Slashdot Mirror
MediaSentry & RIAA Expert Under Attack
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Jammie Thomas, the defendant in Duluth, Minnesota, RIAA case Capitol Records v. Thomas, has served her expert witness's report. The 30-page document (PDF), prepared by Prof. Yongdae Kim of the Computer Science Department of the University of Minnesota, attacks the reports and testimony of Prof. Doug Jacobson, the RIAA's expert, and the work of the RIAA's investigator, Safenet (formerly known as MediaSentry). Among other things, Dr. Kim termed MediaSentry's methods 'highly suspect,' debunked Dr. Jacobson's 'the internet is like a post office' analogy, explained in detail how FastTrack works, explored a sampling of the types of attacks to which the defendant's computer may have been subjected, accused Jacobson of making 'numerous misstatements,' and concluded that 'there is not one but numerous possible explanations for the evidence presented during this trial. Throughout the report I demonstrate possibilities not considered by the plaintiff's expert witness in his evaluation of the evidence...' Additionally, he concluded, 'MediaSentry has a strong record of mistakes when claiming that particular IP addresses were the origins of copyright infringement. Their lack of transparency, lack of external review, and evidence of inadequate error checking procedures [put] into question the authenticity and validity of the log files and screenshots they produced.'"
So much for those arguments.
"In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
Thank you for your coverage of these events, even if you're biased. ;)
Then again, consider the audience!
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
Please? At the very least you'll have someone with an honest to god education who can proofread and write decent articles on your editorial staff, as opposed to ... kdawson.
-1 TROLL
Troll.
If they're protecting those poor underdog artists, then what's with the extortion tactics they use?
They'd have more success with racketeering than extortion.
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
I've prepared a few expert reports in my time, but IANAL, however, as satisfying/intimidating these reports may be, most of the time they'll be downplayed or ignored by the other side. In court, if you ignore it, unless the judge is on the other side, it DOES go away.
I'm waiting for the expert testimony, because anybody can type up 30 pages that equate to "Nuh-uh!" but judges sit up and take notice when someone sits in the witness chair and says "Nuh-uh!"
Essentially, what I'm saying is that while the slashdot community will rally around this news item, the legal community won't take notice until there's a precident.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Daubert is around one of these corners.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Maybe save that color for something important, like a virus that has infected 90% of online porn.
Yeah, digital evidence can be such a bitch, especially when you gather it remotely. You have no idea if the client (remote end) is telling the truth or not, let alone if it was tampered in transit or not, and even if none of that is true, there's still no way to link what a computer does definitively to what a person designated as the primary user of that system, simply because that system could have been previously compromised via a litany of vectors. In short, why this ever got this far is beyond me... The standards of evidence have slipped quite a bit. These days, you yell "computer!" in a crowded court room and bring in an "expert" in a suit, and the judge and jury will believe just about anything. IP addresses and hashes as "digital fingerprints"? a smack of MP3s on a hard-drive is "evidence"? If I rip a CD I legally purchased, encode it into MP3, and then the CD is damaged and thrown away, or stolen, does that make my digital copy illegal? Apparently. things that are perfectly legal to do to their physical counterparts become illegal to do when a computer becomes involved, simply because someone yelled "computer!" in a crowded court room.
Please god, send us a lawyer worthy of Mordor.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I understand that the RIAA is a popular target here, but why was this article shown in bright red when I came here a moment ago? I've read Slashdot for years and I've never seen that...
Thank you Ray for all you do for us.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
So the massive RIAA layoffs aren't happening?
Someone mod this shit +1 Funny
Artists deserve to make money on their work. We dislike the RIAA because they use questionable tactics and have a history of going after individual, largely non-technical defendants and suing them into the stone age.
And no, downloading music without paying for it is not STEALING. It's copyright infringement.
We don't want something for nothing. We want the right to purchase digital music ONCE with the ability to transform that single digital copy into any media or format we choose ... and purely for personal use.
I've purchased several thousand dollars worth of music over the past 35 years, and I think I'm justified in making a few MP3 copies of the various music CD's I've legally purchased and the older LP's that I've legally taped, then legally converted to digital media.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
We want the right to purchase digital music ONCE with the ability to transform that single digital copy into any media or format we choose ... and purely for personal use.
Then why hasn't music piracy disappeared since iTunes went DRM free?
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
What exactly is a "misstatement"?
Is it an incorrect statement?
An inaccurate statement?
A misleading statement?
A correct statement used in the wrong context?
A deliberately obfuscated or weasely statement?
Reminds me of people who say they "misspoke" - usually means "lied".
Piracy has always been here, so expecting it to ever disappear is just dumb. Let us not forget that the iTunes Music Store brought music sales back up. Have sales started going back down since they went DRM free?
You're assuming that everyone pirating, or even just a significant percentage of them, would have purchased the music otherwise. Do you actually expect a business model built around selling physical media in an age where the media can be reproduced by anyone at virtually no cost or effort?
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
What is FastTrack? Is this what they were talking about?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You Poor fuckers need to get out of your parents basement and get a job you freeloading fucktaints.
Not a good thing to say at the start of a depression, friend. people have been guillotined for less.
Firstly, the RIAA has not "given" any funds back to the "artists" it represents, they're just a high profile organization that tries to scare people away from copying music - legally or otherwise. Secondly - their outrageous claims about "lost profits" and "starving artists" are patently false. It's like the US complaining about the lost tax revenue it has to bear every year by NOT conquering the world. It makes no sense. However no doubt the same accountants and mathematicians representing the RIAA also worked in the financial industry up until recently.
Frankly, I think that digital distribution of media - especially music and film, is the way to go. It's much more environmentally friendly and economically efficient - after all, if "pirates" can do it for FREE then surely the COST can't be all that great. There may be a slight problem with expecting people to pay $15 for a CD or $1 for a song, however. But look on the bright side, if artists earn less perhaps that will force the price of their cocaine down due to demand destruction?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Can you download non-lossy from iTunes?
The report discussed various types of 3rd party attacks to which computers are subject, and noted:
A miscreant wishing to cover his or her tracks on the Internet has many options, the most likely of which is direct exploitation of one or more computers owned by a third party. Those computers can then be used for activity that the malicious party would not want linked to his or her Internet account. The average uninfected âoelife expectancyâ of an Internet-connected computer running the Microsoft Windows XP operating system without any security updates (âoepatchesâ) is as low as 4 minutes [15]. Since all Windows XP systems attempt to connect to the Internet immediately upon installation/first boot, and since it requires some time to download all security updates from Microsoft (which, for a newly-installed Windows XP system, can measure in gigabytes, with a typical Internet connection only capable of handling a few megabytes per second), it would not be surprising that any given Internet-connected Windows XP computer be infected with any number of pieces of âoemalwareâ (software malicious to the user of the computer on which it is installed).
