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The MPAA and EFF Cross Sabers
wigwamus writes "Motion Picture Association President Dan Glickman and Electronic Freedom Foundation co-founder Johh Perry Barlow lock horns, then knock lumps off each other over the movie business' attitude to the Internet. From the article: 'These are aging industries run by aging men, and they're up against 17-year-olds who have turned themselves into electronic Hezbollah because they resent the content industry for its proprietary practices.'"
The bottom line is that if I can see it or I can hear it, I can find a way to copy it. If you make it too difficult to watch a movie or listen to a music, people won't buy it. They'll eventually figure out that they have more to gain by making things easy to use rather than creating ill will and incompatibiity by trying to stamp out casual copying.
No longer will copiers of electronic media be referred to as 'pirates'. They are now to be escalated to terrorists. That way, the MPAA & RIAA can get federal anti terrorism money to help in their fight against these evil people.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
You can hear extended audio of Glickman v Barlow on the Newsnight 9th June podcast, 20 minutes and 20 seconds in. Download from http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/ viewPodcast?id=136697142
I think Glickmans comparison of music to clothes and cars is where his argument fails.
Copying a song does not deprive anybody of the item - only the entity that controls how money is made from the transaction
See the Boston Tea Party and the American War of Independence.
KFG
As someone who recently was a 17 year old "electronic Hezbollah", I can say ideology had nothing to do with my choice to download and share movies. I did it, and still do, because it's easy and costs basically nothing. Sure I don't like the MPAA but I would still torrent if they didn't exist.
if you change one word I think your point becomes fallible.
People with old world business experience going up against young idealists
In either case, new ideas actually quite often do win.
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
These are aging industries run by aging men, and they're up against 17-year-olds who have turned themselves into electronic Hezbollah because they resent the content industry for its proprietary practices.
Dear EFF: It's probably not such a good idea to align yourself with terrorist groups. Remember:
"But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow"
The American War for Independence featured two sides, each led by experienced people in the fields of business, government, and war; I'm not sure exactly how it is relevant.
I'm pretty sure that comparing teenagers to Lebanese 'terrorists' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah) isn't going to help win the hearts of the unwashed masses.
/tongue in cheek
Registered Linux user #421033
This kind of "play by my rules or I'm taking my ball and going home" attitude is disgusting. When will these suits realize that technology is change by its very essence and refusal to accept change breads discontent. There totalitarianistic utopia has ended but they refuse to seek out new means to an end. Do they realy believe a threat of "noones gonna make movies anymore if they can only become millionaires instead of multi-millionaires" is gonna work?
Walk with Music;
"Young idealists?"
But you know the problem is - the bad news is that you're up against a dedicated foe that is younger and smarter that you are and will be alive when you're dead. You're 55 years old and these kids are 17 and they're just smarter than you. So you're gonna lose that one.
Also, I would think that these young individuals have a greater and farther reaching influence than the corporate bigshots. Internet. SERIOUS BUSINESS (really).
You would think the BBC would get the names right. It's actually the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The hackers want to break Hollywood on the wheel of their collective ingenuity and show the suits who is in charge. ...
Big media wants to make money from the internet like it does with every other outlet, or at the very least not have piracy forever draining away their profits.
Isn't it ironic that hollywood is seeing some of their biggest profits in ages, and as time elapses they continue to make more and more money. I know that they do lose money due to piracy, but most of that piracy comes from organized groups with huge copying and distribution capabilities. For those in NYC, how often have you seen "bootleggers" in front if the federal building, state office buildings even near police precints selling pirated copies. Why doesn't hollywood focus on finding the sources of these centers and shutting them down. If the government under hollywoods complaints can go and bother 17 year olds, how difficult would it be for the same government to find out who is buying multirecording DVD burners on a large scale. Let's get real.
Infiltrated dot Net
True. Two of the members of the '60s band "The Grateful Dead" are already dead.
He's an old hippie, and he don't know what to do. Should he hang on to the old? Should he grab on to the new?
The real thing the 'AAs have lost is the power of distribution.
20 years ago if you wanted a movie you had to hop in the car. Even for home viewing of a VHS you had to go to the video store.
The MPAA and RIAA need to face the fact that the internet is essentially a broadcast/time-shifted medium which casts to a broader audience than ever. And how do broadcaster's make their money? Advertising.
This may or may not be a popular notion - but it is my opinion that the best way to support movies and music in the future is via product endorsement. Yes, that's right. You might see wayne's world-esqe product placement rise - but isn't everyday life just product placement anyhow? look around you and count the consumer items that have no labeling on them. Our movies and music should follow suit and become freely distributable.
They cannot hold back the tide forever - I think it is inevitable.
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
I suspect it'll look (and sound!) something like this.
I'm generally a Barlow fan, but that's some of the most poorestly chosen words in the history of language. Just what the MPAA, RIAA, et al. and their paid governement servants need, a little more help getting the little guy who just wants a backup copy of a movie sent to Gitmo.
"Look, this works. I have proof."
"I refuse to believe it can work."
If they can't listen to reason, we'll have to wait for them to die, it seems.
You can't take the sky from me...
The reason why the movie industry is getting clobered, and the music industry got clobered: they didn't offer legal alternatives to the service.
To say it's a battle between free and paid is oversimplifying: iPod + iTunes is wildly succesful. It's paid, but it leverages the ease of the internet to get legally downloaded music.
If these industries had tried to embrace the new tech instead of surpressing it, most would go to them, and the black market would be a fringe issue.
For movies, the choice right now is either online and illegal/unpaid, or offline and legal.
A lot of people are choosing online, not illegal.
Example: if they offered movies for download, or online streaming movies and paid subscription, and the price wasn't retarded, a LOT of people would ditch piratebay et al.
My $0.02
I think his point was that there's plenty of occasions where the underdog has won. However, going up against big business is a painful process, whether you win or lose.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
I think Glickman makes a really good point here. I'll roll with the obligatory car analogy since everyones already familiar with the laws of 'human nature' as applied to cars. Suppose you left your Subaru parked outside your house on a public street.. Now suppose i had a replicator machine which could replicate any solid object and I came along in the night and replicated your Subaru and then got into the new Subaru and drove off into the night. The next day you might get into your car, and start driving along. But all the bonds between the atoms would have worked loose as a result of the replication, and also Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle. Your car would just evaporate into a pile of chrome dust on the highway. You would be screwed.
I know this analogy doesn't apply to digital media, but it might.
Oh, great way to give propaganda to the enemy. Fucking dimwit. Why not just compare the Apache group to Al Qaeda because they're an umbrella group for "renegade" software developers like Al Qaeda is a terrorist umbrella group. In this day and age of terrorism being the new "think of the children!!!!" rallying cry for every attack on freedom, why choose the one comparison that gives a talking point to the forces who want to end freedom in their area?
The EFF is painting a picture of people who are pirating for teh sake of pirating becauase they feel it's the right thing to do. None of the people I know who actively copy movies and songs have every mentioned once screwing any institution. For them it's "I can watch this new movie at home, on my big screen TV, with my popcorn and drink and not fork over $25 for my wife and I to go to a theater and probably have a better experience" or "This let's me have tons of music I wouldn't go buy just so I can listen to it and see if I like it" and things like that. There's no magical army of "copyfighters" out there. Just people who want free media.
The MPAA and RIAA and various other organizations have it wrong in thinking that they will out-litigate these people because simply put, these people know what they're doing is illegal and choose to do it anyway.
