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Collective Licensing for Web-Based Music Distribution
Two weeks ago we discussed a proposal from music industry veteran Jim Griffin to implement a monthly fee from ISPs in exchange for the legal distribution of copyrighted music. Now, quinthar brings news that Warner Music Group has hired Griffin with the intention to make that proposal a reality. Warner wants Griffin to establish a collective licensing deal with ISPs that would let the ISPs stop worrying about their legal responsibilities for file-sharing while contributing to a pool of money (potentially up to $20 billion per year) that would be distributed amongst the music industry.
"Griffin says that in just the few weeks since Warner began working on this plan, the company has been approached by internet service providers 'who want to discharge their risk.' Eventually, advertising could subsidize the entire system, so that users who don't want to receive ads could pay the fee, and those who don't mind advertising wouldn't pay a dime. 'I.S.P.'s want to distinguish themselves with marketing," Griffin says. "You can only imagine that an I.S.P. that marketed a 'fair trade' network connection would see a marketing advantage.'"
So now instead of me having the choice of walking into a store and buying a CD I'm forced to?
Who says that just because I use the Internet I ever listen to your music?
Get out of my fucking wallet!
Lord knows everyone here will figure out a way to get rid of them and still get all the free stuff they want.
First they came for my mp3s, but I did not download those, so I did nothing.
:(
Then they came for my tv shows, but I did not download those, so I did nothing.
Then they came for my porn and I was sunk
liqbase
You do realise that you already do that when watching TV, right?
Because the flat tax you pay for it and that helps fun programs is exactly the same as this one (okay, more advertisement contributes to it, and it's not only for music; but still).
Would you consider that forced buying?
Don't take my posts literally; it's just code to control my botnet.
They aren't quite clear about what you get for that fee. On the one hand, they talk about "access to a database of all music", but then they talk about freeing the ISPs from liability. This might well mean that for your fee, the only thing you can legally do is "access" music in Windows-only formats from an unreliable and poorly maintained RIAA server, whose notion of "all music" is limited to top-20 stuff.
In any case, any proposal like this should have a clear and well-defined path in it towards dismantling the RIAA and making its members obsolete; a world in which music can be shared and distributed freely does not require record companies in the traditional sense. The only thing these people still can hold on to should be the old copyrights they managed to obtain from less lucky artists.
I buy all my music off iTunes and eMusic, I'll opt out thank you very much. They way I get my music is much cheaper than this idea. Quite frankly, I can't think of the last time I bought music of a Warner owned label, so they don't deserve a dime of my money.
Burn Hollywood Burn
This is quite possibly the worst idea the record companies have ever come up with. I would be very surprised if any ISPs ever give in. I can see it now:
Monthly internet bill:
50.00 - connection fee
5.00 - music extortion fee
5.50 - movies extortion fee
8.25 - television extortion fee
3.00 - print media extortion fee
4.00 - software warez extortion fee
2.00 - images possibly out of copyright
4.00 - independent music fee
3.00 - documentaries fee
2.50 - guitar tabs/sheet music
3.00 - song lyrics
2.00 - spambot fee (just in case I'm a node)
7.00 - fee for everyone else wanting my pound of flesh
total: $100 per month, and I think I'm being quite generous
Where will this stop? If the record labels get their fee, I want my fee for everyone that downloaded that one picture from my blog that I told you that you shouldn't save but you did anyways. You can just send me those $.02 per subscriber per month, or I'll take a flat fee of $3,000,000 - thanks.
I for one am all for a $5 fee to allow me to pirate (all I can eat) all the time. Now I occasionally feel a pang of guilt (I lie down and the feeling passes) when I'm stealing some sweet music. After this nominal fee I'm good to go for full tilt piracy. After all this fee is paid because I'm a pirate, right?
Sheldon
This stinks like the CD-R tax in canada except that now EVERYONE must pay a surcharge. What a bunch of crap.
Tolerance does not tolerate intolerance, or hypocrisy.
Seriously, this is so exponentially insane the first thing I thought of was SCO.
- "The company has been approached by internet service providers 'who want to discharge their risk.'" Fuckin' bullshit. Total horseshit. Lies, lies, lies. Classic smokescreen to try to create some kind of peer pressure. There is no risk. There are no such ISPs. That's why they must go nameless.
- What ISP would open themselves to this kind of blackmail? Wouldn't that be an obvious signal to the movie industry, the book publishing industry, the software industry, "come get in line and bilk us for money, we're weak and easily intimidated"?
- "Eventually, advertising could subsidize the entire system, so that users who don't want to receive ads could pay the fee, and those who don't mind advertising wouldn't pay a dime." What the fuck? How do those ads get on my system from the ISP? Across Firefox? Through my email? In my WOW packets? Take over my OS? WTF is that?
This guy should be in protective custody, under observation for a few weeks. He's clearly lost his grip on reality and must be a danger to himself. But then, that didn't stop SCO.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
"You can only imagine that an I.S.P. that marketed a 'fair trade' network connection would see a marketing advantage.'"
First off 0%... more cost? Dude I have encryption...
Second, the current lawsuits don't really affect many people outside the U.S. we're not scared to go on pirating in the open, MPAA might be able to pull this off if they could catch all the people with I.P.'s listed in bittorrent.
3rd. Hello Extortion won't you come join the already failing U.S. internet push...
This whole thing is a blatant attempt to push a clause of the ISPs being responsible for content... which they are NOT. The legalization of accessing unsecured wireless networks proves it's not constitutional to monitor the communications to the degree that is required.
Finally to ensure that piracy of smaller labels and major labels that choose not to join this group doesn't take place would require monitoring of internet communication, bye bye privacy.
I'd be much less repulsed by this idea if I had any belief that the fees would be distributed in a fair fashion. As someone who listens to a fair deal of indie stuff (and virtually no major label stuff), I'm concerned that there's no way in hell anyone not on a major label would get to see a dime of the money. (Not that anyone ON a major label will see a dime of the money either, what with the soul-stealing contracts they make bands sign).
Ultimately then, it becomes about subsidizing an industry in a manner that provides absolutely no incentive for any major label to make desirable music. They can produce whatever they want and take the flat fee, preventing us from voting with our wallet. As a result, music would become even more controlled by the major labels than it already is now. And that's a particularly disgusting thought.
The laws of probability forbid it!
I'm in Australia. My ISP is in Australia. I listen to Australian bands. US bands. English bands.
Jazz, rock, hard rock, pop culture and some classical stuff too. Actually pretty much a mix of everything from EVERYWHERE.
Who do I pay for the privelage of not getting sued ?
Who does my ISP pay ?
RIAA ? The Australian version of RIAA? Anyone who claims to be a music distributor ? All of the above ??
This is straight "all your monies are belong to us" crap, that has nothing to do with finding a solution, and everything to do with ONE foreign (from my perspective) organisation trying to extort even more of my money from me.
Just what risks do ISPs have for the file sharing by their customers?
THe last I heard, ISPs have a safe harbor as long as they just act as a conduit.
As such, any ISP that worries about their liabilities for the issue are wasting their time on nothing. To the best of my knowledge, there are no risks for the ISPs.
Even if this idea wasn't insane, the problem still lies in how the money would be distributed amongst the "music industry". I don't listen to mainstream tunes very often. I don't want my money going there.
Much like the surcharge on cassettes or recordable CDs, they'll take the cash and insist on more and more. It's all for the artists, but the artists never see any of the money - instead, the labels continue to figure out ways to cut the artist's share even more.
This will go on and on and they'll never be satisfied. The only real answer it to say NO and put these leeches out of their misery. Will our corporate overlords have the backbone to do this? I don't know...
If my ISP charges me for music that I am NOT downloading I promise I will steal every album known to man 1000 times. I mean make 1000 copies of every album known to man.......
All points of time and space are connected.
I'd gladly pay an extra few bucks a month for my internet if it means I have carte blanche to torrent as much music as I want without having to worry about getting sued (and if it means my ISP would stop throttling my bandwidth - I'm sick of having to reset my modem every other day.)
An object at rest cannot be stopped.
After careful consideration, sir, I've come to the conclusion that your system sucks.
Did anyone else fall over laughing at that "$20bn a year" bit? How'd they arrive at that carefully calculated number: "gee, i'd sure like 20 billyun dollarz lol." Honestly, if the major ISPs have any brains left at all (debatable, i realize), i don't see them going for this. "Hey can you be the bad guys, charge your customers more, sell them on it, and pass most of the profits on to us? Kthxbye."
