Hilary Rosen Loves Creative Commons

13.7Billion Years writes "Former RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen has written a piece in Wired extolling the virtues of Lawrence Lessig's Creative Commons licensing, providing such juicy tidbits as 'I'm still cynical about its origins, but I've come to love Creative Commons,' and 'the industry ought to embrace Creative Commons as an agile partner providing tools for new ways to do business.' She's not quite ready to pooh-pooh the current all-or-nothing licensing regime just yet but this sounds like good progress."

Comments

Convenient

[Hatta]

Shame she's not in a position of power anymore. Funny how this happens after she leaves.

Open Source Tunes

[Rightcoast]

The issue also includes a 16 track Cd with Chuck D, Beastie Boys, Danger Mouse and others that can be sampled, burned, and used under Creative Commons

Re:Open Source Tunes

[jeffehobbs]

a legal torrent of which is here.

I like the David Byrne and the Le Tigre track, the rest is a little so-so, IMHO.

~jeff

Rosen's view of copyright..

[doormat]

"Farmers can leave their property to their children; why shouldn't songwriters be able to leave their songs to their children?"

Uh, perhaps because thats not what the original intent of copyright. Copyright is supposed to be for a limited time, and then to enter the public domain. Property is forever (well, 'til the world ends).

Re:Rosen's view of copyright..

[pilgrim23]

Indeed so. I have no idea who is owed all the back copy write fees for the works of Aristotle. Think of all those monks in the middle ages making their unauthorized quill pin "rips" of his work... Or the plays of Aristophanes From circa 400BC till 2004 AD there is one heck of a back interest payment. Definitly for the Birds... The current view of copy write law amounts to stupidity. The whole idea was to protect the IP for a "Limited Period of Time".

Re:Rosen's view of copyright..

[Anonymous Coward]

artists have to do the same things the rest of us do: work for a living.

and if they are successful, they can do the same thing the rest of us can do: leave a big inheritance.

Farmer: has a farm.. gets to leave it to the kids

Artist: has musical instruments.. gets to leave them to their kids

Farmer: makes a crop: can't leave it to the kids, it'll spoil or it got sold already

Artist: makes music: can't leave it to the kids, because they already have it! it's just information!

So, if the kids want to get rich from the farm, WORK THE LAND!

And if you want to get rich from music, WORK THOSE INSTRUMENTS!

as an ex-musician myself, I understand. making CDs (or tapes in my case, it was a while ago). it's a tough business. But you're not entitled to a damn thing, and neither is the plumber, or a doctor.. or anybody else.

Re:Rosen's view of copyright..

[BillyBlaze]

A farm is capital - a tangible thing you can use to make money, a means of production. You can't farm without a farm. When a farmer dies, he passes his farm, his tractor, etc. to his children, and they use it to make money. If he had money, he passes it to his children also. The creative equivalent of a farm is pens, paper, instruments, recording hardware, and creativity - all of which a musician can pass down to his children. And he can still pass down his money, and he even gets to pass down his name. But a farmer's child isn't guaranteed income unless he farms the farm, thus becoming a productive member of society, so why should an author/musician's child expect to get income unless he writes/sings/etc?

Re:Rosen's view of copyright..

[cranos]

Copyright is not designed to be a legacy to be passed down from generation. Intellectual Property is not the same as physical property. Ever since the idea of Copyright and IP was born it has always been made quite clear that eventually it goes to the community, this is why there are limits on the amount of time you get a copyright for(even if they are obscenely long).

Ideas should be treated differently from physical possessions, its the only way a culture can truly advance.

Re:Rosen's view of copyright..

[GlassHeart]

you're an artist, and if wandering the countryside in search of scraps was good enough for artists of the 13th century, it's good enough for you. In short -- know your place. A farmer gets to leave a legacy for his children. You don't.

Sorry, what stops an artist from selling art and buying some land to pass on to his or her children?

Re:Rosen's view of copyright..