Seems like there expert is saying here "Hey XP is a sickly child in the streets of Mexico" Kind of interesting that they make this correlation and unfortunately I don't have time to go over the whole report right now but I would like to see what other reads have to say about this part for now
I find this all very interesting from a kind of "we're living through history" perspective. What we've been witnessing over the past few years is almost the complete devaluation of the record company's main 3 products, 'recording', 'promotion' and 'distribution'.
Artists needed record companies to make them nice recordings and to promote them (advertising and getting their records out). The record companies made most of their money off of record sales. The artists made most of their money off of concerts and appearances. With recording equipment fairly inexpensive in comparison to the recent past, and free or nearly free software that can professionally mix, recording now comes at a very low cost. The only real advantages of a studio now are the sound-proof room and the technician that knows what they're doing. If a musician spends the time to learn and experiment with acoustics, the trained technician becomes less valuable, and all you need is some equipment and a nice room.
It's obvious to anyone reading Slashdot that promotion and distribution can be handled through the Internet now for extremely little money.
It's amazing to think how these 3 things which were so valuable for such a long time became cheap so suddenly. The argument that file sharing is anti-capitalist is completely incorrect. It's capitalism at work. It's just that the value of the job that record companies do is no where near the value it had even a decade ago. Ironically, pretending it's still the same is anti-capitalism.
You're assuming that everyone pirating, or even just a significant percentage of them, would have purchased the music otherwise.
No, I'm not. The GP was.
He implied that the majority of pirates only pirated in order to obtain a DRM-free copy of the music. The iTunes example provides ample evidence that it just isn't the case.
I'm not against piracy. I'm only against the rationalizations of many who engage in it.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
It has. No one is downloading songs anymore. Didn't you notice?
But seriously, it will take time. The piracy market will always exist, and that's just the way it is. But it probably would have been much smaller if DRM-free downloads had beaten Napster out the door. Hell, even DRM-laden downloads probably would have worked. But it's been nearly 10 years now of free music, and up til now it's been better than pay-for options. So it will take some time to get people to gravitate toward legals options.
This isn't evidence that people didn't break the law primarily because legal options sucked. It just means that once someone decides to live "illegally," they are less likely to revert to completely lawful behavior, out of habit if nothing else.
If songs always cost 10cents, though, I'm guessing the pirate market would dry up quite a bit. It just wouldn't be worth the work.
-Dan
I'm not sure that's the wisest thing to wish for. :D
MediaSentry and the RIAA deserve to be constantly under legal and political attack!
How could a legitimate expert in the field make the errors and omissions Prof. Doug Jacobson did in his testimony? It appears from what has been said that either Jacobson's academic credentials or his honesty are suspect. These omissions are not minor, nor are they so esoteric that a so-called "expert witness" could be forgiven for being unaware of them.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
[snip]
If songs always cost 10cents, though, I'm guessing the pirate market would dry up quite a bit. It just wouldn't be worth the work.
-Dan
It might be worth the thrill of breaking the law though.
$ make available
They can have $.99 when I can download a non-lossy format free from DRM in an open format that I am allowed to use how I see fit. As long as it is fair and I do not re-distribute. That is what I had with CD's. This is what I want with online purchases. Also, while I am on the topic of online, when I can download the song and save it without having to use their software program to "manage" it then they can have my money. If I wanted bloatware slowing down my computer then I would install Windows*. Thanks and HAND!
I use Windows at work. I have a linux desktop too.
"Gunny! Double the charge in the clue cannon!"
Gunny: "Aye,aye cap'n!"
Capn: "And stand ready to reload. I think it's gonna take more than just a few rounds!"
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
That's a pretty good point, possibly because everyone who would use itunes is already doing it? I've been scared off by their crappy interface before, and the way they charged *more* for not having DRM in the past, i just assumed that they had jacked up their prices across the board without really thinking about it. Probably should curb my piracy and give it another shot.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
We dislike the RIAA because they use questionable tactics...
Add to that... I dislike the RIAA because I don't believe they represent the Artists as much they they'd like us to think. Their members are most notably Sony, EMI, Warner and Universal, not the drummer who started distributing with a CD burner. If anything, those little guys want nothing to do with the RIAA. Smart people.
Most of the stuff on
Professor Kim claims that typical internet connections are only capable of handling a few megabytes per second. If one were to assume, conservatively, that "a few" means 3-4, then a "typical" internet connection is on the order of 25-35 megabit. Please, Professor Kim, tell me where in the US this is "typical" as I'd like to move there. Further, the gigabytes number is quite off. Service Pack 2 can be installed to an unpatched Windows XP machine, and it's only 108 MB. SP3 needs at least SP1, but it's only 72 MB. 180 MB, at Professor Kim's "typical" connection, would only take about a minute to download, leaving a three minute window before infection. The rest of his report is somewhat more accurate, but these sloppy facts would hurt his testimony--if either the judge or the RIAA's expert witness knew any more than that, which I doubt.
Because it already disappeared soon after they first started using DRM. After "Mission Accomplished," everyone was able to relax.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Some people pirate music they already own just because it`s faster (downloading 60mb? not even a minute) than the hassle of putting the cd in the tray, clicking convert, and picking it out. And the filenames are already typed in a convenient way.
Did you infringe someones copyright ? It would be hard to say so on this, since you made a copy for yourself of something you had the right to make a copy for yourself..
The parent should be modded off topic as is this post
Ok here is where I have an argument. The conceptual difference between "copyright infringement" and "stealing" is null. So why the obfuscation and insistence that what you are doing is not stealing. Illegal enrichment is illegal enrichment.
Now I'm bypassing the legal bullshit that fair use is involved because I will stipulate to fair use. But every other form of copying without permission is still stealing or it's semantic equivalent.
Perhaps the scarcity equals value has been taken too far with copyrights but that is what the music industry and the artists count on to get paid.
Why bother
Off topic.
Why bother
They can have $.99 when I can download a non-lossy format free from DRM in an open format that I am allowed to use how I see fit. As long as it is fair and I do not re-distribute. That is what I had with CD's.
