suggested that a voluntary compensation model would seem to work well for music, although not necessarily for other mediums--see my essay sharethemusicday.com ).
I have pointed out some pitfalls of a compulsory licensing scheme . The main problems (beside the technical ones) are the political ones. If you thought the negotiations about Internet radio were bad, wait til you see this debate! Also, it seems to argue against individual initiative and hand too much power to a taxing authority.
Here's what I predict: content aggregation sites like mp3.com will build their own private p2p networks where subscribers can distribute mp3.com's exclusive content. Musicians pay $100 to put their content on mp3.com (that's the current deal), and make more money depending on the number of downloads, hits, eyeballs which mp3.com can measure. (Mp3.com could also charge for product placement, etc). That gives musicians a vested interest in encouraging fans to subscribe. It gives fans a vested interest in subscribing to get the latest content, recommendation systems, file management, etc. The assumption behind this idea is that the aggregator offers unlimited downloads for a fairly low price. It resembles live365's scheme for allowing subscribers to reward their Favorite radio station.
If vivendi can't offer a low price for this, then the tipjar model seems preferable. The question remains: why doesn't mp3.com offer this capability or even the ability to link to a tipjar?
To love the music, you must share the music.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
Difference for DVDs at least is that they provide added value, when compared to CDs. Sure, you can view the movie in divx, but they are much clearer on a DVD, plus you get the added benefits of "special features".
How many millions must engage in sharing of other media before we start hearing a call to legitimize that sharing? After all, millions can't be wrong, can they?
No, certainly not. Millions of people believe in ghosts and UFOs, that Elvis is alive, and that Windows is a great operating system. Let's take everything that millions do and make it valid! I'm writing my congressman right now about legalizing drunk driving.
Why we currently discuss music so much, rather than books or movies, centers on how people use them, as well as what people can reasonably download compared with the time it takes to "use" that download.
With a book, you can find OCR'd copies of just about anything in existance with a carefully worded Google search, and they only weigh a few meg at most. However, reading them then takes at least a few hours per book, and people likely will not read the same thing again for quite a while. Additionally, many people have a strong bias for dead tree versions, and even a printout doesn't really satisfy that bias (not to mention that, on an inkjet, printing out a complete book might well cost more just buying the book in the first place).
With movies, downloading them currently takes too long even over broadband (as someone else mentioned, I can run to Blockbuster and back and have the movie quicker). But even when network speeds and compression techniques make dowloading them in realtime possible, most people don't watch a given movie over and over and over... Yeah, perhaps a regular "Saturday night Brazil" showing among a group of really obsessive friends, but not several times each day.
Music, however... Just the right file size to make a noticeable dent in bandwidth, yet still download in realtime. And the usage pattern differs from books and movies in a very critical way - People can listen to music in the background, and do so repeatedly.
We don't listen to a song once or twice, then let it gather dust in the library. We listen to it, and if we like it, we add it to our playlist. It then gets played every few days, or even a few times each day, for at least a few months.
So although music cannot possibly compare with a book, or even a cheesy Hollywood hit, for depth of content, we "use" only moderately decent music far, far more than even our most beloved books and movies.
Ummmm - is it because we play music all the time, and because the file sizes for your typical MP3 are so small, that even a 56k connection can amass a sizable collection in a relatively short time? Sorry - the answer seemed obvious. That and with most media players automatically retrieving tags for the songs - easy to see which ones you are missing too, can set up to play by genre, artist, album - a friggen jukebox! Who wants to pay for a 100 disc cd-changer anymore and get the same sort of things you get out of any one of the media players out there. F that. I can play by artist, genre, personalized playlists of more songs than one of those hurking monsters - and I don't have to worry about a scratched cd anymore, the machine busting on me. It's all good. Movies are harder to download - not much so with a nice connection, but slower nevertheless. It's becoming more of an issue though in the last year or so with more people hopping on broadband. Might see the Movie industry adopt the same stronghold tactics the music industry soon enough. But you know what? Good DVDs are totally worth buying, especially all the features jammed on in. I wet my pants with the Fellowship special edition, and can't wait for the two towers special edition. Ya sure - you can copy a dvd, but you need the original in some way to do it. Rent or borrow it is the only way to get all the features. I don't see too many 5gb isos out there for movies - mostly crappy divx files (though I have seen a few good ones). I've made some rather high quality divx files, but again - a good dvd has a lot of features that you can't get in divx. Now an MP3? Hell - you get it all in a nice small filesize portable just about everywhere now. The price that the RIAA expects me to pay for a CD is a total ripoff. CDs are dead anyhow - about to go the way of the LP, the 8-track, and the cassette. Most of our future is going to be wrapped up in files as a far as music goes. It's all going to be about files. Files files files. There really is no other "format" you can predict for the future. Every copy protection will be broken by someone - eventually. DVD saw it. Every game publisher has to deal with things like CD-Clone or Alchohol or whatever the years best copy protection scheme is out there. You can not regulate the behavior of 3 billion people. Too many countries. Sure - pass laws in the U.S. - think scandinavia is gonna care? Think a German is gonna blink an eye? The same goes in reverse - think the guy who really wants to play that new Japanese game is gonna care about the laws over there? Sorry - the RIAA got smacked in the face by the internet - but that's how it goes. DeBeers is about to get smacked in the face with companies able to mass-produce diamonds of exceptional quality and size. I asked my wife - would you rather have a 3 carat stone you could buy for 50 bucks, or a 1/2 carat for 2000. She said - are you nuts? She doesn't care about the fact it was man-made - its a diamond. I don't know what the RIAA expects us as a whole to say anymore - but whatever it is they want, it's just not going to happen. Better to accept it now and get on with it. I think we've screamed enough the business model needs to be changed - but they find it unacceptable. Sorry - but that's how it is. I think Itunes and a few other sites have the right idea - but it's still not going to be enough. Ya, I've heard all about M$ and the upcoming protection schemes to files - but what's to stop everyone to simply change OSs? Or it being circumvented? Or sales slump? Get the word out that people are sticking with XP, NT, 98, because they don't want such restrictions and you think Microsoft is going to care about the RIAA? Microsoft is about Money. Linux is on a good role despite what SCO says - and if Linux provides the community with everything they want minus the restrictions - well, I could very well see that as killing M$ - and I don't see that happening.