I do agree with the concept that they need to make it possible for people to buy media in a conducive manner without an undo cost and they will make money. ITMS and several others are proving it's possible.
The MPAA can go ask the software industry exactly how profitable "stamping our piracy" has been for em. Or they can ask them how much inexpensive downloads have helped good software spread.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Electronic Hezbollah is my new band name. TM and (c) and all that.
Post-rock/Ambient/Drone and other noise.
>See the Boston Tea Party and the American War of Independence.
That's why the tea is crap in America and good in Britain.
Evil people are out to get you.
You can tell Dan Glickman's age in his speech:
- Microsoft: SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005
- Washington Mutual: 2 dollars given out in $2 denominations(the $2 bill)
- Gentleware: Poseidon(Community Edition)
- Wal Mart / Sam's Club: Sampled foods from selected vendors
- Arby's: Chicken Fingers(?)
- Google
It doesn't defy the law of nature, it's a useful technique called marketing!Old man should see this
In a contest they would.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
You are correct to state that a business will indeed win. It likely won't be Big Recording, however. It will be those who can capitalize on the new music market we have today. Some of those 17-year-olds will age to become the ones who are able to make money off of the new ways of distributing content. But soon enough, they'll be the old men, trumped by the young again.
In a way, business is always the winner. It's often just not the same businesses.
Glickman: You are powerful, as the Emperor expected. But you are not a Jedi yet.
Barlow: You'll find I'm full of surprises!
Clash of lightsabers, sparks
Glickman: You don't know the power of the DRM Side! Join me!
Barlow: Never! I'll never join you!
Glickman: It is pointless to resist!
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
The real world 17 year old idealists have more going for them in my opinion... business "experience" is simply trying to make more money and how they can trick people into giving them your money... idealists have brains like anyone else, even if they are 17.
Did anyone else notice that the article references the Digg comments thread that's associated with this story? I find this extremely interesting -- almost a validation of Digg by BBC, a major media outlet; also, a major validation of the BBC, by a major user-driven web community.
Of course, I found this story via Slashdot, so there's no reason for major media organizations to NOT be aware of/reference the methods of "Web 2.0" in their online articles.
Much as I support the EFF's efforts and goals, and sympathize with the gut-level worries of artists about "theft", this article does neither side any service.
It's basically two guys taking nasty swipes at each other. I think that either BBC2 was actively and selectively trying to portray them like two implacable, mean-mouthed curmudgeons, or that JPB and the RIAA guy could both have been a bit more factual.
One thing I really don't like is the characterization of "Electronic Hezbollah", although it's a catchy term; it's not like there's an organized, widespread movement to thieve and destroy. Rather, it's a combination of a groundswell sentiment against excessive prices and insulting, oppressive consumer-unfriendly practices, and a wish to have more convenient and accessible media (remind me again why iTunes was so successful) that doesn't hinder people from listening to their music / watching their movies anywhere or doing a bit of sharing with their friends.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
... soon enough, you'll be able to stick them in nursing homes & tell them they're not allowed to borrow the movies that the lady in the next room has.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Evil Will Always Triumph, because Good is Dumb - Lord Helmet
-- Spaceballs
The Grateful Dead encouraged sharing of fan recordings, etc. So you would tape a concert or a mix and share dubs of that tape. Which didn't sound that hot compared to a LP. Most people went out and bought the LP for 2 reasons: ( (1) more convenient (2) sounds better )
Zoom ahead how many years? Now we have the internet and you can get the album quicker than running to the store (kill reason #1) and if you encode it right the quality is the same or at least undiscernable to the untrained ear (kill reason #2)
Now I'm a firm believer that there is a middle ground but JPB is way off base saying they can just take "their" model nowadays. Times have changed, man!
The American Revolution (and several other successful revolutions on that list) were initiated and run by, not peasants, but the wealthy middle class/merchant class. Most "peasants" tend to lack the education, training, experience, funding, etc. to successfully start and sustain a revolution. The wealthy that are not in power use the grumblings of the poor/peasantry to entice them to battle, and thus putting the wealthy people who weren't in power into power. There's a reason there are pieces called "pawns" in chess games...
Read my blog posts on usability.
> they're up against 17-year-olds who have turned themselves into electronic Hezbollah
To compare file traders to Hezbollah shows either a grotesque sense of proportion or a distorted sense of reality. Had it been the MPAA idiot making the comparision it would simply be the typical file traders == pirates == menace to society == torrorist rubbish we have grown to expect from those asshats. Dispicable but par for the course. But no, this quote was from the EFF, meaning they think the comparison is apt. Which either means they AGREE that trading files online is morally comparable to intentionally murdering women, children and other non-combatants or, more likely, they think terrorists, as long as they are politically correct anti-american/anti-semitic terrorists that is, are admirable people worthy of comparing oneself to.
Yes, the original goals of the EFF were praiseworthy and I supported them. But 9/11 apparently did change everything. Lately the EFF seems to spend most of its time and effort supporting the terrorists and even when, like this event, they were back on topic they can't seem to avoid showing their true political calling. Harsh criticism? Yes. But there is a difference between criticism of the current administration, criticism of your country, and supporting the enemy, lending them aid and comfort. And for most of the left today, they are so far over that line they don't even see the line anymore. Anyone who can entertain the notion there is ANYTHING praiseworthy in Hezbollah is someone who is way over the line.
Democrat delenda est
When the EFF selects as a spokesman the former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, you can just sort of expect the colorful, counter-culture (or is that counter-productive?) over-the-top stick-it-to-the-man metaphors and accusations to fly. The result is hardly what I would call "crossing sabres;" more like crossing Ohio State Daisys with National Guardsman sharpshooters.
And that always works out well, doesn't it?
But the folks to whom the EFF is pitching -- the college kids and twenty-somethings who are donating to them and actually paying for the EFF people to fly comfortably cross-country from SF to DC so frequently (I'll never figure that move to the West Coast out...), they'll probably think that "JPB RAWWKS, D00D!! KICK A$$!! FAWK, YEAH!!" and pony up some more dough for the EFF coffers, so in the end, it's probably a brilliant idea to keep tilting at those windmills with tie-dyed lances.
often, but not always. with movie piracy I am reminded often of what happened in Canada many years ago with cigarettes. Big business (the Canadian gov't) lost big time on that one and the little guy was triumphant.
Without going into much detail, or even providing a link (i'm that lazy and at work so I shouldn't even be here) - Canada decided smokers would pay out the ass if they heavily taxed cig's, i mean heavily, i think at the time it was early 90's and suddenly the price of the dirty cancer sticks jumped a couple of dollars. they still paid. for awhile. than, oddly enough, people found some stores that sold cheaper slightly less taxed (OK, not taxed at all) cigs at some stores. Canadians liking to save money like everyone else opted for the lower cost. I inquired into it a bit and discovered that pirate rings for cigarettes had been established - in some cases it was local reserves, others it was smuggling from the US, and local stores were frequently buying quantities of cigarettes of people who sure didn't look very official.
the gov't saw this happening and took immediate steps to stop it that succeeded, they dropped the tax on the cigarettes and learned a valuable lesson - when you charge a lot for crap, people stop buying it. now to bring this up to today, in the article the MPAA advise that they need to pay these people salaries so they will continue to produce, i whole heartedly agree, but not million dollar salaries, if you need to make several million for working for a few weeks and can't get by without it, than screw you and the horse you rode in on. if the product was priced more on par with the value the consumer got from it than they wouldn't be having this problem.
