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?"

Comments

The moment....

[Kedisar]

I open up a brand new paperback and see a EULA, is the moment I destroy the human race. =/

Bandwidth and cheap media.

[gpinzone]

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.

Theft is not what anybody wants

[Sean80]

Maybe this will be considered a troll. But, I feel that sometimes the posting as written needs to be questioned - we can't just take it as the truth and proceed from there.

"...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.

Re:Theft is not what anybody wants

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

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.

Here is the misconception, copyright violations are not theft. Copyright ownership is not an absolute right like property ownership is. Copyright is a comprimise struck by society with artists and writers. The purpose of compulsory licensing was to modify the compromise to maintain it's fairness. The MPAA and RIAA have no absolute right to control their members' creations. Neither do their members for that matter. If the MPAA does not live up to it's side of the compromise, we the people reserve the right to renegotiate.

No slippery slope, no theft. If we give in to the MPAA and RIAA or any of those extremists that say intellectual propery is the same as real property, then we are giving up our rights and heading down a slippery slope.

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody...

-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac McPherson, 1813

Why no compulsory licenses?

[stonecypher]

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.

How can this be lega.?

[Hugh George Asm]

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?

Compulsory License

[M.C. Hampster]

If you were as confused as I was reading the article, check this out:

Verizon's Solution in the Napster Debate

It gives a good overview of what "compulsory licensing" means:

The scheme Verizon proposes is known as "compulsory licensing." A compulsory license forces a copyright (or patent) owner to permit someone else to use the work for a predetermined fee. Accordingly, it precludes the owner of the copyright (or patent) from refusing to license her work to other people in certain, specified circumstances.

I don't want the responsibility of music

[tuckerclerico]

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.

What people want...

[Quixadhal]

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.