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RIAA President Decries Fair Use
triskaidekaphile writes, "Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, has an editorial on CNet responding to the Consumer Electronics Association's support of the Digital Freedom campaign for fair use. Sherman proclaims, 'The fair use doctrine is in danger of losing its meaning and value.' Like a true spinner, he indicates that fair use is indeed important, then states 'Let's be clear. The CEA's primary concern is not consumers, but technology companies — often large, multinational corporations which, like us, strive to make a profit... But to seize the mantra of "consumer rights" to advance that business interest is simply disingenuous.' Slashdotters, trollers, and pollsters one and all, what say you? Disingenuous or dissembling?"
I don't think the CEA "invented" the idea that fair use is a consumer concern. Whether you will be legally limited in reprinting (reposting?) or sharing some copyrighted work is pretty much the definition of a consumer concern about IP.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
...area rapist decries the right to bear arms, saying "the ability of a woman to defend herself is in danger of losing its meaning and value."
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
"Like a true spinner"
Let the guy make his points and disagree where you feel appropriate. But there is no need to preface it with a comment. You could say that about anyone trying to make an argument.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I think he meant to say:
"Let's be clear. The RIAA's primary concern is not artists, but themselves -- a large, quasi-multinational corporation which strives to make a profit... But to seize the mantra of "artists rights" to advance that business interest is simply disingenuous.'
Reading the whole article, I think his point was to mislead. In his whole time talking, he trots fair use out as a way to criticize, parody or comment on a work.
For me, fair use is being able to backup my cds onto my harddrive and encode them in any format I please for my mp3 player.
If it were up to the RIAA, they would determine exactly which format I would purchase and keep my music on, and that I would have to buy the same music over and over again everytime the next best thing came out.
Given their history, their hypocritical actions against artists, I have very little reason to believe they are arguing anything in good faith, hence I have very little reason to listen to them at all.
he says: "don't believe their creations will be adequately protected from IP theft and other unfair...."
Considering that it is impossible to steal IP (you can only copy it), he has no idea what he is talking about. Either that, or he is intentionally lying. He also quotes a Grokster judge who said that Grokster was theft, and says that this judge is tech-savvy. How can he be? If he knew a thing about Grokster, he'd know that no theft ever took place on it.
Where were you when the voynix came?
The consumer electronics association has everything to gain from legal, clearly defined fair use; more goods sold to the user to duplicate, backup and store copies of perishable media such as those that the RIAA peddles. The RIAA loses ground because they can no longer force you to buy a new copy of your product if the one you purchased is no longer usable. My point is, of course the CEA has a lot to gain from it, but that only demonstrates that consumers aren't the only ones that want legal clarification of fair use statues, or stand to gain from it. This seems more to me like the RIAA standing up saying "Not Fair! He wins if the consumer does and we don't!" Go cry in another corner, emo boy...
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
This is a classic ad hominem attack, which seeks to avoid addressing an opponent's main argument entirely by casting into question the person or entity who is making that argument. Thus, an ad hominem ("to the person") attack addresses not the argument on its own merits but the person making the argument, usually by attempting to undermine the person's true motivation or intention in making the argument. I think in contemporary developed society, this kind of ad hominem maneuver can't be very effective in actually swaying anyone. We're not very susceptible to the "they're just capitalists like us" argument. First of all, it's not a very strong counterargument to begin with. Secondly, consumers are VERY FAMILIAR with the fact that businesses are interested in making money, or, in general, that societal forces are composed of opposing interests and groups of interests that seek common ground in order to push forward an agreed upon agenda that meets the needs of multiple interests. So on the one hand, you have the RIAA, an entity that has demonstrated its own desperation, ignorance and sheer laziness, as well as a sense of entitlement and mean-spiritedness that does not stem from actually producing anything but merely licensing and distributing it. Remember when Creedence Clearwater Revival's recording company sued John Fogarty for stealing his own style of making music? (And lost?) They're essentially luddites; if they could get rid of the technological successes of the last 20 years, they would. And on the other hand, you have a bunch of companies that want to sell you some shiny bits of kit so that you can walk around with your tunes and feel cool. Oh, and a bunch of pissed off, anti-control, anti-corporate consumers. Who do you want on your side? Who is on your side? The RIAA counterargument is substanceless and ineffectual, just like their feeble anti-piracy countermeasures.
Its the things that he doesn't say but implies that are the real sneaky bits.
1) Fair use isn't about making personal backups (I'm talking putting the song on your favorite player not copying for your friend).