Technology (as emobdied in the internet) will drive future business models - not ideology. There will be two types in the media industry - those who see it coming and work to "catch the wave", and those who resist it by trying to hold it back. Two guesses who'll be running the show in ten to twenty years.
In Mexico, we have a word for obsolete groups ruled by grumpy old men.
"Dinosaurs".
Allow me to explain.
It's part of common culture, the oldest political party (PRI) is run by 60-year-old (or older) men who belong to established groups (freemasons) and unions (CTM) ruled by them, with union leaders imposed by the government in turn. Political cartoons in mexico often use this image to depict the PRI, which had been in power for more than 70 years, and their government model is more than obsolete. It's *extint*. Hence the name, "dinosaurs". Here's a pair of cartoons drawn in 2000, before the elections where the opposing party (PAN) won for the first time in history. Note that in the first cartoon the dinosaur represents the party, and in the second, the worker union which gives its support to the party, threatening the voters.
Knowing this, the term "dinosaur" is more than adequate to describe the RIAA and MPAA.
> People with real world business experience going up against young idealists. Guess what? Business always wins. Always has, always will.
Except when they don't. Don't confuse the aggregate power of the profit motive as evidence for the competence of individuals.
In this case, it is the business people who are living in a fantasy land, and the "idealists" are the ones thwacking them with the cold cruel club of reality.
The problem with that is when the young grow up, their humanitarian ideals fade away, and they embrace the business ideals of America. Those who don't are considered fringe and ignored, or chastised for their choices. A 17-year-old activist is considered a hero; a 55-year-old activist is considered a trator.
"The fact of the matter is that people who create content for movies and television have to make a profit. If they don't you won't see all this wonderful stuff and listen to it."
By "wonderful stuff" does he mean the pathetic garbage that's been coming out of Hollywood in recent years? The whole movie theater profits have been falling for a while now, with people waiting untill DVD release to rent/watch the stuff. If Hollywood/music industry actually put out decent content they MIGHT, and that's a big might, have something to complain about. As it stands now, I don't go to the theater, and I rarely watch movies, because of the lack of good/innovative story. In the last 3 years I have aquired LOTR(Extended box set), Equilibrium, and Basic (which I only got because it was really cheap and someone recommended it). And I don't watch pirated content, so even if all piracy died now I still wouldn't be any more profitable to the industries.
No, the tea is good in Britain because the British spent centuries raping east Asia and poisoning its people with a combination of opium, disease, and empire-building.
The Americans just decided Dar Jeeling wasn't worth living under the imperial thumb.
People are powerless when they are convinced they are powerless.
Join Tor today!
You are so right, Google would have no chance in the real world.
Linux is a student's project.
OSS is an utopia.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I'm sure all of us have been willing to work for free at one time or another. If you believe in something and enjoy the work enough, it's not really "work". If all these movie makers were as passionate as they should be about creating what they sell, the dollar they earn from making it is secondary to creating something that they and others will enjoy for years to come. Glickman talks like a man that is only interested in profit and that's the problem entirely. No one in their right mind will whole heartedly buy anything from a company or group that is interested only in profit.
I cringe whenever I hear file sharing termed as 'piracy' or, in this case, to the activities of a terrorist group ('Hezbollah'). Allowing this vocabulary to continue wins the argument for the entertainment industry on the power of semantics without any analysis of the facts.
What the entertainment industry and ilk are against is sharing. It is only through their imposition of selfishness and self importance on the ability of others to share that they can make money. Unfortunately, this makes them net negative resources to society because in doing so, they compromise the free flow of information necessary to a technically and culturally advancing civilization. Imagine if they had been around when humans only had oral history as a way to pass information between people and generations. There would be no tape recorders, no CDs, and certainly no computers.
Piracy is when someone actually takes something of value and realizes the value of it themselves. The Hong Kong outfits that take a movie, stamp it on a DVD, and then package and sell it as if were the original are pirates in this sense. It makes sense to have copyright laws preventing this type of activity. However, to use the parlance of the summary," 17 year old kids" are not "Hezbollah". They are not terrorists. They are not pirates. Pirates do not share. They are simply sharing information with each other (and us), which is a virtue we espouse to younger generations. The effort of the entertainment industry to criminalize their behavior is an affront to all of us who share thoughts, ideas, and anything else we choose to share without charge.
A few things that should be noted: the Grateful Dead do NOT give away ALL of their "product". But, giving away some of their products gives THEM much exposure and helps others see that what they have to offer shows skill and has variation each and every time. From this they are able to build greater customer base and support and from that sell more of their other products.
For instance,
With unhappy people, they may copy and distribute product out of SPITE, but with happy loving fans they only do what allowed out of happiness with group, and help police themselves out of happiness too. THIS is what the Grateful Dead have achieved (now some may find a few fans distributing stuff they shouldn't but it is the small minority)
To address the quality point, the Dead allow people to bring in equipment and mike stands, usually up to 6ft or 12ft. People spend thousands on equipment. Files are made using LOSSLESS formats (not mp3), and some copies are even distributed with 5.1 sound-- these are NOT low quality copies!!!
InfoPort
I make music for the sake of making music.
When the EFF selects as a spokesman the former lyricist for the Grateful Dead
Uhm. That "spokesman" is the co-founder of the EFF. I think he's qualified. But what got me was the guy saying that the business model of allowing copying wouldn't work -- right to the face of the guy who it worked well for! Talk about denial.
i am a soviet space shuttle
and the opposite goes for teeth, I guess.
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
Dan Glickman: John Perry Barlow is the one who's doing a disservice to the consumers, because you see if you don't adequately compensate the artist, the director, the creator, the actor, they won't do it in the first place so people won't get movies.
Patently untrue, as the renaissance of truly independant movies coming out today prove. It is based on the presumpition that money is the only motivation that moves people to create. That is hardly the case, and in generaly, artists who are motivated only by money make an inferior product.
Living next door to Hollywood, I know a number of people in the industry, and all of them are motivated by various combinations of three things: money - yes, they do want to get paid to do it, so they can do it all the time, a desire for fame (which is far easier to meet online these days), and a need to create (which will never go way until the day they die). Mostly, they create because they don't know how to stop.
What Hollywood needs to fear isn't pirates, who, from the evidence we've seen so far, actually increase industry revenues rather than decrease it. Rather, Hollywood should (and does) fear the interent as an independent (as in, beyond their corporate control, and outside their revenue stream) distribution channel. It is no longer necessary to sell your soul to a big studio for a distribution deal to deliver your movie to an audience. Between digital video (which Max Allen Collins called "the keys to the kingdom") and the internet, it is not possible to make a movie, and sell it commercially to people all over the world, and make a profit doing so for an investment smaller than the price of a new car.
It is, I suppose, a happy coincidence for the movie industry that mandatory copy restrictions that depend on patents that require substantial cash outlay to use will just happen to continue to lock out indpendent industry outsiders from the market. I say "happy coincidence" because I see no reason to believe that the indstury tycoons are smart enough to have planned it that way on purpose.
Business never wins that one; they almost always survive by way of massive change - which, of course, is all that's being asked of them.