I expect the RIAA and their ilk are just going to get weirder and more invasive like this as time goes on, especially if they perceive their powers fading. They say they love a free market, but they love a captive audience more.
That which does not kill us makes us... st
This fucking idea is so crazy that it just might pass. Thank god I live in Canada where I only have to pay to music companies when ever I want to back up my photos onto a cd from a new photo shoot.
Wait a minute?!
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
We in the business like to call this a "protection racket".
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
And what about the deaf, will they have to pay this tax, err, I mean, collective licensing?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Get over it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I intend on distributing my music through the web, how can I get in on those payments?
Twinstiq, game news
I thought the plan was to gather a monthly fee, and in exchange we do whatever the fuck we want, and the industry pisses off to count their money.
Whats this advertisement supported stuff? How are you going to feed ads into my p2p app, or download of choice? The only scheme I could think of is one where they force me to watch ads, and if I don't watch enough, I get a bill.
What this is, is charging everybody for a service nobody wants. This is akin to Comcast dumping some dipshit golf channel into basic cable, and charging everybody for it. In fact, that's exactly what it is. A dumbass online "music channel" I don't want, and I surely don't want to pay for.
I want to know which ISPs aren't going to pony up to this new extortion racket, so I can recommend them and switch if needed.
No, they still don't get it, not even close.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
...of a dying industry.
Honestly, the music landscape is changing; the format is changing. It isn't a bad thing that corporations will have to find other sources of revenue due to society changing the way it obtains/listens to/communicates the media of music.
There may be less money in music after the dust has settled but extortion is not the answer. Diversify or fall.
Its interesting. Usually changes in industry require new technologies - new hardware technologies. Think digital cameras vs film. Alot of film corporations (agfa, konica) no longer exist in that aftermath. This is subtlety different; it is a change in social thinking. If 80% of kids pirate, then it should not be considered pirating. It should be legalized and the new way of doing things. There are new ways to make money from this.
Where will the corporations put the money gained from isps? Obviously into new lawsuits.
Do they actually have any? Surely their responsibilities begin and end with complying with law enforcement requests to provide details of users suspected of copyright infringement.
Sort of sounds like a scare tactic; I can't imagine ISPs falling for it - aren't they 'common carriers' specifically so the responsibility for what people do with their network _doesn't_ fall on them?
Record Industry -------- "I'm with stupid" Seriously this is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Our business model sucks so every subscriber on the internet must pay for our shitty practices. When and where does the revolt start!
Iraq billions
their part. They have been losing customers. Not because of theft, but because they put out trash. So, they are changing from an oligopoly with a somewhat competitive approach to a tax based approach, in which they get paid NO MATTER what the industry does. I suspect that it will be structured based on number of songs that they have, rather than what is being downloaded. If if based on downloaded, then find a dynamic IP isp, and have their own systems download in auto mode. IOW, they rack up the charges themselves. In fact, they could cut a deal with a company like QWest or MSN and sit in the front, be given IPs to use and simply request music, but discard it as it comes in. You would be surprised at how accommodating some of these companies can be where money is involved.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And then there were a few providers who wouldn't pay. They set up a new network where this practice was prohibited, at the time called the Othernet. Since it was a new network they could use the open technologies of the Internet, but avoid the chains of legacy technology like IP v4.
This proved to be the revolution that transformed intellectual property. Because the Othernet required secure Onion Routing protocols and packets protected by public key encryption fast ASICs to make the requirement fast and reliable were developed. The logic from these ASICs became embedded in the logic for Othernet core routers. The features were found to be popular on Internet and intranet routers as well, and so became an industry standard feature no vendor could avoid.
On the Othernet it was impossible to determine who sent what to whom. Naturally this became a haven for the criminal element, the disaffected and the insane. Here also though was a channel for open discussion free from fear of oppression. The Othernet begat Radio Free Othernet and the numerous cells responsible for the October Rebellion culminating in the Halloween event referred to in your history books as "the day they hanged the lawyers."
The market for the classic Internet shrivelled as its proprietors folded one by one. Eventually the last desperate holdouts were absorbed into the Othernet. Although the official name for the network is still the Othernet for casual purposes it is now referred to as the Internet.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
not the ISP's, they are indemnified with this plan. this just makes it convenient to ask congress to rid the scourge of neutrality from the net.
Enjoy Every Sandwich
This is a fucking shakedown. The MAFIAA is shaking down the ISPs for a percent of the money they earn by providing me with internet service. I do not do file-sharing that involves unlicensed music in any way. So of course the MAFIAA does not deserve to receive any of my hard earned money. What. The. Fuck. Are. They. Injecting. Into. Their. Veins.
If you look back you will see that the record industry made cassette makers pay a surcharge on their production. not much to notice and they just added it to the price to the consumer. This is just the same tactic all over again. Instead of leaching off media producers they are gonna stick it to AOL and the other big ones. This way the get a cut off every person on the internet.
FOREVER
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
What about all the independent musicians? Do you think they will get a share in this tax?
Remember, this isn't collecting royalties, this is the traditional and dying music industry looking for free money.
Why not tax electricity for the RIAA? After all, we all know music pirates have to use electricity to make illegal copies,
therefore all users of electricity must be music pirates! (This is the kind of logic we're talking about here)..
This blanket tax thing is an incredibly bad idea.
Ask Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead how they feel about such a tax, after showing they can make far more money without the "help" of a corrupt and bloated music industry.
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
Right on AC.
Seriously, I don't see why everyone's got such a hard-on for protecting the music industry. Maybe we're obsessed with this idea of the small musician being able to make it big, maybe we just like the sound of a corporation making money, but seriously, guys, SERIOUSLY.
CUT THIS SHIT OUT. I'm sick and fucking tired of people defending the damn RIAA while they continue to make off with money they didn't earn. Did they compose the song? Is it part of their soul? A creation of their own? No! They sit there and exploit their artists so they can exploit their consumers. It cheapens the value of art, it destroys the beauty of sound, and it fucks us all over in a giant corporatist blood orgy.
Why is it corporatist? The entire legal backing behind a record distribution company- the idea of COPYRIGHT, is a law intended to CREATE a market for something unmarketable. Why can the music industry continue to use old, outdated media (CDs, record stores) when there is a BETTER media around? (FLAC, the internet)
Because we are CORPORATISTS. We feel like we have the right nay the OBLIGATION to protect something someone made up in their heads. Fuck that shit. Music is meant to be enjoyed, not exploited.
Seriously, FUCK that shit.
+5, Truth
Famous artists could have their own distribution models set up merely because they have a good name. All they'd have to do is sign out contracts with indie music they endorse.
God spoke to me.
... if I don't like whats available?
This is the most retarded business idea I have ever seen.
How is it decided who gets the money, what are we paying for?
This is just another way of passing the costs on to us, however this time we don't get a valuable product in return, and there is no incentive to produce. This will inevitably cripple the music industry more than file sharing could ever do, and it will hurt the ISP industry as well (Unless it's voluntary, in which case it won't last long, since there are significant economic incentives to not do it).
I can't believe someone even considered this.
No legitimate business would ever consider this, only Government would consider a revenue stream like this.
This is pissing me off heaps right now, and I haven't even read the article. I hope this is another one of those "Slashdot went crazy and badly worded the article" moments.
Someone needs to smack them over the head with the wealth of nations followed by free to choose.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
what if I've already bought your crap and don't want to pay for it again? (I own ~1000 CDs I've bought each one, I don't download music but I use the internet heavily, why should I pay a tax like this?)
Oh wait... they own a couple.. AOL and Roadrunner.
No thanks. The goal is not to give you music for money, it's to continue their control the industry. The pieces will invariably include:
They have already tried this shit on college campuses and it failed dismally. Their software sucked and so did the music selection. The vast majority of students ignored the service to purchase CDs, download really free music and trade music without the RIAA's help. The RIAA simply can't compete and that's why their members companies revenues are crashing at 15% per year.
The world is rushing to embrace alternate lables and artists who are putting the fun back into music. No one wants to give money to people who are suing their friends. The world is going to party on without them.