(From biz.yahoo.com)
Taking the compulsory licensing model and applying it to other media hilights the flaws in the model, for music as well as other media.
One problem is in how money moves. Instead of dealing with the relatively straightforward counting of albums (or games, or DVD's) sold, you'd have to somehow measure files moving around the network. Since there's no way to accurately measure how files move around a p2p network(especially with encrypted networks like FreeNet), the division of money would be the subject of ongoing (legal) fighting. If people weren't fighting over the numbers, they'd be fighting over the formula used to split the money.
Then there's pricing. In a network where everything is the same price (free), how do you differentiate between low-value products cranked out for almost nothing and the huge, high-value productions? There are plenty of niches where the number of customers is small but people are willing to pay more (e.g. massive RPG's, enterprise software).
Another problem is that the total dollars for the music (etc.) business would be fixed, rather than fluctuating up and down based on people's desire for music (etc.). This means that there's less reward for making great music (i.e. the classics that grow the business). Instead, the winning strategy would be to crank out "OK" music as cheaply as possible to collect the guaranteed income.
Imagine a new game company introducing a great new game, Deer Hunter. That game created a new genre of game, selling through an entirely new distribution channel (cheap, simple games selling through grocery stores, etc.), which grew the game industry dramatically. In the compulsory licensing model, before launching the game they'd have to make sure that their new distribution model was counted properly, and that the proper accounting would be done. And even if they were a hit that doubled the size of the game business (which is what actually happened), instead of getting 100% more income into the industry, the new game would suck 50% of the fixed revenue from other companies, so they make 1/2 what they would have, and other companies whose "sales" didn't actually go down would lose 50% of their revenue.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
why not take it to the extreme - 2 week jail time for all people with a penis, just in case they misuse it.
"Accenture in India has also been moving into front office work such as doing clinical data management for its pharma clients. Accenture's pharma team here, which consists of doctors, dentists and biologists [indiatimes.com], analyses data from tests and helps its pharma client to gain `time-to-market' advantage. "Normally, for a BPO, back office activities are the target, but we are beginning to spot opportunities in front office activities as well," Cole said." There has always been opportunity for them in the front office...assuming that 'front office' is synonymous with 7-11.
With electronic music that's put togeather in some program and not performed live you could distribute the original file from that program along with any associated samples, or even source files used to generate the samples. You might also distribute MODs but they're relatively restrictive. Even mixes could be distributed open-source by logging various parameters during the performance. All this would be really neat, enabling derived works, helping people learn to make music and enabling amazing synchronized effects at parties.
With music that's actually performed you can't really distribute it like open source software. Sure you can distribute sheet music or some electronic format of it, but it's not like anyone can compile that into music... you need skilled performers and even they may need to practice. How about the vocals? Still distributing some sort of source info would be useful and really neat.
Now what's LOCA doing? Just distributing MP3s? That's worse than just distributing binaries because it's not original quality... it's almost like distributing uncrackable trial versions of software.
I would like explained to me exactly how compulsory licensing is going to produce quality art, whether in music, movies, or the written word.
Exactly what impetus does an artist have to produce quality stuff under this socialist system? Why not turn out total horseshit. I mean after all, you're getting paid anyway. Furthermore, what if I record a song in my basement. Do I get a cut? How do they gauge how large of a cut I deserve?
This sounds like one of those stillborn ideas.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
you can still appreciate music - good vibrations!
Joking aside, though, I have 70% normal hearing (believe me, that's pretty low) w/o my hearing aids, 85-95% with, in a sound-proof booth, under optimal conditions.
And I'm a musician and music-listener.
And my first comment about good vibrations isn't actually a joke - Gallaudet U has dances, and most of their students are deaf.
Is that a bad thing (losing 30% of the economy)? I would like to think of it as freeing 30% of our resources for really productive endeavors, like the colonization and commercialization of space (already happening in a fairly small way). As it is, that wealth is locked up producing the next multibillion dollar Hollywood flop or creating the next pretty petty boy/girl band.