And rememeber: this dynamic isn't just young idealists going up against business-experienced people; its business-experienced people going up against young idealists in the idealists' home turf. There will be no winners - just concessions. And I can tell you now: the concessions won't include DRM. The more that shit gets spread around, the more its resisted against.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
George Orwell, 1984
I don't know about you, but I really don't think that the whole automobilse-vs.-movies argument really works very well – the difference being that while an automobile is a physical product, a movie is simply a bunch of pictures which are interpreted by the mind as a single moving image and that have no one, fixed, physical form. And while neither one is strictly necessary to live – there are much more important things like food, water, and shelter – the automobile is at least much more useful than a bunch of guys walking around on stage.
Having said that, I will admit that I do see one connection, though – automobiles depend on oil, which is another fairly unpopular industry which many feel is run by greedy old guys who only care about money. Not that this is necessarily true, of course, just figured I may as well point it out anyway.
Either way, though, as far as the "good" side of the argument goes – nothing there, unless I missed something (and yes, I did RTFA).
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
As a pastime musician I'm frequently using the "Copyleft" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft license for distribution of my songs and CDs. I think it's a cheap way to get known and to hook more people to my shows.
So here it goes:
1. Free music
2. More collaborations with others underground musicians
2.b More contacts, friends and partys, B2B ideas sharing
3. More free music
4. No label to pay
5. More people @ my shows
???
== Profit!
IN YOUR FACE RIAA
Let's not turn these "17 year olds" into deep thinkers or idealogues. They simply want free stuff. That's what 90% of this is about, people want to download movies and music for free. The other 10% is legitimate "I want to do what I want with my music/movies", but it's disingenous to make this some kind of 100% noble battle.
While still an inexperienced 21 year old college student in 1743, Samuel Adams, a man without whom the Boston Tea Party would not have taken place (and very possibly the War of Indenpendence itself) wrote a thesis entitled:
"Whether it be lawful to resist the supreme magistrate if the commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved."
Is it your thesis that the progenitors of and participants in the war did not start out as 17 year olds with an axe to grind?
What was the average age of the pariticpants in the war anyway?
Or are you, perhaps, suggesting that men such as Lessing and Barlow are inexperienced?
KFG
Sure, I know JPB's resume, EFF co-founder, the Well, all that. Gosh, I even had a subscription to Mondo 2000 and remember Wired when it was readable. But my point is, whether you're playing as if it's 1994, or 1969, you're still SOL in the 21st Century. The media companies just are not as clueless as the unwashed digerati like to believe they are.
But for the EFF, it's about making money, and Good Theatre keeps the donations rolling in. They've become a kind of "Digital Rights PETA."
The music recording and movie industry are clinging to outdated business plans, distribution and cost models, because they have been seeing increasing profits as the costs of production and distribution drop.
The technologists have seen the same thing, and ask: "why should I pay $17 for a CD when I can download the songs for $0.99 each off iTunes, or $0.11 each off AllofMP3.com?"
The answer probably lies somewhere between the two. Distribute non-DRM'd music and videos at a reasonable price. After all, making a small amount of money is better than making none. AllofMP3.com succeeds by making the price reasonable. It probably won't be around much longer, but that means there's going to be a vacuum...and an oppportunity. Unfortunately, the recording industry is probably *not* agile or innovative enough to capitalize on that opportunity.
For the bit of, er, *things* I have, umm *archived*(yeh, archived) I don't feel like I have stolen anything. These people have been robbing everyone including themselves and those that share their *ideals* for a loonnnngggg time. It's funny, nobody ever talks about the people within those industries that have short-changed other artists; and not just the big-name headliner, but the lighting man or sound man, the hairstylist or caterer. In fact I don't even THINK the entertainment industry can be profitable without robbing someone or a lot of someone's. I dare you to ask for a refund after a sucky flick, or after the album you just dropped $20+ on sucks. Although on that same hand, different side, I dare you work on a sound or lighting gig and come with some, "Where's my check?!", or "How come the last check bounced?!", or my favorite(the one I know the best)"Nah, sorry, the check didn't come in yet...". I promise you that you will find a reaction that feels nothing less than the kiss of death. The consumer get's screwed with over-hyped, bad content, sure; but the guys that have to feed families and work on a contract to contract basis are at the mercy of the content provider(s). The industry has created an illegal science of robbing those that help them the most. And the only thing that is/can be said is "That's show-business." (breathes from inhaler)
Spartacus!!!!!!!
Great book (and one of my personal favorites).
Read my blog posts on usability.
Too true, and while their business model may not survive, there is no denying that big business owns the IP. Whether their content gets distributed for pennies 'per use' or dollars per DVD, they still win.
What infuriates me the most personally is that these companies are allowed to hold IP hostage. If it weren't for the 'Hezbollah' this stuff might never see the light of day again.
Example#1. I would happily buy old MST3K episodes legally (yeah I'm wierd), but many of them simply aren't available at any price.
Example#2. The Sci-fi channel bought up rights to the original outer limits, therefore shutting out my local PBS station. Which would be ok if they actually aired them occassionally, but you know...they dont.
The computer industry has created a lot of jobs (not just Steve Jobs). The movie industry creates moral depravity.
The movie industry claims we are forced to choose: either kill technology innovation or the movie industry won't survive. My proposed message to the movie industry: don't let the door hit you on the way out.
I could care less if no more hollywood movies are ever made.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Does anyone know of a direct download link for those of us Linux users who can't access iTunes?
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Terrorists can't gain military strategic advantage, so they attempt to gain advantage by exploiting media hype.
The media has an incentive to hype things, because it gets paid by the "number of eyeballs" value rather than by the service value of the news.
However the media would have no incentive to focus their resources toward grabbing eyeballs if competitors could copy their productions, because their effort would result in more up front costs without a competitive benefit.
Therefore if copyrights were scrapped, the media would be forced to neutralize hype, maximize services, and greatly increase the costs that terrorists must pay to communicate their message.
In sum, copyrights promote terrorisim.
The MPAA and EFF Cross Sabers
In other news Hezbollah doesn't like Israelis. :)
Xbox reviews.. We think they're funny.
In this case I think that point that's being made is that the 17yr olds are not playing by the 'rules' at leats not by the rules of big business because they're not engaged with the system - suppose instead we say "it's a bright new wild-west frontier and some stuffy victorian gentleman is saying 'hey old chap that's not cricket' - see another metaphor - but from times gone by - the 'Hezbollah' is an idea standing in for something else - it may push your buttins right now 20 years from now it will be just a word, but it also wont carry the idea of 'working outside the existing legal system' that it does now
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
The funny part is (at least to me) that this is not about an industry so much as it is about the *AA and associates trying to maintain a fully disfunctional (in light of current and future technologies) business model.
The real deal in all this mess is that content creators "REALLY DON'T NEED THE *AA ANYMORE" since for not much more than a data center contract, any record label, including independents, can set up their own music distribution system over the Internet. The entire need for a music and movie distribution organization (i.e., the *AAs) no longer exists.
US Telephone users are finally going to get to stop paying for the Spanish American war, but when will recording artists get to stop paying for 'breakage of vynl disks' on their contracts?
Its not about DRM, its about stolen wealth, and the *AA is currently stealing it, blatantly stealing it. They counter claim that because they were unable to steal it from content buyers, it was stolen from them.... I'm calling BS.
Now, the price of content is high because of the *AAs of the world, but if content providers could get out of the draconian contract they signed, and start providing content over the Internet at reasonable costs to users for the 'PURCHASE' of said content, most users would happily just purchase the content as its not worth the effort to most people to be illegal or even figure out the ins and outs of stealing it. Additionally, any kind of licensing setup that allowed fair use (backup copies, multiple players, etc.) would be accepted easily if the price was low enough (see iFanboi rhetoric for an example).
