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Music Industry Develops Centralized File-Sharing System
pearljam145 writes "A new file-sharing standard designed to distribute copyrighted music and movies legitimately has been developed by a technology consortium. The system could deliver any content format to any computer, and users might even earn rewards points for sharing the files. Using the new standard, computer users could share small files containing information about music, video or other data, but not the content itself. The Content Reference Forum (CRF), founded by Universal Music Group backed by technology companies including Microsoft, is hoping the sharing file standard will be adopted by technology companies and incorporated into software music players."
What's the point of this if I can't actually share the content itself? Why would I want to share a description only?
They want me to host the files that will link to their servers and get them paid! This is nothing more than a distributed bandwidth reduction process. In return you get these imaginary points with no cash value. This isn't file sharing people, this is bandwidth redistribution.
I basically end up hosting 'links' on my computer that point to a pay-as-you-go service.
Essentially, I offer spam on my file sharing connection to other users.
Because each file has meta-information about myself, perhaps I can earn 'bonus points' and get free credit to download the latest Britney Spears single.
A simpler model of this system would be "we'll pay your for legitimate e-mail addreesses of your friends to whom we can send corporate spam."
The article is light on details, but as a business model I think this is one of the worst I've read about in months. The value proposition is so low I can't see anyone participating in this.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
The real story was written by Will Knight of the New Scientist news service, for the record.
Come on now... Or was this just an amazing use of plagerism to illustrate the point in a story about fair use rights and legal music sharing (note that quoting verbatim half the story without attribution is not fair-use, at least not in the US)?
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
If you RTFA, you'll see it's not about content sharing it's about advertising sharing. Users can share information about the content, but not the content itself. This is a non-event.
Imagine your ultimate stereo system. Don't be bashful - if it's really the ultimate, it should include a music library containing every piece of music ever recorded, and a program which can use your past music preferences to suggest new pieces of music for you to listen to. It would be an incredibly mind-expanding device, and one which is technologically not far off - but the introduction of the personal music library will likely be delayed by a decade or more because of copyright problems.
Electronic magazines; special interest news programs which are compilations of the most interesting articles from diverse sources; computer program libraries so programmers don't have to reinvent the wheel; information devices such as an encyclopedia you can wear as a pair of earrings - all of these things would be made much easier and less expensive by the elimination of copyright.
If we abolish copyright, it will be much harder for authors and performing artists to get paid. Absolutely true. Some will say this is a fatal objection. I disagree strongly.
Sometimes changes in technology lead to changes in the economy. The invention of the steam shovel put a lot of ditch-diggers out of work. And the advent of the information age is going to make it impossible for authors to retain strict control over the distribution of their work. Should we then pass laws to try to allow authors to regain that control? Absolutely not. If the authors find life more difficult in the information age, that's the way the cookie crumbles.
As it turns out, though, the information age contains more benefit than harm for authors. The process of getting published becomes as easy as pressing the 'return' key, and anyone can participate. The result will be to make the authorship process much less elitist.
We still have a challenge: how can we arrange for authors and artists to get paid? I agree that it's a challenge, but I think we're up to it. They could:
- get grants;
- hold an academic position where reputation counts;
- give live performances;
- market their recordings themselves;
- publish 'shareware';
- produce a new work and charge a publisher a moderate up-front fee for being the first on the market with the work;
- embed advertising in their work and distribute it widely for free.
We can also design alternative institutions to support artists - for instance:
- A 'book of the month club' which pays artists to contribute their work. True, without copyright you can't arrest freeloaders, but if the service is worth a lot and only costs a little, people will join it.
- People are willing to pay a little money to feel good. An on-line entertainment service which pays authors a small royalty and brags about it may be more profitable than one which doesn't.
But even if it becomes harder for authors to make money (and I'm not convinced that will be the case), the benefits to information consumers far outweigh the costs. And really, there's no other choice. The maintenance of copyright laws is just a finger in the dike. People familiar with computer technology understand that, in the computer world, "bits are bits." A piece of music, a book, a picture, a computer program - they're all just information, and the only technological way to prevent my copying any of them is to outlaw computers altogether.
Apple has demonstrated that when you give people the choice to buy music in the form they want, and at a reasonable way, people will buy. There are no gimmicks in their offering, and you simply pay for what you want.
Today, when I walk into a record store and look at the prices of CDs, I usually end up not buying anything at all, not because I cannot afford them, but because I do not think I am getting value for my money. 18 dollar CDs with 2 or 3 songs that I really want, is not a good deal in my book.
I wonder if they'll ever figure it out ... sigh
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
this is not content they are talking about putting on this sharing network. it is advertising - don't get the two confused!
the last ten years have seen the entertainment industry working very hard to blur the line between content and ads. people regard movie trailers as content, some in the movie industry are starting to regard the movies themselves as advertising (for merchandise like action figures and lunch boxes, which is where the big money is).
2 1337 4 u!
I can safely say that regardless of price (including free)or method of delivery, I'm not buying anything from Brittney Spears, 50 cent, Creed, or whatever "superstar" they have this week. Its not my music. And that is the fundamental flaw in their piracy argument: They are assuming that if it wasn't for file sharing I'd be buying this crap. Personally I stopped buying CDs in any real quantity in the mid-nineties - well before napster. I'm not going to start again anytime soon. Its still not my music.
iTunes and Napster 2.0 aside, I can understand why it's so difficult for the record industry to develop a truly unique offering that we would be willing to pay for: We can't even think of one and we are the target audience. There are still compromises in those services which we would love to do without (like proprietary file formats) and the selection needs to be significantly larger.
Perhaps, instead of trying to build a new service using existing content, we should build a new service for musicians and writers where they can post new works not belonging to a publisher and get paid by a subscription fee. If the content was worthy, people would pay. Eventually, it could become the method of choice for emerging artists, thus cutting off the record industry's supply. Or we can just keep downloading illegally...
--KS--A musician friend of mine once summed it up as "All the record industry is good for now is creating rock stars. And who needs more rock stars?"