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Record Labels Change Minds About Sharing MP3s
Mass Defect writes "While the RIAA continues to sue people for p2p file sharing, the record labels have made an about-face and given their blessing to users sharing MP3s via the social networking site imeem.com. In May this year the site was being sued by Warner for allowing users to upload photos, videos, and music to share. However to everyone's amazement, instead of being flattened, imeem.com managed to convince the label that this free promotion was a good thing. In July imeem.com signed a deal with the label. Since then the site has added Sony, BMG, EMI, and now the biggest fish of them all, Universal. Imeem now has the royal flush of record labels supporting its media-sharing service, each getting a cut of the advertising revenues generated by their catalog. Finally someone has figured out a way to do 'YouTube for MP3s' without getting sued out of existence."
About time! When will they get the point that music sharing will ultimately lead to more exposure for their artists, and thus, more revenue?
***i watched you change into a fly***
It's unbelievable.
expandfairuse.org
Does this mean that the universe is going to end?
Imeem now has the royal flush of record labels supporting its media-sharing service, each getting a cut of the advertising revenues generated by their catalog
gee... i wonder why they agreed to drop legal action against imeem.
Is this going to stop the RIAA lawsuits at all? This reads like an advertisement for the social site more than that the record companies have done an about face in policy.
Besides, what's to stop them from having the RIAA from going after these downloads? I hope that's in the contracts that give them a cut of the advertising.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
"these 30 sec peview are dumb u cant even steal songs from here how is ti possible to download. plus these are intended to have em in our page we can never put dem in our ipods and such ya know. get rid of da 30 sec limit quick or da 50 cent guy below u will be right about losing alot of members"
Clipped right from a song sample page...
"You must be logged in to hear the full song. Click here to create an account."
You can listen to the entire song.. With an account. That is why there is so much Google information of how to cheat the system and download the songs. Nobody wants a bunch of 30 second clips of songs except as ringtones.
The truth shall set you free!
sudden outbreak of common sense?
Wow. How amazing that the record companies agreed to this. Low quality streaming with loads of ads and a "download" button that sends you to the iTunes store or amazon. The annoying registration box that pops up after listening to 30 seconds of a song (you must register to hear the rest) is a nice touch.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Imeem's missing the point. One of the biggest positive points of P2P is that the record companies, radio conglomerates, have absolutely no say over the selection and presentation of content.
What we're seeing here is the Record Companies trying to appeal to our better judgement, while making one last effort to maintain an iron grip over their content. And it's just not going to work.
You see.... last year was arguably one of the best years on record for independent artists and labels for this very reason. The amount of *great* content being released by small labels was staggering to say the least, and I'd be pretty certain that more than a few of these artists got their "big break" via P2P.
Meanwhile, the talent on the major labels was.... crap... to say the least, and it has nothing to do with the inevitable backlash that occurs between generations. Most of the "Top-40" artists are untalented, formulaic, and absolute rubbish.
The crackdown on P2P, and the agreement with Imeem is at least in part trying to mask the fact that the RIAA's members have completely lost the ability to identify and sign new talent. On the other hand, the indie labels have gotten quite good at it.
The days of rock stars with million dollar salaries are over. The labels need to accept the fact that music is going to become increasingly diverse over the next several years, and that their old strategy of promoting a very small number number of superstar artists just isn't going to work any more.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
The record companies must be getting a significant cut from the advertising then. I can't help wondering the amounts involved that cause such an abrupt about face. In reality they are benefiting in two ways though. First of all monetarily and secondly with artists getting more exposure. The best kind of advertising is a friend mentioning something cool. More fans = more money being spent.
I checked this out earlier when CNN pointed it out. While imeem doesn't make it easy for you to download music, they are streaming standard Flash video with MP3 soundtracks, which makes it easily downloadable e.g. using DownloadHelper. The MP3 files can then be extracted using e.g. MPlayer ("mplayer -dumpaudio -dumpfile foo.mp3 foo.flv").
End result: free, often decent quality (128 kbps), legal MP3s of music from major labels (where fair use applies; the usual disclaimer about not being a lawyer also applies).
I agree that file sharing is a problem, but there are plenty of problems in the music industry and these problems have more to do with their lost revenue than file sharing itself. If the record labels had gotten off their ass and got into online music in a big way when it started, we wouldn't have this problem.
My blog
Since both here and at last.fm you can only listen to 30 secs of a song, how are they different? And if I don't get the full mp3 anyway, I'd prefer last.fm since they can track what I listen to, and generate radio stations with music that gets uploaded by the record companies themselves! No need to go the awful looking imeem site..
Is this going to stop the RIAA lawsuits at all? This reads like an advertisement for the social site more than that the record companies have done an about face in policy.
Nothing changes in the P2P lawsuits. The RIAA has been solid on a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy being as good as the original copy is a bad bad thing. Making a copyable file and posting it is bad bad bad and we will sue...
This website is not P2P. It is a post and broadcast.. There is no download and pass along a copy.. well not without some google searching on how to D/L a copy in violation of the DMCA. The songs are protected by streaming flash and maybe an identifying watermark.
The site is now a web broadcaster. The site pays royalties out of the advertising revenue. There is no P2P. Copies stolen (copyright violated) may be identified for later lawsuits by watermarking or other identifiers provided at the site to prevent theft (copyright violations). This is probably why there is no listening beyond a 30 second clip without an account. With an account the info may be embeded in the clips so if they show up on Kazaa later, they know who to sue for the violation. How much personal information do you have to give to get an account? If it requires a CC number, you are pretty much a sitting duck if you D/L and post on Kazaa.
The truth shall set you free!
No, the copyright system isn't broken. Copyright has worked well for over 200 years in this country. (The patent system is another story). Now laws like the DMCA that criminalize what would otherwise be legitimate acts...that's broken.
Some would argue that the current copyright system is broken.
The original system where a copyright:- Had to be registered
- Lasted 14 years
- Provided for an additional 14 year extension if applied for
was far more sane than what we have now."They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
OK. I read your post. I get your logic. But I disagree with what I thought your inferred conclusion was: There will always be artists who want different compensation for their art and allow for different presentation of their art. There will always be record labels. There will always be variation in copyright laws in different countries. Ergo the Status Quo or similar is justifiable.
I don't think the Status Quo is justifiable. I don't think the lawsuits, the intimidation, the harsh penalties, none of this is justifiable against a casual downloader.
I have concluded this, right after I thought a while about the value of music. Live shows have value, just as T-Shirts, Posters, and other physical art has value. A CD without a reasonable media replacement policy has little value and the cover art that comes with CD has almost no value. The actual audio portion of a song I receive from radio has little value.
And thus the Audio portion of a MP3 file has little or no innate value. What gives MP3s greater value are what you can do with them. If you have a collection of MP3's it just as important to have correct & complete ID3 tagging as it is to have the audio portion. This allows you to group, sort, find, and select specific files. Being able to discover new music based on past preference and the current state of the world of music also increases value (you could call this meaningful targeted advertising).