Its pure "pot and kettle black and white" when it comes to the *AA claiming downloaders and file sharers are stealing from them.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
The former Grateful Dead lyricist that the EFF is using isn't just a spokesperson, he's also a founding member. You know - one of the people looking far enough ahead to see that it was going to be an issue before it became an issue. As far as locations are concerned, they didn't move to the West Coast - they were founded on the West Coast - San Francisco being only a short drive away from the headquarters of Yahoo, Google, Intel, Sun, Apple, eBay, Cisco, HP, Seagate, Western Digital - those companies who's technologies are the reason that the EFF needs to exist?
I had to've been trolled here.
They're also very rich men. Perhaps they actually believe that every download is a lost sale because they can afford to buy every single piece of music which they like. Is it possible that they're totally out of touch with the idea that many of us had to budget our CD purchases? It's been said before, and I'll say it again: They need to start selling ten times as much music for one tenth of the price. Unfortunately, some people don't like to change.
Teenagers were not the leaders of Hezbollah. Nonetheless teenagers started Hezbollah and provided the grunt force on the ground.
.the teenage grunt force on the ground.
The leaders of Hezbollah were indeed older and more experienced, experience gained by being . .
KFG
This is good... but hey! Dan Glickman knows what is an iPod... or at least he has seen one... or... what?
Laws of nature? Someone call Danny and tell him he's playing the bad guy in this movie. A kind of stupid/funny bad guy... I don't have his phone, that's why... thanks!
---
Donde Ser Geek No Duele
Donde Ser Geek No Duele
When I was a kid my mother took me to a very small performance by a dutch artist called Peter Blanker. I don't know how she did it but she got from him a tape with his songs, the a-side his adult songs and the b-side his kid songs. That tape lasted me a long time BUT it eventually just gave away. Well I tried to replace it by buying CD's but no luck, the music just wasn't available.
I couldn't replace it until napster came along. Now I got most of them back again. Napster also introduced me to some unknown stuff as you could select to view all the other songs the person you were downloading from. Hey if they like that song you like perhaps they got other stuff you might like.
Movies are different. I used to spend a lot of time at the movies BUT when I moved to a different city I learned just how bad most movie theathers were. The one I grew up in used to just skip the commercials if their were only regulars and they didn't sell any food stuffs that made a noise. It was in wageningen in case any dutch people want to know. One in Ede used to do the same if you were the only group. I guess both places figured they made more money keeping a few kids happy then sticking to the rules.
Anyway, things changed and now when you go to movies you get lenghty boring commerercials (thanks for banning smoking and drinking commercials at least they were fun to watch) super expensive food and actuall checks that you don't bring your own, people talking on cellphones or even just talking. I just stopped going. It ain't my idea of a funtime anymore.
DVD's are a pain, being out long after the hype has reached you via the internet. Having those stupid piracy warnings wich you only see if you bought the product legally so this is like stopping people who don't speed to warn them about speeding. WTF?
Oh and I can download weird movies that never make it to dutch shops.
You ruin the product you are trying to sell me and the free alternative is better in all aspects. It would be like you had to buy a 100.000 Lada but could get a McClaren for free.
Change your business. Make 1 theather sound free and anyone that makes a sound in it gets a laser in their eyes and make DVD's easily playable the way I want them. Oh and let the DVD's actually be cheaper then the VHS version. Talk about a ripoff. A pressed piece of plastic being more expensive then a mechincal device.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's ok, we'll export some to you on the black market. Can't beat a nice cup of tea...
People that believe in their opinions don't post AC.
Look, to assume that artists are going to stop doing what they're doing because there isn't wealth in it is stupid. People who enjoy creating and sharing art will continue to do it so as long as it remains enjoyable for them and they can get enough money to fund their projects. And technology is making that easier not harder. So to say that music, movies, writing, story telling, dancing, painting, sculpting, and anything else that contributes to a culture is going to die because of piracy is silly. We have the history of civilization to prove it.
What we observers know is that models and technology pass from existence, not art. Mr. Glickman represents a bureaucracy that currently dominates western movie production and distribution. He'd like us to think that he is doing something noble but his intentions are not. He isn't fighting to save art. He isn't even fighting to save the industry. He is fighting to save the model on which the industry is currently locked into.
Every bureaucrat hates innovation. They hate new ways of doing things which are more productive. Innovation makes the old people and old ways look incompetent, and no one likes to look incompetent.
I have no doubt that movies and movie makers will survive. Mr. Glickman might even survive, but not by trying to fit his old model over the new one. I'm sure he will land on his feet either way.
I thought I would say it because I don't think that Mr. Barlow did an adequate job.
just don't sing the song here. It's copyrighted, you know.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
That's why the tea is crap in America and good in Britain.
.Tommy Lipton. :)
That's what we get for buying most of our tea from . .
KFG
Good Theatre indeed: http://www.eff.org/legal/victories/
Absolutely. I donwloaded a torrent a while ago of the first season of WKRP as that is unlikely to see the light of day anytime soon due to IP rights.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
As far as locations are concerned, they didn't move to the West Coast - they were founded on the West Coast - San Francisco being only a short drive away from the headquarters of Yahoo, Google, Intel, Sun, Apple, eBay, Cisco, HP, Seagate, Western Digital - those companies who's technologies are the reason that the EFF needs to exist?
The EFF needs to exist because of the legislation being created in D.C. That's where all the serious lobbying outfits are based. But the EFF is not serious (it's a fact that none of the legislators take them seriously any more), so they *moved* from DC, to the West Coast, in the late '90s (Google it). It was regarded, by anyone with half a clue regarding how US government policy works, as their "Jump the Shark" moment.
Now, the EFF is about fresh-faced interns who genuinely believe they are "doing good," cocktail parties with high-level luminaries from the companies you iterated so the rank-and-file legal beagles can network their way into corporate gigs, flying business class, and drumming up new crises every quarter or so to coincide with their fundraising drives.
Hey, so it goes. It's how the world works...
Same here. I am always saddened by how many people refuse to read it because they're afraid they won't understand all the big words, or they won't enjoy it much, or their friend's sister's former roommate didn't like it as much as Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
ResidntGeek
Yeah. If Apple and Microsoft hadn't been founded by grizzled veterans, they wouldn't even exist today.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Right. The Americans still weren't done killing off the natives so the Americans could rule with their own imperialist corruption. Luckily they got the job done in the end and we can all enjoy a nice McDonald's burger while sipping a Coke and watching Fox News. Good stuff.
"If you are not a liberal when you are 20 you have no heart, if you are not a conservative when you are 30 you have no brain."
--Winston Churchill
When I go to the grocery store, folks are giving away free samples of food all the time.
Movie companies show parts of their movies for free on TV all the time to get folks to come see them.
So Glickman's point doesn't hold water for me at all. Media companies have been giving stuff away to sell stuff forever...
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
Let us not forget: using our internet.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
"..because you see if you don't adequately compensate the artist, the director, the creator, the actor, they won't do it in the first place so people won't get movies." There will always be movies.
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
MPAA: You young whippersnappers!
EFF: STFU!
MPAA: No, you STFU!
EFF: No, you STFU!
MPAA: No, you STFU!
EFF: Last word! Psyyyyyyche!
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
Stop paying actors anything more than scale upfront. Give a $20M actor 0.5% of net revenue from ticket and media sales. Pay the writers more so that the movies have plots and character development, and thus might be worth watching.
