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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. =/
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?
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
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.
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.
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
Takes me about an hour to download a movie from Movielink on my cable broadband connection.
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?
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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.