[tdvaughan]

Surely the point is that every artist, writer and otherwise creative person is only able to be creative in that way because they're able to build on the past creativity of others. This is the deal: when you benefit from previous generations' work, fine. Just don't block the next generation from benefitting from your work in the same way. And if what you've made is popular enough then you'll have earnt enough from it to leave your children enough of a legacy for anyone.

Re:Rosen's view of copyright..

[JanneM]

You can keep your song, and give it to your children, and their children for as many generations as you want. Just keep it for yourself. Of course, with nobody ever being able to hear it outside your family, not many people get any pleasure from it.

What copyright is intended to do is very similar to patents (since ideas tend to be in sort-of the same situation). They grant you a time-limited monopoly on the use of the song - and this is a benefit you did not have without copyright. You pay for that benefit by it being time limited and having your song become public domain after that time ends.

This way both parties win - the holder gets a limited time to make the most of their media/idea, and in return, the public (or society at large) gets full and free use of the media or idea to build on after that period ends.

Note that this deal is totally volontary - if you don't want your song to ever become public domain, then just never release it. But you can't reasonably expect to be granted the gift of a monopoly without ever paying anything back, do you?

Of course, that seems to be what media companies are striving for at the moment...

Re:Rosen's view of copyright..

[AstroDrabb]

A farmer gets to leave a legacy for his children. You don't.

Dude, you are WAY off. Copyright was supposed to be for a LIMITED time and to create a LIMITED monopoly for the ORIGINAL copyright holder. Not to leave a "legacy" to your children's, children's, children. There is no WAY that the ORIGINAL copyright holder is going to benefit from a copyright 70 years after they are DEAD. How can a person benefit from something after they are dead? That is insane and against the original purposes of copyright.

A copyright owner can still leave a legacy for their children. Then can take the money they make from that copyright and do something good with it so that it is there for their children. Copyright was NEVER about passing it along to your kids. Your kids are not the ORIGINAL copyright holder or author and should have NO right to it. It should be in the public domain. The WHOLE point of copyright is to move works in to the public domain. Not to make sure that some copyright holders kids get a bunch of money.

The problem with copyright is because of people like you who think that the purpose of copyright is to give you an UNLIMITED stream of revenue. The purpose of copyright is to influence the creative arts by giving a LIMITED monopoly to a work. After that LIMITED (IMO 15 - 20 years) time, that work becomes the public domain, thus creating an incentive to CREATE AGIAIN.

Re:Rosen's view of copyright..

[Saeger]

And if you want to get rich from music, WORK THOSE INSTRUMENTS!

Ahh... but I was hoping to hit it big so that my great-great-grandkids could live off artificial-scarcity royalties for the rest of their spoiled, unproductive lives -- a healthy commons, and 'working' for a living be damned.

--

Re:Rosen's view of copyright..

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Such a philosophy doesn't sit well with a portion of the Slashdot crowd who think that society would be better off if artists and writers knew their place -- give away your stuff for free, and hope that you make money by playing live concerts or live book readings. If somebody violates your copyright, don't fight back too hard -- you should be lucky to get what you get. And a big hearty fuck-you if you're uppity enough to put copy protection or DRM on your work -- what's done with your work should be the choice of the Slashdotter, not you. If you have the same aspirations of being a millionaire that, say, a (insert typical Slashdotter profession here) has, check yourself -- you're an artist, and if wandering the countryside in search of scraps was good enough for artists of the 13th century, it's good enough for you. In short -- know your place. A farmer gets to leave a legacy for his children. You don't.

[wearily] The people who say this kind of thing are hardly ever artists or writers themselves. Very often they're parasites (like Rosen and Valenti) who want to get rich off artists' work, however.

I am a writer, among other things; I make a not-insignificant amount of money off writing, and you can be damn sure I want every penny my books earn. However -- I do not believe that my work is perpetually my property, or that of my heirs; perhaps more to the point, I do not believe that it is perpetually the property of my publisher, or any corporation, and most especially not of scumsuckers like the RIAA, the MPAA, or Disney (this last being mentioned because it's largely due to the Mouse's efforts that we have the absurdly extended copyright laws we do.) The government makes, or is supposed to make, a deal with the creators of original work: you put your work out there for people to enjoy (and hopefully buy) and in return, we will protect your right to profit from that work for a limited time. Period. If you don't like it, lobby to amend the Constitution.