Challenge the creativity of everyone involved, put in an artificial spending limit... say @25M per hours worth of final product, based projected length of the original script. Tie future funding to revenue generated from the previous work.. shoot a movie
for $25M in production costs that returns $250M in box office and media sales, then your budget for the next projects is $200M..
Of course, this will never happen in my or my children's lifetimes
At least the popular (even if occasionally horrible, see McDonald's) things from American culture are legitimatly associated with the USA.
Tea has nothing to do with Britain, except that they invaded another territory, liked their foul-tasting drink, and decided to pretend it was utterly British.
DK: It is ridiculous to believe that you can give product away for free and be more successful. I mean it defies the laws of nature. I see this happen all of the time in the technology world.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Just curious as I've seen it done before and thought it might be to prevent RIAA Google hits, but thought we'd want just the opposite...
Thanks,
Ed T.
One thing that seems to be over looked in all of this is actual economics. MPAA says they need to pay the directors etc big bucks to work. Fine, do that. One problem, I don't want to pay that much for the final product. The MPAA is an organized monopoly. My company doesn't have that luxary. If it costs us too much to make a chip, our competitor will do it for less and we'll be out of business. It is that simple. Think Dell.
I'm not saying copying movies is the best thing to do, but don't bitch to me that you have to pay your out-of-wack bills either. $5 is what I'll pay to see a movie. If $5 * #_of_tickets isn't enough money for your $200M movie, that is not my problem. Don't cry to me about ticket sales decreasing while ticket prices are increasing. Supply and demand is not balanced so fix your business model.
If Nicole Kidman wants $20M per movie and that blows the budget, don't hire her. She'll adjust too after being unemployed like many Americans (or Australians).
The MPAA and RIAA don;t care about the large scale pirates, because these guys are indirectly supporting there business model. If you can get a pirate DVD for ~1/3 of the price in the shop, but the quality if often poor, the packaging is photocopied etc., it kind of reinforces the fact that you pay 3 times as much for the official copy. You see it like there are two different levels of quality being offered at two commensurate prices. In fact you mind less paying top dollar for a special film, or if it;s a gift, because you know that if you only want a crap copy you can get it cheap.
/. already knows - the film is just the 0s and 1s, and there is a limitless supply of them. It may sound obvious but it's not. Lots of people really don't understand, and have never really thought about, what actually happens when they 'buy' and 'download' say, a ringtone onto their phone. The RIAA and MPAA are painfully aware that their business model bit the dust in about 1995, and that their real position is now as distribution companies. There is no such thing as a 'content' industry anymore. They're just trying to stop these important economic, political and philosophic truths about the new economy from filtering through to the wider public, at least until such time as they have completely locked down everyone's TV, music player and games machine with DRM, and they can carry on as if nothing had changed.
On the other hand, once you start downloading/filesharing/ripping this stuff, a light goes on in your head, and you realise what everyone on
my password really is 'stinkypants'
If your not purchasing your tea online. You've missed the point of this article.
http://www.adagio.com/
>But you know the problem is - the bad news is that you're up against a dedicated foe that is younger and smarter that you are and will be alive when you're dead. You're 55 years old and these kids are 17 and they're just smarter than you. So you're gonna lose that one.
No. The bad news (for EFF) is that while this dedicated foe will be alive but bankrupt when the old guys are dead, a new generation will have taken the aforementioned old guys' place and will have inherited all of their wealth, power and influence. They'll still be calling the shots while the "younger and dedicated foe" will be struggling through debt slavery.
What kind off brainless uneducated idiot moderated the ignorant parent up?
Tea Party was not between "17 year old tea lovers who wanted free downloads of tea from the metropoly". It was between colonist-businessmen and metropoly-businessmen.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The EFF wants to see the pirates as some sort of radical movement trying to "stick it to the man." He's wrong. It's just a matter of money. The real pirates are packaging it and selling it all over Asia, and the kids are just watching something on a laptop they probably wouldn't see otherwise and deleting it when they're done.
The MPAA wants to think they are the champion of the hard-working people in the industry (seen the ads about it at a movie lately?). Who really gets the money? The actors? (laugh) The director? (laugh) The writer? (more laughter) The bestboy or keygrip? (huge guffaw) I'm guessing it's the studio. By the same token, who greenlights those $200 million flops and why should we pay for the studios' mistakes? If the studios offered a value-priced, quality movie over the Internet, I think you wouldn't see much piracy, certainly not what you see now. As it stands, the movie industry is pricing themselves out of the market, and using piracy as a scapegoat for their own failure.
There's a very subtle comment in the movie Soylent Green and I paraphrase, "Almost all the books are copyrighted and we shouldn't even have them in the library.". The movie also very subtly makes the point that no one watches TV or listens to the radio any more... Eventually in a corporate run world you being entertained by media of any kind will not be an option... Information can be transmitted with media. All information belongs to the corporation.
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
We hear plenty of talking about how we don't like RIAA and MPAA and the business model they have... how about offering useful suggestions, instead of just sitting on our asses and bitching?
Obviously, a company (or band) giving the MP3s away for anyone to download isn't going to fly. At the very minimum, bands will need money to eat and pay their electric bills. So, what are some other ideas that would enable actors and musicians to make money while the music is allowed to be free (as in beer)?
Some things to think about: there are a lot of post-production issues that musicians deal with when making an album. Similarly, actors making a movie will have lots of costs... effects, props, etc. Look at the credits in a CD cover or after a movie to see how many people are involved. Cut those people out of the process (to save money) and the quality of the film probably would drop (think the quality of a SciFi movie being like the old Dr. Who series as opposed to Star Wars or Firefly/Serenity type graphics. Donations given after release probably won't cover it, and it quality sucks even more, they won't get any donations. Regardless, we'd have to see artists drop these $10m/movie salaries and drop down to more like $10k/movie salaries, I'd imagine.
So... instead of sitting back and just voicing what we don't like, maybe we can give some ideas on what we think would work.
The salaries in the music industry are mainly going to the huge PR machine they run. The average CD costs 15-20$, the sound on it costs about 2$ to make. Packaging costs almost as much as if not more than the CD itself. The publisher gets as much out of each track on a CD as the artist. The writer gets a large cut as well. (This all true circa 1999, when I was in Internet music) The problem with the music industry is that somewhere along the line the other eight dollars before retail keystoning gets sucked up by (mainly) dumbasses wearing suits. All these dumbasses are making a steady salary and to get that steady salary they need to keep the business model working their way. Otherwise they become redundant. Now, they do things which are extremely important in the current industry- schmoozing, payola, schmoozing, payola, schmoozing.... - but if the industry changes they may not be as useful.
.com's we had two offices - one in LA and one in Portland. The people in LA were generally 1) incompetent, 2) overpaid, 3) arrogant, and 4) touchy about the other three things being true. I have no reason to believe the rest of the entertainment industry is any different.
Where I worked during the
My little site.
Keep dreaming.
I always have, and I always will
Bye bye, EFF. It's been nice but all good things must come to an end.
So shouldn't bad things also?
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
What Hollywood needs to fear isn't pirates, who, from the evidence we've seen so far, actually increase industry revenues rather than decrease it.
:)
Not to mention the fact that we help stop global warming yarr!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The real deal in all this mess is that content creators "REALLY DON'T NEED THE *AA ANYMORE" since for not much more than a data center contract, any record label, including independents, can set up their own music distribution system over the Internet. The entire need for a music and movie distribution organization (i.e., the *AAs) no longer exists.