No calls now, I'm
I don't remember meta-moderating anyone with a modifier of "overrated" or seeing a "Score X: Overrated" indicator on any posts. I'm pretty sure that the meta-modder would see "Rating: [original rating]" even if "Overrated" had a majority of the points in the post. Then again, I don't really know how Slashdot operates.
ISP's are already protected by their Common Carrier status.
There's a reason for this - and it's because the ISP's cannot easily monitor traffic that flows across its network. It's the same way the postal service couldn't easily read the letters of all the mail it delivers.
Wouldn't it be easier setting up a website similar to Amazon where people can pay $X/month for "all they can download" DRM-free music?
Everytime a song/album is downloaded the system keeps track of it, and at the end of the month the artist gets paid for the number of times their music has been downloaded?
You could even allow for independant artists to upload and distribute their music through your network.
Great idea!
The entire music industry gross revenues are about $14 billion. So what we'll do is hand the RIAA $20 billion pure profit for sitting back and not doing any work in particular on top of them continuing to collecting most of the $14 billion they get now minus whatever speculative amount legal P2P might actually diminish those $14 billion revenues.
I'm glad to see we've finally found a fair solution.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Allow me to propose a counter-offer: Anybody who wants to voluntarily pay X $$ per month tacked onto their ISP bill, they can commit as many acts of non-commercial copyright infringement that they like. That is, anyone who pays the fee/levy/whatever gets blanket immunity from RIAA lawsuits.
Anybody who isn't interested, well, they can choose to continue with the current status quo.
Let me start the negotiation for what that amount per month should be with my offer of $1 per month.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
... and Comcast began playing around with filtering ... at the behest of content interests, right? Could this remotely be a deep trap to trick ISP's into losing their common status?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
But what if I dont want to download their crap?
Do I still need to pay?
How dare you be logical.
Such an idea couldn't possibly work! Someone could pay the $X, download our entire collection and share it all on bittorrent for everyone else!!
</mode>
TBH, I think that's a great idea - I havn't downloaded a single mp3 in over 3 years (sorry, but nothing good has come out recently - yes that's how bad your music is, I won't even go to the effort of downloading it for free). Making me pay $x per month on my ISP bill would be wrong - unless you were giving it to the porn industry.
However, if you made a site with a monthly subscription that let you download limitless or X per month songs (be reasonable about it - remember you have to compete with free) and made it easy to search/use with no DRM. People will generally prefer to use such a site as it'll be faster and easier then most of the other methods of downloading such files.
You're making a small confusion there: I'm not trying to get a recourse fo a moderation, but to change the general rules that govern moderation and meta-moderation to make them mor fair (in the future, and for everyone).
When I was asking "where" I should say that, I ment like a slashdot thread designed to speak about slashdot (Ã la "village pump" of Wikipedia), or some kind of forum (a mail to the editors is not enough; I'm trying to get support in the community).
Don't take my posts literally; it's just code to control my botnet.
So will this mean that Ma Bell can charge customers for breakage -er a P2P tax processing fee?
Sounds like a nice setup for everyone except the suckers, I mean consumers.
Then again, I don't really know how Slashdot operates.
That's part of the problem, isn't it? Like for example, why don't you when you get a token or not?
I know that the sourcecode is released at slashcode, but I guess the specific rules (like displaying the score of overrated comments in meta-mod) an't be inffered from it.
Don't take my posts literally; it's just code to control my botnet.
I don't like it but I might think it's tolerable if:
1) The fee charged is low (doesn't affect cost of internet access that much) , and can be different on a per country basis.
2) It allows ISPs to cache the content without being sued - this means ISPs can start having "Super Peers" for seeding P2P stuff in their networks.
The ISP can then throttle P2P connections that go to other ISPs, except those for their Super Peers, and prioritize inter-isp traffic to their Super Peers, and Super Peer traffic to their customers.
This would be a lot more bandwidth efficient. And the P2P users could get their torrent downloads faster or at the same speed without affecting the other users as much.
What about if the music industry was collectivised? If you look at the original idea collectivisation was actually quite good. Everyone would be paid the same and would consume as much as they could. Obviously the implementation of this was flawed in since most "communist" countries were really state capitalist dictatorships.
But a true anarchist collectivisation system might work quite well. I think the proposed system is bad though, since there is no link between the people that consume the music and the people that produce it. E.g. an unpopular musician would get just as much as a popular one. State capitalist collectivisation had the same issues. Lazy farmers were paid as much as hard working ones, so the supply of food dropped dramatically, leading to terrible famine in some cases.
My collectivisation would work like this. Copyright would be abolished and musicians would be free to release what they wanted, but since there were no controls on copying they would not be able to stop buying a copy and then putting it on the internet. However some sort of taxation would tax all internet users and pay a fee to collective, and that would pay a salary to musicians, provided they met production quotas. So far this is the same as the proposed scheme. But I think the missing element is feedback, so I propose that in return for taxation the public would vote on directly on quotas, how much the collective would pay musicians per song of particular genres.
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;
""
"What about all the independent musicians? Do you think they will get a share in this tax?"
Never said it would be the perfect system. But why would independant music make less money with it? You can still buy CDs of a band you want to support. Same goes for Radiohead.
"Remember, this isn't collecting royalties, this is the traditional and dying music industry looking for free money."
Betting that this system would be prone to corruption is probably realistic, but it doesn't mean it should be how you judge the system itself. I don't see any technical point which would prevent indepent artists to get money this way. Why wouldn't it be like royalties?
"Why not tax electricity for the RIAA?"
Why not indeed (except of course, I think the money should go to the artists, not the RIAA). A global tax (on income, for example), with a fair repartition of the money (proportional to listening) would probably be the perfect way to fund music.
For one thing, it would prevent the arbitrary limitation of music one person can listn to. Of course, music haters would be paying for music lovers, but you are already paying for a lot's of roads, when you only use a few each year. Music haters probably like films or books which music lovers will pay for.
It just happens to be that the correlation betwenn music download and internet use is better than with electricity. I still prefer to tax income, but as a rule, rich people tend to get their way and impose tax which are disjoint from income (value added tax, etc).
Anyways, all I was saying in my post was that the majors seem to have given up on some key points; of course I would prefer them to die compltely. But I'm happy to know that we have "won" on some points (the disck label fighting with ISPs to stop interering on the content would really be a win for us).
If that deserves to be modded "overrated" (good way for the mod not to tell his reason, especially since this was the first moderation of the post), then sorry for not "FUCK THAT SHIT" lood enough... (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=502290&cid=22889900)
Don't take my posts literally; it's just code to control my botnet.
My family only watches an international channel. Yet I must pay for, and subsidize, a program of "standard channels", even though I do not use them, in order to get the international channel (which is charged seperately) . All of the providers (Cable and Satallite) all do this. I have no choice.
How is this different from the "protection money" Big Fat Paulie wants me to pay in return for not lighting my shop on fire? I get free music in return? Well Paulie said that I'm protected from the other criminals in return.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
I intend on distributing my music through the web, how can I get in on those payments?
I believe Steve Albini has the procedure for that outlined here:
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
In other words, if you're not signed to a major label, fugettaboutit!
You think they want to share any money with the competition?
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Even if they do implement this system in some sort of ideal way, it still does not solve the caveat emptor problem. How can people who are sick of the RIAA and their tactics manage not to pay them?
Market controls only work when the buyers have a choice. Once again, the RIAA is trying to force people to pay. Their business model is based on government enforced extortion, and anybody who pays them is funding the record industry's theft from society and countless individuals who have been unfairly sued.
If the artists get paid, I am all for it. But I am in no way inclined to compensate a bunch of brainless MBA's who studied How to Rip Off Artists for Dummies in college.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Reminds me of something The Disney Channel did years ago. It used to be a "premium" channel that you specifically had to order. In an effort to massively increase the number of subscribers, they convinced the cable companies to charge everyone $5 extra each month and to include The Disney Channel with the standard cable package. Now the music industry wants to charge all Internet users for music downloaded by a small subset of the Internet's users. (Charge ISPs, the ISPs will charge the users.) And then it's still not legal to download music -- all this extra money does is give the ISPs peace of mind that the music companies won't sue them. It doesn't make any sense.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
The biggest problem here is that it won't solve anything. People want more access to art, but they don't want to pay for it. The RIAA wants to be paid fairly for all the unauthorised accesses to the art they produce. The two are incompatible. Either we'll have a super-inflated internet connection price (and be screwed over), the RIAA will be screwed over (as they are being now by pirates), or both parties will be screwed over simultaneously to a lesser extent (which is essentially what is happening now with piracy, lawsuits, restrictions, etc).
