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Interview with Jim Griffin
mpawlo writes "I just finished a Greplaw interview with Jim Griffin. Griffin, of Pholist fame, gives his thoughts on copyright and digital distribution of music. Learn also why copyright should be renamed copy risk. Griffin was once - at Geffen - behind the online release of a full-length song by Aerosmith. In 1994! He is, however, not a John Perry Barlow School of Thought devotee."
...which amounts to nationalizing all art. (He who pays the piper, etc.)
Unless you like Soviet hymns to tractor production statistics, that probably isn't such a great idea.
wow, the western equivalent of rav_eaters! i sure do love pho.
(pho tai nam for me)
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
I fucked your father, krog bitch.
Hey it's that old country hit by purple rain!!!!!!!!!!!! yay microsoft?
so THATS where i got herpes from!
http://www.brianstorms.com/archives/000224.html
Has to do with Michael Robertson trying to "save" the indie music at MP3.com from being deleted by new MP3.com owner CNET.
From the interview, concerning DRM systems:
So it seems quite obvious that conditioning access on locks and keys doesn't work today, and is purely a theoretical, hypothetical suggestion that has never proven value in the marketplace.
Sounds like "information wants to be free". In this case free from strange limitations (Yes, you can play that CD on the computer, but it will only work, when it's Windows or Mac. Can you repeat? Linux? What is Linux? Ah, yes I heard something. No, sorry Sir, we don't support it. Oh, one more thing - to make it work during playback every 17 seconds you have to press Ctrl+V+F7). If the DRM-protected file is less useful and flexible than one you've just got from Kazaa, you will use the one from Kazaa. Period.
shut the fuck up you fucking jew bastard. Krog's father is watching!
While I for one support the License Fee, many over here in the U of K hate it, and wish it was gone. Why they would want to go for a US-alike TV system, with commercials everywhere, I don't know.
Also, by Europeans I think he means "Brits". To my knowledge, only we pay a TV License.
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
He argues both that DRM is a concept not a technology, and that the overall costs and balances of DRM ought to be taken into account (the Cable TV argument), and that the financial value of art is in its ability to draw a crowd.
The cost of applying DRM to a given work should be factored (as a negative) into the popularity and therefore take-up of that work. I'm still not convinced that anyone "high up" in the content-protection (**IA) business has figured that out... This ought to be required reading for industry execs.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Jim Griffin sounds very knowledgeable about this subject but he also spins some serious hippie crap that makes me doubt his theories and opinions.
I have no particular take on QTFairUse. I simply acknowledge, accept and find delight in digits -- especially those carrying art, knowledge and creativity -- bionomically finding the shortest, most efficient and effective path from source to destination.
Yeah, that's the biggest cop out to a serious question ever.
I wish he'd just come out and say it in plain English:
Our path to progress is clear: Tolerate risk, but anticipate its consequences and address them through actuarial means, by pooling fees and allocating their rewards to risk takers such as artists and rights holders. Paying into actuarial network funds should be no more voluntary than ought be automobile insurance.
In other words, everyone should pay a "music listening tax" regardless of how much music they listen to. Those who listen to a lot get great value from the taxation and those who listen to less just...shut up and pay the bill.
As fabulous and socialist as this all sounds, the part about pooling the fees and paying the "risk takers such as artists and rights holders" scares the shit out of me. Are we willing, for the sake of putting rights management out of our minds, to trust a huge payment distribution system to reward our artists? I'm not. I'm terrified that the little guys are going to fall through the cracks. This plan sounds exactly like the payment of royalties for non-profit radio stations--like the one I work for--where we pay a lump sum and the distribution companies like ASCAP dole out the payments based on "play statistics." Massive Habit and Jump Little Children aren't getting a single nickel from what we pay. It's my responsibility as a fan of their music to go outside the payment system that sees them as insignificant and give my money directly to them in the form of CD purchases and show attendance.
my dad doesn't give a horizontal shit about Northern Mickland
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
true that, my friend. True that.
