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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?"
zoi gy Well, this time I am really leaving. I will try to speak only Lojban, as much as possible. Doing so here would get me modded down to oblivion. Keep up the good work, everyone! The Singularity is near! Don't take my weapons and armor! Use Hexadecimal! Use Binary! Don't use decimal! Be an atheist! Be a libertarian! Wow. Let me make it somewhat relevant. I don't want to listen to non-Lojbanic music. This means I'll be getting by on a lot of instrumental stuff. Much of which happens to be non-RIAA. gy
u'e sai
fa'o
Just not one that I agree with.
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...
Which is why RIAA has gone for a lot of soft targets http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35 669
Engineering is the art of compromise.
"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.
> Slashdotters,
Information wants to be free.
> trollers,
First Goatse
> and pollsters
79%
> one and all
79% of information is goatse.
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.'
He sharpened his fangs carefully, didn't me?
Where were you when the voynix came?
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?
(emphasis added by poster.)
You know the Democrats are in power when the RIAA line is that fair use has to be eliminated due to "large, multinational corporations", instead of "freeloaders" and "free riders".
I'll give Cary this much. He's smart enough to adjust the spin vector to best conform to the prejudices of whichever group of thugs happens to be in ascendance on the Hill. But then, that's what he's paid for.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
The bottom line for fair use is this:
I should be able to make a copy, for personal use, of any content that I can receive, whether it is broadcast for free or (especially) if paid for.
This is what Fair Use has always been understood to mean, in addition to being able to use small excerpts for review or educational purposes.
It was about us popping a tape in our VCR or radio and making a recording.
Now that the recordings are equal quality to the original, the RIAA and company want to renig on the deal. It's as simple as that.
If you've paid to receive the content, or it is freely given away, you should be able to make a copy for personal use. Period.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
"Reading the whole article, I think his point was to mislead"
He did lie about a couple of situations being theft, when in fact no theft was ever involved.
"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."
That about does it for me, too. Add to this DVD/video content (including anything I download or view online) and being able to view such content on my DVD player.
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.
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.
"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, unlike you, the CEA does not seek this profit through monopoly control over the products they sell (OK, with the possible expception of Sony...). A CD player is a CD player is a CD player, no matter who manfucatures it, but a new Death Cab for Cutie CD can only come from Atlantic. Because the electronics manufacturers don't have nearly the same amount of federal legal power to fall back on to protect their profits, they are far more inclined to (day I say it) cater to the whims of the customer (insert previous Sony caveat here).
While there is always the danger of manufacuring cartels getting together to limit consumer choice in the realm of hardware (DVD-CSS), these cartels don't have the same kind of legal protections that copyright holders do, and are always susceptible to competitors making cheaper yet more functional devices (Wal-Mart won't try to sell bootleg movies, but will be more than happy to sell you a region-free DVD player).
Copyright is a social contract. The government agrees to protect a monopoly for a limited time in exchange for an idea being released into the Public Domain. The Fair Use clause is a reminder that the materials copyrighted will become Public Domain and is an exclusion to benefit everyone for the limited time where the monopoly is in place. Of course they don't want Fair Use. For one, it is an excuse for users to be able to access the idea they bought in a convenient manner. The content providers want you to re-buy for you DVD/TV, DVD/computer, DVD/PSP, car, iPod, etc. Fair Use explicitly states that you do not need to buy multiple copies of the same thing. Additionally, Fair Use is a reminder of the contract. The Limited Time portion has already been forgotten by Congress. The more the content middlemen can get people to think that their ownership of copyright is a right, the more they can separate themselves and their tactics from the intention of copyright.
I ask myself one question. Do the laws surrounding copyright encourage innovation? My answer is "no, they do not." With that answer, it means that I must necessarily think that the laws regarding copyright are unconstitutional. Innovation is not when Velcro's replacement is held back from public consumption until after the patent on Velcro has expired. Innovation would be releasing it when it is discovered. Many companies hold back the next generation of products until the previous generation patents have or soon will expire. Companies use patents to prevent competitors from making obvious enhancements to their own products. Copyright law is being used to prevent Fair Use and extending the copyright every time it get close to expiring indicates that it is not a limited time. 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.
Oh, and "Science and useful Arts" does not include business processes.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
Sometimes, all of these entities are the same company. Look at Sony for example. They own a record label, produce consumer electronics, and sell blank media.