1. People don't really like to read books on a computer - you'll see them come after these market later. 2. Films take a ocean of time to download for most people, usually about 100 times bigger, thus not close to as common to download as music. The film industry will probably wait for the music industry to pawn the way, and claim the rules must apply for them as well when the time is ready. 3. Music is way to profitable in comparison to investment and risk. (How much do you think it cost to make a song vs. making a book or a film?). The music industry have by far better reasons for trying to keep everybody from finding better ways to enjoy music.
Two, actually:
Chop your paragraphs up with the <p> tag; next paragraph is code for the previous paragraph:
And chop your lists up with the <br> tag, like so:1. first item
2. second item
Code for this follows:
The "gift" part is a little sarcastic, but frankly I didn't read all of what you wrote because it was a big mass of words. I agree with you that the times they are a changin', though, and I would bet that Microsoft will auto-insert their DRM into XP; not sure about 2000/NT/9x. Linux is looking better and better. And you're spot on about other countries citizens not giving a rat's ass about the US's laws.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Compulsory licensing schemes are monopolies by another name. They use public resources to collect revenues and distribute them to a private entity.
This forces all providers to use the statutorily-recognized middleman if they expect equal treatment under the law. It's not unusual for the distribution schemes to be rigged to penalize independents.
It is not the role of government to be the collection agency for the RIAA or any other producers' union. In fact, any law that recognizes a specific private commercial entity and gives it special treatment is a corrupt law that should be repealed.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
MP3's is an easy alternative to CD's. Burn it to a CD and you have a traditional CD just like that. The files are small enough that downloading them is not a big deal.
Movies, games and printed material suffers in ways that music does not on P2P networks. These things suffer to the point that they do not make an adequate replacement for the actual media.
Movies... where to begin. If you want them in a small download, small being defined at 700 megs or less, you have a quality hit that you must take. If you don't want the quality hit you are looking at 1.5 gigs of media. More importantly though you simply cannot recreate the movie theatre experience at home.
Cannot be done. People that think that movie theatres suffer because of P2P are simply wrong.
Ever try to take a date to your PC?
DVD's suffer in pretty much the same way, want DVD quality, you are looking at 4.5-9 gigs of a download.
Then there are video games.
Games probably suffer the least. But they do suffer. There is no compression scheme for games. A 4 disk set will always mean a 4 disk download. Copy protection schemes on games are very wide ranging. Some games, -ahem- Microsoft games, can simply be copied, other games need cracks, still others there is no way around.
When the games are patched it is an educated guess wether the patch will destroy the downloaded game or not. You just don't know.
And printed material. This suffers the most.
I simply cannot replace the feeling of printed material in my hands for staring at a screen.
Absolutely no reason. Compulsory licencing is the only way to approach IP in the modern age.
It would reduce the search for prior patents in the invention process to an actuarial process: Estimate how many patents you are using (rather than infringing), and factor that into the cost of the product. Then let the patent holders track you down for their payments.
Follow the adventures of the new wandering jews
Compulsory licensing puts control of creativity into government hands. That's the very last thing we want.
what kind of twisted world is this?!
there's an old story where the beggar, caught enjoying the fumes wafting from a restaurant from the street, is hauled before a judge by the restaurant owner seeking payment for services rendered or somesuch. the judge applied "in kind" thinking, the result being the restaurant owner had to settle for listening to the sounds of the beggar's two coins jingling as payment.
listen, you idiot mofos w/ the guns and the fancy clothes: you want people to pay to lick clean the slop you dish out on your stupidity-dissemination networks? fine. you want people to pay you to think, to share, to relate to each other in ways beyond the reach of your stupidity? that's fine, too. but realize this: the payment is always in kind. you will get slop for slop and you will get disrespect for disrespect. have fun w/ the slop, and watch out for the disrespect, for that, my idiot friends, in great quantity means your head on a platter, your dignity scattered, your fancy clothes tattered, your ediface splattered.
"a tax on the people's minds, for i am the state!
have they no bread left? then let them eat cake!
a victory tour, install that hi-def telescreen!
300-yuk lure, nudge nudge, heh you know what i mean!
let's all pretend that it's getting quite chilly,
i'll put my hands in your pocket, a small game, quite silly!"
"but massah, i'm broke (though my pocket's quite cramped for some reason).
why not share grog, instead --- wouldn't that be more pleasin'?
we'll play a few cards and laugh at ourselves a lot
get drunk on the stars, find a waterpipe, and keep it hot.
what's up w/ sniffing my armpits and calling for showers?
you ain't no weaklin' yourself in the BO power!"
[ ok, someone else can complete this little rhyme.
i've ranted myself thin and no longer have the time.
main point still stands: what goes around comes around.
make some noise NOW before payment is required for SOUND. ]
thi
There should be licensing for e-versions of written works, because the vast majority of authors need protection from losing their contracts with their publishers, or worse. When an author signs a book deal, they have to sign over certain rights. The publishers almost invariably insist on signing over e-rights, whether they plan on doing anything with them or not (unless you're a Stephen King or some such, and can call your own contractual shots). Once signed over, it remains the responsibility of the author to prevent dilution of these rights signed over to the publisher. If the author does not protect that which was signed over, the publisher can consider them in violation of the contract and annul it, demand return of payment, or anything else their legal dinks can think of with which to harass the author. For short story authors, often the only way to actually make any money is to sell reprint rights. If the work is found to be available for "free", an anthology editor isn't likely to pay an author for something that others are already getting without having to pay for it. It doesn't matter if the files are available on an umpteen million member P2P file sharing net, or on a half dozen collectors' FTP sites, the concept holds.