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
It looks like you don't have much of a clue either and, as always, more fingers on your hand are pointing at you than at those you accuse.
The bottom line is that:
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
So, would deaf Internet users also be taxed by this? Or would ISP's instead have to check out each customers history also into the plan...pfft
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
You play the Devil's advocate well. I will bite.
The problem is: information is not a "good" or a "product". It is not a "thing". So, it cannot be analysed in the same manner as physical objects. Lessig's picnic table example is perfect for this. If I take your picnic table from your back yard, I am stealing. If I see you have a picnic table, like the idea, and go and buy one for my yard, what have I "stolen" then? I certainly got the idea from you, but I also have not taken anything from you.
It is only valuable if artists truly have an alternative. Before the internet, there really was none. It is entirely possible that this sort of blanket taxing on ISPs will return artists to the former situation -- just as with net radio where SoundExchange requires royalties to be collected for all songs regardless of whether the artist is a member or not. This sort of monopoly is unfair to both artists and "consumers" as it denies both the opportunity to exercise their Free Choice.
This does not mean that internet style distribution should not be used. Phone services are now all packet switched, but most people have no idea. The same could be done with radio. Radio is supposed to go digital. Why not have radio stations stream MP3s or other cacheable data instead of whatever format they use? Why not have car radios that load streams off the internet when they are near wifi hotspots? Why does the radio user have to have any idea about the underlying architecture?
Correction: The artist is entitled initially to any money generated by the work they create. If they artist wants to "keep" his work, he can keep his work a secret. If he is going to give it to the public, it will no longer be exclusively his -- it will be a part of our culture.
If the ISPs start going for this proposal, no one will have a choice: Connecting to the internet will be "buying from them".
Correct enough. However, this "outdated business model" is the cause of copyright violating other more important rights like Free Speech. The increases in the scope and duration of copyright over the last century alone are reason enough to violate it. Following unreasonable laws helps to support arbitrary laws and dictatorial government administration. It is the responsibility of citizens in any Free Society to both question and refuse to obey unreasonable laws. Before the internet, copyright did not conflict significantly with the First Amendment. Now it does.
Are you doing your part? Or are you making it easier for governments and corporations to violate our rights in new and innovative ways?
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Not you, the RIAA and similar organizations.
Would you prefer if I avoided using such aloof and intellectual terms as "trading" or "ownership"?Point being that we're not talking about trading kilogrammes of potatoes. The discussion is about 'owning' ideas and intellectual property and the transmission thereof. It's being argued widely, in case you didn't notice, that information and ideas (eg: recordings of music/melodies, as opposed to the actual personal and live performance of music) should not be defined in the same way as material objects because they are so easy to replicate at no appreciable cost.
Yes, the RIAA is a target but so is the concept of copyright which, it is argued, is being abused to make unfair profit and hound ordinary people into paying protection money. This why the two are linked, not due the stupidity of anyone.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
All of which is an interesting debate, but not a factor in this push. This is just an extension of the tax on blank media that goes to the music industry. I don't want this and I don't see why I should get dragged into it. But the whole system is dependent on not having some ISP users choosing not to opt in (because if the aim is stopping piracy, how would it work otherwise). Additionally, a system like this would be open to large scale abuse in increasing the power of the big labels, potentially raise prices of actually purchasing music and quite likely require extensive monitoring of your Internet traffic.All of these, but particularly the first and last, are solid reasons why this needs to be shot down now. The issue of whether the RIAA are nice or not can be separated neatly from this one (though I personally think they fall into the category of 'not nice,' myself).
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
* Which is not anyone with a vested interest in copyright, and they certainly don't pay to spread my opinions (just to head off those trigger-happy witch-hunters who accuse anyone with a contrary opinion of being an RIAA-shill).Fair enough. It's really a matter of opinion and you are entitled to your own. However, I'd like to explain why my opinion is different.
Basically, physical property is already a theoretical concept independent from tangible objects. You may own that kilogram of potatoes, but there is nothing physical in your ownership. If someone steals your potatoes, they don't instantly own them; you still do (you just no longer have possession of them). Just because it's easy to take property doesn't mean that we should align ownership with possession. That would destroy the point of property and negate the vast positives of defining property. It would also be cheaper in terms of enforcement and chances for civil system abuses (ala RIAA lawsuits) to ignore property, but we have decided that those costs are vastly outweighed by the benefits. If as many people were to commit physical theft as people currently commit copyright infringement, I would bet my bottom dollar there would be moves to abolish physical property to be in synch with the fickle nature of possession.
IP is relatively new, and difficult to enforce. Therefore it is not currently as entrenched in our morality, and a community of infringers has been allowed to form in the absence of adequate enforcement. IP could reflect society if society started to support IP law, like we did with the concept of property, and like physical property, we could benefit from it's addition to property law. The current abnormally high rate of abuse once it's refined and enforced properly, like physical property is. To quote the old propaganda "You wouldn't steal a car..."So it's not copyright they're complaining about, it's the RIAA, or more specifically, the exploitations by the RIAA of certain holes in the legal system that allows them to demand "protection money". And instead of campaigning to plug those holes, or even call for the RIAA's head on a pike, they've decided to go for copyright, a system that is actually beneficial.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
If they'd come up with this ten years ago, I might have folded and agreed it was a good idea.
But not now. They've not earned this. They've earned something else.
Expect this to get some traction on Capitol Hill, however.
expandfairuse.org
What legal responsibilities ? So far as I'm aware the ISPs have no legal responsibility for what is carried over their networks so this is simply an attempt to extort 'tax' from anyone they think they have a chance of bullying. I really hope the ISPs get themselves some representation to put their side of the argument against all this nonsense coming from the media industries. Last month it was the fantastic plan whereby the BPI told an ISP one of their customers had downloaded something illegal and before you could say Jack Robinson they expected the ISP to terminate the customers contract and ban them from accessing all ISPs.
In fact, as reported by The Guardian yesterday, both the music and movie industries are doing very well at the moment with boths sales and revenue on the increase.
What about software developers, movie makers, authors of books, magazines and newspaper articles, photographers, web page authors including bloggers, etc? Don't they deserve a share of the cash too?
You play devil's advocate, for your opinion is neither moral nor would be beneficial to people. Therefore, you are advocating a larger devil than I. Of course, what I'm saying I have not justified in any detail, but I resent being called a devil's advocate when my views are all reasoned and reasonable, with the good of everyone (not just copyright holders) in mind.
It could be considered property if we so wish. If you take a picnic you take the value of a picnic table and add it to your own by taking it from the owner. You could feasibly take a leg of the picnic table, and take a portion of that picnic table's worth. When you copy an artwork (not an idea - ideas theoretically shouldn't be worth anything without significant research behind them), you don't steal from the owner of the original copy, you steal from the copyright holder. You slightly loosen the control that copyright guarantees by making that copy. That control is the only thing giving that copyright value, and by loosening it, you deprive the copyright holder of value, like you did with the picnic table. You also illegally gain value yourself, just like with the picnic table. It's actually quite compatible with traditional theft.
Fair enough. I didn't say I supported this arrangement. I don't, unless there is some kind of choice in the equation. For example, you can opt in to the fee if you wish to copy music, or else face the usual multi-thousand dollar lawsuits.
Currently though, it's not a monopoly.
Of course not. It just means it shouldn't be used exclusively, which it isn't. The RIAA use it as much as is natural with the market the way it is.
You're wrong. There is no money in anonymous P2P file-sharing, but it significantly degrades the value of the copyright. It'd be a HUGE hole in copyright if there had to be money involved. It'd be like pardoning corruption if there was no exchange of cash, which would mean the RIAA would be able to set politicians up with hookers to pass any law they want, legally.
Well, I personally am not comfortable about leaning on artists to keep their work private. I would rather experience it.
Oh, what bullshit. That, and your sig. Give me one example where copyright has limited your ability to express yourself legally. We have fair use for exactly that. No copyright holder is so starved for
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
My temporary solution has been to contact my ISP and make it very very clear that, since I do not download copyrighted music, I will be dropping their service immediately if they accept this proposal from the RIAA. My one comment won't mean much to them, but if they start getting a fair number of them, they might pay attention.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
If you don't make the payments on your IP, it cannot be repossessed. If I have a good memory, I can keep your IP in my head - will you have the courts compel brain surgery against infringers to recover the stolen property? How much is your IP worth? If you make 1 million copies of your $0.99 song, do we tax your IP at a high rate, because you are now worth almost a million dollars?
