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Two Blanks Against the Trend
skdffff writes "German band Eisbrecher has decided to make a statement for its fans and for music consumers in general and is releasing their album ("Eisbrecher") including a bonus DVD with 2 blank CD-Rs which have the same label as the CD itself. Alexx Wesselsky (singer and head of the group): 'We are of the opinion that the music buyers are criminalized enough and have been made responsible for the wretched state in the music industry. We are giving them the chance to make 2 legal copies for private use with "official blanks".'"
Whoever came up with this idea is clever. But, he/she similarly totally misunderstands the point of copyright laws by playing "bright lining" games (as do, in my experience, many slashdot readers).
(the term "bright lining" means doing some activity with a full knowledge of where the law or regulation is and doing something right up to this regulation, this living up to the letter of the law, though, the implication is, not the spirit.)
Copyright is a socially constructed concept. Basically, copyrightholders are entitled to a monopoly of sorts for a limited time on their work. most people agree that the primary reason for this is to encourage more creation of works.
When people talk in terms of "it's legally okay to copy a song from the radio" or "it's legally okay to copy three pages, but not the whole book", then they are basically referring to PRAGMATIC copyright interpreations and rulings based on past technological and social circumstance. as technology and social circumstance change, it may become necessary to change (usually tighten) what is allowed in order to best preserve the spirit and intention of copyright, which, again, is to encourage authors.
here's a really obvious sign of when the spirit of copyright is broken--i call it the "extrapolation" argument. basically, somebody takes an existing interpretation and tries to "scale it up":
* sharing music with your kid sister is ok, so sharing music with everybody's kid sister is (Napster)
* photocopying one page is ok, so let's set up a distributed system via amazon's new full-text thing by which everybody downloads one page and somehow they are combined again (slashdot/amazon)
* MIT has a blanket license for analog music / copying music from existing analog sources of music is ok (radio - unscheduled recordings, includes ads, not complete songs), so let's play a clever trick by which people can get whatever they want in a high quality, but analog format (MIT)
All three of these will work, in the short term. And all three will generate stricter interpretations and a clamp-down, because they are so clearly against the spirit of the socially beneficial copyright law (oh, shut up already, completely-anti-copyright anarcho-libertarians - go and do a little historical research about every attempt to do away with copyrights and patents completely). The end result of this will be stricted interpretations and more bitching and whining on slashdot. What is the root cause of this? The evil RIAA and MPAA? Yes, they occasionally go overboard (the mickey mouse extension act is pretty egregious), but generally they are in the right.
The root cause is those who think that they're being clever by bright-lining copyright interpretations without realizing that they are interpretations that are subject to reasonable modification as circumstances warrant, not god-given cast-in-stone truths. or, in other words, more technological sense than social understanding.
Disagree? reply, not mod down.
While I applaud the effort, I still think this could promote the false notion that they have to give permission in order for private home listeners to make backup copies for their own use. This is the real source of debate, whether or not I can copy the CD I own onto my own mix CD and let a friend borrow it.
The *AAs focus on the macro-scale because they know the argument is much more convincing if they try and say the average user is 'stealing' and 'distributing' to thousands of people. Instead, the average person is most likely willing to pay for a song if the price is right and the restrictions aren't too severe. iTunes seems to be doing fine, and the competitors are springing up.
Never confuse volume with power.
You see this is exactly what is needed - A changing music business model, combined with a tolerant "lets not be evil" policy
The trouble is that the business model of "Litigate until you show a profit" is somewhat self-perpetuating whereas this new one is risky...
Remember kids! Guns don't kill people - Americans kill people.
but why don't they just give you two extra copies of album instead of CD-Rs?
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
IANAL, and I know this isn't happening in the US, but wouldn't the two blank discs intice a US consumer to break US laws? Aren't we allowed on one personal copy?
What are Germany's laws in regards to this?
I wonder if it will be subject to blank digital audio recordable media levies? You know, the ones which go into the hands of the enemy :-)
Wouldn't it have made more sense to just include two extra copies of the CD instead of two blanks? At least then you wouldn't end up using the blanks for something you REALLY want extras of, like Fedora Core or Led Zeppelin.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
I see it as a concept that may make people understand the idea of 'copyright'. It stuns me to see how many people DON'T understand the idea. A case is on my web site I have an area where people can download music. It's also copyrighted music.
I've lost count of the number of times I've been emailed about it, from anonymous do gooders making sure that I know they know I'm serving copyrighted goods online, and that it's illegal, and that I could get in some great trouble. Even had one guy argue with me until he broke down into swearing and abuse insisting the RIAA would have my balls on a platter.
The punchline? It's music I've written, I've recorded, I hold copyright over, but as part of that copyright I allow my music to be downloaded.
Over here in the UK, a socialist singer/songwriter called Billy Bragg did this with audio cassettes. He released an album that was entirely recorded on the 'A' side and the 'B' side left blank and unprotected with the label 'Confuse the enemy - bootleg the Bragg'.
It seems to me all Eis-brecher are doing is the same thing, only brought up-to-date.
Please remember socialist != communist.
this is just a publicity stunt.
And it worked.
I'm going to buy this album and I've never even heard of this band. Sooner or later, the music industry will realize that the old ways are dead. Pretty soon, McDonalds and Taco Bell will be record labels of their own, selling new releases with the purchase of a value meal.
What did you think that those Wifi installations were for anyway? New cell phones will have WiFi and Bluetooth by the end of '05. It will be easy.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I agree with you on this. I can take it one step further, I had on old host go in and totally erase my band's site back when the RIAA first started ramping up their attack on Napster. No phone call, no e-mail, no warning what-so-ever, the site just disappeared. Apparently they were afraid of being the next target so everyone that had any mp3's on their site was a pirate until proven otherwise. Once I sent them a fax of my copywrite I find out the damn fools didn't even have a backup of my site so I had to go back and re-upload everything. I wouldn't have minded so much because I keep a current version on my own computer but I'm on dialup so it took a couple of hours to recover. Needless to say I moved to a new host right quick.
I wouldn't say I'm a bad gambler but the last time I went to Vegas I even lost a buck on the soda machine.