2) CEA is self interest, but the RIAA is better than that..
Also he never said that fair use rights "must be respected" he acknowledged they exist. But the RIAA and MPAA have shown disdain in the past for research and other fair use rights when they require breaking encryption to achieve them.
Is there anything else you can buy in the world, where there are such restrictions placed on its use? Stuff that's reasonably easy to duplicate, and has potential for such abuse, that it has protections?
Looking around my (typically messy) desk, I see... hmm, my camera. Ok, I can pay $1300 for a lens on my DSLR.. Canon doesn't say "dude you can't put that on any other camera". Nope. Of course, there's no other camera to put it on, but I knew that when I bought it, and canon doesn't say that I can't do what I want with the results of the pics.
Ah, there's a clip loaded with .22's (well, this is the country, and the other day a coyote tried to get at my chickens!). Remington doesn't say that I can only put these in their rifle. I bought the bullets, I can do what I want with them, as far as the originating company is concerned (Uncle Sam may disagree with me, of course, but you won't see Remington getting involved in that).
So, is there anything produced where the manufacturer places specific use restrictions (not "suggestions", like a recipe which calls [let me exercise "fair use" in an excerpt here] for "1 bar (8 oz.) NESTLÉ CHOCOLATIER(TM) 62% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Bar, broken into sections" or "2/3 cup LIBBY'S® 100% Pure Pumpkin" as though something else is going to ruin the recipe - they're not denying you the right, or ability, to use their recipe unless you use their product!) other than media?
Perhaps the special thing about media is that the company wants to sell you not "listen to this song" or "watch this movie" but "listen to this song only on this one thing". There's a clash between what the consumer believes himself to be buying, and what the company claims to be selling.
Yeah, their history sucks. But is what they're saying now unreasonable? If you push your opponent against the wall and he finally relents and gives you what you need (not saying he's giving everything, but he is giving something) do you just scoff at him?
Hell, we need to be taking notes on what he's saying now and we need to stick him to his word. He says things should be balanced. Yes, they should. He says we should have some, but not unlimited fair use. Yes and yes.
When your enemy gives you ground, you don't go hide in your bunker and call him names. You advance. I consider this an opportunity.
TW
The other problem with Mr. Sherman's statements is that it serves mostly publishers and not the artists -- while the goal of copyright law is the encourage the creation of artistic works, not to maximise the profits of publishing houses. Whether downloading is illegal or not ignores the real question, which is does it help artists and should it be illegal?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
"It is proper to call the act of removing money from the content owner's pocket theft."
Yes.... which has nothing to do with copyright infringement.
"You can say "I just made a copy" but that does not change the fact that you accessed something I should have been paid for to enable your access"
Accessed? Like in your wallet example? Theft is theft. Period. Copyright infringement is copyright infringement. Period. Sounds like you are discussing some sort of unauthorized access. There are other forms of unauthorized access which are also not theft (such as trespassing). The person who has "just made a copy" is guilty of copying, not stealing.
Where were you when the voynix came?
He is attempting to portray the fair-use balance as the interestst of the content publishers versus the interests of the equipment makers. At one point he makes this explicit. At another he talks of balancing the interests of "all players". This is totally bogus.
In fact the copyright balancing is the interests of the content producers versus the interests of the content users (of a number of types - including the content PURCHASERS who want to format-shift their property in order to player-shift or space-shift it, whom he carefully ignores).
The makers of the equipment, software, and other insturmentality that enables the content users' exercise of their fair-use rights DO benefit. So they have a financial incentive to support the content users' position. (Indeed, the industry's activity is an effective way for the content users to fund the defense of their own rights.) And their profit is indeed part of the overall social benefit intended to be promoted by the copyright law. But (despite Sherman's FUD) the copying-equipment industry's interest is NOT the other side of the "balance" of fair-use.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'm not arguing that I should be able to get my music for free, but once I pay for it I can do with it whatever I want, as long as it's fair use. I'm not going to accept his version of "fair" - probably no media shifting, no format shifting, if possible no time shifting and hardware-locked to a specific player - I want the rights I deserve for having paid.
You make the mistake of accepting his framing of the argument: he isn't "giving in" in the slightest, he makes an outrageous demand, and, when no one will fulfill it, backs down a little. It's the same as if I asked you to pay me a million dollars for using the same air that I breathe, and if you aren't willing to pay, well, I can back down to a payment of one dollar a month. I guess you would consider that a great deal, since I "backed down" so much...