Then why are you pirating, and not buying CD's? Seriously, if you want to pay for your content, and you want it to have all those qualities, why aren't you buying a CD?
Again, I'm not against piracy; I'm against your rationalizations. Your misrepresentation of the thoughts of the average pirate do as much damage to the cause of copyright reform as the misrepresentations of the RIAA.
Unless we are all honest about the causes and results of piracy, we'll never be able to have an honest debate about copyright.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
And neither would the production of music by the artists be worth the effort.
Why bother
Some people pirate music they already own just because it`s faster (downloading 60mb? not even a minute) than the hassle of putting the cd in the tray, clicking convert, and picking it out.
Unless you can show that a non-negligible percentage of file-sharing is done for this reason, you haven't added anything to the discussion. Of course there are plenty of legitimate (as I believe this is) reasons to file-share. But the vast majority of the infringing traffic is generated by people who just want music for free.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
The RIAA is stupid as hell because they got it all wrong, especially since I could just as easily copy the songs off the radio. If they were smart they should try to get the file sharers to pay a broadcast license instead of this copyright infringement crap. Of course, the Internet is an international communications medium and can't be controlled by one country and all that stuff blah, blah, blah. If one country leads the way then others will certainly join in (governments like tax). The country with the best licensing fees would get the most business and downloaders could download for free without all these needless courtroom battles.
What if the CDs are physically scarce? How would you know that the grandparent's reasons are dishonest? What are the thoughts of the average pirate? Which specific rationalizations are valid and which are not?
And neither would the production of music by the artists be worth the effort.
Excuse me, but your assuming that most artists have ever received a monetary return that would financially make creating & performing music "worth it". Here's a clue from a musician of 30-plus years; most musicians, even very talented and creative musicians, don't make anywhere near what it costs them to create and perform their music in just about any measure you'd care to use.
We real musicians don't play and write for money...we do it because the music is inside us and burning a hole in our souls to get out. Between instrument and equipment costs, travel costs, etc etc, we rarely ever break even and even more rarely do we ever actually get ahead financially. This is why the majority of musicians have day jobs. Even many artists signed to a label seldom come out ahead because of "Hollywood accounting".
Read this piece by Steve Albini on what a typical artist/band goes through even in the rare case they're even offered the chance to sign with a major label.
The Problem With Music
Even knowing all that, how the odds are totally stacked against a band or artist ever making a living from music, we still work, strive, and sacrifice to write and perform our music.
This is why the idea that you espouse is, no offense, totally wrong.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Because iTunes is platform-locked and therefore sucks ass.
Because iTunes is platform-locked and therefore sucks ass.
CD's are platform-locked; you have to have a CD player. Generic mp3's are platform-locked; you have to have a computer or dedicated mp3 player. Records are platform-locked; you have to have a turntable.
Every music delivery method is platform-locked.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Mostly innuendo and facts of marginal relevance.
Except for these two zingers:
http://lists.sans.org/pipermail/unisog/2004-April/
http://lists.sans.org/pipermail/unisog/2005-January/
Look for the messages regarding "MediaSentry". Real network administrators posting their experiences receiving nonsensical requests from MediaSentry and related entities for information about bogus IP addresses. Doesn't reflect too well on MediaSentry's methodology.
What would be interesting, and possibly helpful, would be a screenshot showing that someone with the IP address of a SafeNet office (or an RIAA lawyer's law office) has a lot of files on their computer with filenames suggesting kiddy porn or something to that effect. Introducing that faked screenshot as evidence would be interesting, since any testimony supporting the validity of the Safenet screenshots may support a felony case against Safenet (or the RIAA lawyer).
I don't have the skills/time to find the appropriate IP addresses, ascertain operating systems and such, and then fake the believable screen shot. I don't know that it would be legal, either, so please don't take this as a suggestion. It would be interesting in court, though.
Please tell me where I can order a CD with just the songs I want on it?
Oh right, you need to buy the whole package.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Please tell me where I can order a CD with just the songs I want on it?
Oh right, you need to buy the whole package.
If you pay $20 for a CD with 10 songs, but you only listen to 5 of them, you're effectively paying $4 per song; rather than the $2 per song nominal price. So you're just making the argument that people pirate because music is too expensive. How does that square with the "piracy does not equal lost sales" argument? You can't have it both ways.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
I dunno' but ever since I discovered that Amazon had DRM free MP3 at decent bitrates for reasonable prices I've been buying new music for the first time in about 8 years. Previously I would usually buy a used CD and rip it or borrow a friends - occasionally I'd download from someplace although honestly my tastes in music haven't found me wanting much of the new stuff. Now that I can cherry pick what I actually DO like from Amazon and often pay less than a buck while being able to easily put it on or play it on any device I or my family own I'm buying again.
So while piracy may not have ceased everywhere in my case, and that of others I know, it has certainly have been REDUCED. One would hope that the music industry would be bright enough to know that piracy (as THEY define it) will never actually go away. They can go after torrent sites and P2P software all they want but folks will still trade with friends etc. so making available at reasonable prices with reasonable terms aka no DRM is about the best they can do IMO. If they try to lock it up tight as a drum again I'll simply stop buying again.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Amazon allows you to download straight unprotected MP3s. There's no specific program from them that you HAVE to use to manage the resulting downloads although they do have one that will automatically place them in artist folders and register them with iTunes if you want to use it. I agree it would be nice to have the files lossless but I'd simply rip them anyway :-)
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Only to a select few. With the frequently-run Amazon MP3 specials putting ten or more tracks out there for $2-4, I find myself buying a decent amount of music recently. It takes two minutes to download (ignoring the time spent to FIND a good torrent, they're still almost always much slower), has all the metadata and cover art done correctly (torrents VERY rarely can say the same), and there's no question to the legality. I've bought from iTunes once, and have avoided it entirely since having been burned by DRM (even though there's no DRM anymore); up until recently, I still preferred having the CD hard-copy, but for two bucks, I'm fine with a 256k MP3 from Amazon.
Naturally, I'm a single data point, but I can at least assure you that I'm less likely to spend/have disposable income these days than when I pirated more content, so it's not as if I've suddenly won the lottery and decided to go legit for my media sources.