Slashdotters, trollers, and pollsters one and all, what say you? Disingenuous or dissembling?
All of the above. I have the right to use my media as I see fit. What, is he next going to claim that ripping my own CDs is illegal? Pesky "Fair Use", it's holding back commerce and hurting the economy. Hey, we have record executives to feed! They have children to put through ivy league schools! And Hummers to buy! The rabble is getting just too damn uppity, I say. Do you honestly think that's disingenuous?
Sheesh!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go download last nights Frisky Dingo episode.
How about, from this article:
Fair use is an undeniably important plank of copyright law. Critics like CEA sometimes lose sight of the fact that record labels and other copyright owners are as dependent on fair use as consumers. A healthy and robust fair use doctrine is critical to us, since so much of what we create is built on the art that came before.
The question is what each side considers "fair". They're hitting CEA for being on the side of free file sharing (by backing Grokster), which does not sound even vaguely like the intent of fair use to me.
The middle ground here is hard to find. The only ways I know of to prevent file sharing also prevent things that are certainly fair use (backing things up, playing on other media, making compilations, etc.)
So we've got a scenario pitting two sets of rights against each other, and two entities arguing that the compromise should be entirely in their favor. Unsurprisingly, it happens to be the way that makes each side thinks makes them the most money (the CEA selling more players, the RIAA selling more music).
Uh huh. And the RIAA's primary concern is
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
On one far side of the IP continuum, you treat intellectual property almost EXACTLY like physical property. Lifetime ownership, lifetime copyright etc... This situation probably grants excessive monopoly power to the IP creator and creates inefficiencies.
Extreme #(2)> ... This situation creates a variation on the classic tragedy of the commons. Everyone has an incentive to use the common IP resources; no one has an incentive to create them. (And no, communism does not work and the broad population will not create free stuff for the benefit of mankind without compensation.)
On the other side, you have absolutely no rules whatsoever. Everyone is free to use/steal/whatever anything.
(3) The Fuzzy Middle
Then there is some position in the middle that grants a time limited monopoly (copyright) with certain exceptions for "fair use." Where "fair use" has a strict definition. A brief quotation is "fair use," while a larger excerpt is not. the Anti IP group (2) people want to redefine "fair use" as "all use." (Switch US system from (3) to Extreme #2 by stealth.) Not that I'm an RIAA fan, but the opinion piece here has a point.
Good Cop Bad Cop.
Right now, this guy is playing good cop. While another part of the organization litigates the end-user into oblivion.
The goal remains, Greater control for higher revenue, which naturally entails drastically limiting consumer usage.
Microsoft's goal, RIAA members goal. All of them.
That this is even being considered as thoughtful by some is just... astroturfing.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
"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?
Seems like they're attempting to cast a negative connotation to the words "fair use", or at least confuse the term until it loses its meaning. If carefully done, this can take the strength out of their opponents' arguments.
The effectiveness of this can be demonstrated by the conservatives' redefinition of the word "liberal", which nowadays is used pejoratively. Originally, the word had a positive meaning (one with liberal views, supporting individual liberty).
Whether downloading is illegal or not ignores the real question, which is does it help artists and should it be illegal?
Wrong. The question should be about respecting private property of all kinds, no matter who it belongs to. The alternative is a slippery slope on which the government tells you what you are allowed and aren't allowed to own.
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.
If it wasn't for fair use rap wouldn't be legal.
"Fair use" does not define a certain limited amount of copying that you have permission to do. It defines copying that you do *not have to ask permission for. You can try to prevent "fair use" technologically, but there is nothing in copyright law that prevents my circumventing that technical measure. Now I defer to a smarter man:
(Moglen on the DMCA): "You never read a case, because there never was a case, in which under the copyright law, somebody was charged with a federal legal offence of any kind for writing a book about how photocopiers work or for distributing blue prints of photocopiers or for manufacturing and selling photocopiers. When you see a legal regime that is engaged in trying to charge people for doing those things, you can be pretty sure it's not the copyright law, it's something else. The fact that they put the word copyright in the title doesn't make it a copyright law folks"
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
"Haven't we paid to upgrade from record to 8-track to cassette to cd to [for some] mp3?"