Hmmm.. That's odd, it seems that every shot you take at the "**AA" in this post is about the RIAA and not the MPAA. While there is a fine distribution system on the internet for music I still have yet to see ANYTHING that is not laughable when it comes to movies. If I want a movie in good quality and a reasonable amout of time I STILL have an easier time going to best buy and picking it up over ANY service on the internet.
Maybe the MPAA is at end-of-life but PLEASE do not act like there is a viable system for movie distribution on the internet. That's a sad joke.
And just to provide notice for the bashers: This is not to justify the MPAA, this is a simple matter of todays technology.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
They claimed the live shows was "where it's at" and this still holds true for bands in their genre.
Disco Biscuits, String Cheese Incident, Umphree's McGee, moe, all these jam bands distribute their music for free via bittorrent. And we're talking studio-board stuff sometimes.
I hate jam bands, myself (it's jazz music for white people) but they're doing just fine with this model.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
John Perry Barlow said it best...
"These are aging industries run by aging men,...."
Dan just does not get it, he can't comprehend that information/content can be free and still make money. Or his greedy ass does understand but wants to get the profit margin up for the shareholders.
From the TFA
Dan G. "So, yeah, we should be protecting our copyright but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be looking for new ways to get that content to people in modern ways -"
then further down he says
"It is ridiculous to believe that you can give product away for free and be more successful. I mean it defies the laws of nature."
and here is the kicker...
"But he is right to the extent that we need to be finding new and different ways to get our content to people,"
God this guy sounds like SCOG lawyers for Pete's sake!!!! Which is Dan, make up your damn melon and quit suing your consumers moron!!!!
Sig
Normally, I would agree...
However, these 'young idealists' have the know-how, have the technical means and only need some free time.
Basically, what businesses are dealing with is guerilla.
Be it software or music or movie piracy, on one hand you have juggernaut businesses who intend to milk the market for every single penny, and on the other you have people who are intelligent, educated and informed enough not to allow to be milked.
They can have all the business experience they want; it does not apply. People who pirate movies aren't customers; businesses don't get money from them.
They can hunt them down, one by one, but they can't catch them (in a way, us) all.
Acually, the only way the businesses can win is to start pricing things reasonably.
The current practice of trying to enforce stricter mechanisms of control is really counter-productive; ask any upturned oppressive political regime.
Ignore this signature. By order.
What kind off brainless uneducated idiot moderated the ignorant parent up?
Tea Party was not between "17 year old tea lovers who wanted free downloads of tea from the metropoly". It was between colonist-businessmen and metropoly-businessmen.
Well there are some basic parallels to people being treated unfairly by government and/or business and taking action that is deemed illegal. So don't get so focused on detail that you miss the point.
It was between colonist-businessmen . . .
What do you think I am? Trust me, I ain't been 17 for more than, oh, lets just say 17 years and leave it at that. I've been involved in some way with "the industry" for more than those 34 years. The waters are deeper than they appear on the surface.
And I recommend Thomas Fleming's "Liberty! The American Revolution."
KFG
See the Boston Tea Party and the American War of Independence.
What the hell? The American War for Independence was started and financed by business interests. In fact, it is one of the few revolutions in history which was supported by the bourgeois. (Maybe that is why it has been one of the only successful revolutions...) All the founding fathers owned businesses and were invested in commerce. John Hancock, for example, was one of the wealthiest trader in the colonies.
If you look at all the reasons the colonists had for revolution, they were mostly economic. Increased taxes, shutting down the port of Boston, forcing businesses to jump through expensive, bureaucratic hurtles (incorporation articles, stamp act, etc), creating a tribute system which made British governors wealthy, compelling shopkeepers and inns to feed and house the British army, forbidding non-British (that is, cheaper) goods to be imported into the colonies, and a whole slew of laws all helped the British companies at the expense of the colonial businesses.
Disney has announced the renaming of its well-known theme park ride: Terrorists of the Carribean.
Except I don't hear anyone saying, "Hey, let's start our own record label, produce better music and sell it for less." I hear (basically), "I could get it for free (both hassle and dollar wise) for a few years in the late 90s, now it's becoming harder because the record labels got wise and cracked down. My rights are being trampled!!!!!!!"
Analogy works when MAIN points of the phenomena match, not the details.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
1) Distribute Music and Movies freely.
2) ???
3) Profit!
There's no place like ~/
American tea is quite good actually, though there's currently on a single source for American tea. We have a domestic tea plantation on Wadmalaw Island in Charleston, SC that produces very fresh, high quality tea (I live relatively close and have been on the plantation tours several times).
Try it. It's good.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Bring me the head of Dan Glickman!
- by decree of his majesty Zaphod
barack to the future?
From the slashdot summary: Motion Picture Association President Dan Glickman and Electronic Freedom Foundation co-founder Johh Perry Barlow lock horns. And from the linked article: Motion Picture Association President Dan Glickman locks horns with Electronic Frontier Foundation's John Perry Barlow. First of all, if you're not going to use a direct quote, then don't just shuffle around a few words, while still using the exact same phrasing. Second of all get the name of the organization correct, it's Electronic Frontier Foundation.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
I thought Nike trainers got made... 'out of the country', so to speak.
Analogy works when MAIN points of the phenomena match, not the details.
I'll bet you understood the point they were trying to make though, didn't you?
Really?
Released for download 18 May 2006, currently at over 500,000 downloads. There were 2000 DVDs sold as of 11 May, before it was even released for download. This is just for a 10 minute short.
After it was explained to me, yes. And I claim that besides me being not so bright there is another reason for that: it is bad analogy.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I see this as a question of value of the content. Because the cost of something is the amount of life you are willing to exchange for something (dont remember the origin, sorry). Todays music and movies typically dont have the same quality as so many we grew up with or came to appreciate. The plots suck, the lyrics are bland, etc... any number of complaints/truths. People today are willing to pay a premium for certain things, but not everything. The extra $ paid when purchasing blank media (cdr, dvdrs) to reimburse creators is widely accepted. Consumers have fair use rights which have traditionally been to make personal copies which is totally reasonable. But with todays technology it is almost a duty of the content holder to make media available otherwise demand will urge others to act. I can imagine that its frustrating for labels and studios to keep up with rate of advancement in distribution systems and keep a profit, but they only have to digitize the media and find tech partners, much like Apple has done with the labels and certain studios/organizations (only Apple had to drag them kicking and screaming). While I would have liked to have lower prices on older songs its not quite feasible with the costs involved for running the iTMS distribution network (server costs) Bittorent could change that, but computer storage needs and network speeds to be massively expanded for individuals to not mind donating space and bandwidth to lower content prices.
If it's "just" a metaphor then you are basically saying that Hezbollah are just a bunch of rebels believeing in something else and the means they use to "convince" people is A-OK.
Yet they are in fact a group of organizaed murderers. It's basically making light of the activity they engage in and giving it credence as an acceptible behaviour in modern resitance movements.
You are not understanding that metaphors work both ways, that the laws of equivilence applies and that when you use a metaphor you are telling soemone what you think of BOTH sides of the equation.
It's exactly why I am no longer donating funds to the EFF, which is a shame as we need a group like them - just not one with a political agenda aimed against any particular party.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Oh. So you're saying it was a bad idea for me to register ElectronicHezbollah.com then?