My equivalent of a farmer's field is not my book. That would be my computer, which is unlikely to be of any use to my children by the time I die ... My books are the equivalent of a farmer's crop. No rational person would argue that farmers should be paid in perpetuity for crops they harvest once.

Re:Rosen's view of copyright..

[WarmBoota]

So write your goddamn song, sell it as a jingle to Pepsi and buy a goddamn farm. Music and literature are derivitave works that owe their existence to the work of earlier artists.

Take a look at Disney. Instead of contributing back to the Public Domain from which they've built their empire, they hoard their characters (which belong to the common lexicon) and swallow real creative places like Pixar.

Physical property, unlike creative works is limited. That's why we afford it special protection (and why governments choose to levy taxes on certain forms of it). Ideas and creative works are different, not just in their lack of physicality, but in the fact that our use of those ideas is colored by our perceptions and by our life experience. I might see or hear something different in your work and want to emphasize that myself (think decent cover versions of songs).

I really think that artists need to be compensated for their contribution to society, but I don't think that copyright protection should extend past 15-20 years. I am extremely opposed to their children inheriting the rights to their works. Give them the house and the car, but make them get a job for chrissakes!

Finally DRM technologies should be eliminated for the benefit of future generations. What good is copyright expiration if you can't get access to something because the key is lost

Re:Rosen's view of copyright..

[Red Pointy Tail]

That's why they have high inheritance tax - if you didn't earn it, then you really shouldn't be enjoying it that much.

Maybe they should have a copyright inheritance tax or something - upon death, 50% of the copyright revenues goes to the government, and after two generations most companies won't bother to hold on to it.

Only problem:

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice that Mrs Rosen things Creative Commons is nice and all. Only problem: Nobody cares about Mrs Rosen anymore since she isn't RIAA chief anymore.

Re:incompatable with gpl

[MP3Chuck]

" it's still IP, and thus should be more open."

What the hell more do you want? The individual unmixed tracks ready to load up in Pro Tools (or should they use a more OSS-friendly file format)? The instruments they were played on and sheet music to go with it?

Some people will never be satisfied ... damn.

man tar?

[fiddlesticks]

from the FA:

'After spending the summer decompressing in Italy with my family'

sorry, she spent the summer running

tar -zxfv ./

on herself, or her family too?

wtf does 'decompressing' mean if you aren't a deep sea diver or a tar/zip file?

is she aware of the patents on some de-compression work?

In other news...

[davmoo]

And next week we'll see Saddam Hussein proclaiming that he is in favor of democracy.

I trust Hilary Rosen to really support Creative Commons about as much as I expect Bill Gates to support Linux.

Re:In other news...

[Midnight Thunder]

And next week we'll see Saddam Hussein proclaiming that he is in favor of democracy.

I trust Hilary Rosen to really support Creative Commons about as much as I expect Bill Gates to support Linux.

People change, as do what influences them. These people in protect their opinions because of their vested interests. If the situation changes, then their point of view may change too. Any smart person is capable of accepting the benefits of someone else's point of view if there are indeed real benefits.

Remember Hilary Rosen is no longer in charge of the RIAA, so she doesn't have to play the same game, even if she still believes in the mantra she preached. In fact reading the article shows that she understands that the record industry is in need of change, but as the same time people should not accept everything for nothing. She sees the CC as choice made by the artist about the accessibility to their works, which is different from someone deciding to do something with a copyrighted piece of work that the copyright does not permit.

Why is she saying this?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

So she was only doing what she was doing before because she was paid to do it. That's not a big surprise. The only question that comes to mind is who's paying the bitch now?

Re:Why is she saying this?

[LostCluster]

who's paying the bitch now?

The answer to that is on page 2 of the article...
Hilary Rosen, former chair and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, is a business and political commentator on CNBC and an adviser to media and technology companies.

Basically, she's a professional pundit now.