There are many products that we buy and replace because they wear out (record, 8T), or because newer products offer better quality (CD) or convenience (mp3). If you made most of those conversions, it's because you had a good reason and obtained a clear benefit from doing so. You could have, for example, bought some equipment and recorded all of those 8-tracks to CDR, but the quality would have sucked, and you didn't really want to take the time to do it anyway (convenience). Again, things we often pay for.
This is what makes the transition from DVD to BR/HD interesting, because in one way you may be paying for the "same" movie yet again... but on the other side, it's not the same movie, but a much higher definition, clearer, sharper version.
Worth paying for? Your choice.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
The right to time-shift and format-shift for personal use are well-established as part of the fair use exceptions to copyright law. As long as they don't grant this ability, copyright owners have nothing to complain about when their copy protection gets cracked, or people forego the distribution medium.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Music not the media it is on. As such I should be able to transfer the music to any media that allows me to listen to it.
IS that to hard to understand?
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."
For example, "fair use" means you can quote a few words from a textbook, but cannot repeat the whole book. "Fair use" also means you can play a few seconds of a song, or a few seconds of a movie without permission or penalty.
You are mistakenly conflating two forms in the statutory basis for fair use: borrowing for purposes of quotation or criticism and limits on commercial exploitation.
It is perfectly legal to spend an afternoon photocopying a complete book in your public library and lugging the reams of 8.5X11 home with you, if your purposes are scholarly or educational and you have no intention of commercial redistribution. Mr. Sherman is pleased by your confusion in this regard and your mistaken guidance to the hoi polloi. In fact, they are relying not upon the deterrent effect of a handful of lawsuits, but the great murk that this tactic generates around these questions in the public discourse.
It is perfectly legal to make complete copies of any copyrighted work provided there is no commercial intent and no restraint of commerce (read: giving them out for free and destroying the market) and anyone who will tell you otherwise is mistaken or lying. Grokster died not because copies existed on its servers or servers it indexed, but because it had no way of guaranteeing that those copies were not commercially exploited or that restraint of trade was not occurring. It purposefully marketed this anonymity of purpose as a value-add.
illegitimii non ingravare
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
Again, to a certain extent the medium does matter, since rerecording older versions off LPs or tape entails a loss in quality though generational copying and also recording the scratches and pops on the LP and background noise and hiss on the tapes. So the "quality" aspect of my argument applies here, since people didn't get the "same" content for their money when they upgraded to CDs, but (arguably) a better version thereof.
You also choose to spend your time doing so, whereas others often will pay not to spend their time doing drudgework when they could be off doing something else they enjoy more, much like I pay someone to mow my grass so I can go out and play volleyball.
As to what you call "fair-use"... well, I can call my cat a dog, but that doesn't mean she's going to go fetch the paper.
While I think that what you did is "fair", it doesn't yet fall under the "comment, discussion, satire" statues of the "fair-use" doctrine, nor does it really fit into the "personal backup" or "right of first sale" aspects of other law. And as another example, I know several people who think torrenting a song to 10,000 "friends" is fair-use.
Which, when you get right down to it, is why we're having these discussions regarding personal rerecording, device shifting, file sharing, TIVO-like time shifting, and so on, and why those definitions need to get nailed down so that fair is fair, for everyone.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
This digital music IP issue reminds me of those machines in sci-fi movies that can synthesize stuff out of any raw materials. Imagine if those existed and they were affordable. Imagine trying to have a capitalist economy coexist with such machines... You could stick a dog turd in and get back diamonds. Except - why bother? Diamonds would be of no more value, just less smelly. Turn it into something useful like dog food.
As technology gets good enough, it starts undermining capitalism. You can't charge $18 for a music CD when the raw materials and medium costs basically nothing when it's digitalized. No package, no shelf space, no retail store, no salespeople.
Next will be movies (already starting - digital rental/purchase downloads will kill rental stores and DVD sales), then books and magazines. When the technology arrives to replace paper medium, someone is going to come along and iPod/iTunes the book/magazine industry. I'd give it 20 years maximum.
At some point robots can start taking over service jobs in some industries (slave labor, no food, no health care, etc). They've already replaced people in parts of the manufacturing industry. Eventually, if we make good enough use of technology, there just won't be enough work for people to do and we'd have to switch to some kind of communist system.
I mean, we're talking about our distant generations of offspring here, so f*ck em, but still...