(I'm not accusing you personally, but every time I see something like this I wish people were more aware of basic manipulating tactics - these are old tricks, and, sad as it is to see, they still work).
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
"Author's life + 10 or 25 years, whichever is shorter would be more than sufficient for protecting the creator for profit to encourage creation of new content."
I disagree. 10-20 years is all they should be given a copyright for. Its the expiration of income from a given work that inspires one to produce more works. If I come up with a good idea and got paids for it for the rest of my life, what's my inspiration for creating even more works? None. If I know that gravy train is going away soon you best believe I'll be working my butt off on coming up with a new idea to sell.
That's how copyright came into existence. What we have today is an abomination and is in serious need of correction.
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
Actually I remember back in the day, it was pretty common with folks with "hi-fi" systems that had both a LP turntable and a reel-to-reel, to dub their best-loved LPs to tape, and then play the tape, thus saving wear on the vinyl.
I once dug up an early 'mix tape' that my father had made this way, in the late 60s...format shifting is not a new idea, and it's fairly recently that its been attacked and called "stealing."
The previous upgrade cycles mostly happened because there was some perceived consumer advantage. 'Cassette tapes' sucked less than eight-track (cassettes), particularly for use in cars. CDs were superior to vinyl in terms of damage resistance (or so they said at the time, anyway), not wearing out, ease of FF/REV and SKIP, and sound quality. People chose those upgrades. Anyone with a decent home stereo could go from LP to cassette tape pretty trivially, and some people did (I know I did, for my car), but it was time consuming and most people didn't bother.
With the CD to MP3 format changeover, moving one's music oneself is trivial. Put the disc into iTunes, hit Rip. Thus, a lot of people aren't repurchasing their music as they did in the past, because this changeover is easier than any in the past. This drives the record companies crazy, because they've been used to getting a huge influx of cash every time one of these changeovers has happened in the past -- in fact, they think they're entitled to it. That is their critical mistake. They are not.
Frankly, I think it is this sense of entitlement that really aggravates me about the RIAA and its member companies most of all.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I bought the media content on those 8-track and cassette tapes. The medium which conveys the media matters little in this argument.
Without the content they are just blank tapes.
When I purchase the music I will listen to the music on the original -or- a copy of that original as I know all too well that any mechanical carrier wears out with time and the medium is not the message, the content is.
My library content goes back to reel-to-reel tapes and yet I have no reel-to-reel machine anymore. It died in 1989 after I copied the content to cassettes, then when computers came out I encoded those cassette tapes to mp3.
My original purchase of the content allows me to continue to listen to it to this day. That's what I call 'fair-use'!
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
He is absolutely right in saying that there is a major conflict of interest between the content providers and the technology companies. Both are led by large corporations, and both serve "the public" to different extents (content producers and consumers). He is also right in pointing out that fair use is necessary for all, acknowledging that "so much of what we create is built on the art that came before".
He also makes a couple of interesting points: first, that downloading is illegal and immoral (the opposite view being an "extremist position"); and second that the new fair use will stop artists from producing content because there would be no economic advantage. And IMHO both of these points are flawed and misleading.
For the first one, there is no mention of what makes it an extremist view (other than his obvious agenda), and the opposite view is just as extreme. Downloading is not illegal everywhere, and it certainly is not immoral - there is no morality on the reordering of a bunch of 0 and 1s on magnetic storage. Nothing was lost on the other side.
But the second one is more interesting. It is simply not true that artists will stop producing content if people are free to use the technology as they see fit. This is already happening, and the attempts to outlaw it is a proof of that. But the impact won't necessarily be worse than today if allowed to happen.
I think that these are hiding another, deeper, threat for content companies: the fact that technology companies serve both consumers and content creators, and it scares the crap out of them because of the implications.
In other words, technology massively lowers the barriers of entry for new artists. Massive distribution technologies allow users to bypass the traditional and oligarchic "means of production". Cheaper equipment means more talented people can reach the eyes and ears of listeners, which will cause money to be distributed more broadly, and more fairly - at the expense of the traditional players of the content industry. An example of this is how, given a specific content, some illegal copies manage to release something of a better quality (no ads, multiple subtitles in different languages, better size/quality ratio, etc).
Content industries have a history of perverting technology for their own economic ends. DVD zoning is an example of this. I can understand the marketing drives to do it - artificial market segmentation, and so on. But in a increasingly global world they become as annoying as they are obsolete.