Dinner was great yesterday. Your mom and I appreciated everything, but we're still puzzled over tacos being served instead of turkey. Oh well. See you at Christmas. Love, Dad
Just one!
I might sound simplistic, but isn't this the road to socialism - Compensating all media when most of them deserve to die an unsung death?
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
It simply cannot be done. There's always ways round it, and it's kinda futile. Copy protection programs generally only work under Windows/Mac, and can often be disabled, a la the shift key debacle of recent months. If the copy protection is a bit better than that, and can't be disabled, then youc an always use a different OS. I couldn't rip the Dido CD in Windows, but Grip in Linux did it just fine. Even if they were to tighten up on things like even including blocking for Linux (and I don't know how they'd pull that off) then there'd still be ways round it. If you can hear the sound then you can record it, and that's good enough. You can hook a CD player up to a PC and record the audio, or a PC to another PC... you name it. Granted, most people aren't going to go to such lengths - the general public doesn't really care for Linux :) - but there are already systems like Kazaa in place to distribute MP3s, so it only takes one keen person to create the MP3 in the first place, and everyone else is laughing.
The music industry should stop worrying about DRM and all this rubbish. The horse has bolted, the cat is out of the bag, etc etc. The only way people are going to stop pirating CDs and start buying them again is if the record companies start selling good quality music at a fair price.
Here endeth the lesson.
p.s. I assume I know you?
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Where there is a will, there is usually a way. Liked the article.
Every time we buy a product that was advertised on TV, the cost of the TV advertisements is being passed on to us. Fortunately for Americans, thanks to the free market that money goes to corporate boards that aren't accountable to us, rather than to some silly "public broadcasting concern".
All's true that is mistrusted
Does anyone have a copy of this historic file? Perhaps someone with a beefy server could host it? Or would we all get tossed in jail?
I favor imposing involuntary fees across network users such that the fees become so low they are hardly worth complaining about.
The size of the fee is not the problem. It would be a huge mistake to codify the current flawed network structure of 'network users' and providers into tax law.
We already have a many legally taxable networks. The telephone, cable, water, sewer, and road networks are all taxable for various reasons and with varying amounts of harm and good.
But the Internet is ideally a distributed mesh network constructed and operated by the individual owners of its nodes and links, not multinational corporations. New tax structures based on the current heirarchal model will limit our ability to migrate to a meshed peer network structure as technology allows it. And no government has the authority to prevent the construction of such networks, according to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
When two roomates decide to network their computers, should tax collectors be involved? Of course not. What about two neighbors? Ten? An entire city? Neighboring cities?
In some cases, taxes might reasonably fund parts of the network. Links between cities might be paid for with sales or property taxes. But that is an issue to be decided by the citizens of the respective cities. Enabling speech with taxes is fine. Limiting speech with taxes is not.
It would be absurd to limit the ability of individuals to communicate with each other in order to promote the ability of some artists and their agents to communicate to their market.
------DO NOT WRITE BELOW THIS LINE------
The copyright licensing schemes only got negotiated on TV&radio because (1) the govt monopolizes broadcast licenses, so the number of broadcasters is low and easy to determine (2) it's very obvious who is transmitting what. Obviously, these don't apply to p2p.
I can see what you mean: monitor and log downloads at the ISP, pay fees to artists, spread the cost across customer subscriptions. Perhaps negotiate a blanket license for the ISPs instead of pay-per-play. Whatever. I just can't see that model working without it being universal and compelled. People would just pick the cheaper no-surcharge ISPs.
Any market-acceptable surcharge would never cover for the "lost money" of music companies. Even my cheapskate broadband can pull down ten bundled albums or a nice quality cinema movie per day. Spread that as thin as you please, and it's still a lot of $$$. Especially with everyone joining in, ecouraged by the hypothetical ISP's "all you can eat" license.
Jim? Jim Griffin? You mean Peter's brother??
I thought it was just a cartoon and now you're telling me it's real life? Crap.