On the other hand, what about real, tangible property? Can we treat it similar to IP? If it's been 70 years after the death of the builder, can everyone come live in that house? Once that sack of potatoes is in the public domain, can we make potatoes au gratin, even though the original owner made mashed potatoes?
I'm really disgusted with the ludicrous idea that IP should be treated the same as tangible property. It's not the same, and can never be treated the same. You speak of some crazy IP law as something that should be "entrenched in our morality". As long as people have independent thought, that is impossible, because when sharing an idea becomes morally repugnant, we will no longer be human.
I wouldn't steal a car, but if I could give a car to someone that didn't have one simply by pulling it out of my ass at no cost to me, that seems like a really "moral" thing to do. Telling me it's wrong because [Big Corporation] should get something because *I* made a copy of a car just doesn't *feel* right.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I think here is about the best you'll get.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Being a a deaf person, it owudl seem to me rather unfair, as there is absolutely no way I could make use of any downloaded music. How will they accomadate me?
> It seems like in exchange for this monthly fee you get access to legal downloads.
They have absolutely nothing I want. I mean that literally.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
What about "safe harbor"? ISPs aren't liable for file sharing! So why would they fall for this scam?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
- Every Web Page will come with "Elevator Music" to qualify for a slice of the cake.
- Want an IM client on your desktop? "de dah de dum di dum di dah" it whispers, just loud enough to count as a tune.
- Here's a spam email, "DE! DAH! DE! DAH! DE! DAH!", paying for itself from your subscription fee.
It's a safe bet that there will be nothing left for the real musicians.Reduce, reuse, cycle
You don't quite understand. They want a Federal law requiring the ISPs to collect the fee and hand it over to them.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Hmmmm. Microsoft Tax vs Music Tax. Which one is more evil? I'd say the Music Tax. At least I can opt-out of the MS tax.
The insane part here is that ISPs have some sort of "legal responsibility for file-sharing" in the first place.
...we break up all the music labels, throw their executives in the slammer for racketeering, shut down every corporate radio station that takes payola, then have the government sponsor a nationwide renaissance in audio artwork. Just imagine the music that artists could make if they weren't trying to copy some artist that just hit it big copying another artist that is copying the Beatles. Why, we might even hear taleted artists when we sponsor their training from a young age into college.
Fortunately, this will never happen because people must have their new Nickelback album.
But
By virtue of being a human with a connection to the internet, you are by definition pirating music. Therefore, you should be obligated to pay. It's just that simple.
*sigh* Seriously, you make an excellent point, one which I and many others have tried to make over and over again. This presumption that everyone is guilty of piracy and needs to help compensate the RIAA for lost sales is complete and utter bullshit and we need smarter lawmakers to push back and say "no, you're an idiot".
I just bought over $300 in CDs last weekend, and I usually spend $800-$1000/year on CDs -- usually in big chunks. Actual, honest to goodness CDs from artists and labels I really dig. I make a point of buying from them, because I get to find new music, and by supporting them, they'll make more. I get completely infuriated when some wanker says that I need to pay a tax on my internet connection (or blank CDs, or eyeballs) for the massive amount of music I'm not downloading.
I think we should start fining record execs on the presumption that they're snorting blow out of the navels of hookers and luring little girls. It is completely stupid to charge everyone to prop up their business model, and those of us who actually buy music are getting pissed off with subsidizing the people who just download it.
That industry just wants a guaranteed percentage of the GDP entrenched in law so they don't need to do any work any more. This feeling of entitlement they have is really getting tedious. And if every group who figures they're losing money due to file copying on the internet was to ask for this levy, an internet connection would cost a tremendous amount of money.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
A few corrections, and a disagreement:
The laws defining entitlement to physical property is the theoretical concept, physical possession or indisputable control over physical objects is indistinguishable from "ownership" without laws, a society that recognizes them, and enforcement. The necessity of "ownership" of physical objects begins with that our bodies are physical in nature and at least in need of physical support (food, shelter, clothing). Beyond basic physical needs we are in the realm of accumulating wealth. I would say that your claim that we would adjust the laws that govern physical property to be in-line with the rules that could conceivably be applied to non-physical goods is, at best, a straw-man, and at worst deliberately disingenuous.
The interesting thing about the "laws" mentioned before, is that the laws themselves, the very concepts, are NOT governed by the law it encodes! Everyone can own a copy of the law. This is why:
Is substantially a non-starter. The fact that non-physical, trivially-copyable, inherently shareable "things" (we call them thoughts or ideas in the past, today that expands to cover externalized thoughts and ideas we call, generically, data, but that data can be decoded in special ways to be interpreted as music, images, documents, etc.) that simply do not remotely posses ANY of the characteristics that the objects that the above mentioned laws apply to have always been with us. In short form: we have been in the presence of this problem since the beginning of time. Consider this: I walk into a store and pick up a book and start to read it. A copy (not a perfect copy mind you, but a copy never-the-less) in entering my skull. Now, today you're likely to say: this situation isn't applicable, there are no laws that govern this kind of copying. Imagine the day, not too far off then, in fact, it would be possible to make perfect copies as you read, through either worn external augmentation or embedded technology.
Your argument is one of re-imposing the model of "scarce goods", which is not a good long-term strategy, as it is antithetical to the expansion of the ability of the human brain. Like it or not, computers, and all the external gadgetry we are accumulating are coarse approximations of what the future will hold. Idea copying will be the norm, not the exception. You may then say that, in an analogue to my comments above, having a copy is not the same as ownership, well, eventually, yes, it wil
My ISP provides a connection to the internet for me. They don't force me to use some damned AOL-like portal. I run my own servers (web/mail) so I don't have to connect to their mail service to gather my email. So... where are all these advertisements that are intended to subsidize the music industry supposed to be coming from? I can't see how I'd even be seeing them. Yet I'm possibly going to have to pay to avoid seeing them.
Yet another proposal for dipping into my wallet coming from an industry that still has no idea how the Internet is supposed to work. I'm having trouble figuring out who further from understanding this: the RIAA or Ted Stevens.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Exactly!
Don't forget the people who would like to be paid to sit and drink beer too, don't they also deserve free money?
The whole concept seems to be that a given minority (Music Industry Execs - this is NOT musicians working on this) seem to think they are "owed" something, and they want the governments to extract it from everyone.
While it's a nice utopian dream to have everyone independently wealthy so they can do whatever they like,
it's not reality. By then going to the government to force people to pay for their own dream, it crosses the line to unfairness and an abuse of government power.
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
You're quite astute, but not quite astute enough. I wasn't actually saying in that paragraph that we should adjust those laws because physical property is just as theoretical. I was saying that the theoretical nature of IP should not be a reason in itself to discount it, because physical property is equivalent in that criterion. I don't presume that that would be enough to make a vacuous argument in favour of IP.
One would hope that with the expansion of the human brain would come other solutions to the marketability problem of art. Right now, all we have is one working system, a couple of highly experimental, barely tested systems, and a large group of people saying the system in place now is crap without any working system to compete with it. I'm not blindly devoted to traditional copyright models, I've just yet to see a system that works any better.
That's the future, this is now. We can drop copyright law just as easily later, when it becomes a hindrance, as we can now.
Then you could conceivably be sued for copyright infringement (but I doubt it'd fly). If you just had a word-perfect version in your memory, then good for you. No publisher would be so stupid as to try to sue someone for their thoughts.
Ya, so is possessiveness. You should be spreading your wealth as much as you can amongst the poor. Unfortunately, coding that into law means that there is no incentive to work for your possessions, since they'll be gone anyway. It's nice to give, but not nice to be forced to.
If there is all that untapped potential, why haven't they come forward and tried their new ideas? What if the reason for that is that we actually don't currently have the potential to come up with replacements for copyright? What then? Do we just let art die?
At the same time, it not only won't but has absolutely no obligation to be forced to settle for something significantly worse than status quo.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
It's not *my* analogy, as I said, it's Thomas Jefferson's, and one that he used when debating the copyrights and patents provisions of the US Constitution. The provisions that have been perverted to ridiculous proportions to support the greed of corporations that became rich by controlling the means of production that they can no longer control.