To my knoweldge, no publisher has yet cancelled any contracts over these terms. But many could, and could have for years (5 or 6 years ago there were far more unauthorized written works than music to be found online). Although the numbers are much smaller than for music trading, there are still file traders, FTP sites and usenet newsgroups specializing in e-books and the homemade equivalent, scanned hardcopy converted to text or PDF.
There's no group like RIAA protecting authors. (For that matter there's no group really protecting musicians; everyone's well aware RIAA is serving music publishers, and musicians rarely see any of the income RIAA claims it's protecting). Some specialists writers' groups, such as Science Fiction Writers of America, are trying to help authors come to grips with what for them really is a problem and could become far worse for reasons they can't control.
The up side is that authors tend to be far more imaginative than record labels. Many have been experimenting with alternatives to their "problem". There's no big breakthrough yet, but I'm confident that thyey'll come up with an alternative suitable to author and reader alike long before RIAA comes up with anything similarly acceptable. Actually, I doubt RIAA will ever come up with anything acceptable to musicians, because that's not who they work for.
Yes, it's long winded. Yes, I know more than a little about it. I set up a business doing for authors what BayTSP is doing for RIAA, tracking infringers. Although there was a lot of money to be lost by the authors, there was very little money to be made in helping them. Most of them don't make much, and the publishers themselves don't care. I could have made a lot of money working for RIAA instead. Unfortunately, I have a conscience; I shut down the business instead.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Jeez... OK, answer me this, if MP3's have the same audio quality as CD's, why aren't CD's released in MP3 format, containing 10X the number of songs? Why does the professional audio industry adhere to that clunky old PCM standard?
Because it's better! Anybody who thinks MP3 audio quality is as good as PCM is invited to investigate the following terms: "lossy compression", "artifacts", "full frequency spectrum". If MP3 were something for nothing it would be the ligua franca of digital music. And as quick as it's catching on, it's not anywhere near as ubiquitous as PCM is, and it never will be.
What's that, you ask? If there's a significant quality loss copying from a CD to an MP3 file, you ask, how is that any different from making a casette copy? I'm glad you asked! It's not!
So, just to review, because this myth seems like it's everywhere:
PCM: Used in CD's, pro-audio recording systems, DVD's, sampling keyboards. Very good audio quality, zero-loss codec. Very large files.
MP3: Used in, well, MP3 players and computers. And now some video games and phone voicemail systems. And radio stations too cheap to pay human beings to work there. Lossy compression. Very average quality. Very small files.
From this day forth, let none speak of the equality of MP3 and PCM on pain of, well, another lecture!
They will never stop until somebody makes the
What's with the compulsory license sort of slant that's happening now? I'm sorry, but if slashdot supports this idea, no thanks to you.
What I want to see is an Open Proposal Network. I.e., a band proposes a new album. Fans fund production. After that, it becomes public domain. Most likely, bands would have to release some free samples to generate initial support, but this would be much more ideal. This same model could be used for GPL'd software. People could propose features, and it could be funded, and then released under the GPL.
The REASON we have free media is becuase we have free ideas. This centers around a single arguement, how free do we want our ideas? Music, computers, programming, machinery, etc are ALL versions of the same principle; the idea. Who can exploite them is answered by pantents and copyright, and those are in place to ensure the benefit of society, not the indivudal making the music.
We have come to a crux in our developement. Do we realize our best hope for survival is with eachother, stop fighting and start working and trusting eachother, or do we break up into nitpicky intrest groups and rip eachother apart? It's seeming a lot like the ladder of the 2, although most would prefer the primer of the 2 and go with the first one. The whole reason our goverment prosecutes [insert thing here] is becuase they don't trust them. I for one trust most people and most people trust me. We don't ened this bullshit. All they're trying to do with this is tear us up into little nitpicky groups and while we're all distracted by briteny spears' new album they'll fuck us over some more. When we finally awake, we'll find our headphones blank and useless, the computer moniter black, and the books in our houses turned to ashes. Read 1984, you'll get the idea of what I'm talking about.
If we give up free media now, we give up our human right to communicate and to freely share ideas. If we give that up, we lose our humanity. What makes a person robust is their experiences, their ideas, aspirations and ideas. Without stimulation in the form of books, beauty, music, logic, and others we won't be anything but sacks of useless robotic meat. I for one refuse to become like that, and I'll start blowing shit up before I let it happen as would most hackers.