Will some people always steal it? Sure. Just like some will always pay. For the rest of us, it's simply a matter of finding the right price point. $2-4 for an album is great for me.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Another good one to read -> http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
I don't think I've ever seen a music torrent complete in less time than it would take me to rip a CD and grab the track listing from CDDB. Maybe usenet is faster; I wouldn't know. Regardless, there are probably about ten people alive who have "pirated" music simply to avoid ripping it from a CD they already own.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Artists deserve to make money on their work. Why do people hate the RIAA? The protect artsts from people illegally stealing music off the internet.
And yes, downloading music without paying for it is STEALING.
So fuck you retards that want somthing for nothing.
You Poor fuckers need to get out of your parents basement and get a job you freeloading fucktaints.
Sounds like YOU are the one needing to get a "real" job.
Or demand will simply dry up, and the crack cocaine gangs out of Mexico will need to find another way to make money.
And therein will be the RIAA's next marketing slogan to discourage piracy: Piracy kills Mexican babies!
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
We dislike the RIAA because they use questionable tactics...
Add to that... I dislike the RIAA because I don't believe they represent the Artists as much they they'd like us to think. Their members are most notably Sony, EMI, Warner and Universal.
That's because it's the Recording Industry Association of America, not the Recording Artists Association of America.
(This message brought to you by the Society for Pointing Out the Bleeding Obvious)
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
I don't the average consumer cares about perfect sounding files which they probably can't hear the difference with the Amazon version anyway. I for one, buy from Amazon MP3 a lot. Laugh at me for buying music if you want.
I own a Sony CD transport. I also own two Pioneer DVD-RWs which are good at reading red book CDs. My fiancee owns a portable CD player made by some yumcha brand or other, and we both have CD players (manufactured by different manufacturers) in our automobiles. If the fancy took me, I could trivially, using the technology on hand, assemble SOME device which could play red book PCM audio. Even if Sony and Philips both went bankrupt tomorrow.
Similarly, I have, lying around at home, about 15 devices which are capable of playing MP3s, manufactured by a large number of different entities (although quite possibly all made in the same dragons' breath factory in china.) Were every single MP3-player manufacturing entity in the world to disappear overnight, it would not impact my ability in the slightest to play MP3s. Worst case, i've got a copy of the mpg123 source code and the handful of technical data about the format I could find when I was writing a tool which needed to understand the format on some level. The various MPEG standards are quite well documented and implementable by anyone who gives a fuck. If the Fraunhoefer institute (or whoever claims to own those patents this week) goes broke, it impacts my life exactly 0.
I don't own anything that can (trivially) play an iTunes .m4p file, excepting the one iPod that was purchased several years ago and has since suffered chronic, irreversable headphone jack damage. If Apple go away, it doesn't matter how much effort I exert, I am not going to be in a position to play a .m4p file. This is the very DEFINITION of platform lock. Simply being tied to a format is NOT platform lock-in, because you're always going to have, at the very least, some way of reimplementing that format.
Go home, and write "Itunes tracks are platform locked. MP3s are not platform locked. Red book audio is not platform locked." 1000 times. I want it on my desk first thing in the morning.
You're doing it wrong.
Maaaan. I wish I had mod points right now. :D
I believe the people who run this site would disagree with you, and they aren't being sued anytime soon. Now, for bonus points, would you please explain why it takes 90 years after the death of the artist for something to be in the public domain?
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Ahem, isn't any digital format, including CD "lossy" to some extent?
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
1. I'm not making any arguments about people. I'm talking about me.
2. I don't want the other songs, I don't care what the cost of the rest is (unless it's $0)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Shush. Don't confuse them with facts.
Why aren't the record companies suing Best Buy et. al. for setting the retail prices too high? After all, when I choose to not buy (and not copyright-infringe) due to the too-high prices, isn't that a lost sale? Shouldn't we treat all lost sales the same way, whether they come from copyright infringement or high prices?
[/troll]
Look, the idea that piracy is going to go away once legal music is available on iTMS is idiotic. First of all, every consumer is going to value songs differently. Heck, any particular consumer isn't even going to perceive the same value for all songs. So, to maximize revenue, you need to engage in price discrimination. And one of the consequences is that some songs are going to need to be free before they are purchased. (and downloading infringed songs is not free because there is a risk that you might be sued) Record companies are angry because the excess profit that usually goes along with having a monopoly is being turned into a regular profit that goes along with competing in the market.
Secondly, many infringing downloads lead to later sales. (ref the previous stories on /. that downloaders are also some of the biggest buyers) Apparently, the people who make these infringing downloads somehow get utility from buying the CD after already having the MP3s. Maybe you and I view the world differently, but I view that as not being a lost sale.
Finally, and this is really part of the first point, elementary economic theory holds that people will only buy your product if they are able. If I have zero dollars and infringe on your copyright, you haven't lost a sale because I couldn't have bought it anyway. Obviously, this is different from a tangible good because, if I were to steal a tangible, you wouldn't be able to sell it to the next guy that comes along who is able to buy it. Now you may feel that it is wrong for me to get something for free in this instance, (it's your old chimp tit-for-tat instinct) but you have not lost money.
I'm not saying that copyright infringement is a good thing. Nor am I advocating that people do it. Copyright infringement may increase or decrease the revenue of artists and record companies, but you need to recognize that the argument that 1 download = 1 lost sale is complete bullshit.
Mod up!
Excellent link to Steve Albini
Amazon.com has everything you require except lossless format. They even have a download manager available as .deb, .rpm, and .dmg used for purchasing whole albums. Some songs are $.79 and $.89, although most are $.99 with albums as low as $4.
256 kbps mp3s are acceptable to my non-audiophile ear, so I'm satisfied. In fact, I hadn't bought music in years, but now,... well, it's sometimes real easy to get click-happy!
You'll need 50.1% approval to pass the motion.
Let's see, there are 1,500,000 Slashdot members...
1,500,000 members, of whom maybe 5% are active?
I don't think that's going to fly. Reminds me a bit of the post-Microsoft ISO SC 34 committee.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is it too late to object? They probably don't know about that conflict of interest, so I'm sure they wouldn't mind if someone just happened to tip them off...
you realise that pretty much anyone can stick a $50 note in a photocopier or printer right?
The fact is the government goes to enormous lengths with special ink, special paper and even special code in printers and photocopiers to try and make what should be trivial (copying an image) very hard.
They also have severe jail terms if you do it.
Why bother? They are trying to prop up a business model based upon preventing you doing something that should take no cost or effort right?
Perhaps they realise that there is a social benefit to keeping the currency at a limited supply, so it actually has some worth...