Really odd

[blueskies]

No one finds it really odd that suddenly she writes an article supporting the CC? What's in it for her? What is the underlying motive?

Maybe she is trying to subvert the CC from within?

another day...

[numbski]

another slashdot spamming script.

Goood lord. :\

Anyway, any step toward sanity is a good one, however embracing a license isn't enough for me to start singing around a campfire with them.

Stop suing your customers, then perhaps we'll talk.

BTW, link 'o the day. CmdrTaco on TechTV!
http://www.g4techtv.com/flashpop.aspx?vid eo_key=88 92

The RIAA's attitude in a nutshell

[techno-vampire]

From the article: In a contest of greed versus theft, I suppose I chose greed as the morally superior position.

The RIAA is basing its position on the false dichotomy of either greed or theft. They can't seem to understand that it's possible to protect the artist's rights without draconion measures or royalties that would put a robber baron to shame. Isn't it a shame that Hilary Rosen didn't learn this until she'd left the RIAA and had no more influence over their thinking?

Err did I miss

[Alci12]

Hell freezing over?

Only natural.

[OccidentalSlashy]

I've seen it so many times before ... at first you are compelled to hang around with the artists and bohemians, no matter what your parents say. This stage is followed by a sort of dull resentment or sometimes outright hostility towards their loose ways and apparent lack of motivation, culminating in a blow-up attempt to get their money, smash their guitars, whatever (that's the part we all saw in her, and hated). Possibly this stems from an inner feeling that she is plain not good enough to be part of that community.

But self-loathing cannot stand on its own, and eventually, it is re-directed in a healthy way -- "I LOVE the commons! What POSSIBILITY!" Yes, Hilary has come full circle at last. The healing has begun. The flame of art has travelled on!

Welcome, Hilary! You're on the good side now! :-)

She loves a free lunch.

[Doc Ruby]

Of course Rosen loves people giving away their creative products. Disney has made a fortune from copyrighting public domain fairy tales. Rosen sees dollars from peddling CC works without paying the authors, once corporate execs find a 21st Century version of the Disney scam. She's cynical about the origins of the CC license, because that community successfully opposed her IP cartel so often.

Hilary Rosen

[Infonaut]

In this article Rosen revealed a bit of herself. She's not the one-dimensional creature that a lot of RIAA-haters have made her out to be. Her position at the RIAA was never easy:

The presumption in these attacks was that Rosen was calling the plays for the music business and not the other way around. She seems to prefer it that way; she gets paid $1 million a year to shelter the executives from criticism. But in fact, according to those closest to her, she's not the hard-liner in the crusade against file-sharing. Yes, she's the frontwoman. But there are five CEOs backing her up - and some of them make her look like Mary Poppins. "They still think they should put teenagers in jail," says technology guru Esther Dyson. In fact, Rosen tried to steer the labels toward the online future long before they saw it coming. In the mid-'90s, Rosen brought Dyson to a conference of music executives to brief them on how technology would transform their business. Dyson described for them the inevitability of digital delivery, an eventuality Rosen says she had begun to understand but wanted her bosses to hear from an outsider. But as Dyson spoke, the label executives became defensive, then furious. By all accounts, the meeting devolved into a shouting match.

Sure, as the head honcho at the RIAA she was on the wrong side of a lot of issues, but she's not exactly Pol Pot either.

Re:Hilary Rosen

[chrisd]

So since she wasn't murdering people and instead concentrated on suing 12 year old s and reducing our freedoms, she deserves a cookie or something?

Chris DiBona

Re:Hilary Rosen

[Anonymous Coward]

There's this thing called "google". There's another thing called "wikipedia".

There's this word called "lazy".

Re:Hilary Rosen

[quantaman]

So since she wasn't murdering people and instead concentrated on suing 12 year old s and reducing our freedoms, she deserves a cookie or something?