I'm a fucking human dammit and I'm not going to just let you take away the ideas I thrive on. Fuck your system, fuck your way of thinking, and damn the lawers to hell who actually fight for this. I'd figure there'd be a point where any human would think "you know, mabye I'm going a little too far". These people are psychopaths, there seriously needs to be a mental condition for excessive greed so we can lock these assholes in a mental institution so they can't do anything to us.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
"Control Culture"
An article in a recent edition of Wired caught my eye: The Incredible Shrinking Studio. What was once possible only in a professional recording studio is now being done with a mic and a Powerbook. This, blogging, online comics, and Ebay are all part of the same trend: technology empowering the individual, people like you and me, to actively create our own culture, rather than passively consume whatever we're fed.A few people, however, aren't thrilled at the prospect--e.g. the RIAA, Microsoft, and the movie industry. Unfortunately for us, these entities use their market dominance and political clout to monopolize the evolution of culture.
After all, what exactly are record companies good for anymore? In all their success in painting filesharers as amoral fiends who are stealing from the artists, they've apparently forgotten that stealing is how they make their living. Most RIAA musicians sign away the rights to their music, their style, even their own name, and yet never see a dime from their labels. The cost of a CD goes almost entirely to marketing (i.e. getting us to buy it), and to the maintenance of an outdated business model. In a world where recording is cheap and distribution is free, why should we support a bloated, inefficient industry that inflicts Top 40 "Hits" on all of us?
We are losing control of our culture on two fronts: one legal, one technological. In 1998, Congress passed the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Among other things, this law makes it illegal to copy a DVD or to play one from overseas--even one you've purchased legally. The DMCA also gives copyright-holders the power to shut down a website for ten days just by contacting its ISP... without evidence, liability, or judicial review. Diebold Corporation has been taking advantage of this to suppress information about egregious flaws in its widely-used electronic voting machines.
Perhaps even more frightening is the fact that Microsoft and friends are currently working to make it not only illegal to resist their vision of the future, but actually impossible. New versions of Windows will tie in with a chip in your computer to remotely monitor and control what you can do with it. They claim that their system will be voluntary, but how voluntary is it when opting out means not being able to open Word documents and PDFs? Even if consumers were informed about it, they wouldn't have a choice; Microsoft's monopoly--not the market--dictates what people can buy.
While groups like Microsoft and the RIAA claim that their power grab is necessary to stop evil, they ignore an evil that most of us don't think about: although a powerful few benefit when culture is centrally controlled, we all benefit when ideas flow freely in society. Imagine where science would be without the open exchange of ideas in journals and conferences. What if every novelist had to pay Proust for his insight into the art form? Ideas are made of ideas. Culture is always ripped, mixed, and burned from other culture. This is why we evolved communication in the first place: for humans, cooperation is the killer app.
We must create a sensible regulatory system that allows for the open exchange of ideas, as opposed to the Orwellian vision of the media cartel, where your computer is nothing more than a vending machine and the Internet is glorified television.
---
Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons
scdc.emegaweb.net
I know that Americunts have a proto-fascist world view right now, but have you any idea what Socialism actually is? I've heard yanks describing anything that remotely smacks even of fairness as "Socialism". It was brainwashed into them at an early age. This isn't Socialism, it's propping up a failed economic model, something usually exhibited by state-sponsored protection of Capital, but, strangely, not in a free market.
This is a self evident truth. Unfortunately 90% of the thinking poulation is still stuck in 20th Century modes of thinking about 'ownership'.
how many times have you listened to your favorite CDs? how many times have you watched your favorite movies/read your favorite books? That's a pretty big difference, IMO.
people are going to do what they want. It doesnt matter what the RIAA says, the president says or God says (ok some may do what God wants). People want downloadable convenient music. The RIAA doesnt give it to them, they will take it. That is human nature, live with it.
In my view, this statement is almost laughable. What's the purpose of it? To justify theft? That's a very, very slippery slope indeed.
You know, this statement really makes me think.
Lots of people here on slashdot like to say, "It's not theft, it's copyright infringement." As if this minor difference in terms means much, as if I were to write a book and someone scanned each page then put it up on the internet, I wouldn't feel like I had been ripped off.
So why do we (as a community, culture, subculture, everybody but you, whatever) continue to justify the act of stealing music? Hell, I understand that it's wrong. Yet I have a 30gb MP3 player. I didn't pay for any of the music on there. Why doesn't it cause me guilt?
It's not like I'm an amoral person. A cashier at Wetzel's Pretzels gave me back too much change last weekend, and as I was putting it away, I thought about how that cashier might get fired if their register came up short. So I gave the money back. A lady there looked at me and said, "You're a really nice person." Whatever. $10 isn't worth the hit to my karma.
Hell, I can't remember the last time I shoplifted anything. I must have been a little kid. If I stole something today, I'd feel bad about it, and since there's plenty of other things in life that I've done to feel bad about, why complicate things? Most people feel this way, I think. That's the way that a conscience works.
My pet theory as to why we can steal music (and movies occasionally) without guilt is that we're so used to receiving it for free that it has no intristic value. So our conscience has nothing to feel guilty about.
Hear me out for a second or two. You or I could go outside right now to our car (if we're lucky enough to have a car that is) turn on the radio and most likely hear some fairly good music -- for free. It likely won't be our favorite song on the radio, or our favorite type of music either, but it won't be offensive. It's still pretty good. I don't really like the Rolling Stones for instance, but hell, it's at least interesting in rhythm and structure. And they give this music away free!
(Sure, radio is paid for by commercials, but experientially, it's still free.)