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Ok here is where I have an argument. The conceptual difference between "copyright infringement" and "stealing" is null. So why the obfuscation and insistence that what you are doing is not stealing. Illegal enrichment is illegal enrichment.
Fraud is not theft. Murder is not theft. Rape is not theft. Most things that are illegal are not theft. Calling copyright infringement "theft" is just stupid.
There is also the principle that the law makers know what they are talking about and that when a law says what it says that is intentional. The US law says that theft is taking something away illegally from the rightful owner to deprive him of his property (thus a policeman taking a cigarette lighter away from the rightful owner who wants to light a cigarette at a petrol station with spilled fuel is not committing theft). When the law says "to deprive the rightful owner", they mean it. If the rightful owner is not deprived of anything, it is not theft in US law. For comparison, German law says it is theft to "take something away illegally from the rightful owner to enrich yourself". Immaterial items are excluded for other reasons, but the argument that the owner is not deprived of anything would not count in German law.
given the history of mistakes in evidence / accusations has anyone considered making a spoofing app that just sits there pretending to transfer copyrighted works ?
low traffic use but reporting back to the trackers/peers that it has downloaded a lot.
even better if it can attempt to spoof IP's as well, sometimes effectively, sometimes not. just to make sure there is a very real an provable occurance of this happening so it can be used in defence. always the highest profile movies / music at the time to get the attention of mediasentry.
anyone running it would have an element of confusion to use in their defence if accused, and also anyone else being accused will be able to point at it saying well how can you prove it wasnt someone else running this that spoofed my IP?
I don't see where from his sentence did you extrapolate he's pirating anything? From Several people in this thread told you clearly that they're interested in copying their own CDs into their own personal digital music collection (MP3s, OGGs,...) Nowhere they said THEY would use ripping process to produce copies that are easy to share with other people. They are interested in creating copies for personal use, for sharing between their own devices.
Same thing with DRMed media. People don't want DRM because they are unable to copy music to their own devices. And all for the sake of protecting against pirates... who may be us or may not be us.
Piracy isn't good. All that I can see that was claimed above your post is that piracy is unavoidable, but nowhere that they do it or that they condone it.
Again, point me where in your post's ancestors did you find implication of piracy being good?
The faked screenshots are there as evidence of how you can fake a screenshot.
As such, there is NO ILLEGALITY in putting them forward as evidence, even if they were evidence of a KP ring in RIAA headquaters and a tactical diagram of Air Force 1 and a plan to kill the president in the hands of Media Sentry.
Because these are not put forward as evidence of KP in RIAA HQ, nor of evidence that Media Sentry are plotting terrorism. They are put forward as evidence that screenshots can be faked.
And as such, they are SAYING that RIAA aren't in charge of the largest KP ring in the world and that Media Sentry are not traitors.
The reason why you do this is so that RIAA/Media Sentry can't counter with "but they are true!". They'll admit or profess (hey, maybe there is KP in RIAA HQ...) that it is wrong and therefore admit that screenshots can easily be faked.
And that is completely legal.
...unless there's tequila involved.
I'm surprised there hasn't been more discussion of the actual technical stuff which Dr. Kim discusses.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I for one, accidentally the average consumer.
c++;
No, a CD is not lossy since it will exactly record the information you send it. You can replay the information as many times you want, and it will return exactly the information you stored, unless the disc is physically damaged or degraded.
All known analogue formats are lossy, since there will always be noise added through the electronic components necessary to record the signal.
c++;
I guess I'm one in 600+Million then... When you've got a big fat pipe and a couple thousand CDs in your collection, you quickly find that .torrent is a LOT faster than swapping discs through the ripping machine. If it matters at all, this is a consequence of my earlier work as a DJ - over 3500 CDs spread through almost a dozen CD books that each have slots for 512 discs.
Some of it's not piracy, regardless of what the industry states.
I have a record collection of somewhere around 1600 LPs. Yes, vinyl. Some of these have been picked up from yard sales in less than perfect condition. I have an original, but with a few scratches and pops. I feel perfectly justified in downloading an MP3 of anything that's on these records, so I have a digital copy that sounds good.
The music industry is trying its best to have the music that you buy a product, like a car, and also a licence.
If it's a licence, then the record or CD that you bought that got scratched should have a replacement method that doesn't involve buying a complete new CD at full price. After all, that's buying a second licence, which you don't need. But you can't do this.
If it's a product, then it should be yours to do with what you want after the fact. If I buy a car, I can repaint it, I can make a "derivative work" by putting window tint and some chrome rims on it, and it's all fine, because I own it.
The music industry wants to stop you from doing both of these, because they want the best of both worlds.
They can't have it. At least, not from me.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
actually, there is huge difference. copyright is a right to a limited monopoly over an intangible idea that is given to the holder in exchange of a promise that upon expiration of this right, the "ownership" of his work will revert to the public domain. the sole goal of this right is to extend creativity. this is very different from property, which is exclusive, perpetual and has no "goal" strings attached.
ever since the copyright was born, there has been an effort (quite successful too) from certain quarters to manipulate the situation politically so that the monopoly is extended, and the term limit made longer with no proof that this has fostered creativity.
"lossy" when referring to an audio recording doesn't refer to the fact that the media itself will not degrade, it refers to the fact that the waveform as stored/reproduced does not perfectly record the waveform as originally played. As such, every playback medium that's come out since 8-track tapes has been "lossy", because to some extent they've all been digital representations of the waveform rather than the actual wavefrom. You are literally losing some of the information in the waveform because you have to throw it away as a necessary step in saving the data on a computer. You can make up for it by using a high sample rate (this is why something recorded at 44.1KHz sounds better than something recorded at, say, 8KHz), but you're still throwing data away as part of the recording process.
Depending on the amount of compression being used, you're throwing away even more data. MP3, for example, uses the knowledge that the human ear simply can't hear some frequencies, and that the brain will automatically fill in the holes to even out the sound at lower frequencies in order to discard large portions of the recording as part of the compression algorithm.