So in my MP3 music collection very little of what has value comes from artists, the record label representing them, or the industry associations that bank role their operations. The ID3 tags are from places like music brainz and LastFM, the manipulation is from applications like iTunes, Song Bird or Media Monkey, the advertising is from blogs, webpages, forums, and torrent trackers.
Where are the labels and industry associates in this?
Why should I pay these people a lot money when I so little of what gives the MP3 value comes from them?
Because this is the legal frame work we find ourselves in? This isn't a very satisfying answer.
Because the Artists deserve money for their art? The current system is designed to prevent the end consumer from paying the artists directly and I'm not giving money to the bankers and advertisers they do business with. Besides, they have plenty of opportunity to get my money when they tour in support of their album. And then I'm buying T-Shirts and Concert Tickets, and the occasional CD.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Frankly, I really don't care what is allowed today and what is illegal the next day or vice versa. The record industry is confused, I know. But it's not my fucking problem. If they can't speak with one voice and come out every day with a new law/copyright/drm/ or whatever, I just don't care anymore. I share my stuff now without regret. They have proven to be clueless and it's not my job to follow every press release to have a semiidea of what is legal or illegal today. Now sue me for rebuying my LPs in the 90s as CDs and not doing the same with your DRM-ridden songs last year that you are now reselling as DRMfree MP3s. You can have your LedZeppelin Revivals, I have my LedZeppelin records and everything you produce today is rubbish anyway.
I still have to pay for my music? No fair. I want it for free because it makes me happy.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
From the terms of service page...
"Any audio that you upload to the imeem service will be filtered by an audio fingerprint filtering system that prevents registered audio content from being full-length streamed to any users other than the user that uploaded it. "
This is why some tracks are fully playable without an account and other tracks are 30 seconds. They also frown on uploading content that you didn't create.
"You must not upload or present any media or content in which you do not have the appropriate rights to do so. You may be in violation of copyright laws if you do not have the appropriate rights to the media or content you upload or present on imeem. imeem will not tolerate known infringements or misbehavior by its users."
Most disturbing part of the terms of service is they claim you retain your copyright when you upload, but in uploading you provide an unrevokable license to them.. This is bad.
"Member Content, you agree to and hereby do grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, imeem, its contractors, and the users of the imeem Site an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully sublicensable, fully paid up, worldwide license to use, copy, publicly perform, digitally perform, publicly display, and distribute such content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such Member Content on the imeem Site or Service."
Basicaly you give them a permanant license to use your content in any way they want forever including distribution. They could compile your work and then sell it worldwide and you would get jack for royalties.
The truth shall set you free!
This isn't an outbreak of anything but more crap. Who would use this service? It's like going to a news site where all they do is provide a brief, degraded version of an actual news story...
Badass Resumes
"Copyright infringement is a DIFFERENT THING."
Indeed with stealing you can get away with a mild sentence or some community service when caught. Copyright infringement, on the other hand, will probably put you in debt for the rest of your life.
that it won't be very long before they start adding in a clip at the start, middle and end of each song saying something along the lines of "You're listening to this song on Imeem.com"
Summation 2
Artists get a very very small cut of the wealth -- despite being the product. In almost no other industry does this occur,
My blog
There is no download and pass along a copy.. well not without some google searching on how to D/L a copy in violation of the DMCA.
You can only violate the DMCA if you live in the USSA.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Uh no, sorry. http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/firsts/copyright/ (with photographic proof) Original copyright law was 14 years, extendable one time for an additional 14 years. The original penalty for violation of the copyright law was, turn over the infringing material to the copyright holder for them to destroy, and pay 50 cents per page you had to turn over. The act was signed by George Washington and went into effect in 1790, and DID NOT CHANGE AT ALL until 1891 when copyright protections were granted to non-citizens. Currently, copyright does not expire until 70 years after the death of the creator. Research has been done to suggest that 12-14 year copyrights are optimal, as it allows the creator to get a bunch of money out of it, and then after it goes out of print due to lack of salability (NES games?), it returns to the public domain relatively quickly so anyone interested can get ahold of it. This is how it should be, but its not.
(A)bort, (R)etry, (I)gnore?_
There are two reasons for a track to be limited to 30 seconds: either you're not logged in (easily corrected; creating an account is quick and free and the personal information required is minimal) or imeem has determined that they lack the rights to distribute the track even to members (in which case only the uploader can hear the full track).
If I read your comment correctly, you think that the site Imeem is fine-and-dandy, but sharing music via P2P is wrong.
I cannot reconcile this. What is the difference? That Imeem makes money and a P2P user doesn't? That's exactly backwards from my thinking, where commercial infringement is worse than non-commercial.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The problem is groups like the RIAA want *all* devices to enforce DRM... meaning there is no choice for the artist that wants to release music (or even sound bites) unDRM'd.
Oh, really? Where are these devices that ONLY play DRMed content? Every media player and DVD player I have ever seen has always been able to play unprotected content in various forms.
I think you're confusing this with online media stores historically needing to DRM all of their content for reasons for practical, technical, and consistency reasons, and even that is reversing (see iTunes and Amazon) to allow artists and labels who wish to provide un-DRMed content to do just that.
Artists who wish to release un-DRMed music have ALWAYS been able to, and they've ALWAYS been able to be played on all devices that support whatever format they've chosen to distribute the file in, from MP3, to AAC, to Windows Media. Until recently, what they hadn't been able to do was release on some of the major online music stores without DRM, but that didn't stop them from still making the music, or clips, available online. But even that is changing, and artists have more options - not fewer - to release their music, for free or for money, via mutliple online music stores.
So what is the "problem" you were trying to describe, again? Oh yeah, it's saying things that are flatly not true in this tired old debate about how the trade groups are evil. And some of their actions may indeed be, in the eyes of some for other reasons, but not for the one you just outlined.
Copyright has existed for 200 years. However it used to be 17 years. Now it's life of the author + 70 years. It used to weeks, months, years for information to travel from one end of the country to the other. Selling millions of copies of a song use to take a long time for people to even find out about it. Now we have the internet, and media can be spread across the entire country in a matter of minutes. It doesn't take years to gain popularity if you are producing good content.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
there are other sites that have been doing this for quite a while (i.e. http://www.deezer.com/) and it doesn't change a thing about how the RIAA feels because without violating the user agreement you can not download only listen.
Did we switch to one while I was asleep?
I guess this means Duke Nukem Forever will be coming out next month.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
Imeem is fine and dandy because the CREATORS and OWNERS of the music, or their agents, have agreed that the music can be "shared" there, via the mechanisms Imeem has in place (e.g., playlists, online streaming, no download, etc.). If the record labels tomorrow said music could be freely shared in the form of musical notation as expressionist body art, yes, I'd think it was "fine and dandy" because it's THEIR CHOICE how, when, and where they distribute it, and for what price.