I wasn't ignoring your explanation - I was trying to point out why it doesn't make sense. Property is tangible. "IP" is a made-up term that the elite try to use to confuse property with government-sanctioned monopolies on reproduction of certain goods. They will never be the same, viewed the same, or treated the same, no matter how many times you try to confuse the issue by using the word "property" to describe these concepts.
If you do make that nigh value-less flame available to the public, you lose whatever profitability you may have been promised when you made it. So yes, you are deprived of value, just like regular stealing. It works better if you take a multimillion dollar movie instead of a flame, because multimillion dollar movies don't pay for themselves.Not really, because it doesn't matter what was spent to make something, that doesn't give it value. You're never "promised" profitability - it's always a risk. You sound like you think because you put effort into something you should be able to demand something from society. It only has value based on the demand that the market will bear. There are plenty of multimillion dollar movies made that end up worth less than the studios paid for them. So even though they can spend the money, then make copies for $0.25 each, they still wasted their money because they can't find 20 million people that will pay $1 for the movie.
You can't prevent it from being copied informally like that, and it simply isn't worth it (for copyright holders or their customers) to enforce that high on the hyperbola.But where do you draw the line, then? Think of a possible future where computing power and storage is so advanced that people can upload themselves into an artificial brain and live on after they die. Now they know lots of songs, and they "hear" songs and "see" movies right over the network. What's the difference? Where is the economic mechanism to prevent the sharing among sentient entities?
An idea is not covered by any form of IP. Patents can prevent you from marketing a product using certain ideas (certainly not from conveying or expressing that idea), which someone else has worked hard to come up with and refine (in theory). Art is far more specific.Tell that to the patent trolls. Again, where is the line? And how do you enforce these laws? Death of the author plus 70 years? How long do we hold up progress so that corporations can reap profits?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Or a database of all approved music?
Maybe a database of all music they care to know about.
Perhaps.
Something important to keep in mind here is it's not just the issue of lost revenue from lost sales.
With the advent of P2P sharing they no longer know what the opinion leaders want.
Big Music wants to know what you listen to.
Big Music NEEDS to know what you listen to.
Big Music wants to sell their knowledge of your buying habits.
Big Music is lost without it.
That may be a good thing.
The Turing test cuts both ways
Isn't this how things are done in Radio, more or less? It's all out in the open. The music, and it's success is tracked, so the artists get a fair proportion of whetever revenues are generated by their songs. The ISP's pay the recording artists (or more specifically their robot overlord management) for the provision of the indexed catalogue of media, and you and I download songs, non-DRM'ed at a whim. I Love it, provided the cost is nominal.
The big difference is, radio does songs, and that's it, the Internet does video too, and does it well, so any effort would have to be undertaken across the arts, not just music.
Seriously, for my money, this is the best idea ever. Advertising is an absolute fact of life in the modern, capitalist world. And we know, because WE forced their hand on this, and away from DRM, by being very demanding consumers, who are always one step ahead of them, WE KNOW, that if they screw it up, we'll just start hacking the system until it works.
Count me in, as a long-standing conmsumer of the BBC's television, this can work.
You may not agree with what I say, but you should fight to the death to allow me to say it, by modding me up.
OK, I keep seeing one extreme to the other: "I never buy music" or "I only have 10 CD's and don't need anymore" or "$5? Sure! Now I can pirate all I want!"
Well how about me. I download a song from Shareazaa once in awhile. I'm a musician, and sometimes I need to hear an example of what I am going to play. Yes, I probably should pay for it, and when I can't find it on Shareazaa, I go to iTunes.
But we're talking maybe two or three songs a month! It's not a huge number! Certainly not worth $5 a month for me. Even if I were perfectly clean, iTunes still only makes $3/mo from me.
Just covering the middle ground here, and saying it's still a bad idea.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
I second this. This is complete and total BULLSHIT. There are no if's, and's, or but's, it's JUST bullshit.
"Just a fox, a whisper."
Every time the entertainment industry comes up with another idea designed to force the money-spigot wide open, it reeks of the desperation of a junky trying to get one last hit.
These bastards have sat on their asses for over fifty years, reaming artists and raping customers and enjoying tons of cash.
Those days are over, but the junkies can't conceive of a world in which they don't get their easy fix.
It's repugnant.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Nice little ISP business you got here. It'd be a real SHAME if something were to happen to it...
Not really, because it doesn't matter what was spent to make something, that doesn't give it value. You're never "promised" profitability - it's always a risk. You sound like you think because you put effort into something you should be able to demand something from society. It only has value based on the demand that the market will bear. There are plenty of multimillion dollar movies made that end up worth less than the studios paid for them. So even though they can spend the money, then make copies for $0.25 each, they still wasted their money because they can't find 20 million people that will pay $1 for the movie.
I must disagree with that statement. Artwork have an intrinsic value because of the work of the artist, and we wouldn't have multimillion dollar movies, if said movies were to be free in high definition before hitting theatres, just because too few people would still be going to theatres. And I agree when you say that some movies are worth less than what the studio paid for them. But without IP, no movies would be worth the price paid...
But where do you draw the line, then?
Nobody said the laws were correctly chosen here; but this is the heart of the problem, where do you draw the line? How to enforce laws like that. How to make laws that protects the artists, encourages good art, without straining the consumer in a web of unreadable laws that everyone transgresses daily without a second thought.[...]
Again, where is the line? And how do you enforce these laws? Death of the author plus 70 years? How long do we hold up progress so that corporations can reap profits?
The laws in this matter are not done properly, they are flawed almost everywhere, and need a complete intelligent rereading now that tools like internet exists. However, they're better than nothing in this matter... And the flawed design of the current business model and law system doesn't mean that it would be better without it. The whole system could be better, but this new collective licensing thing is IMHO a good thing, showing a positive evolution in the system.
If I'm wrong, please correct me ; learning is better than being right.
Change of strategy? I think not.
500 million CDs at an $11 wholesale price = $5.5 billion
200 million internet users x $5 a month = $10.5 billion a year.
50 cents a month is much more reasonable.
Who gets paid? Unknown.
Basis for determining what was played? Unknown.
Level playing field? Doubtful.
Pay the songwriters? SoundExchange doesn't.
Rumsfeld would call those the "known unknowns".
Beyond that, the biggest problem for this enterprise is that it is now attached to Warner Music. Can they be trusted to work with the other labels to oversee a comprehensive digital library?
Wouldn't that be an antirust violation?
For a system, even as poorly described as the one in TFA, to function efficiently and fairly would require several things that not one of the four major record labels has ever demonstrated a capability to do:
1) Honest, transparent accounting -- Every major label is under perpetual audit by its artists. You have to schedule 2 years in advance to get a chance to see how bad they're screwing you.
A couple of years ago, Warner Music's annual report warned stockholders that they might have some problems because their royalty accounting might not fly under the Sarbane-Oxley Act.
2) Accurate statistics -- What the RIAA puts out as statistics each year is meaningless drivel, pumped up (or down) by fantasy "value" (no one pays the "manufacturers suggested retail price"). Neilsen SoundScan tracks sales of a "representative sample" of retail outlets and guesses at the rest. ASCAP has a team of listeners. What they hear is what gets paid.
And it's all a secret. Want to know how many new releases there were last year? That's gonna cost you about $125. How many copies of your last release were actually manufactured? Aw, gee. We forgot to keep track. They can tell you how many boxes they put on the truck, but anything that came before or after that brief moment in the sunlight is like the 7th Level of Scientology.
The entire music industry is based upon bogus statistics. They lie so much to each other that there is a cottage industry selling information back to the labels about their business.
3) Pay the artists -- Dave Marsh has said (paraphrasing) that the purpose of the music industry is (and has always been) to collect every dime possible for the use of music and give as little as possible to the artists who made it for them.
This is why all their numbers are bogus. They've never paid the artists. No logical reason to expect they'll start now.
------
Start with a monthly fee in the 25-50 cents range and the basic idea has potential. If such a thing is to be created, the purpose should be to support the "useful art" of music and provide incentive to those who would write and perform it. It's the kind of thing that the Internet Archive is set up for. Alternatively, drop the DRM and the 99 cent payment and the iTunes Music Store is a good starter database. I'd bet Apple can tell you exactly which songs were downloaded how many times.