And look at all the great PR that's gotten them, besides if she didn't do something as drastic it is very likely her replacement would of (and perhaps more). In the struggle for freedom sometimes the greatest sacrifice is by those who would have you believe they work for the enemy so that they may fight them from within. Now I don't believe for a second Rosen was in an allout subversive struggle against them but I do feel she was a more moderate force trying to hold back the true extremists, perhaps given the organizations she was representing it was all we could of reasonably hoped for.

Sole Stated Purpose of Copyright

[Roger_Wilco]

It has nothing to do with protecting anybody, but only encouraging progress. See Article I, section 8, clause 8 of the US constitution:

Congress has the power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Re:Pooh-pooh?

[Synonymous Yellowbel]

I am sorry but never in my life did I encounter the expression pooh-pooh, can someone please enlighten me?

It basically just means to dismiss, disparage or criticise (depending on the context).

steve

Re:incompatable with gpl

[macshit]

What the hell more do you want? The individual unmixed tracks ready to load up in Pro Tools (or should they use a more OSS-friendly file format)? The instruments they were played on and sheet music to go with it?

Yes?

Throw Bill Gates' head in too and I'll even say thank you!

Supporting rightsholders' decisions...

[turnstyle]

Being in favor of Creative Commons means being in favor of rightsholders making decisions about sharing their works (as well as remixing, etc.)

But to be in favor of rightsholders making those decisions also means accepting them when they decide *not* to share.

If we only care when a rightsholder decides to share, and not if they choose otherwise, then we really don't care about them making that decision.

Re:Supporting rightsholders' decisions...

[An Onerous Coward]

Damn straight. If a copyright holder decides to make full use of the vastly overinflated collection of "rights" that infest modern copyright law, I have no respect for their decision to do so.

Now, if copyrights were much shorter, and copyright law contained clear, sensible guidelines about derivative works that would allow for creativity, and all DRM schemes were required to uphold those guidelines, then the decision "not to share" would be a perfectly respectable one.

Creators should have a certain level of control over their work. By default, copyright law grants them "rights" far in excess of that level. In such a climate, the decision not to share amounts to being a complete and utter prick.

[This post licensed under the "Do Whatever the Hell You Want With It" License v.2.0 or later.]

Re:Supporting rightsholders' decisions...

[fucksl4shd0t]

Preaching to the choir, eh? :) From the article:

Lessig also complained about the Copyright Term Extension Act, which adds several years to the terms of protected works. I countered: Farmers can leave their property to their children; why shouldn't songwriters be able to leave their songs to their children?

So does she figure that the particular portion of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to secure for a limited time the rights to Creative Works to Artists, for the long-term goal of securing them for society has anything at all to do with property law? It doesn't. There's no comparison.

The deal is, you can have your copyright, but you must give us your work. Copyright isn't some way to make kids that haven't been born yet rich off their asses. It's a way to provide creative types with an opportunity to make money from their work as an incentive to do more work. Copyright is all about the benefit to society, and has very little to do with Artists' Rights.

Blah, she doesn't get it. She's a puppet of the record industry, not the musicians. The labels the RIAA represents, the ones that actually make money, own the copyrights to the music they distribute (with a few exceptions). Peel away the bullshit, and she was right about one thing.

In a contest of greed versus theft, I suppose I chose greed as the morally superior position.

Nothing to see here. Move along. ;)

Re:Supporting rightsholders' decisions...

[uncoveror]

In case no one pointed this out yet, neither A in RIAA stands for artists. It is the Recording Industry Association of America.

Last pagraph response

[Famatra]

"Slashdot crowd who think that society would be better off if artists and writers knew their place -- give away your stuff for free"

It isn't about their place in society. I would mostly be content with these writiers and artists not turning so called 'society' into a police state so they could squeeze that extra last dollar out of someone who likely was not going to, or able to afford, that song / book etc.

"If somebody violates your copyright, don't fight back too hard"

Copyright is artifical, you do know this? People speak as if it comes from on high, but it is a law and one that can be changed or even repealed.

"If you have the same aspirations of being a millionaire..." ...then I suggest you choose another profession other than author since the current state of technology, that allows unlimited copying, means the current structure of making gobs of money off keeping the masses ignorant and information deprived are over.