As I said, different mechanisms have different costs, like a radio license versus buying a CD in a store. It's no wonder you can't reconcile this from the comment you just made. P2P "users" don't have any rights to "share" the music under the current framework of law we have. Imeem does, because the creators and owners of the content grant it to them. If you want to try to get them to make this same allowance for P2P, knock yourself out.
But hey, the dirty pirate way worked for YouTube as well. And as long as it is these nice corporations, who cares if they are dirty pirates.
Non-profit users, on the other hand, should be sued into ruin. They can't just throw up their hands and say, "Gosh, we'll start buying music now," once approached by the labels.
I don't share your world view.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The important parts you missed are:
There is tons of jucy stuff in the TOS. I started with one point and then started rambeling as I kept finding stuff.. I just cut it off. Go ahead and post the rest of the TOS. It's a good read.
The truth shall set you free!
That's an entirely different argument, Dave. If someone is running a Web server on port 80 and plugged into the public internet, but doesn't have any authentication methods and just assumes that he didn't give explicit permission for anyone to access, therefore no one has access...well, that's just stupid, now, isn't it?
Yes, but accessing a Web server on port 80 plugged into the public internet without any authentication methods is legal.
Copyright infringement is not.
A better analogy would be reaching in to an open car window and removing something that doesn't belong to you: it's easy, quick, technically and physically possible. And it was made easy and quick because the window was down, and you happened to be in the area. So just because it was possible, enabled, or made easier doesn't mean it's okay.
But wait, in my analogy, someone was "deprived" of something, right? And in copyright infringement no one is "deprived" of anything (except the right to manage the music they create, own, or both, in the ways they and their duly authorized agents see fit under our current system of law, but we'll just ignore that for now).
Ok, then. What if you invent a really nifty contraption that makes it easy, practical, and quick to go into Borders and quickly photograph every page of the selected book in a very low key and unobtrusive way, and then have a mechanism that converts the content to a nicely formatted PDF, so that the final product is as desirable and functional as the original, albeit in electronic form.
Copyright infringement? Check.
Something made easy/quick by a technological improvement? Check.
No deprivation of a physical object? Check.
So how is that right, given the recognition and control that we grant to creators and owners of content (and their agents, etc.)?
That's right, but you also tend to make it sound like the record labels are totally benign and that artists get paid fairly. That's also not the case, as recording artist after recording artist has come out and said. You also make it sound like the RIAA don't try to control what gets played on the airwaves. They have rules, you know, for radio stations that says that if they want to play RIAA content, they can't play it alongside of non-RIAA content -- i.e., indie rock. Some radio stations have even expressed this view as completely ridiculous, but abide by it because they feel they have no choice. Doesn't this sound like the tactics of another big monopoly? One that starts with an 'M', ends with a 't' and has a Vista in the middle?
That's right, but you also tend to make it sound like the artists were forced into signing contracts with record labels. If they did so because they believed it was the best thing to do, that was THEIR CHOICE. There is ALWAYS a choice. And any organized framework for managing media content, distribution, and sales, will inevitably involve organizations or groups, no matter how informal or loosely organized, that act on the behalf of their artists. They'll take something for this. Whether it's "too much" is completely subjective, not to mention irrelevant to the discussion. I don't care of the label takes 99% and the artists gets 1% for the purposes of this argument: it doesn't matter, because that is the arrangement THEY entered into of their own free will, and THEY granted the right for their label and the industry trade organizations to vigorously protect the content that they essentially now legally co-own.
As a particular indie gets more popular, they'll realize they can't do it all themselves, and they'll have their own labels and proxy representation. And if someone doesn't care about how their content is distributed or shared, maybe they'll be able to find labels and trade groups who share this philosophy.
The game may change because of the digital realm. It is changing. But it's not going to happen overnight, and the persons and organization that OWN THE RIGHTS to content under the current system of laws have ever
I realize this is offtopic, but holy HELL, our society is doomed.
Yeah, I know, get off my lawn, et cetera.
Copyright has worked well for over 200 years in this country. (The patent system is another story).
I would argue that the patent system works and copyright doesn't, because at least with patents they RUN OUT. You can get generic Paxil, you can manufacture and sell generic Paxil, but you can't share the late John Lee Hooker's music that was recorded before I was born over half century ago.
There is no longer an uproar over the poatent on GIF because it ran out (or is about to).
But that's the current legal framework we have (from GP)
When they start passing respectable laws I'll start respecting the law. My grandpa had a beermaking kit during prohibition, so I assume he had the same attitude I do.
before you start tossing around terms like "MAFIAA" (also from the GP)
Music And Film Industries Association of America. I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that!
why not consider that there will always be groups of artists who want to control their own content (yes again)
Because the disrespectable law says that it isn't their content! The US copyright law says that recorded music is automatically a "work for hire" and belongs not to the artist who created it, but to the label they signed with. If they actually could legally their own content, The Offspring would have posted MP3s of the entire "Conspiracy Of One" CD online as they wished. Pretty fly for a white guy, eh?
I agree that file sharing is a problem
I don't. I continue to maintain that if the indies would go away, the majors would embrace it. If they were so afraid of their music being free they wouldn't allow it to be played on the radio.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
"in almost every other industry does this occur".
There, fixed that for ya.
Unless you really believe that direct producers get something above a very very small cut of the wealth in some other capitalist industry. wich you don't, do you?
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
Isn't this the same thing as last.fm? Or Pandora? I have always wondered how last.fm hasn't been sued into oblivion; from what i've seen they have music from big-name labels.
Anybody know what the deal with that is?
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
The difference between stealing music and infringing copyright
If I go to WalMart and shoplift a CD, that's stealing. WalMart no longer has the item; it's gone. If I get caught stealing that $25 CD, I'll be arrested for misdemeanor retail theift, released on my own recognnisance (which I can't spel and don't care to look up) and will have to go to court and pay at most a couple hundred bucks in fines.
If I infringe copyright the copyright holder still has copyright, and still has his music. He hasn't lost anything. If I get caught I'll either pay a $4,000 extortion fee or get hauled to court in a civil suit and pay up to $150,000.
THAT'S the difference between stealing music and copyright infringement.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
If music has no value, why do you listen to it? It seems like it would be far simpler (and cheaper!) to just copy a lot of ID3 tags and manipulate them with software...
Post-rock/Ambient/Drone and other noise.
"Good for you! After all, if something is technically or physically possible to do, that must mean there is an implicit grant allowing you to do this.
Oh, I know I know. "What about recording from the radio?" "Shouldn't I be able to preserve sound waves that I have heard with my own ear, and re-listen to them on any device, anywhere I choose?""
The courts have stated that time shifting media is legal.
Media shifting is also legal.
Back in my high school days I would buy records and then record them on tape to take in my car. I can rip CDs and put them on MP3 players.
Now what is broadcast on the public airwaves. I say again YES. Once it is on the public air waves why shouldn't have the option to record it or even listen to it?
There should be a right for people to listen and or view anything that is broadcast in the RF spectrum.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
ever heard of the concept of "res derelicta"? i don't know about you, but at least in our legislature, we have a distinction between "robo" and "hurto", the first being robbery, and the second being gneric theft (there's probably a more specific term for this in english, i don't know).