I almost choked on my dinner last year when I read about one record company exec expounding on how "Apple should start sharing-out some of the profits from iPod sales." He seemed to firmly believe that a percentage of any profits related to music sales (even they are from hardware purchases) is due the music industry. This on top of the fact that iTunes makes little money for Apple since the bulk of the profits already go to the rightsholders. There has to be some form of mass-psychosis at work here, at least among the upper management of these outfits.
Besides, how do you tell when the head of the RIAA is lying?
His lips move.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
Since you're using this warfare analogy, lets look at this a little more closely.
For a long while, the countries of Listeneria and Distributeria lived side by side in a peaceful trade agreement. The Distributers sold products (imported from distant Musiciania) that the Listeners wanted to buy, and so the they bought them and everyone was happy. Then along came technological advances which allowed the Listeners to domestically reproduce the products they previously had to purchase from Distributeria, and other advances that would allow the Musicians to sell their new products directly to the Listeners, completely bypassing the Distributarian trade routes. So, fearing for their livelihood, Distributeria invaded Listeneria and tried to halt and reverse their technological progress, plunging them back into a more primitive way of life where they would again be dependent on Distributeria.
But, banned by international treaty from the sorts of weapons they would need to use to successfully conquer Listeneria, the Distributers found a long, drawn-out battle that they could not hope to win, as Listeners fought a guerilla war against the Distributers. The Listeners knew that in the end they could never be conquered, but the Distributer invasion was seriously disturbing the peace in their lands.
Fast forward to today, after this hopeless battle has been continuing for many years, and suddenly the Distributers say "you know we don't really want to hurt the Listeners at all, we've always liked them and just want to live in peace with them again." They haven't pulled out of the country, haven't stopped their attempts to destroy the Listeners' technological infrastructure that let them be free of dependency on Distributeria. They're like the Martians of "Mars Attacks!", running about and shooting their ray guns shouting "do not run, we are your friends!"
Would you expect the people of Listeneria to just walk out into the open and say "oh ok, they didn't want to hurt us in the first place!"? Or would you imagine they would tell the Distributer to "fuck off and get the hell out, and then we'll talk about getting along peacefully"?
You're right that when your enemy gives you ground, you don't just hide and call him names. But when your enemy just says "I'm putting down my guns now, you can come out, I promise I won't hurt you", it pays to remain suspicious, unless he's saying that because you've just pointed a bigger gun at his head. We the consumers don't have such big guns to point at the RIAA's head, so there's no reason to think that they would just happily give up the fight.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
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.
"Musicians, artists, filmmakers and others won't produce rich, diverse content if they don't believe their creations will be adequately protected from IP theft and other unfair, illegal uses."
...Promise?
BULLSHIT.
PLENTY of artists continue to create and release works under Creative Commons and other open license on a daily basis. Only artists and commercial publishers like the RIAA's clientele won't produce content without restrictive "protections". If they went away, the commons would only grow.
"Threatening" us with the bankruptcy of proprietary artists does NOT serve you well as a useful argument. It makes me want to call your bluff. No more Britney or NSYNC?
Of course, we both know you're not going away. So quit bullshitting.
When I studied Copyright Law as part of my engineering degree, it was emphasised that you cannot copy the whole material regardless of whether it was for educational or non-commercial use.
If you want to read more, you can do so at the US Copyright Office website:
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
From that site:
Note that nowhere in those examples does it say wholesale copying of a document.
Sorry but I doubt my copies of the Marx Brothers or Futurama get any better in HD. Will future movies look better? Yes. Do I see a reason to upgrade my collection? No. There is plenty of old music that is only in Mono, but we buy it on CD in quality formats... because it's cheep and we already own a CD player. When HD formats become as prolific as the CD, I'll buy it. Until then I'll stick with my 'cassette tape' called DVD.
And frankly I don't think that day will come. CD's were an infinite improvement on Cassette in more ways than just recording quality. DVD's were a great improvement on VHS. HD... just looks prettier and holds more. I don't need a LotR level of special features with every movie I rent or buy.
Anyway format wars aren't the topic. I agree with you. As far as I'm concerned when you buy a CD to upgrade your music you're buying the convenience. The average consumer doesn't see it as a re-purchase of their licence. If they wanted to upgrade formats themselves, they should be allowed too.
Shick's Law: There is no problem a good miracle can't solve.