So yes, the technology companies have a lot to profit from this. But guess what - their best economic interest is to allow the people (artist and consumers) to be able to do more with their gear, not less. So if I have to choose my side, I'll go with the technology companies, not with the people who would like to "license" things to a given item of hardware and still charge as much as possible.
Some people are getting it... these guys are trying to offer a free HD TV show on the net. In other areas such as gaming, there are many examples of freely available software, which are free yet fun to play. This is the future, IMHO, and is arriving sooner or later. Yes, in part, I like it because I get a free ride, but that's because I'm given one by people who have the means of doing so. And those means are given by technology.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Copyright is not private property. Copyright is a limited-time government-granted monopoly on the reproduction of intangible works.
I own a bicycle. I own it forever -- my ownership of the bicycle never lapses.
I own the copyright to this message. 70 years [or whatever the Disney Corp. manages to extend it to] after I die, the copyright expires and this message automatically goes into the public domain.
Nonsense. With copyrights, the government is controlling what I can do with the book I already paid for. And the government already says you are not allowed to own some things -- like other humans.Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Well, you have no "right" to the song you created, but I think that we as a society should throw you a bone to encourage more songs. Not a 90-year bone, mind you, but a more reasonably-aged bone. The discussion should not be "How do we protect the rights of the artists?" because they have no rights. The question should be "How do we encourage the production of art?" Copyright is one approach, and has actually done a decent job. I just think that the pedulum swung too far in one direction. Some combination of short commercial copyrights and compulsory licensing is probably the way to go.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
How can you steal a concept, a feeling, or an idea? If I do an excellent moonwalk, have I stolen exclusivity from Michael Jackson? Do Robin Williams' impressions infring on the exclusivity of the impersonated? You can't steal an idea of exclusivity, only money associated with the loss thereof.
I'm much more comfortable with the argument that piracy is stealing from the (mostly well lined) pockets of record companies and artists. This at least holds water when directed at those who could have/would have otherwise paid for the content.
By your logic, artists could sue for the pain and suffering their loss of exclusivity caused them.
Copyright of today actually stifles the creation of more art. It has turned from a protection of the artist to a protection of the studios, and this in turn means that only artists that agree to work together with the studios "may" produce art. With more copyrighted material, you have less room to create new art (or recycle existing art to something new. Try being a collage artist today...).
It's not (only) the duration of the copyright, the form itself hinders the creation of art. Copyrights (as well as patents) have turned from a tool that should encourage to publish and produce into a tool to monopolize the market. And that has never been the intention of its creation.
Quite the opposite!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
While some may point to the vast quantities of works created the past century in the USA as proof that copyright works, I'll respond with two points:
- Copyright is a coupl'a hundred years old. It is really only in the last 50-100 yrs that there has been an explosion in the publication of works.
- I suggest as an alternate theory that the creation of works is tied directly to available leisure time (both as creator and consumer), and at no time in history have more people had more leisure time than the USA in the same last 50-100yrs.
Provable? nope, but it's at least as plausable as the copyright theoryLastly, what those that are proponents of copyright never talk about is the damage that it does - I've read estimates that some 70% of all published music is unavailable for purchase. It's locked away under copyright, and the 'owner' doesn't feel that it's profitable to release it. So anyone who looks at the shear quantity published, without taking into account the works that copyright renders *unavailable* is being dishonest... ... when in reality it is necessary only in terms of ensuring their profits.
It's the RIAA/MPAA et al that have everyone believing that copyright is necessary to us
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
"It's the exclusivity that's stolen, not the right itself."
Let us return to that place where those who abuse the definition of "theft" fear to tread: the dictionary. Definition of theft "the act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny."
Aside from the gross inapplicability of the idea of "carrying off" to a possible diminishment of a right, let's look at the "taking" requirement. You are arguing that exclusivity is stolen, right? If this is true, then how come the copyright infringer does not gain any exclusivity???. If he's taking it, he'd gain it, right? Of course he doesn't.
The word "theft" once again is proven inapplicable. Even if we assume that this right is a property, the act of infringing on it does not constitute the right being taken from one person by another. Rather, it constitutes the destruction or damage of the right.
In a real-world analogy, crimes where you wreck something but don't steal it are often called "property destruction" crimes. They are never called theft. A vandal smashing a window is doing something similar (in the analogy) to what you describe when talking about damage to the exclusivity right. The vandal certainly can't be accused of stealing a window.
Where were you when the voynix came?