:)
So material considerations should be taken into account when determining the criminality of an act. Does this automatically make copyright infringement ok? no, of course. but treating it the same as robbery is absurd, for obvious reassons, specially when determining if 1.- it justifies expensive criminal action 2.- it justifies brutal sanctions like the ones the RIAA has tried to pursue.
This of course is related to a broader question: in principle, the means necesary for the protection of intelectual property did not violate the rights of individuals in such a grievious way, even when this violation was legal according to the statutes concernign IP, mainly because the copyright ingringement were so unimportant that copyright holders did not pursue such cases. And they were of course, no criminal offenses. With new laws like we have now, and the MAFIAA watchdog trying to destroy anyone trying to enforce their fair use rights in ways not especifically provided for by the copyright holder, the measures needed to protect such IP are stomping on a lot of individual rights that we (should) hold dearer than property, i the long run.
This is problematic. This implies that the law will criminalize a lot of acts that the society in broad does not consider to be criminal, even if the law says so. This is a broken system. This system needs reform.
My two cents with respect to *that* specific part of your argument, i let the rest slip, if you don't mind
ps: IANAL, but i live, dearly love and often discuss this things with one... I3AL
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
well, all /. discussion has the usual anonymous coward trying to appear as a victim of the irresponsible, childish, and fanatical /. crowd.
Too though for ya, boy? go somewhere else and stop crying about the moderation system or how this forum is infested by pimply teen geeks. who cares?
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
The DMCA prevents me from bypassing DRM so that music I legally purchased on iTunes can be played on a non-Apple media player.
The list goes on. I'm sorry, but if I pay for something, I should be able to use it on any device of my choosing in the manner it was intended to be used.
My blog
I hate to agree with Dave on anything, but I'm not seeing your point here.
First of all, Imeem may or may not have done bad things in the past, but we're talking about the here and now, and the content creators are apparently blessing what they're doing today, largely because the dynamic has been changed a little (the content creators apparently getting some kind of value back.)
As for YouTube, the copyright infringement that was going on in YT was never what YouTube's founders intended, they're taking positive steps to remove copyright infringing materials, from complying with DMCA take-down notices to creating new filters that use nifty AI algorithms to locate infringing content. Intent does mean something when you're evaluating the morality of someone's actions.
If someone creates a non-profit Imeem, that still delivers the same benefits to content creators and their investors that Imeem does, I don't see why it wouldn't be backed by the same group. Or are you seeing evidence that such an organization exists, and it's being ripped to shreds by the music industry? Who is this mystery organization?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
"You must not upload or present any media or content in which you do not have the appropriate rights to do so. You may be in violation of copyright laws if you do not have the appropriate rights to the media or content you upload or present on imeem. imeem will not tolerate known infringements or misbehavior by its users." So if I write a song and record it, how do I know whether or not I have the right to upload it? How can I tell whether my song is original, or whether it'll be the next "My Sweet Lord"?
Well gee, since the ONLY thing I have done with CDs for years is to rip them to MP3 then stick them in a box, I guess this means that there's no point in me buying CDs at all anymore. If it's going to be illegal no matter what I do, I might as well just download it for free.
I find it telling that of all the arguments I've read for reforming copyright law as it pertains to music, that only one of them has ever been from a musician. I don't think I can remember a time when so many people supported musicians: but the kind of support that doesn't involve paying for their music.
How many musicians do you suppose are aware of the problems with copyright law, yet go ahead and make the choice to sign with a major label anyways, thinking that is their best option?
damaged by dogma
Lovely snarky point you have there. I suppose I should have specified monetary value. As the ID3 tags obviously have no value without the audio I would say that this is reciprocal property: having a bunch of ID3 tags with no audio is as about as useful as having a bunch of audio files with no tags. Following the current CD model the tags don't come from the CD. So, now that we've had this discussion, I'll restate my thoughts: the audio portion of an MP3 file has a roughly equivalent value as the ID3 tags. I get the ID3 tags for free, thus the audio portion has no monetary value.
In truth, I find myself listening to spoken word (podcasts) as much or more than music.
What music I do listen to I get from the artist, typically from a purchase at a show or festival.
Though I do have a large bootleg collection and I do enjoy those recordings.
I have written 4 separate artists and asked them for alternative avenue to purchase their art (as that they are not likely to tour in my neck of the woods) and was unsuccessful in all counts.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
The DMCA, generally speaking, is a bad law. It grants too much power to individuals at the expense of the people, and it allows for the revocation of rights by a small minority.
This implies that the law will criminalize a lot of acts that the society in broad does not consider to be criminal, even if the law says so.
So if most people consider downloading things to be ok, it should be legalised, even if the owners of the material are bankrupted?
That seems like a very dangerous idea, despite the fact it would benefit me in the short term since I get free stuff and don't need to worry about getting busted. Even if the people that actually create the content I like continue to do so in the absence of any payment, it just doesn't seem fair. And how do I know that some technological change in future might put me in their situation - a minority that the majority decides it is ok to expropriate from?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
How can I tell whether my song is original
It is fingerprinted and compared against a database of registered songs.
"Any audio that you upload to the imeem service will be filtered by an audio fingerprint filtering system that prevents registered audio content from being full-length streamed to any users other than the user that uploaded it. "
As far as any writers rights, fingerprinting only goes so far. An infringing song might not be registered in the fingerprint database and later lead to a legal challange.
The truth shall set you free!
So, I went to imeem.com and clicked the link labeled "Classical" fully expecting to, you know, find some, well, classical music. Seemed a reasonable expectation to me.
Here's what I got:
http://www.imeem.com/music/ranked/classical
I guess the kids have gone and changed the definition of classical music. Back to iTunes for me. Clicking on classical in iTunes brings up a page of Beethoven and stuff. Pretty old fashioned, I suppose. I guess I'm just an old fogey.
If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
I just find it humorous that Imeem is "fine and dandy" despite gaining their popularity by infringing copyright, while P2P users are "thieves" and "criminals". The record industry signs deals with Imeem, and sues P2P users into ruin. Perhaps the tactics of Imeem trigger the release of dopamine in their disturbed little record-exec skulls? Or maybe they are just tired of playing whack-a-mole. Or maybe they finally see these kinds of sites as nothing more than a modern incarnation of request radio. We may never know.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
too bad you have to have itunes to doenload it
I don't so I will not be back
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
Then the artists should stop signing work for hire contracts.
If the artists don't like record companies making the majority of the money then maybe they should stop agreeing to terms where the record company gets the majority of the money.
If you can find people stupid enough to sign their right over for you to make money on then that's just capitalism. The artists are most of the problem.
I find being offended by me offensive.
well, that dangerous idea is generally called democracy, and yes, it is dangerous, but it's the best idea we have in regards to choosing the rules that govern us. nothing new under the sun here.
Now, with a little more substance, every rule is the outcome of a process of negotiation, and as such, it has winners and losers. i don't see anything too radical there, either.