You're also incorrect in saying that all analogue formats are necessarily lossy. There are perfectly lossless methods of recording sound that have been around as long as recording has been around. The problem is the media itself degrades in time... there's precious few wax cylinders that are still playable, and it would be very unwise to play one because they're so fragile. There are, however, some early records which have not degraded at all... the vinyl records do degrade in time, but there was a time when they used aluminum to produce records, and those have stood up quite well.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
90 years its more like 120 from what I've heard.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Back in 1999, when Metallica introduced me to Napster (really! I wouldn't have known if they hadn't gone all Streisand), ripping CDs was neither simple nor quick. These days your statement stands, but I did get some music I already had on CD, and I am still alive. I think your estimate is on the low side.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Because a) iTunes is not open source, b) it doesn't run on Linux or other free platforms such as FreeBSD, and c) they don't offer FLAC or OGG. At least those are my reasons. Back when AllOfMP3 was still operating, I spent a pretty penny buying FLACs and high bitrate OGGs from them. Ever since they were shut down, and I haven't been able to find a non-flash, non-PayPal, Linux friendly, FLAC/OGG offering digital music service, I haven't bought digital music. I'm not paying for low bitrate MP3/AAC/WMA crap. Especially when I can download it for free.
Supply and demand, bitches. You don't supply what I want, therefore my demand for it is zilch, zero, nada.
Nathan's blog
Are you actually trying to refer to the production of currency as a business? At least compare apples to apples. I'm not saying that pirating music is okay. It's clearly copyright infringement, though the damages that the RIAA are demanding are absolute insanity. But even so, the RIAA can't ever hope to win this battle. There's just no way to make most people stop short of draconian internet filtering and/or a music "tax" that everyone pays whether they download music or not. The only thing that's going to save them is for them to adapt to the changing market conditions.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Wasn't that the company that in addition to being the RIAA's techno-snich, was also the one responsible for flooding networks with false files.
"Under Attack" I don't think is strong enough. Unless that phrase ends with "with a baseball bat" or "by gauss cannons" or "by pirate ships" or something of that nature.
Besides being totally unethical and wrong, I seriously wonder why they were never taken to task for criminality. To me it is the same thing as spammers flooding the net with bad links, and we are throwing them in jail these days.
Copyright infringement may increase or decrease the revenue of artists and record companies, but you need to recognize that the argument that 1 download = 1 lost sale is complete bullshit.
I agree. But, as soon as you engage in this argument, you've already lost. That's my point. You've taken the RIAA's bait, and allowed them to frame the debate.
Copyright infringement is currently illegal. Instead of debating how many sales are lost to downloads or how the high price of music leads to piracy--arguments based on the premise that piracy is not as bad as the RIAA says--we should be focused on positive arguments for copyright reform. If we want to change the law, we have to give the politicians a reason to.
As long as music pirates are seen as people who only want music without having to pay for it, we'll never win this argument.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Wait, is that proof by wishful citation, proof by mutual reference or proof by vehement assertion? ;-)
I've started purchasing all my music through amazon. After the purchase, I get a DRM free mp3. I used to pirate like crazy, and when I heard a good song that I played often, I'd go and buy the cd. Now I just purchase the individual songs. Slowly I've shifted all my pirated items off my systems and replaced them with open source, or outright purchased them.
Then why hasn't music piracy disappeared since iTunes went DRM free?
iTunes doesn't work in all countries...
If piracy is killing the music industry, then how is iTunes profitable?
Free Martian Whores!
And yes, downloading music without paying for it is STEALING.
No, its not.
Stealing or theft is when you take something away from someone else without their consent and/or providing compensation. The original owner no longer has the thing you stole. Example: If you walk into Walmart, pick up a music CD, and then walk right back out without paying for it.
Downloading music means you're making a COPY of it, you don't go to the provider's computer/server and take the digital file from them. Copying, when the work is copyrighted, is copyright infringement.
Now, is Copyright Infringement wrong? Most people would say yes, and I'd agree with that (although I don't agree with the copyright time lengths).
The RIAA/MPAA, however, want to have their cake and eat it too. They want Copyright Infringement to be viewed, by both the general public and the courts, as stealing.
Why? Well, by making Copyright Infringement into theft, they an make it a criminal offense meaning it could end up as a felony or misdemeanor charge. Just imagine, the RIAA/MPAA could go far beyond demanding insane amounts of money per infringement, they could add jail time into their extortion methods to put the fear of The Almighty RIAA/MPAA into the infringers
If piracy is killing the music industry, then how is iTunes profitable?
I'm not implying that piracy is killing the music industry. I'm just saying that it is disingenous to state that a significant fraction of pirates are just looking for DRM-free music, and would be willing to pay for it, were the means to do so available. The availability of DRM-free iTunes and Amazon music has not resulted in a decrease in piracy.
So, there must be some other reason why most pirates infringe copyright. We can only have an honest debate about copyright reform in this country after we have all acknowledged this fact.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Hey, that should have been a numbered list ending in "Profit!".
When you imitate the RIAA's business strategy, there's no profit step :p
The defendant's lawyer did not object.
Can't you disbar them for gross negligence of their client's interests, or something?
Or does it only make them a lousy lawyer?
Or.... The explanation certainly is easy, it's just not very satisfying to me :)
Amazon won't sell me straight unprotected MP3s since I am not in the US
No sig for the moment.
Aha. An excellent point, and a fine argument.
Therein lies the bugaboo -- the only compelling reasons, for the politicians, currently have to do with the wads of cash and free lunches that the RIAA and member companies provide.
Which points to the underlying malaise of the whole US political system: how do we re-align the interests of the political class with the interests of the country as a whole, and of the citizens (i.e. humans, not corporations) in particular?
I have no real ideas that don't involve some degree of bloodshed (which is depressing to me, as I'm generally a pacifist). Johnsonav, do you have any thoughts? You seem a sharp mind; I'm interested if you have any feasible solutions at hand.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I never download music now. When I did download music to try it out, I bought a small percentage of it and deleted the rest. Since the lawsuits, I've washed my hands of the whole dirty affair.
Capn: "Belay that, Gunny! Triple-shot 'em instead. And prepare full broadsides both starboard and larboard, and call in the marines from the tops to help man the guns. We'll come about and hit 'em with both sides, reloading as we go -- now that the fog has cleared and we can see the size of this behemoth, it's clear that it'll take a while to get through that thick hull. An extra ration of grog to the crew that first punches through!"
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
1. I'm not making any arguments about people. I'm talking about me.
2. I don't want the other songs, I don't care what the cost of the rest is (unless it's $0)
I think his point was that the cost of the rest is $0. The cost of the 4 songs you wanted is $20. Or if you only wanted 1 song, the cost of that one song is $20. The rest comes along for free.
Basically the current pricing structure is that you can choose as many songs as you like from this list of 14 tracks (album) for one flat fee of $20.