Movies are pretty much free too. If you have cable, you can watch as many movies as you like for a monthly fee. No real commercials even. It's like movies on tap. You just hit the power button and they come on. If you're like me, sometimes you'll sit through a bad movie just because it's on and you don't have to pay for it. Of course, you really are paying for it, but it's not tied in to the experience. Movies on tap! Wow! Wait around long enough and a good movie that you liked in the past like Pulp Fiction or Trainspotting will probably come on.
It's not a new thing, this giving away stuff for free so the people who really like it will buy it to listen/watch at their convenience. Hell, they've been doing this with music long before most of us were born. I grew up watching "The World of Disney" on broadcast television for free, every week they played great movies for free.
So because of peer-to-peer networks, we have the opportunity to get this music that they're still giving away for free and listen to it at our convenience. Suddenly there's a huge uproar, "You're stealing music! Don't take that, you didn't pay for it!" Well, yes. But it's not like I would have bought the CD anyway, and you'll give it away for free if I wait around long enough on the radio, so what's the big deal?
Of course, it is wrong. By the laws of the land, radio music is free and you're welcome to partake, but you're welcome to free music only when listening to the radio -- and when you're on hold, and when you're in a store, and when you're in an elevator, and when you're in someone else's home and they're playing the music that they legally purchased from the rightful manufacturer. There's all these exceptions where the music is free. The
well?
You highlight an excellent problem with intangible assets. Specifically, how can a business survive (that is stay in business) when their livelyhood depends on the sale of intangible assets.
I think the correct answer to that question is "no, you don't own the rights to the music". What you do own, or more exactly what you have paid for is, a medium of delivery (CD, Vinyl, Super8, VHS, paper, etc.) and a limited personal use license. You should have the ability to make an archive copy of your product and enjoy unlimited, acceptable-use rights that are fully transferrable with ownership.
This is the scheme that businesses have developed to allow a business based on intangible assets to exist and have received legislative and judicial support in accordance with the practice. Essentially, the business owners are looking for a way to protect their existence as a business.
As it has been said before, the problem with Copyright law is that it is outdated. It was written when the concept of a computer or digital media, let alone the internet never existed. Now, we have technological means to easily supplant copyright restrictions. In the past the traditional distribution lines (suppy chains) for the copyrighted materials were easily regulated and were often cost prohibitive for an average individual to maintain. Now, everybody (nearly) has access to the internet and the freedom to upload/download whatever is available to them virtually unchecked. There is also an abundance of software equivalents to UPS, FedEx, DHL, and freight companies that are readily available for free (P2P software is an example) to "ship" your copyrighted/pirated material across the internet. Before the internet, you would need to go to a bookstore, a recordstore, or a movie theater to purchase/view copyrighted material. The pirates did not have a supply chain that was distributed enough to avoid detection, or large enough to provide to the masses. Essentially, the pirates had sales out of the trunk of their cars and only to a small subset of the population. There are/were of course examples of more sophisticated and organized pirate operations that functioned more as a business. The mafia in the U.S. and certain cadres of citizenry in Russia and China are good examples. The citizenry examples existed mainly due to the difference in copyright laws here in the U.S. and abroad. The problem of piracy didn't really begin to "show up on radar" until the following conditions were met.
I suspect that copyright law will be "revamped" that include restrictions that are adequate for our day and time and potentially, if the writers have any foresight, far into the future. Perhaps the better question to ask would be; "what should be copyrightable, and what should be public domain?". Perhaps societies view are changing on that question, and we should (at least here in the States) review what we consider to be acceptable to sell.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
Yeah...that New Economy a couple of years ago passed me by too.
I must be one of the 90%.
ASCAP started all this. Victor Herbert was the main mover, a major mogul and composer/songwriter who was very popular and respected. He wanted protection for songwriters (around 1914) and he got it. After all, music, at least before the recent rounds of the downward spiral, was meant to be contagious, something that you wanted to copy, ie sing to your buddies after you heard the song a few times. This is both how the really good songs can maintain their positions on the hit parade for several centuries and how catchy new songs with amusing lyrics and an interesting bridge can become popular in a matter of months. But Victor Herbert figured that this cntagion was no excuse if you could make a living singing his songs and not paying him a royalty on your performances. Seems reasonable. That's why ASCAP and BMI bust bar owners today for playing a radio. Never heard of Fox News doing that, but they might.
While I have no doubts that storage and bandwith cost made sharing music easier than movies and software (as many others here have noted), I can think of several other reasons why the RIAA feels more threatened by file-sharing than the MPAA.
Controlling public consumption:
The MPAA can still control what theaters movies are shown in, which is where most of the public still sees movies. As P2P and Digital Radio replace analog radio stations, the RIAA can't control what music people listen to. If they can't get people to hear their music, no one is going to buy it.
Decreasing Costs of Music Production:
As mentioned earlier, the cost of recording an album has gone down considerable over the past decade. This means less artists will be enlisting the RIAA's service in the future.