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
and that means? who cares if the musicians have X or Y interest, the point is that in our society, the protection of the rights of a few record labels and musicians is being used as a fundament for the violation of the individual rights of a lot of people. Since this violations only tend to increase in scope and absurdity, a moment wil come when society is gonna realize that the rules that enable said violations are wrong and need to be reformed.
I for my part have heard a lot more musicians, and more fervently, attacking copyright systems, than defending it, probably *because* they do not have any alternative. Specially with those democratic and competitive practices form the RIAA that prohibits playback of non-RIAA music to radios, and such.
This is not a problem of what's best for the musician, but of what values are more important for a society as a whole. If musicians can find a way to defend their interests without violating our rights (to put it very generally), they are welcome. And noone is saying "fuck the musicians", we are only saying that the current restrictions are excesive, brutal, and will fall by their own weight if they keep trying to enforce them in their utmost brutality.
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
So the white majority could vote to enslave the black minority and that would be democracy? Or in a few years when hispanics are in a majority, they could vote to enslave everyone else, or confiscate some or all of their belongings?
Democracy is a more subtle idea than you think it is.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Ameem
"No, the copyright system isn't broken. Copyright has worked well for over 200 years in this country. (The patent system is another story). Now laws like the DMCA that criminalize what would otherwise be legitimate acts...that's broken."
Yes it is broken. At least in my view. Now the people who pushed to get it "fixed" didn't think it was working as it worked 200 years ago and so to "fix" a working system that they deemed broken, they broke it. (Well, lobbied for the changes which broke it.)
Or do you maintain that the system in place today is unchanged from the one 200 years ago?
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
I'm sorry if I came across snarky. I was just truly confused by your statements. :)
Post-rock/Ambient/Drone and other noise.
Can someone give a short version of how digital watermarking works?
If I create user account A, and also create user account B (perhaps with incorrect information), and download the song on each of them, wouldn't a binary diff reveal whatever watermarking was in effect? I mean, short of transcoding on the fly (for each song for each per user), it doesn't really seem feasible. What am I missing?
How is it different from Last.fm?
At this point, it becomes useful to actually investigate what the drawbacks and advantages of current copyright law is, and what possible alternatives are. To simply sit there and argue that "It's the Law!" is simplistic to the extreme, not to mention unproductive. The primary argument for shorter copyrights and expanded fair use is that all art is a product of what's available in the Public Domain, and that as such, the public has a right to access it and use it. So far, I haven't seen anyone successfully argue against that. The argument that copyright law makes more money to individuals doesn't hold water, as a law that requires everyone to change their windows every 2 weeks is also profitable to window installers, but a drain on society as a whole.
In short, your argument that simply because a law exists it must be good and must be followed represents an awfully, incredible naive lack of understanding about where the laws came from and the money that paid for them.
For the record - I've largely stopped consuming copyrighted media because of this crap. There's money to be made off of people like me, if I'm offered what I ask for.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
yup. sure thing. you said it. That's the way it works. Actually, in some countries, legislation is being passed, allegedely by the most democratic of nations, to supress the civil liberties of some citiznes, as we speak. I know of a few countries where being muslim and trying to get in a plane is a direct ticket to an 8 hour interrogation room, or where magically, because of your race or religion, and being at the wrong place at the wrong time, they throw you in a concentration camp in Cuba, or they shoot you in the subway with no explanation whatsoever. So yes, actually, its just the way it works in your country (i asume you are from the us, as we already are a majority over here, and have been for the last 500~ years) too!
Now, in a more serious vein, a society should decide democratically how to set up rules to protect all of its precious values. Liberty being one, property being another. If, in the pursuit of protection of one of this values, ie property, we incurr in unaceptable violations to other values, and the majority of the people agree on that, THAT SYSTEM NEEDS TO BE REFORMED, in accordance to the way democracy works.
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
"due to lack of salability"
hmmm... but wasn't that the whole point of the current extensions? According to Disney, et al, some stuff IS still salable much longer than 14 years. They will drag out Steamboat Willie as their prime example, I believe. Now, that being one case, what about those NES games? We're starting to see a resurgence in retro gaming. Wii virtual console anyone? If the mobile industry would actually standardize in some way (BREW and J2ME ain't there yet) I wouldn't be suprised if nintendo et al would release mobile ports of their old libraries. The cellphone toting sheeple will pay $3 for a ringtone, why not for a mobile version of Excitebike?
So, if salability is supposed to be the 'ready to pass into the public domain' metric, in some cases it does make sense for it to be longer than 14 years. 1993 is 14 years ago. That's when Jurassic Park was released. I believe copies are still selling acceptably well (no numbers to back that up. the-numbers.com only gives box office sales and recent dvd sales... anyone?) The book was in 1990, and I know that's still on Amazon.com under the 'buy new' column. sales rank ~27,000, but paperback is 5th best Michael Crichton seller. So, should those be public domain? Should anyone be able to go print out a copy of Jurassic Park for nothing, or sell my own copies now for whatever people will pay me? Should I be able to record an audio copy to (plug warning) www.librivox.org for anyone to download and listen to? Maybe I should. Maybe 30 years would be okay. can anyone come up with a 30 year equivalent analogy? (sorry, I was in diapers then)
Not arguing that current state is no good. But what would be good in a marketplace with what might be much more product longevity than existed a few hundred years ago?
I'm currently listening to three full tracks from my friend's band, no account required.
"Consider the lillies of the goddamn field."
Songs, books, plays and even libraries existed and thrived millennia before anyone developed the bad notion of asking governments to grant monopoly rights on intellectual realizations. Will this change once these rights disappear, since everything that has a beginning has necessarily an end? No, intellectual productions will continue thriving just as before.
Copyright is nothing more than a side note on human history. Unneeded before it existed, annoying during its existence, unneeded after it ceases to exist. Nothing more, nothing less.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Generally, in an industrial good industry, it works like this. In general the COGS of any business is somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of if it's asking price. So, here's an example:
Consider this distribution model:
End user <--- Retailer <--- Wholesaler <:--- Distributor <--- Manufacturer
The item retails for $100. Assuming each business has adds a 50% markup:
Retailer <--- Wholesaler <:--- Distributor <--- Manufacturer
$100 $50 $25 $12
So, out of a $100, the manufacturer gets $12 or about an 1/8th of that $100 retail price.
Are you telling me you really think that the artist gets $2.50 royalty for each $20 CD sold?
'Cause if you are, you're crazy.
It's more like pennies.
My blog
Excuse me? Peter Noone would never be that rude.
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
I hate control freaks. First sale doctrine means that an author loses control over how any copy of a book is distributed once it's purchased. Stephen King may hate Amazon.com and refuse to sell his books through them, but once I've bought a copy I'll sell it through Amazon and there's nothing Mr. King can do about it, nor IMO should there be.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
...
i agree with you. the point is that that phenomenon is hardly exclusive to the music industry.
Who makes nike shoes? some chinese laborman. Let's say he makes a couple hundred pair of shoes a month. His salary is nowhere near the 12.5% of the cost of a couple hundred pair of nike shoes.