Put it in the hands of a record company, or one of its subsidiaries, and it turns out the same as everything else they're involved with -- for exactly the $ame rea$on$.
There is no change in strategy. First, you scream "pirate!" Then you condemn it. Then you take it over or copy it, create access barriers, collect all the money and give as little as possible to the artists.
Nothing new here.
I would like to go beyond morely pointing out how bad this is and offer a more rational alternative.
http://www.azoz.com/newsarchive/2008dash03/RealPlan.html
Follow the "Discussion" link at the bottom of the page for a lengthy debate about the details.
It's not a matter of what they're injecting into their veins, it's a question of what they'll be injecting into you veins if you don't pay. Well, in civilized countries the penalty is imprisonment with no lethal injections, but this is the United States we're talking about.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
So it's agreed then, you original argument was a straw man.
I see no current, nor future problem marketing art, regardless of the medium. Different media will impose different constraints on how you can market it, no problem.
This is another straw man: we have the status quo and the status quo is crap we need another system that can replace the status quo but otherwise be just like the status quo. Firstly, new business models not based on selling copies are emerging. FLOSS is already doing it, a number of musicians are figuring things out. This trend will continue. Saying that there is nothing to compete with it is hyperbole.
It is happening, RadioHead and Nine Inch Nails are doing rather well with their disintermediated copy selling. No, not everyone will be able to use the same approach as these guys, so what? Selling recordings of music for a living didn't happen until the technology came to be, and it changed the world, we're in another transition. It is happening, bit by bit, but adaptation takes time. There are still musicians out there who, given the chance, would outlaw computers because they can make copies of their recordings. The transition we are in the middle of is the end of days for the "recording artist". It is nobody's fault, but technology has been produced and adopted that undermines old business practices: boo hoo. We have absolutely no obligation to support business models that fail to adapt to new realities. As for "working better", well, that's a subjective measure I can't really address, but I feel rather confident that people will be able to figure out how to exploit the new technologies to make a buck. It is already happening.
One would expect that, if, new laws were to be written up on copyright that we should expect a reasonable shelf-life for them. If we have some degree of enlightenment on the subject of the nature of "copying" things right now, and that insight is clearly telling us that, at least as far as non-physical entities are concerned, our traditional views on copyright are simply wrong, or perversely misguided, then what is the justification that society sanction the capricious granting of monopoly rights (i.e. the copyright) to individuals who create works exclusively in the medium of "copying". It sounds like a pretty bad deal. If your argument is because we have people making money because of copyright, then you are explicitly asking society to subsidize a set of businesses by exchanging their ability to exploit the extended medium of mind and ideas (i.e.: computers, the Internet, various and growing number of interconnected electronic devices and people and all the emerging technologies that gets us closer and closer to having our minds "on-line") for "tradition's" sake. In short: why should I, or you, be so willing to sacrifice our ability to maximize the utility of the Internet and related and su
Not quite sure about your question - do you mean we should tax everyone, and then give everyone the tax dollars to make everyone richer?
It's interestingly close to the design of a perpetual motion machine, and probably violates some Law of financial thermodynamics.
Taxes above some limit, are known to have a net braking effect on the economy, and therefore tend towards making everyone poorer.
Yes we all collectively agree to build roads, hospitals, infrastructure, health care etc, and that's an acceptable drain on the pocket book.
A welfare system for Music Industry execs is not my idea of a good thing to spend tax dollars on.
(Note how the RIAA are not distributing their hundreds of millions in lawsuit winnings with the musicians they claim to be protecting).
Even limiting the debate to the scope of only the music industry,
should we pay all musicians equally from this new source of revenue?
Should the guy who is totally tone deaf who does covers of Yoko Ono be paid as much as a world class Jazz musician?
Since the government (or some industry group - by proxy) will be in charge of giving out the cash,
how do they decide who gets what?
I prefer a free market solution - if someone thinks your music/art/dog poop sculptures are of value, let them chose with their wallets.
I like the dream of Utopia. Being financially illiterate won't get us there.
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
What about money? Is money tangible? Do you dispute our ownership of our bank balance? Do you think cash should be worth the ink and paper/plastic it's printed on? Property is not tangible, and therefore, no significant distinction lies between IP and physical property in that category.Property is an abstract concept that we came up with a long time ago. It wasn't handed down from on high (unless you're religious), it was invented from nothing. We are the owners and sole keepers of the concept of property, and thus we can change it and expand it to suit our needs. I have shown that the concept of property and the concept of IP fit the same economic model. In fact, that is actually the point of IP: to fit the economic model of property. Now, you can say that IP shouldn't be property for some reason pertaining to its benefits/costs, but you can't really claim that it doesn't work with property. It does, and we could let it in, and until people provide compelling reasons why it shouldn't be let in, we will continue to think of it as property.Pardon me, I simplified confusingly. What I meant to say is that the artist is promised a correlation between popularity and profitability, should he price it well. There is always a risk that no-one will want the product. There shouldn't be risk of people taking it and not paying for it.Where judges, juries, and common sense dictate. You are well on the other side currently.That's another debate entirely. I have some ideas and some theories, but unless you insist, I'm not going to exacerbate this debate any further.It's not and never was about corporations reaping products. That's the very definition of a strawman.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
No, a strawman is designed to shift focus away from the issues at hand. It was a rebuttal to another strawman. It's not designed to convince you that IP must be incorporated into property law. If it was, it would be a strawman, but it's not. It was perfectly relevant and to the point, until you read it out of context.
You really see no problem here? Ever heard of the problem of scarcity of art? Scarcity is a major cornerstone of modern economics, and art simply doesn't have it naturally. Without scarcity the only money comes from weak economic aberrations like charity, which while it may work acceptably for a while, it is not at all reliable and not particularly fair (i.e. representative of effort). It's a problem to which we have a solution: copyright. Ignoring the problem won't make it go away. If you wish to replace copyright, you must replace it, not just throw it away, and hope something will step into its place.
No, this is actually the very heart of the problem. Copyright is only here because we have yet to find something better. Now, copyright is actually damn good, in principle. We offer artists copyrights in exchange for creation. Those copyrights, so long as they are honoured by the community, have value, yet, at the same time, don't cost us anything. Their entire value is derived from the potential of the artist's work. Now, we don't actually force artists to accept copyrights; they can choose to give them up completely. Therefore (and this is the real beauty) any artist who would have created under a copyright-less system will still create, plus many more who need/want the money involved. Copyright, as a system, is actually highly competitive, and can easily be tested side-by-side with any other system.
Not only that, but the free market can actually be used to determine how copyrights are used. Artists can (and do) tap into the market for free(ish) media, and they can compete with all-rights-reserved media. Consumers can decide whether they want the locked down media or the free media, taking into account price, quality, convenience, etc. There's no need as of yet to codify this into law. It's already happening as you point out. Most FOSS licenses (only exception being BSD-style licenses that don't require crediting of the original author) require copyright, but they don't retain all rights. FOSS has proven that even if it can't quite get to the pinnacle of certain software markets, they can still make damn good software, for free. Copyrights can still exist, but the market could potentially determine that reserving software rights is no longer profitable. Similarly with music. Only when we find a way to market all forms and all potential forms of art, while committing them instantly to the public domain, can we replace copyright. It's not the current copyright holder's responsibility to adapt if you want free, illegal, access to their works, it's your responsibility to come up with a better system.
It's the pirates' fault for using the technology illegally, and you have an obligation to obey the law. If you don't like the
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Could acknowledging the possibility of liability inherently cost ISPs safe harbor be definition? (ie accepting any deal is taken as an admission that you've done something that denies that protection?) For that matter, is it possible some major ISPs are already unprotected as a result of recent over-collaberation (spying on citizens w/o warrants)? Could snooping itself (outside of warrants) count as a "not-just-a-conduit" disqualifying action?
> Maybe we're obsessed with this idea of the small musician being able to make it big,
I'd be curious to know what the odds are of hitting it big by sending CDs to the music companies, hoping you'll get noticed and then hoping someone will actually care vs spreading random oddball memes around the net. (ie making WOW videos or AMVs with your own songs, Eepy bird / diet coke & mentos making Audio Body known etc. Sadly many devoted musicians have probably been outsold by the Hamsterdance CDs.