This turns my whole world upside down, inside out, and well...quite frankly, I'm confused.
Reg
ps: oh yeah... "boobies" nyahahahha
It's all envy dressed up as philosophy. A way for leeches to salve their conscience. The cow is stealing from the leech collective! It has so much blood and we have so little! Unfair! Redistribute the blood, comrades!
The arguements for bundling mostly have good counter arguements. Sure, it can make sense for a theme park to charge a single admission rather than a per ride fee. They can save a lot of administrative costs. Those who remember Disney's old A through E ticket system, where the consumer often ended up with a bunch of left over A & B tickets, and tired kids who didn't want to ride the Mad Hatter's teacup ride just to use them up, will know the feeling.
But, the LP or CD format itself is bundling. Downloading just the songs you want is a move _away_ from bundling. Paying a flat fee per song looks like bundling on the level of pop music and single tracks, but is a move away from bundling at the album level.
Example: At 99 cents a track, Mike Oldfield's Tubular bells will cost you about 2 dollars for the whole album (2 tracks). Tubular Bells 2 is about 20 dollars, and Tubular Bells 3 is about 16. So, if Mr. Oldfield releases Tubular Bells 4, it will doubtless consist of exactly as many tracks as his agency figures will maximize total return.
Who is John Cabal?
Um. Dunno how it happened, but this should have gone under a different article (If MS built cars...) Sorry.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
You know, Jim's asked about "DRM" and then he goes on and on about cable television and how "rare" it would be for "DRM" to make sense in "mass media," about "denying content" to "digital or analog radio" -- *without a word at all* about digital broadcast television. It's not like it's at all likely Jim doesn't know the FCC just decided to mandate the "broadcast flag."
So what's your position on the broadcast flag, Jim? Would it be only some set of "licensed professionals" who get to analyze and process digital broadcast television signals with the flag set on? Or nobody gets to without the copyright holder's say-so? Don't you think you ought to address the "rare" case of the "broadcast flag?"
Griffin, of Pholist fame
Doesn't take much anymore to be called famous, does it?
is available at imira.org as a mp3 .
In a world where content managers from the MPAA and RIAA membership are screaming and whining that the sky is falling, Jim has seen the potential since beginning. His testimony at the Napster hearings, was the high point of the and actually gave me some hope. The same day, Lars Ulrich from Metallica was whining "Napster ripped me off," Jim Griffin was talking about increasing the size of the musical pie from $40 billion to $100 billion per year. Basically telling people to quit fighting over who gets what part of the pie, lets make a bigger pie, so everyone can get a slice. Every word he said that day, still applies today. It's well worth a listen.
The other testimony that day was prompted me to found the boycott-riaa website, and later IMIRA.org after I left boycott-riaa in October this year. Jim's ideas may not be perfect but they are much better for all involved than the current situation.
If someone said to you, "There's a new electromagnetic weapon powerful enough to disrupt the computer systems running most modern attack vehicles. It may save countless lives but it could also fall into the wrong hands. What is your take on this kind of weapon?" You wouldn't respond, "I can't render a verdict until I've fired one."
It's not necessary to have used something to form an opinion about what it does. The question was not posed to you to determine if you felt QTFairUse had a nice GUI or needed more usability testing. The interviewer gave you a basic understanding of the tool then asked how you felt about it and, by extension, it's potential uses. By sidestepping the issue he presented--"On one hand, the program may provide fair-use, on the other hand, this may in practice be the silver-bullet to the first functioning commercial alternative to more or less illegal downloading through for example Kazaa"--you left readers without an answer.
As I see it, either you consciously chose to ignore the question and didn't explain why, or you misunderstood the question and missed an opportunity to speak on one of the most important aspects of this whole debate: What about the people who, for whatever purpose, forever seem to be circumventing the plans that are put in place? We wouldn't be reading the article if we didn't think your opinion mattered, so stop hiding behind your "delight in digits" and say something concrete.
Did they bleach the colour of MJ's penis too, or is it as black as the day he was born?