I know, i't s a tricky analogy, but give it a spin: how many cents does the original designer that worked in any given pair of nike shoes get for each shoe sold? i bet is much much much less than 12%, or whatever.
Yes, musicians are under-paid. But in capitalism, EVERYBODY that does not own his own bussiness is under paid, and that includes a vast vast vast majority of people, specially in other countries (other than the us, that is).
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
On the contrary, it may takes years or even never achieve recognition. Just because an artist has done something worthwhile doesn't mean anyone else has noticed. Marketing, social trends, the right people (for instance, if I create a rocking metal track, but the only people who hear it are country fans, it isn't going anywhere quickly.)
You're confusing "can" with "will."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Why should this apply just to music, movies and software? Why shouldn't a painter be able to control who looks at or uses a house he painted, or a plumber be able to demand a license fee for using the toilet he installed? Why should music producers (etc) get a special treatment?
I speak both as a musician and as the owner of a literary agency. The problem is that the legal system is corrupt from the very top - the executive branch, the courts, the legislature - and the public knows it. They know the laws are not created for the benefit, or in service of, the citizens at large. Furthermore, the laws that are being created, generally in service of pandering to fear for the purpose of consolidating power, and/or serving the interests of PACs or large corporations, are not reasonable. The citizens are subject to law- and enforcement-based wars against their personal choices, their speech, their liberties, even their ability to travel. Only the dimmest or most deluded citizens are unaware of the status quo.
It is unrealistic to expect people to obey the laws under those circumstances. And sure enough, they are not doing so. There is no legislative fix; a fix by power, that is, a technological fix or some other mechanism by which the public can be forced to comply with the decrees of the legislature, is not presently available, and consequently, every segment of the IP industry - programming, writing, musical and dramatic performance - is suffering a huge hit to its ability to provide gainful employment.
I suspect the congress's recent attempt to declare the Internet a "terrorist weapon" is the beginning of the end of file sharing. For all the freedom-loving hackers out there, remember, all the data has to go through lines owned by large entities that can, and will, do what they are told. The day may be coming very soon when you cannot send encrypted information over the net, and you can't send files at all unless you're a "registered file vendor" or some such horse manure. Don't think they'll let the current state of affairs continue. It affects the corporations; they control the legislature; that snowball is already rolling.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If they're worth pirating, they're worth something, and if they're worth something, why not let that something go to the artists who actually allowed you to enjoy it in the first place?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
However Time Fades Away By Neil Young came out the same year and has been deleted from his back catalogue. Basically this means that of two albums that came out in the same year one is very hard to get a hold of, and the other is very easy. There must have been hundreds or thousands of other albums released that year, do you want to estimate how many of them are still available as new? How many of them might become available if Copyright expired on them?
There are record companies who specialise in releasing smaller batches of recordings that are out of copyright. While it's not considered economically viable by the big labels these companies survive. Extending copyright terms (as happens way too often) makes it more likely that material will vanish rather than drop out of copyright.
Z.
-- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
Similarly, stealing will deprive one person of $X worth of assets, copyright infringement will deprive one person of $X worth of assets again, and again, and again, and again...
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
"I know, i't s a tricky analogy, but give it a spin: how many cents does the original designer that worked in any given pair of nike shoes get for each shoe sold? i bet is much much much less than 12%, or whatever."
Well, here's a real-world example: until recently I was a director at a PC peripheral company that everybody reading this has heard of. I was responsible for about $30MM worth of business. Yet my salary was less than one percent of the gross sales! And, my pay was likely around the 98th percentile in my company.
Another real-world example: we pity the artists because they gross perhaps 5% of the selling price of a CD. Some of us even use this as moral impetus to pirate music. Yet the artist whose name is on the cover of the CD likely gets the biggest slice of the pie. Warner Music had something like $3.4 billion in revenues last year; if Edgar "I don't let my kids trade music" Bronfman's salary was, say, $10 million dollars last year, that's still about one third of one percent of revenues.
I agree with both you and the GP that musicians are underpaid. I'm underpaid. It would be a better world if the standard musician's contract included 50% royalties and their choice of color for their free pony. But the reality is that most record companies are exactly like every other big company, and that pie is sliced into a lot of pieces. It's disingenuous to call this out as an example of badly musicians have it.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Oh, really? Where are these devices that ONLY play DRMed content? Every media player and DVD player I have ever seen has always been able to play unprotected content in various forms.
The only way to fully enforce DRM is for the vendor to fully control the device. This might be acceptable for stand alone DVD players. But currently, you have to buy M$ Windows to legally play purchased DVDs on your non-Apple computer. And while running Windows, you have about as much control over your computer as over your standalone DVD player.
What DRM boils down to is a proposal to prevent digital copyright infringement by outlawing the general purpose computer. And, of course, it works just like gun control. Actual outlaws will continue to use general purpose computers for anything they want, including to illegally copy DVDs (and successors) and sell them on street corners (or sell downloads on shady web sites). Innocent paying customers are banned from fully using one of the most important technologies produced by our culture. It is once again the elite seeking to keep the peasants under their thumb - using the fact that a few peasants are thieving hoodlums to justify their oppression.
Not every privileged member of society is wicked. The proportion is probably about the same as for plebians (interesting study: how much does power corrupt?). But a wicked aristocrat has so much more potential for far reaching evil than some small time bandit in an alley. And all the time, they think of themselves as "better" than the bandit because they wear nice clothes and smell nice.
None of these are good examples.
The Chinese laborer is not the product. The shoe designer is not the product.
The musician on the cover of the CD is the product. When they sell a Flyleaf album, they're not selling little plastic discs, they're not even selling songs -- they're selling Flyleaf! Flyleaf is the product. They don't make the product, they don't design the product, they are the product.
My blog
What the GP is talking about is Majority Rule(aka Pure Democracy) and not a Representative Democracy(which the US is). The latter is there to prevent(hopefully) things like a majority trying to enslave a minority, the founding fathers hated the idea of a pure democracy which is why they set things up the way they did.
However, you are still missing the point. If society wants something changed and most believe that the change is good for society as a whole, we can change it. And yes, that could include enslavement. We can essentially shape society as we see fit; as long as we can all agree and convince our representatives of the idea.
Bullish Machine Tzar
Disclaimer: I'm just a 'lowly' university student! I don't know about the current situation completely... I'm just trying to follow a logical thought process.
Okay, true, the band/artist wasn't forced to do anything... but when struggling to make money in the world, what other choice do they have? So they go with a big-name record label who will give them only a small proportion of records sales revenue, since they feel lucky to be 'given' a chance to become famous/make money/other reason for entering music.
Next, I agree with morgan_greywolf that big record labels (in the USA, affiliated with the RIAA (I'm in the UK, but the principle is still the same) are distorting the "market" for music. Another disclaimer: I'm a heavy metal fan, and so I understand that I make up a minority of my population. I appreciate that there are genres of music that a majority of the population like. However, I feel that in the UK people are being force-fed hip-hop and RnB. There is no radio station that caters for heavy metal, or even 'good old' hard rock (e.g. AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, The Who, etc.)