He's got a pretty good point. You can't argue that it is not about price if you don't want to pay their flat $20 fee per list on the basis that you only get 1 or 2 songs you like for the $20.
That makes me really angry. I had read enough before this to be vaguely aware of some dirty tactics by record companies, but the letter of intent takes the cake. We should, as a community, make it a goal to hurt the record companies by taking that away from them. How can we accomplish that?
Furthermore, we should find a way to enforce a policy that the record companies must pay their employees (read artists) actual salaries and medical insurance before they can claim to represent them.
The record companies in actuality don't represent any of the artists (follow the money, who's getting paid), and the relationship between record company and artist is an abusive one, no better than a big corporation outsourcing clothing production to a sweat shop in a third world country.
Maybe if you buy more CDs from bands who produce concept albums, it'll be worth it!
For this reason, I despise anyone who will buy "1 or 2 songs you like" from Pink Floyd.
However, I'll agree for most pop crap, it's the hit singles you want, and everything else is filler.
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So, there must be some other reason why most pirates infringe copyright. We can only have an honest debate about copyright reform in this country after we have all acknowledged this fact.
Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture is an excellent treatise on this. There is also quite a bit in the forward to Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. Both books are free and online, and you can also buy dead tree versions. Google the authors' names and titles for an online copy.
Lessig's book lists four reasons for piracy, and how each could affect sales. It's an excellent read.
Free Martian Whores!
Therein lies the bugaboo -- the only compelling reasons, for the politicians, currently have to do with the wads of cash and free lunches that the RIAA and member companies provide.
I'm not quite so pessimistic. I can't really blame politicians for upholding the current copyright regime. From their perspective, copyright protection has enabled the production of a rich and diverse artistic ecosystem in the US. I'd be nervous too about drastically changing anything, for fear of killing the goose that lays the golden egg. It's worked for 200 years, why scrap it now?
We have to show them that we can produce art of the same, or better, quality without the protections of traditional copyright. We need to show them that copyright is unnecessary or harmful. We already have a decent start on this: artists are increasingly releasing their work to be shared freely, a significant portion of the software market is dominated by GPL or BSD licensed software, and people everywhere are making and distributing content on sites like YouTube. We've not quite reached parity yet with the traditional media; but it's close.
Once that happens, we'll probably see copyright fade into irrelevance. The laws may never leave the books, but so long as artists don't invoke their protections, they may as well have.
Which points to the underlying malaise of the whole US political system: how do we re-align the interests of the political class with the interests of the country as a whole, and of the citizens (i.e. humans, not corporations) in particular?
Well, now that's a problem well above my pay-grade.
The thought that worries me, is that maybe we've got the government we deserve. No matter how much money corporations pour into campaign coffers, the people are the ones with the power to vote them out. But, we don't. If the citizens of this country really wanted to change things, they could. Any attempt to change the political system has to begin by changing the mindset of the citizenry. Unfortunately, that's far harder than enacting campaign finance reform or term limits.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Let's call infringement murder since it "kills the artists' livelihood" and (hopefully) kills the RIAA.
Off with their heads!!!
thegodmovie.com - watch it
We have to show them that we can produce art of the same, or better, quality without the protections of traditional copyright. We need to show them that copyright is unnecessary or harmful. We already have a decent start on this: artists are increasingly releasing their work to be shared freely, a significant portion of the software market is dominated by GPL or BSD licensed software, and people everywhere are making and distributing content on sites like YouTube. We've not quite reached parity yet with the traditional media; but it's close.
Note that the only reason GPL works is because of copyright, though. By default, you're not allowed to use other people's code (due to copyright violation). GPL grants you the right to use certain code as long as you follow certain restrictions (e.g. that you release your own code under GPL as well).
If copyright is eliminated entirely, then GPL will "fail" in the sense that people could then take the source code posted on the internet, and use it without complying to the GPL, and there'd be no way to sue them for doing so.
(And just to show that I'm trying to clarify something here, and not just doing a strawman argument -- nor arguing with you at all, for that matter, -- I'll explicitly highlight the fact that there's another possibility that I'm not bothering to address, which is that we don't eliminate copyright altogether, but simply "fix it somehow" so that GPL still works, but everything that makes copyright sucks disappears.)
Ahem, isn't any digital format, including CD "lossy" to some extent?
No. "Lossy" here has a very specific meaning. It refers to, when compressing data, throwing away or modifying some of the data to make it more easily compressible.
I'll give several examples of "data loss" which are not lossy. Some of them may sound facetious, but my intent is really to highlight how many different points "data loss" can occur, even beyond simply using a digital format.
If someone plays a guitar into a microphone, and the microphone is crappy and "loses some data", we usually don't use the term "lossy" here, because we were not compressing data (we were recording data). If your speakers are crappy and can't reproduce the sounds of the guitar accurately, again we usually don't use the term "lossy". If your hearing is kind of crappy, and you're sitting in the same room as the guitarist, who's playing live, and you don't hear every single subtle nuance in his playing, we're losing data, but we don't use the term "lossy". If the guitarist is unskilled, and he has this concept of how the song should sound in his mind, but his fingers don't play it quite the way he imagined it, we're losing data, but we don't call it lossy.
Also note that if the original artist is composing everything digitally via software, and not using any recording equipment at all, then it's quite possible to use digital formats and have zero loss of information.
And if you have a really hardcore artist who directly creates a .mp3 file using a hex editor, then it's plausible that the resulting file contains EXACTLY the sound the artist envisioned, and so you could say that you have a "lossless mp3 recording", though most people wouldn't know what you meant by that and you'd have to explain how the file was created.
I wouldn't actually go so far, in part because I am not convinced that copyright per se is harmful. I would simply like to see copyright laws rolled back several iterations to more closely coincide with their initial implementation and original intent. The more recent revisions that extend copyright essentially indefinitely are an absolute perversion of the original compact made with the public -- i.e., that we, the people, would grant authors and other producers with *limited* monopolies, for the express purpose of encouraging them to help enrich the public domain. What we have now, instead, is little more than an egregious power grab by moneyed corporations as they seek to lay claim to every aspect of our modern culture. I propose no killing of the goose (copyright) that lays the golden egg (much of modern culture -- books, movies, music, etc.). The problem is that the goose no longer allows us to make use of that golden egg. Thus, I propose instead that we undo the mutations that have given the goose the enormous size, sharp fangs, and poisonous venom that imperil any of us mere mortals who even think of approaching that golden egg. :)
Oofda -- this gets complicated. Yes, while in theory the public has the power to revamp who gets into office, the reality is complex in the extreme. On the one hand, you have moneyed interests who get to decide the very candidates we vote for -- meaning that the elections are rigged before they even happen. Then there are the deeper issues of failing civics education and deliberate disinformation on pretty much all sides of any issue...