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
What's more interesting than the Boston Tea Party is the Burning of the Gaspee. You see, the burning of the Gaspee (A British tax ship) was because they'd taken a ship owned by Nathaniel Greene. The Providence Journal has been doing a nice multi-part profile on Greene over the last couple of weeks.
Won by people who were interested in paying less taxes on their large slave-run businesses? Yeah naive communism really won out over capitalism there.
The Dead are hardly the only rock band to have gotten rich largely due to giving away free content. Though the model predates the Grateful Dead.
How much have you paid CBS or Fox or Clear Channel lately to buy their content?
What amuses me is Dan Glickman's asserting that "free content" business models can't work, in a conversation with somebody who got wealthy in the process of proving that one can.
The *AA companies left standing will switch to more modern business models once the dinosaurs, and will be more profitable as a result.
Tech Public Policy stuff
But if you can copy (are capable of copying it), then it is allowed unless it harms someone else. This is what free society means.
Copyright does not come from a fundamental moral right to get $X for creating a song of quality Y. It is a compromise of freedom intended to promote science and art
"If those who support the copying of copyrighted materials have their way then art it self will soon be a thing of the past"
Do you understand how ironic and multi-layered your ignorance on this subject is? Copyright is a thing of the present, not of the past; it is a couple hundred years old. There has been art forever. What's fairly new is art as mass-commodity industry and -- yes -- a good many people wouldn't mind if that became a thing of the past.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Comparing 17 year-olds to Hezbollah terrorists is a really bad analogy. No one ever died because a 17 year-old downloaded a movie on BitTorrent. Kids don't walk into movie executives' homes wrapped with high explosive and 10-penny nails demanding "freedom for information or death!"
This sort of really bad hyperbolic logic makes lucid, rational debate almost impossible. (Of course, the MPAA's stance does that as well!)
It seems like everyone is freaking out over the fact that he mentioned Hezbollah.
Did it ever occur to you to that maybe your preconcieved notions are corrupting his message?
The civilian arm of Hezbollah is very active in providing civic, social and news services inside Lebanon. They are even represented in the Lebanese government.
Kinda like Hamas & Palestine.
You should read up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas
Maybe he was trying to say more than "these kids are teh terrists"
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
All your point proves is that the Canadian government (like many other governments) is highly dependant on tax revenues.
That's why alcohol and cigarettes will never go away. They bring in too much tax money.
If the **AA dissappeared overnight & their former distribution channels moved onto the internet... there would be problems, because there would be a serious hole in most State budgest due to the missing tax revenue.
If the **AA is a 'problem', not everyone wants it to go away.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Copyright, wether it be by institutional law or other form of enforcement (limitation of knowledge, or force for example) has been around as long as the ability to copy or forge artistic works has been easily accesible to the everyday citizen. When forgeries cost as much and took as much skill as the original there was less need for copyright, since may forgers actually took claim and pride in there ability to copy the works of the masters of their art. Today there is no skill involved in making mass produced copies of print, photographic, recorded or digital art and the cost in resources, including time, is considerably less than that required to create the work. Without copyright protection we would be without most of the art that we have today. Artists would not find themselves free enough , do to the obligation to make a living elsewise, to produce the amount of art, wether you like it or not, that we have available to us.
Art through the years has change from a single solitary task, to works that require many people hundreds of thousands of man hours to create. When a painter, one of the older reproducible art forms, were to spend even a hundred hours on a painting, they could find someone willing to pay over a thousand dollars for the original and there for provide a living wage. Music records take easily a dozen people hundreds of man hours to produce, and with the complaints about the high cost of CDs today I doubt anyone would be willing to pay 10 thousand dollars or more to have the original. If we look at movies or video games, those numbers become astronomic. Now that these newer artforms are pure digital in also adds another difference between the art of today, and the historical art you speak of. Digital art loses no quality in replication, where as a painting, for example, can not be easily replicated with the same qualities except by someone who is also a painter of the same skill as the original.
Many Things have changed throughout history and you should not look at something like art in isolation and instead look at it in a grander scope, such as including the technology of replication.
I agree with you completely on the face value of that statement. To bad copyright infringment does harm people by taking away their ability to survive in a capitalist society. Once artistic work does not supply the resource to keep a person living (read that very carefully because it is worded that way specifically), then mass promotion, regardless of production, of art will be a thing of the past. Sure there will always be artist, such as people who create artistic works in there free time, but they will only be available to a small audiance due to the amount of resources needed to make people aware of the artistic work.
There is a solution if you would truely like art, or for that matter all creations, to be freely available to all people, but it would require a much larger change than copyright infringement or the abolishment of copyright law.
uhhhh, yeahhhh, So? Your point being...?
(it's a fact that none of the legislators take them seriously any more),
You got anything citeable to back up that claim?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If they're run by aging men with aging buisness models, why don't we just wait for these old men to die with their buisness models?
Staring at a white background [on a computer screen] while you read is like staring at a light bulb — Maddox
For now, I'll give you a hint: the discussion of art as art is different from the discussion of art as an activity subject to the jurisdiction of whatever political regimes are in place
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
If things keep going as they're going, Western governments are going to be seeing these guys turn into a real Hezbollah.
They're gonna find out what's up a couple of months after they impose a draft.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
comparing those who defy the mpaa and others as
terrorists is a lot like call the kettle black.
This behavior on the part of the mpaa strikes me as
someone (the mpaa) acting out of panic, not informed thought.
The mpaa (and others) really should be embracing the net as a
possible revenue stream. it would certainly make their product available over
a much wider spectrum of the viewing public.
So my question is this: what are they so afriad of?
Understanding is much like a 3-edged-sword. in this: there are always 2 sides and the truth.
... because downloading a song costs about six cents. They're essentially an overseas pirate which through the magic of the Internet happens to be available to customers in the US. You could also order an entire season of,say, 24 on Ebay for $20 and think "Wow, I'm getting a good deal" until you found out that your supplier in Hong Kong wasn't on the up and up. (When I was young and stupid I got burned on two pirated games from eBay -- never using them for anything IP-related again).
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
"it's a fact that none of the legislators take them seriously any more"
I beg to differ
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
One big difference - you can't duplicate clothes or cars for no incremental cost. There is certainly economy of scale - a prototype certainly costs a lot more to create than each individual unit on a large production run - but only so far - 100,000 cars will generally cost roughly twice as much to make as 50,000. With something the is information - music and movies - the cost to produce it is fixed, and once you'd done so, the incremental cost of duplicating it is close to zero, especially if many individuals supply their own 'raw materials' (eg bandwidth, blank discs, time, etc) for their own copies. It actually costs the music/movie producer nothing for someone to copy a work, which is why the always couch it in terms of 'lost sales' which is bullshit - they are assuming that everyone who made a copy would have purchased it from them instead, which is certainly not true.
If you didn't know, in Eldred v. Ashcroft the Supreme Court essentially denies this, saying that the Constitutions language about "Promoting Science and the Useful Arts" is not restrictive. Basically any copyright law Congress passes (and that execs from the "content industry" help them out quite a bit with) is presumed constitutional. Isn't that nice?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
For sounding like Kurtz from Apocalypse Now.
Seriously, the guy sounds downright creepy: "These are aging industries run by aging men, and they're up against 17-year-olds who have turned themselves into electronic Hezbollah because they resent the content industry for its proprietary practices."
Creepy!
I am not a lawyer. This post does not constitute any form of legal advice.