Cookie-Cutter-Singles are on the way out
The RIAA has made a lot of their money off albums that only have 1 or 2 good songs on them and 13 tracks of filler. Furthermore, it isn't that hard to make music that is aesthetically pleasing if you know even a little bit about music theory. Just follow the standard cycle of chord progression and it will come out fine. The two patterns we hear most often come straight from this cycle (I,V,I,IV,V) or by cycling backwards (I,IV,I,V,IV : the blues progression). If you think about it, 90% of the music we hear is infringing on the work of 17th Century Monks.
Live Performances are on the uprise:
This is a good thing. This means the artists are going to be getting the money, and the fans get to hear it live. But it's bad for the RIAA because they're put out of the loop.
The RIAA is dying and knows it. We're just witnessing their final *gasp*.
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
Any arbitrary data file - whether its a movie, ebook, or software application can be converted to wav format just by adding the appropriate header. Once it's audio a person can start calling it music and take advantage of the compulsory license.
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
When it comes to stealing via P2P, music rules. The format works well on computers (unlike books). The files are relatively quick to download (unlike movies). People commonly listen to many songs over and over. The same is not true for movies and books. Software is very similar to music in all of the above ways, except Joe Q. Public isn't tech savvy enough to steal his software from P2P... yet.
Before the invention of eruptions, lava had to be carried down the mountain by hand and thrown on sleeping villagers.
I think that music is the "art" form that can be most easily ripped off and then completely refabricated (in this case played) for the end user. You may not want to read a book on screen or on printer paper, there is something substatial and satisfying about the book itself. As DVD copiers become more common and people don't have to watch movies that are grainy on their computer the movie industry may catch up with music.
The technology just supports the duplication of the art form better at this point time, The other major ingredient being the amount of money available (or at risk depending on your point of view) in the industry.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
"The MPAA hasn't provided legitimate alternatives for what consumers want."
Give me a break. The motion picture industry has plenty of valid excuses for any problems in distribution, not the least of which is the massive file sizes in any electronic copy.
That said, you have distribution through purchase for little more and often less than music cds, rental for as little as a dollar, digital satellite and cable with 12 channels of HBO alone often in HDTV and 5.1 surround sound, on-demand pay per view for around three bucks, which you can now pipe via digital cable into a DVD recorder or DVR/TiVO, analog cable, broadcast tv, as well as first-run theater distribution.
There are simply far to many aspects of distribution to start blaming the MPAA because you can't squeeze a full 3000dpi film-resolution 24fps 2 hour flick onto a dial-up internet connection for free or because you have to pay $3.50 for a coke at a theater that made fifty damn cents off your ticket because of a specific studio's royalty scheme. Yes, that spread changes for every studio, the MPAA does NOT set the rates, so stop blaming them because it sounds official just as everyone blames the RIAA for everything because its the only acronym they know.
Want to know why you don't have digital projection in every theater? Hell, the studios would kill for it because they think they will save on the $15,000 it costs to ship each copy on film. It's the theater owners who don't want to shell out the quarter million bucks per theater that are to blame and who can blame 'em? A thirty screen multiplex would cost $7.5 million dollars to convert to digital. There are roughly 31,000 movie screens in the United States, so it would cost on the order of $8 BILLION (more than total ticket sales in a year) to give you all-digital, all-the-time and they'd still have to make prints and people would still bitch about how crappy anything but animation looks in digital when blown up to billboard proportions compared to film.
Besides, what the begeezuz does the MPAA have to do with any of this? Virtually NOTHING! It is a representative industry body that conducts lobbying, legal advocacy and adopts voluntary trade practices like movie and t.v. ratings. Big fat hairy deal.
When what the consumer wants everything made with pure unobtainium, delivered instantaneously and at no cost, don't expect anyone to come running to market when something like "Titanic" costs a quarter billion dollars to make. The legal issues the MPAA may squeak about are practically inconsequential compared to the logistics alone of meeting unreasonable and seemingly unlimited consumer demand.
Really, if "they haven't provided legitimate alternatives for what consumers want," what the hell do you think consumers want within the relatively limited scope of the laws of physics and economics? That sort of statement just smacks of squealing babies that will NEVER, EVER be satisfied no matter how often you wipe their asses for them.
Why should the content industry alone enjoy the privilege of dictating what customers can or can't do with products? If the principle of licensing vs purchasing succeeds with media, why not apply it to everything else? Shouldn't ANY manufacturer be able to license its products to you and forbid you sharing them with your neighbors?
Borrowing is a tremendous threat to our economy! Think of the jobs and profits that are lost because of lazy freeloaders who borrow things from other people instead of buying their own. We need legislation and technology NOW to stop this economy-sapping usage piracy.
Using RFID and mandatory net-enabled base stations installed in every home and vehicle, the location of all licensed products would be tracked constantly and violations reported instantly. Every product would essentially be under house arrest. You would have a day-use permit for anything you wanted to wear or carry with you. If you needed to take something somewhere for repair, you would temporarily transfer the license to an authorized service center. Violate your license and the rights police would swoop in and slap you with a fine.
Sounds like a great world to live in.
The reason is simple. People who download music illegally complain that they don't want to pay $15-$20 for a CD when they only want 1 or 2 songs off it, which is a valid excuse. The same excuse probably wouldn't hold up as well when applied to things such as software ("I only wanted the part that sends e-mails!"), though I am beginning to see where M$ got the idea for rolling all of those products into Microsoft Office...