Now, this looks like a sign for the market being distorted. (Else, there would be such radio programmes or stations in existence, due to demand for it.) From what I've read, this is a sign of a monopoly in existence: the major record labels.
Admittedly, I usually have an axe to grind when talking about most non-metal genres of music, but I am trying to be as level-headed as possible here. In summary: I think that the RIAA and big record labels should be held accountable for producing poor-quality music, and that artists and musicians should get paid fairly for the music they create and play. The system is broken at present.
The whole copyright/patent systems needs to be reformed. We need to go back to our roots.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
But copyright is no longer only temporary. There is now an established precedent in the supreme court that says that it is legal to extend the term on an existing copyright. So now, congress can feel free to extend the term of copyright every 15 years and what was a limited monopoly now becomes effectively limitless.
Copyright now is effectively perpetual because congress can retroactively extend copyrights every time they come up for expiration.
Why should this apply just to music, movies and software? Why shouldn't a painter be able to control who looks at or uses a house he painted, or a plumber be able to demand a license fee for using the toilet he installed? Why should music producers (etc) get a special treatment?
Because you can't easily copy a toilet or a house. That's why music producers/movie producers/software producers get different treatment - because if they didn't they'd spend thousands of dollars to make a single song/movie/program and get one sale to some ass that copies it and gives it away.For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
So is there anything I can do while writing the song to minimize the risk of being bankrupted by "a legal challange"?
;-) For most Slashdotters this isn't an issue.
Yes, Never become popular and make it on the charts.
The truth shall set you free!
Yes, but he loses something significant if you were to photocopy all of "Needful Things" and give away/sell it, then he has lost something other than control - the cost of that book. When you infringe copyright there IS a direct loss to the producer (so don't try the crappy excuse that there is nothing lost), when you sell a secondhand copy there is not (as you have deprived yourself of the work at the same time as someone else gaining it - you would need to repurchase it to get another copy).
Noone's complaining about secondhand sales. If they are, they shouldn't be. But copyright infringement (as in, copying without compensating) is a problem. If you want to argue that copyright is wrong and stuff, and use the tired old plumber or carpenter argument, ask yourself this: do you really want them to have to price music in the same manner as every other product, namely at above the production cost? (I'm sure you'll be happy to purchase a new CD if it costs you $1.8 million). Then while we're at it, we'll treat the unauthorised theft of the first copy as theft - for $1.8 million that would get you a hefty jail sentence (much like Grand Theft Auto - the crime, not the game)
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
iMeem was getting their asses handed to them in court; in all likelihood, they've given all of the records labels tons of equity and cuts of future revenue. As a startup, they're running on borrowed money right now -- and if you think it's hard to make a startup work under normal conditions, consider the prospect of trying to do that with a "you infringed on our copyrights and now you owe us" tax on all of your future earnings, in addition to most of your company board being controlled by pig-headed record label executives.
This deal is just another way the record labels are attempting to kill the problem while sucking up any money in the surrounding area.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Fine, the majority should not oppress the minority. However, the miniority should not oppress the majority either.
(as for my sig, I will remove it when the MPAA provides a OPEN way for me to view products I purchase on my *nix machines.)
>> The problem is groups like the RIAA want *all* devices to enforce DRM... meaning there is no choice for the artist that wants to release music (or even sound bites) unDRM'd.
> Oh, really? Where are these devices that ONLY play DRMed content? Every media player and DVD player I have ever seen has always been able to play unprotected content in various forms.
There's a big differance between "want" and "can do".
iTunes HAS to play by the RIAA's rules or the RIAA can refuse to let them SELL THE SONGS.
If ACME makes MP3 players, what will the RIAA sue them over? ACME doesn't NEED to sell music, that IS the business of iTunes.
Because the CD isn't an encrypted format, there's a plentiful souce of music for MP3 players.
There have been experiments with DRM on CDs though, including some well known and nasty bits by Sony. It's only a matter of time before a single CD replacement is pushed HARD, forcing adoption with the music NOT encrypted and thus DMCA protected. Once there's a network of licensed devices (consider DVD players) any infringing (breaks the protection without being licensed) will be sued under. Watch China and Wal-Mart confront the RIAA head on. It's unthinkable that you should be forced to watch a commercial on a DVD you bought, having it forced down your throat by the DVD player that should be following YOUR whims. It's still here though.
And before you start complaining about fair use, sharing stuff with the entire world is not fair use. It's copyright infringement and it is not exactly surprising that the music industry has set up the RIAA to try and stop it.
E.g. from your first link
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/11/0436215 "In an Arizona case against a defendant who has no legal representation, Atlantic v. Howell, the RIAA is now arguing contrary to its lawyers' statements to the United States Supreme Court in 2005 MGM v. Grokster that the defendant's ripping of personal MP3 copies onto his computer is a copyright infringement. At page 15 of its brief (PDF) it states the following: 'It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies... Virtually all of the sound recordings... are in the ".mp3" format for his and his wife's use... Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recordings into the compressed
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=385319&cid=21664615 I think the issue here is that the article was a troll
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
You can easily make the argument that the only reason imeem has managed to pull this off is due to Snocap. imeem and Snocap (founded by Napster creator Shawn Fanning) hooked up in March of 2007. After that, all of the various pending label lawsuits against imeem were eventually dropped in favor of tagging, tracking, sales and DRM in place through Snocap.
To their credit, imeem has a team of extremely hard working people that are very, very good at communicating with content owners and creators. They also managed to create an infinitely less horrendous user experience than Myspace. However, when it comes to the major labels, I think you have to take a long hard look at what Snocap provided here to see how imeem survived.
Professional Rockstars on imeem: http://professionalrockstars.imeem.com/
DS may indeed have made many "choice comments" but I fail to see them as flamebait. Real discussions allow provocative ideas to which the group may not have logical rebuttals, and that presents a learning opportunity for all.
An acquaintance, "Laura," is an accomplished musician. She sells CDs on a website to help put food on the table. People who've heard (or heard of) her can enjoy hearing her (again) for a few dollars, if they like. There might be enough left after she pays her hosting, design and many other expenses, to make up for the little income she gets from concerts. With largely fixed costs for production, etc., every lost sale comes right out of her pocket.
She and her chef husband both do what they do out of love of their arts. They're not exactly worried about whether to take the BMW or the Mercedes down to the beach.
No RIAA middleman (those bastards!) here to promote and distribute her disks and take a fee for it, nor for anybody to demonize. Just the notion that the music is there for those who want it enough to send a few bucks her way. You do not "have to" have her performances, no matter how enriching you may find them. If you don't like the deal she offers, maybe you'd like to write her & ask for a discount. But she might think, "you know, I put half my childhood and my whole adult lifetime into practicing, practicing, practicing, after expensive training." (She's a classical pianist.) "Why does some guy think he should get the fruit of my labor without even watering the tree?" Or worse, give it away to passers-by so they won't help me, either?