"A farmer gets to leave a legacy for his children. You don't."

I thought children were peoples' legacy ;), anyhow I see no reason why these content makers dont have a legacy. Leaving the world one's ideas that are shared and distributed freely is more of a legacy than having your life's work being sealed away by your children, dispensed out on *their* whim for *their* profit.

Mods on crack

[Anonymous Coward]

dictionary.com says:

pooh-pooh: To express contempt for or impatience about; make light of.

Problem with "Farmers" Analogy

[Roger_Wilco]

Ms. Rosen argued: "Farmers can leave their property to their children; why shouldn't songwriters be able to leave their songs to their children?"

There's at least one difference; when I die, my heirs must pay considerable inheritance taxes. Do there exist inheritance taxes on ownership of copyright? If it's to be considered a kind of property, such taxes should exist (or they shouldn't on real property; personally I believe that each person should do their best on their own, i.e. inheritance should be forbidden, but I don't know how to implement this without massive corruption).

I recommend Lessig's book, Free Culture for a great deal of discussion on copyright and related issues. The FSF sent its members a copy recently; you should join --- everybody else is doing it.

Re:Problem with "Farmers" Analogy

[An Onerous Coward]

You've been out of the loop for a while. The Republicans wisely got rid of "The Death Tax", and in their enthusiasm to eliminate it, they even voted down a Democrat proposal to keep the estate taxes only on money above and beyond the first billion of net worth.

Thanks to the foresight of our leaders in Washington, we are all safe to pursue the American Dream of working hard, skimming a bit off the top, sticking it to a bunch of pensioners, and ensuring your descendants to the fifth generation never have to do anything productive.

Re:Pooh-pooh?

[prowley]

"Poo-poo" is American adolescent idiom meaning excrement, as in "I went poo-poo in my diapers again!"

I pooh pooh your explaination: a) it is of British origin (and we have enough trouble wrestling our words off the French that you needn't think we will just stand idly by while you half inch them under our noses) - I believe a bastardization of the French for chamber pot, Po' Poh or something. b) only when speaking to small children is a pooh pooh a shit c) in this context it means to dismiss d) it also means a bad smell For a thorough useage of the term pooh pooh, please see Blackadder: Melchett: Well, bugger me with a fishfork! Old Darling, a Jerry morsetapper? What on Earth made you suspect him? Mary: Well, he pooh-poohed the captain here and said that he'd never find the spy. Melchett: Is this true, Blackadder? Did Captain Darling pooh-pooh you? Edmund: Well, perhaps a little. Melchett: Well then, damn it all, how much more evidence do you need? The pooh-poohing alone is a court-martial offence! Edmund: I can assure you, sir, that the pooh-poohing was purely circumstantial. Melchett: Well, I hope so, Blackadder. You know, if there's one thing I've learned from being in the army, it's never ignore a pooh-pooh. I knew a major: got pooh-poohed; made the mistake of ignoring the pooh-pooh -- he pooh-poohed it. Fatal error, because it turned out all along that the soldier who pooh-poohed him had been pooh-poohing a lot of other officers, who pooh-poohed their pooh-poohs. In the end, we had to disband the regiment -- morale totally destroyed ... by pooh-pooh!

Ha

[ScrewMaster]

I'm cynical about everything and anything that comes out of Hilary Rosen's mouth. In fact, anything that woman "embraces" is something I will need to be more careful about in the future. And that applies equally well to Cary Sherman and Jack Valenti, for that matter.

say it!

[poptones]

I went through that phase of hilary hating a loooong time ago. Then one day I went online and found MP3.com had launched their "digital vault" which (they argued) allowed them to offer ANY music for download to folks. It wasn't just that I thought this to be incredibly stupid and doomed to failure, but more than that it showed this "pioneer" just another ethically clueless money chasing adventure.

The RIAA sucks ass, and I'm proud to say I've not given them a penny of my money in years. I am a regular shopper at Magnatune and I'm seriously considering giving the gift of CC licensed music this year to a select few.