I agree with you here, though I might quibble with you about the "has to begin" part :). I think changing the public mindset is vital, but I'm not so sure it's necessarily the first step -- there are probably many ancillary issues that could be taken on before or in parallel to this.
Plus, by way of disclaimer, I grew up in DC, so I am naturally biased towards the cynical when it comes to "da gubmint". :-P
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I don't think I've ever seen a music torrent complete in less time than it would take me to rip a CD and grab the track listing from CDDB.
You can queue up multiple CDs to download before going to bed. You can't queue up multiple CDs to rip (unless you got multiple CD drives, or a robot arm to load the CDs for you).
Regardless, there are probably about ten people alive who have "pirated" music simply to avoid ripping it from a CD they already own.
I torrented music I already owned a couple years ago after a harddrive crash. Why didn't I have a backup of my mp3s? 'Cause I knew I could easily get it again via torrents, and in the worst case, I still got the original CDs anyway.
(Actually some of the mp3s I lost are songs I composed myself, and I didn't have a backup of those, so they're "gone forever" and I'm really kicking myself for that.)
Lessig's book lists four reasons for piracy, and how each could affect sales. It's an excellent read.
I googled for it and it's at http://www.sslug.dk/~chlor/lessig/freeculture/ but it's kinda long. Can you list what the 4 reasons are, or at least on which of the 200 pages we can find those 4 reasons?
GP likely said "90 years" without looking it up; it's 70 years after the author's death. However, I think you're thinking of corporate-produced material, which is generally 120 years after original creation.
There's a big table here that explains all of the various possibilities:
http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/public_domain/
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The solution is to hack a firmware update that makes printers LIKE to share music!
"It helps me print."
Singularity, here we come!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It's been a while since I read it, so I drug it out again and looked. It's chapter five, and I misspoke from bad memory; it's four types of file sharing rather than types of piracy, although 3 of the 4 are in fact copyright infringements. The four reasons for file sharing:
1. To get copyrighted content without paying for it
2. To sample content with the aim of buying if it is good
3. To get content that is no longer available commercially
4. To get public domain works, or works whose sharing is sanctioned by the copyright owner.
He points out that under the law, only the fourth is legal, yet only the first is harmful and the second is actually helpful.
Free Martian Whores!
While it is true as you say that without copyright law the GPL would fail, without copyright law the GPL would not be needed.
To give an example, suppose there was no copyright law, and Microsoft decided to use modified GPL code in their next product, without distributing the source. OK, we would not have the source BUT they would have no way to stop us dissassembling, decompiling, reverse engineering to our hearts content, and once we had source that did whatever their modifications did, we would be able to distribute it to our hearts content.
I neglect the possible effects of patents and trademarks of course. But then, my personal opinion is that software patents are actually completely invalid anyway.
Fraud is not theft. Murder is not theft. Rape is not theft. Most things that are illegal are not theft. Calling copyright infringement "theft" is just stupid.
Well you could say fraud is theft of confidence, murder is theft of life, rape is theft of consentual sex. =P
So repeating the same semantic crap is supposed to make it different. At some level, all of those things are theft. Rape is theft of consent, murder is theft of lifespan, fraud, usually results in loss of money at the most loss of confidence. All involve a loss. Tell me how any other illegal thing can not be considered a loss of some sort.
Why bother
and conversely no proof that creativity has been harmed. It is impossible to prove a negative. I propose that it has at least fostered very creative semantic arguments designed to justify breaking copyright law and making oneself feel good about it.
Why bother
Analogue recordings are arguably also "lossy" in some respects. Dynamic range on a record (theoretically) won't nearly match the range of a CD. Thus arguably while you have a lossless waveform with an analogue recording, you still have more noise from (what is effectively) quantization.
Of course, with the trends in music, this is effectively moot (what music uses the ~60dB of dynamic range on a record, let alone the 96dB on a CD). Still, there really is no such thing as completely "lossless" music.
Are you sure? What evidence do you have to back this assertion?
Nathan's blog
CD-ROM drives and MP3 software are *NOT* platform locked. You can use them on any platform with sufficient hardware. You don't have to run a closed source proprietary operating system to use a CD-ROM drive or play MP3s; this is not the case with iTunes.
Nathan's blog
"lossy" when referring to an audio recording doesn't refer to the fact that the media itself will not degrade, it refers to the fact that the waveform as stored/reproduced does not perfectly record the waveform as originally played.
...
You are literally losing some of the information in the waveform because you have to throw it away as a necessary step in saving the data on a computer
This was true in the eighties. Today the 'waveform' is mostly, or exclusively, digital from the start, depending on the artist of course. A major part of the music I listen to at the moment has never existed as a waveform at any point, until I actually play it back.
You're also incorrect in saying that all analogue formats are necessarily lossy. There are perfectly lossless methods of recording sound that have been around as long as recording has been around.
I'm not really sure what you're getting at here. If any electronics were involved, it's lossy by default since there will be added noise, thermal or others. And I don't think you are seriously claiming that a mechanical device for recording onto a wax cylinder will accurately reproduce the full signal either, for any useful range of frequencies. My physics is a bit rusty but I suppose mechanical friction will introduce noise in the process as much as electrical resistance.
c++;
The sibling posters have made excellent responses to you already, but I'm going to point out another aspect.
Look at any supply and demand curve and you will see that when supply becomes infinite that price drops to 0 regardless of demand. In the digital age making copies can be done for such trivial cost and by anyone so easily that supply of a recorded song is infinite for all intents and purposes. Economically smart musicians will realize this, and the economically dumb ones should hire economically smart managers that would realize this. You sell the scarcity, not the infinite good. Every artist has some kind of scarcity they can sell. It could be concerts, t-shirts, posters, etc. But it could even just be access to the musician. This has been done by small-time artists (e.g., Corey Smith) as well as big-name artists (e.g., Trent Reznor).
If a musician is finding that it isn't worth creating music because of financial reasons, it could be that their music has no value to anyone(i.e., it sucks) or that people who would value it can't find them. Free music can help to fix the latter. No business model, no amount of copyrights, no amount of DRM, no amount of copy-protection is going to fix the former.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!