Add the notion that she might hire somebody else to do all the messy logistics stuff for her so she can spend more time at the keyboard, and you have a basic version of every other musician's story . Demonize the RIAA all you want, but in the end, the musician can choose to self-publish or contract with a label, and it doesn't change your "right" to have her perform for you, one teeny iota.
To me, it seems pretty black-and-white, Little Red Hen, Non-Fairy Tale Edition, for people who don't get metaphors. If her listeners bought very much into file sharing, she'd basically have to find a new line of work, one that would deprive her of doing what she loves and all her fans, including me, of hearing her performances.
Yes, DS, it's all about basic human rights, just those of somebody more important to the process than the file-sharers. Some people don't like to hear that. Sigh.
"Inquiring Minds Want to Know!"
I don't understand this move at all. Did they decide that music is no longer a product, but only a means to sell other products? I suppose this has been the strategy in regular radio forever.
-John Fenley
It sounds nice that this is legal. But just as importantly: do the artists and musicians get a proportion of the ad revenue and whatever else imeem are paying the record labels?
They don't legitimately have control over which numbers we're allowed to copy or distribute. That's something copyright law tries to deprive us of.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Oh I see, the issue now is about how your rights are being violated! Could the hysterics reach a higher pitch?
damaged by dogma
go read a little about theories of justice, or right and liberties, or law. every right imposes restrictions on someone elses liberties. In general, the mechanisms that must be set up for the protection of material property impose tolerable restrictions, as there are quite explicit means to enforce the will of the propietor, ie, he can lock his doors, and it wouldn't be presentable to call fowl over the fact that your right to move freely is affected by his decission.
In the case of Imaginary property, like digital goods, the problem is much more complex, and normally, you could end up comitting a CRIME, for wich you could have to pay a lot of money, just by donwloading a file, wich ios not presentable as a grave violation of the will of a third party to defend thier rights.
So yes, the issue ALWAYS is about my rights, and how my rights affect the liberties of others, and vice versa.
Don't be naive to believe otherwise, right and liberty are not empty words, and can not be talked about without consideration for their necesary material consequences, specially if this are enshrined in judicially effective LAWS.
ps: IANAL, just a guy with common sense.
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
Also I'd like to add that even though it'd be more efficient on the supply side to ask what everyone wants, it'd be more inconvenient to the consumer if the works ended up being crap. Both systems could work, I guess, but copyright requires less organisation on the consumer end, and that's a major plus for efficiency.Look in a dictionary. I have never, ever seen a definition for temporary or limited that specifies any specific number of years. While I agree that copyright terms leave a lot to be desired, your rant about them being "clearly" unconstitutional is way off. You're just as likely to get the law changed so that charges can be filed 75 years past the person's death. It's not gonna happen.Well, gee. That was bit of a stretch. Like I said, if it's not that different, then take the legal road, rather than the illegal one that everyone else finds so much easier.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
You can
/dev/dsp hook or something)
1. Listen to tracks via a flash-based player. (Theoretically you could capture the stream via a
2. You can download it via itunes, *IF* you have a platform for which apple has released a version of its proprietary binary only application.
3. You can buy the track at amazon. Not sure what format you get.
If a file is available for 'download' it means there is a http:/// or ftp:// link directly to the file itself, that requires only a standards-compliant http or ftp client, which can then save the file, and you can play it with a standalone player.
Regardless of the merits of what imeem is doing, they are *not* offering MP3's for download for free, at least not anywhere I can see. So I second the 'misleading summary' tag.
Wow, that has got to be the most illogical and screwed-up perspective on music and copyright I have ever read.
Do you derive pleasure from listening to music? Do you agree that people who create music do so using their own time and resources? Don't you agree that there should be some form of compensation for the artists, for the pleasure that you gained from their music and the time and resources they spent to create it?
I have re-read your posts and I still cannot fathom how you believe that music has no monetary value, or that the audio portion of the MP3 has the same value as the ID3 tags. Without the audio, the ID3 tags are worthless. Without the ID3 tags, the audio portion retains all of its value.
I've tried to be polite up to now, but honestly mate, that was an absolute crock of shit.
Pity you have trouble being polite when you disagree with other people, you should work on that. You also appear to have troubles with reading comprehension as I have addressed all of your 'questions' earlier in the thread. I've got time, I'm waiting for the train, so I really was tempted to completely rehash everything I said earlier outlining and perhaps throw in some new thoughts as to why I thought MP3's have little to no momentary value but honestly what's the point? You've obviously made up your mind and this isn't likely to continue to be a polite conversation.
Have fun with your self righteous indignation...
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
No, you're wrong. Each work has a value affected by how much people are willing to pay for it. People are much more likely to pay for something if they don't have it already for free. Think about it. When selling physical goods, each copy of the physical object gives away a small amount of the item's value, since the widening distribution and market saturation ends up with it being worth less. Most of the value is retained by the manufacturer, since they are the only ones who can make copies. If the media companies put no restrictions on copying, they would be splitting the value equally between them and their one customer. Both the master and the copy are exactly identical, and can be copied the same way. Therefore, they have the same value. If that customer makes another copy, that's not just splitting his copy's value, but the media company's copy as well. The fact that everyone can copy it all over the net and still find the experience valuable is a testament to just how valuable a copyrighted work can be. Each time you copy a song or movie, you're splitting the value of the media company's copy (as well as everyone else's copy), and sharing it to another person. It doesn't create value.
I assure you it cannot be higher than I suspect, because I suspect roughly 100%. Yes, just about everything has been thought up on some scale, the only possible exceptions being people who create their own off-scale notes that are half-quarter semitones off the scales we're used to. I also agree that it is immoral in this context to stake claims over something built with other people's materials. However, you have not adequately responded to my point: it isn't staking claim. The public domain is essentially lending these artists the tools to build unique artworks as an investment. The artist profits from temporary ownership, and eventually has to return the completed work with all its parts back into the public domain itself. It's not annexing resources and claiming them as their own. It's giving resources and expecting something in return. It's not at all immoral, and it's a great service for our culture.
Y'know, I was playing a Legend of Zelda game the other day with a friend, and we were just laughing at the economics of rupees. You could just find them anywhere! Link never had to work to get them, at least no more than just cut some grass. It makes you wonder, how much are rupees worth? I mean, who would actually work, help society function, perform a service, keep the economy going, if they could just find money or "value" in the grass? Who would accept rupees as a payment for anything when they can keep their product/service and just find their own rupees? Rupees would be completely worthless. Zelda's economy only has a certain amount of value, based on the potential for their resources (including human labour). If anyone can find as many rupees as they want for doing nothing, every extra rupee takes its own equal share of the total economy. In fact, the only way that rupees could work, is if there were some limiting regulation about finding rupees in the grass, and each breach of that regulation would be a small steal from a huge number of people.
This is similar to your "irrefutable economically demonstrated fact". If people could just pull value out of the air, why would anyone work?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.