But as much as I hate the way the old school does business, the law (and consistency if we are serious about GPL) is on their side. No one forces artists to sign with (so called) major labels, and any band today has MANY opportunities to generate hype for themselves without making that sellout (oh, to have been there the day "The White Stripes" made that deal! Such a shame...)

I hate the way so many simply refuse to see the illogic in defending GPL and then insisting "we" should be able to broadcast their material in any way we see fit. Anyone who seriously believes in the GPL, the CC license etc should have no use AT ALL for "artwork" tied to any of those old school sharecropper licenses. Madona and Britney don't need our help, and redistributing their content only helps preserve the power of a system that has shown, at every turn, a strict unwillingness to adapt even while thus ensuring its own increased irrelevance.

This bit about Hillary is nothing new. Even when still with the RIAA we often heard of urgings to the old school publishers to adapt. They didn't listen then (thank goodness) let's hope they won't start now.

Hilary the Insult Comic ex-RIAA CEO

[Riktov]

Creative Commons is a wonderful license...

For me to poop on!

Intellectual property tax?

[tepples]

Now, if the creative equivalent of the farm tools is pens, paper, instruments, and recording hardware, but you're missing out on the exclusive right to farm the land -- the tools won't do you any good.

And without a way to pay property tax on the land, the land won't do you any good either. To continue this analogy, we need an intellectual property tax such as that specified by this bill.

no, man mpg123

[tepples]

sorry, she spent the summer running tar -zxfv ./ on herself, or her family too?

No, she spent her summer decompressing MP3s of member labels' recordings to /dev/audio. I'd bet record industry executives get free MP3s as a perk.

Re:Amiga MODs are machine-readable sheet music

[PenguiN42]

"Audacity project" or "multichannel Ogg (Vorbis or FLAC) stream" anyone?

But what about effects for the mixdown? Or post-processing that's done in the mastering step? Sure, you could give everyone your raw tracks and the instructions to put them back together, but if they don't have that $2000 compressor, what's the point?

Anyway, one would probably want to use the .OMF format, which is readable by most pro audio software out there. ... but what if they recorded to 2" tape? Should they go and digitize all the tracks for you? You're not gonna end up being able to "compile" the same end result if you don't have their $40,000 console, anyway. And what if they bounce tracks down to save room? The original tracks are gone by that point.

You just described tracked music, which includes machine-readable instrument definitions (as a sample bank) and machine-readable sheet music (as a note sequence) in a file. Common formats for tracked music include .mod, .s3m, .xm, or .it formats. Other machine-readable sheet music formats, which reference (but do not completely define) the instruments, include .ly (Lilypond) and .mid (standard MIDI file format). Compare the concepts of "transparent" and "opaque" used in the GNU Free Documentation License [gnu.org].

But tracker formats may not be sufficient to reproduce the entire range of synthesized and sampled music out there, especially when you consider the thousands upon thousands of sequencers, samplers, synthesizers, drum machines, and controllable effects, both software and hardware based, including some old vintage analog stuff, much of which might not be built anymore, and most of which is hella expensive.

Besides, this whole "compatable with GPL" thing rings a big "NOT APPLICABLE" in my head when talking about music. What do "source code" and "compiling" and "object code" mean when you're talking about music? How can you expect to be able to reproduce the "object code" the same way every time, and still leave room for artistic expression?

Compare to the GNU Free Documentation License. They don't require pictures in a document covered under said license to be packaged with the sketches, or all the Gimp layers used to create the image, along with instructions on what filters to use to combine them. The final result is all that matters in that case.

last in line

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone else has already ripped your faulty analogy to shreds. That won't stop me from doing it too, however.

The musical artists already don't leave a legacy behind under the current system, because they don't own their copyrights. If you want the RIAA to make you famous, you have to give all your work to them, so THEY can leave it behind for THEIR children. You, the artist, are currently left empty-handed.

Not that it matters, even if artists these days did keep their copyrights, your logic would still be faulty. I just wanted to point out that even if your logic were solid, it still wouldn't apply, because the current system doesn't work that way either.