Thanks for the answer; but of course the code slashdot uses is distinct from the way it is used. Actually I'm sure the code allows to do what I'm asking for.
I could confirm this time that speaking about the mod system guarantees you an "offtopic" modding, yet it has to be on topic *somewhere*. I think the best would be a "meta" forum for slashdot.
Don't take my posts literally; it's just code to control my botnet.
Not to be too picky, but you are referring to a diversion. Feel free to look up strawman argument, but typically is means proposing an argument that is counter to the position held, one you expect to be cut down, like a "straw man" in battle.
Based on your response to my clarification on what was the actual theoretical component of "physical ownership" you seemed rather clear that you were not actually proposing ownership as you originally presented. I think that it is clear from your response that we are actually saying the same thing. Ownership, as you were proposing is a manifestation of a set of theoretical concepts called "laws" and a society that can be either complicit with those laws and/or can be compelled via some form of enforcement to obey these laws.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't see anything we need to be discussing regarding this point.
No, I really see no problem. As far as I can tell, there are scarce resources (people) creating art in multiple media. Some of those media retain the scarcity of their creations (statues, paintings, carvings, installations, books, performances, feel free to add to this), and others can produce or share the products of their work in media that offers no intrinsic limit on the number of copies that can be produced of the work (digital recordings, software, images, movies, etc.) The different media obey different laws. Physical media obeys physical laws, the "Copying" media does not. In both case there are opportunities to be exploited to profit.
As far as fairness, I must take a rather large amount of offense with your contrived protection of entitlements to these "artists" you seem to be representing. Personally, I get paid for my time, most people do. I see no, absolutely none (mind you I USED to think otherwise), justification as to why somebody who produces something copyable is entitle to anything more than payment for their time. Now, feel free to call me an idiot for not exploiting the copyright system to seek my fortunes, but as I have already said: copyright is a contrivance (sure go ahead say all law is a contrivance, that is sure to lead to a far more insightful discussion), it is not a "natural" law based on ability of the individual. It is a particular business model hard-coded into various government documents. You may say that this is a fair-deal agreement to promote the production of more works that can be copyrighted, I beg to differ. In the end we are not going to agree on this. Your other points about "value of copyright" and "it's the only way that works" and so forth I have heard ad-nauseum. I very much used to believe the same arguments, but they simply do not ring true. As far as the proposition that I, or anyone else, need be compelled to replace copyright with something else we can call copyright is simply not true. It certainly is possible (I'm not saying probable) to simply dissolve copyright. If you'd like to see discussion that is more in-depth on this particular issue you should visit the "Question Copyright" web site. It is often described on that site that whatever new law becomes the "replacement" of copyright would support the notion of sharing so profoundly as to require that the law not be referred to as a copyright law. Also, that is
I won't.
I'm not sure I understand your point here. You seem to be breaking down the problem successfully, but there's crucial analysis missing. Why isn't the non-obedience of "copying" media to "physical laws" a problem? Is it your opinion that because we have so many scarce art forms, there is not enough of a problem with the lack of scarcity of art to justify copyright?
If so, I'd like to point out that all the art media you pointed out (and all the art media you didn't) have both a physical component and an intellectual component in varying proportions. The greater the physical component and the higher the overhead cost of copying, the less it needs copyright protection. At the same time, there is less need for taking them out of copyright, because it's just as hard to make a legitimate copy. A statue, for example, often takes significant raw materials to recreate, plus it requires a skilled hand and lots of time to copy, or at least a prohibitively expensive machine. There's very, very little statue piracy in the world because of that fact. But what exactly is copyright doing wrong then? There's no lawsuits, no snooping of private communication, no potential for a public domain of any significant value. Compare this with a DVD which the physical aspect costs less than a dollar, but the intellectual aspect could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. There, copyright is solving a problem, if you accept that artists deserve money for their work. However, at the same time, that's where copyright's most controversial aspects are concentrated. If you get rid of copyright, there'll be very little change in the statue trade, good or bad, but there'll be huge change in the movie trade, which will be very bad.
I believe they are entitled to fair payment. By fair, I mean an amount of money that is of the same proportion to demand as any other business. If the money drips in bit by bit, or if they're paid upfront for their time, I don't give a shit. So long as they get their fair amount, I'm happy. I would be slightly upset if we were to remove the ability to enforce licenses like the GPL, but I could certainly live with it. The problem is that the drip method is simply the best we have so far. The free market has spoken.
All law is a contrivance. Some have been around longer than others, and some are easier to enforce than others, but they all are arbitrary rules we set for ourselves. They don't mirror some divine constant of morality, fairness, or justice, they're just to help us survive and survive relatively comfortably. It is indeed human nature to break copyright, but it's also human nature to break all laws. That's why we have them; if no-one wanted to break them, we wouldn't need them. For some of the o
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Perhaps I was too hasty in judging your username. However, the suggestion that my position is immoral is incorrect. Society and artists got along without copyright for the last 10,000 years of civilization and before that for the 2 million years of human occupation of this planet. Copyright is neither necessary nor even provably beneficial to human creativity.
As if that were not enough, the internet has demonstrated time and time again that people can and will be very creative for non-fiduciary reasons. People spend hours composing garbage email messages for their friends to (not) read. Wikipedia has arguably created a resource more useful and of higher quality than the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In Japan, there is an entire genre of fiction composed on phones the authors of which had no intention to publish professionally until the publishers contacted them. In 2007, one of those books was the number one book of the year. We are talking about a book composed by a high school student that wanted to impress her friends (of course, it was her parents that were impressed in the end). People here on Slashdot spend hours writing posts on every subject available. Why? They do it because they can. Not for money -- which is the only thing copyright is about.
My position is neither immoral nor harmful (unless you happen to be one of those fat cat record industry execs cashing million dollar checks generated by artists working at McDonald's and Starbucks). In fact, defending copyright is immoral. Copyright is both an anti-free market monopoly and (as currently implemented) a constraint on Free Speech (how can speech be free if it is "owned"). Free Speech is necessary for both democracy and Freedom. Copyright is a prerequisite for neither. So, whose point of view is moral?
If you really have the "good of everyone in mind", you should consider changing your view. Copyright is a relic of feudalism. It is something that monarchs granted to their subjects (which is a polite word for slaves).
My argument was about getting the idea of using a picnic table from you and buying my own -- not taking your picnic table. Copyrighted material is not property, so your argument is irrelevant. Even if I give in and argue this point, the reasoning is so flawed that its useless. Would you notice the leg was missing? Would the table even stand? Could I then balance my hamburgers on the leg? Or would someone have to sit on it? This is why information cannot be "property". These realspace arguments are irrational when applied to the inexhaustible resource of information (something that can be reproduced infinitely without reducing or degrading anybody else's supply). Even copyright is tied to copies. The reason for this is that tangible things can be regulated, and ideas cannot. If we start regulating ideas, welcome to 1984 and the Thought Police.
You cannot "steal" a copyrighted work. Stealing or theft requires that the owner be deprived of what he once had without his permission. Copying lacks that essential element of taking something away. If I make a million copies of something, all the other owners still have their copies and so has the copyright owner. When you buy a book, do you own it? Or does the copyright holder "own" it? If the copyright holder "owns" it, why can he no
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
It's simple. We don't need an RIAA or a record company. We don't need Apples Itunes with their pre-selected music programming.
I say, if you people are serious, create your own business models, create your own distribution models, and design it into the web itself, design it into the internet itself, design it into linux itself, into windows itself, and through the design revolution you get the protocol revolution which brings the licenses like creative commons, and that brings the business models which generate the profits to allow us to save the music industry while getting rich in the process.
There's money to be made, Google shows us this, and so does Youtube.
We need to simply treat the bands as corporations, and buy and sell stocks in our favorite bands.
Here is an example of how it could work Hollywood Stock Exchange
The Hollywood Stock Exchange idea should be applied to bands as well. Through the prediction markets we can save the arts. We can bet on stuff like album sales, we can bet on anything related to the functioning of the band or the artist. It's a prediction market.
Just as gambling is a sure business model, prediction and speculation is even more sure, because the business model is based on the very model our economy functions on. New bands can issue an IPO of sorts and receive initial investment by the fans who discover them, the original fans along with the band will then get rich together if the band sells a lot of albums.
No need to have record companies, no need to have an RIAA, no need to even care about album sales really.
No, but it did get me a 5, Insightful
+5, Truth