Eventually, if we make good enough use of technology, there just won't be enough work for people to do and we'd have to switch to some kind of communist system.
Not so. At least, we wouldn't have to switch to some sort of "communist system" in the sense that all extent and historical so-called "communist" states have used - forced equal distribution of resources.
If by some technological means we arrive in a situation where capital and labor both are so plentiful as to be free (via robots and Star Trek-style replicators as you described), we won't have just outgrown capitalism, we'll have outgrown the need for any system of economics. Economics systems are just means of trying to "fairly" (for some value of "fair") distribute the limited resources available to us. The reason why we don't have any economic interest in buying and selling (or communally producing and distributing) something like air is because it's an effectively unlimited resource - there is no real scarcity of it, at least not here on Earth. (Though if we had lunar colonies, you can damn well bet that there would be a monthly air bill like your water, gas, or electricity bills you pay on Earth today).
No scarcity, no need for any economic system. You need some of something, just take it, and nobody will care because there's plenty of it left. Like air. If for some reason we ever did run into a scarcity of air and needed more of it, you can damn well bet that people would pony up to pay for air production - and as air is a physical thing that can't be freely duplicated, there could then be valid complaints of "theft of air" and such. But then, with your Star Trek style replicators... if you've got a sample of good-quality air, just replicate some of your own, and let others do the same, and voila, no more air scarcity. Information is now at that stage of effectively free reproduction and thus absence of scarcity. So the distribution of *copies* of information no longer has need for any sort of economic regulation at all - people will do it for free, just to share with their friends, since it costs them virtually nothing.
Now, the *original production* of information (including artistic works like music) is still a scarce resource, and so it would make sense to pay for that. There's any number of ways to do so. Work for hire (get paid to produce a creative work by someone who personally wants such a work) is one way, and how it was done in ancient times - kings would pay great artists to create beautiful paintings and compositions for them. Ransoms are another way (effectively a group version of the above, where a large number of people pool their resources and pay an artist to produce something for them all). Concerts could be a form of ransom - acts could work with concert promoters to find a venue that will likely sell enough to be worth it, and then sell CDs at the concert (or include the CDs in the ticket price).
One way or another, once the information is out there, if someone wants to replicate it and give it away, there's nothing you can ethically do to stop them - they're not stealing from anyone. If it wasn't worth it to you (the music producer) to produce and release the music in the first place, you shouldn't have done so. But then, great artists will produce art for it's own sake, if only the can afford to do so - and if the can't afford it, they should probably be focusing on getting their livelihood together before they worry about their art. And if our society is such that most people don't have enough leisure time so that the artists among them can create art for it's own sake, then there's something wrong with our society. Either we're not as prosperous as we think we are - in which case we should probably be doing other, more important work before we start worrying about having enough new music - or we are prosperous, but a lot of people are getting ripped off and a few bastards are reaping the profits of the masses' labor.
This post is full of enough analogies as it is, but one more: with
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
This is what makes the transition from DVD to BR/HD interesting, because in one way you may be paying for the "same" movie yet again... but on the other side, it's not the same movie, but a much higher definition, clearer, sharper version.
you obviousally haven't look at hddvd and dvd side by side. We demoed a HDDVD player to a big client on HIS home theatre.
you could not tell the difference between the regular DVD through his $30,000.00 video processing system and $55,000 projector and the HDDVD of the same movie.
HDDVD is not that much better, most people that would benefit from it 120+inch screens usually bought good video processing gear and ended up with a fantastic picture from regular dvd and therefore see a marginal or in the case of what we viewed no difference.
HDDVD is capable of fantastic, the studios are not giving anyone anything fantastic to play.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
"Can it be agreed upon that theft is when you take something away, without permission, from someone else so that they no longer possess it, or as much of it, as they had before the theft? Then copyright infringement _IS_ in fact, a type of theft."
No, since the taking away part you describe as necessary is not present in copyright infringement.
"Therefore fair use copying isn't stealing, since the copyright holder has implicitly given permission to copy for such purposes. "
Actually, it isn't stealing, since no form of copying is stealing (whether it is unfair use or fair use)
"But make no mistake.... copyright infringement is most definitely stealing."
BR Ermmm. yeah. Despite the fact that it does not meet the definition. Chalk this up to the weak argument: "copyright infringement is theft because I SAY it is, no explanation necessary."
Where were you when the voynix came?
"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?