Incidentally, They Might Be Giants, the greatest band in the world, has been giving their music away for free since the day they started performing. They retain all their copyrights, because they did not do business with the RIAA. In other words, they played the game the way the slashdot crowd would like to see it played...and they have been making a living at this for 20 years, which is much longer than most RIAA bands can even hope for.

So, everything you said is wrong from every possible perspective.

Re:last in line

[shark72]

"The musical artists already don't leave a legacy behind under the current system, because they don't own their copyrights. If you want the RIAA to make you famous, you have to give all your work to them, so THEY can leave it behind for THEIR children. You, the artist, are currently left empty-handed."

For what it's worth, the way it typically works in a recording contract is this: if you write your own words or music (as opposed to simply being a singer or performer) you keep those rights (that's how composers and lyricists make a lot of their money -- e.g. for radio or juke box airplay, it's the composer and lyricist who make money, not the record company). The record company usually has the copyright on the recording (although it's often shared with the engineer and/or producer). If you don't want a record company to have a copyright on a recording of a song you've written, the best way is to go it alone and come up with the money to hire the engineer and the recording studio. Once you're established, you get more leverage here. This is the reason that many artists end up starting their own record label.

"Incidentally, They Might Be Giants, the greatest band in the world, has been giving their music away for free since the day they started performing. They retain all their copyrights, because they did not do business with the RIAA. In other words, they played the game the way the slashdot crowd would like to see it played...and they have been making a living at this for 20 years, which is much longer than most RIAA bands can even hope for."

I'm a huge TMBG fan as well. Elektra/Asylum has the rights to lots of their earlier recordings (from the Flood era). I was glad to see that they went the indie route when they weren't cranking out the hits necessary to get big label distribution. The Spine was released on a much smaller label (Zoe) with which they presumably have more leverage. You probably know more details about the arrangement than I do.

"So, everything you said is wrong from every possible perspective."

Please take it down a notch.

Funny Stuff

[D iz a n k Meister]

Farmers can leave their property to their children; why shouldn't songwriters be able to leave their songs to their children?

Ummmmmm, because songs aren't property, maybe, hmmmm?, maybe?

But let's not go too far into dreamland. Yes, the current system of copyright can be antiquated and user unfriendly, and its enforcement can be discriminatory, but it has created a lot of wealth for individual artists, not just corporations. More important, it has created a vast body of art for the public.

That the public doesn't own(yet, and probably never will), so it's not really for the public. I mean, I really don't get that statement. "It has created a vast body of content for the public to purchase" seems more appropriate.

Re:Stones and glass houses

[Tim C]

To be fair, the OP didn't say that her past behaviour was redeemed by the article either, just that it demonstrated that there's more to her character than one would think from reading past articles and comments here. That's not exactly hard though; taking the highly-rated comments as being the "opinion of slashdot", it would be hard to find a less one-dimensional picture on most topics; things here tend to be very, very polarised, at least to my eyes.

That's hardly unique to slashdot though; wherever you have debates about emotive topics, you'll find polarisation of opinion and a complete unwillingness to accept or even listen to opposing viewpoints. It does seem to be taken to quite an extreme here at times, though.

Re:incompatable with gpl

[GreatBunzinni]

What the hell more do you want? The individual unmixed tracks ready to load up in Pro Tools (or should they use a more OSS-friendly file format)? The instruments they were played on and sheet music to go with it?

Now that you mentioned it, I believe that the idea of a user being able to remix/remaster the song to be very interesting. And I'm not only thinking about the creative side. For example, if a certain song was presented in a format where the varius tracks were unmixed and the mixing was made in real time, the listener could specify certain surround properties which he liked best. He could shut up the vocalist to get an instrumental/karaoke track, listen to an individual instrument or even reorganize an entire orchestra. That sounds pretty cool to me. There aren't any technical limitations to achieve this. DVDs are more than capable of holding the data needed. Real time mixing isn't a problem either.

Some people will never be satisfied ... damn.

There was mono... Some people weren't satisfied. Then stereo... Some weren't satisfied. Then surround... Some people weren't satisfied. Then... Then... You follow the pattern.