I think, that simply, they're waiting to see what happens. The RIAA is doing exactly what the MPAA probably wants to do as well. So they're letting them go first, to see how it works. If the RIAA gets shot down in court and loses lots of money when the judge decides to grant people rights, the MPAA won't be enthustiastic about doing the same.
On the other hand, if the RIAA succeeds and dominates the world, then the MPAA can step in and do the same. So they're watching us and studying us.
Hypocrisy is the 8th deadly sin.
the whole concept of compulsory licensing is unconsititutional. That's not surprising since it's a direct attack on freedom.
Vote for Pedro
Ok, since everyone seems to be a little off...
A compulsary license has NOTHING to do with you downloading music, and compulsary licenses very rarely happen in fact for reasons that I will explain below.
A compulsary license most often deals with a compulsary mechanical license. This basically says that anyone can record any song, and pay the statutory mechanical rate (set by congress) which is currently 8 cents for songs less than 5 minutes, or 1.55 cents per minute if the song is longer than 5 minutes.
There are a few conditions for this. For one, you must give notice to the publishing company (or copyright holder) within 30 days of recording, and prior to release of the song in order to obtain a compulsary license. The songwriter has First Use rights for the song, so basically the song must have been recorded legally and willingly by the artist, and legally distributed on behalf of the artist first before you can record and sell the song.
So basically if some intern gives you a tape of a song that Band X is recording, or you get the MP3 of a new radiohead song before it was legally distributed, and you transcribe the song, and play it, you can't legally sell it, because you can't get a compulsary license.
However, if you take, "Every Breath You Take", and record it, you can give Sting (or his publisher) notice within 30 days of recording, and before you sell it, and force a compulsary mechanical license.
Before I go any farther, we need to understand something. There are 3 separate entities to think about in dealing with copyright. The Artist, the Record Company, and the Publishing Company. The Artist probably owns part of his/her copyright for the songs splitting it with the Publishing Company. This should be a different company than the record company. The Record company will most likely (99.99% chance if it's a major label) own the Masters. The Artist probably doesn't own any part of the Master recordings of the songs, and probably can't record another copy of them within a certain number of years (or possibly forever), although they might get the masters back some day if they had a really good lawyer or manager to negotiate for them. Let's say for a second that you infringe the copyright on Song A by sampling the melody of the song. Not only would the Record company be able to sue you, but the publishing company would have a suit against you. There's two different copyrights. One for the Master (the recording and any varients of probably), and the Song (the melody, and lyrics... Note: Chord progressions can't be copyrighted, and you need about 5 notes to consist of a melody that might be recognized as copyrightable).
Let's say you wanted to legally sample the song, you would have to deal with Harry Fox to get the clearance for the Master, and with the publishing company (although Harry Fox could probably help you with both). One without the other does you little good.
Ok, so back to topic. We have a compulsary mechanical license. Why doesn't this Rock? Well first of all, since it's not your song you can't get Publishing when you sell your CDs. Most record companies will negotiate for a Controller Composition Clause in your record deal that basically says, look since we are making your songs more valueable, charge us less per song to have the license to record and sell them (Yes, your record company too has to pay to record the Song, on the Master). So they normally get 3/4 Statuory Mechanical or less, so they pay about 5 or 6 cents per song. Let's say 5 for now. They will also only pay for about 8 songs.
Here's another seemly useless tangent that will help things make sense. Hopefully as an Artist you will have three major forms of income (although anything's possible). Touring, Record Royalites, and Publishing Royalties and Fees. They are all from different places obviously and should be simple to figure out. The more you can get from each, the better obviously.
Ok, so we are back. So you'll get 40 cents per CD if you h
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Of course you can sell it!
And if you're clever, you can get almost the price what you paid for. Don't you live in a market economy?
Jefferson wrote that 200 years ago about ideas, not movies/music. So by using that as your argument, you assume that:
a) I would agree with Jefferson.
b) anything that applies to ideas should also apply to music/movies, since they are both "information" (a categorization that I doubt Jefferson would have agreed with).
c) 200 year old ideas are still likely to be relevant today.
-a
True, however in Canada we have a system where those taxes go to fund creativity. Setting up studio's where artists can go for free etc. This system seems very fair to me.
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The bonus being that the space won't be inserted into the actual link. That wasn't too hard now, was it?
Where can you buy a single nowadays?
When I was younger, a "single" was a 45 RPM disk that had the song I wanted, and something on the flip side.
I remember that I could get a CD-single or a casette single of a song my daughters wanted (Macarena comes to mind).
I don't see those being offered anymore.
I *DO* see people offering MP3 cuts of songs I like.
So, let's see... I could buy an album with a dozen cuts on it for, that also has the one that I want, whoch will "only" cost $20, or I could download an MP3 of the song I want for no charge (or, using Apple's iTunes, $0.99). Which one will I pick? Tough choice!
The RIAA has said to hell with what people want (no singles). They overprice CDs. They screw the artists. Any one of those could be moral justification for joining a P2P service, since, we have a moral obligation to oppose unjust laws.
If the business model is to screw and sue the customers, then there's something basically wrong.