Slashdot Mirror
Sony CEO Proposes "Guardrails For the Internet"
testadicazzo writes "Micheal Lynton, the guy who said 'I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet. Period.' has posted an editorial at the Huffington Post titled Guardrails for the Internet, in which he defends his comment, and suggests that just as the interstate system needs guardrails, so too does the information superhighway. The following is pretty indicative of the article: 'Internet users have become used to getting things when they want it and how they want it, and those of us in the entertainment business want to meet that kind of demand as efficiently and effectively as possible. But what has happened online is that if it is 'beyond store hours' and the shop is closed, a lot of people just smash the window and steal what they want. Freedom without restraint is chaos, and if we don't figure out some way to prevent online chaos, the quantity, quality and availability of the kinds of entertainment, literature, art and scholarship we need to have a healthy, vibrant culture will suffer.'"
Just saying.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"Guard Rails" sounds like "Insurance for Commerce". Culture is much more than what you can sell.
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
After this and his other comment, I have decided to not buy anything Sony from now on. A healthy, vibrant culture comes from having low barriers of entry to public discourse, not from having a monopoly on the public discourse held by the rich. Why can't these elitist motherfuckers just die already?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
the cat's out the bag dude. you're either too late, or your business model is fucked.
move along, nothing to see here...
I'm glad people are stealing your shit, Sony.
Either let us pay for DRM-Free content, or watch us steal it.
Numa Numa guy
"Internet users have become used to getting things when they want it and how they want it"
Not at all like rich CEOs, no.
Hitler...
Ok, done. Now can we just stop giving this dipshit publicity?
I am not stubborn. I am right!
If you can't provide what we want, someone else will. Capitalism fills these niches.
Wolverine was leaked. Maybe it did reduce its potential sales, but it certainly didn't make it impossible to sell tickets for it. The movie industry seems to be able to survive pretty well. Hell, Amazon seems to be doing okay with its mp3 store, even though it's easy to get everything they sell for free.
I'm happy for regulation to exist that enables you to have a profitable business providing things that consumers need. But I'm only willing to allow that much. We have no obligation to maximise your potential profits.
Great example of why sony hasn't been doing well. As opposed to changing or modifying their business model to meet the demand "after store hours" the customer should change for sony, not sony for the customer.
Not only has that horse bolted from the stable already, but it is now married with 10-year old kids. Trying to stop it now will work about as well as prohibition did back in the 20's, which was ill-founded for the same reason: EVERYONE was already doing the thing you're wanting to make illegal!
stuff |
What he doesn't seem to understand is the little shop that is the internet is open 24 hours.
Only on bridges and other places where they are specifically needed to protect the well-being of the motorists. The internet already has these; they're called firewalls.
The RIAA and MPAA, who smash our home windows and front doors to come and riffle through our things looking for evidence that we're all bandits out to rob them blind so they can sue us for hundreds of thousands the moment they find a single downloaded song. Oh, the irony.
This request for censorship comes from the guys that sold malware infected CDs to unsuspecting customers. (And passed the blame to someone else.) I wonder how they avoided criminal prosecution...
extern warranty;
main()
{
(void)warranty;
}
No. Freedom without restraint means there's nothing stopping you from murdering me. By the same token, it means there is nothing to stop me from murdering you. Since you consider being murdered a bad outcome, the steps you'll take to reduce the likelihood of it would restrict your freedom - a lot more than having cops who'll arrest you if you murder me.
It's illegal to break into Sony's Web site. It's illegal to copy their material. But I don't recall any law giving potential theft victims a pre-emptive right to search vehicles for stolen goods. If Sony's CEO wants that, he's allowed to wish for it.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
He published in the huffandpuffington post. Are you all that surprised it, like everything else on that site, is just mindless garbage?
I mean, seriously. I have seen not ONE good article there except the stuff they plagiarize. It seems to be a site that exists solely to push stupidity.
For example:
And my point is this: the major content businesses of the world and the most talented creators of that content -- music, newspapers, movies and books -- have all been seriously harmed by the Internet.
Obviously what he really means is that the Internet is stopping the gatekeepers from controlling who can get published. There are more people publishing their own books independently - rather than having to go through, say, Del Rey - than ever before. The comic pages of the newspaper have been replaced by webcomics but that's not necessarily a bad thing either - either you adapt, like Scott Adams, or you don't and you perish.
The Internet has brought people with no regard for the intellectual property of others together with a technology that allows them to easily steal that property and sell or give it away to everyone, with little fear of being caught or prosecuted.
He doesn't give a shit about "theft." He hates the idea of the Internet because it removes the need to keep his dumb ass as the distribution "gatekeeper" and skim money off of the hard work of others.
Prior to bittorrent, there was Samba sharing as enabled by several crawler-search setups. Prior to those, there was Napster. Prior to those, there were a zillion sites running FTP (ratio or otherwise). Prior to "the internet", there were BBS'es all over. Prior to that, there was sneakernet.
Go back ~100 years, and dumbshits like this Sony retard were "protesting" and trying to lobby Congress to forbid municipalities from keeping lending libraries (you know, the public library system we all have the right to use for free) because it would "impede sales if people could simply borrow the book instead."
Internet users have become used to getting things when they want it and how they want it
Natural effect of Capitalism. If Sony's CEO would rather live in a Communist economy, I heard Cuba is still accepting immigrants. He might have to take a cut in salary and status, though.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Original poster nickname is "testadicazzo", which in Italian means "dickhead".
Michael, is that you?
This has no relevance to online commerce, "store hours" do not apply that is the whole point of digital content delivery...
I think he's referring to the arbitrary and often ridiculous restrictions companies like Sony have placed on digital distribution in the last decade. Things like different release dates in different countries, DVD region codes, DRM restrictions, malicious software, unavailability of single music tracks and legal downloads. Basically, the things Sony did to squeeze a few extra dollars out of their customers actually pissed off customers. Big surprise.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
If you sent this guy back to 1999 with all the knowledge of the last 10 years at his disposal - I think he still screws it up and history repeats itself in terms of how the market plays out. This is a guy who cannot and will not change. The industry could have OWNED online distribution but instead decided to put its head and the sand now it deals with its gatekeeper and arbiter, Apple. Good job there sparky.
I like that metaphor. Especially because of the ultimate fate of such overtly greedy monarchies has been well documented throughout history :)
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
the internet has changed the world and people are no longer willing to pay the high prices for the crap that they are trying to deliver.
The implication that the internet could somehow destroy art really just exposes how out of touch with reality he is.
"That word, you keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means."
Labels, studios, newspapers, and book publishers are not "creators of content".
The creators of the content are actors, artists, composers, directors, writers, journalists... not the companies that distribute that content. The Internet makes distribution easier and cheaper, so of course it's going to cut into the business of less efficient distributors. That's going to happen no matter what guard-rails you put on the information superhighway.
Freedom without restraint is chaos, and if we don't figure out some way to prevent online chaos, the quantity, quality and availability of the kinds of entertainment, literature, art and scholarship we need to have a healthy, vibrant culture will suffer.'"
Yes I always felt that what my freedom has been lacking is a Person or group of semi-elected officials filtering what information and data I am allowed to access. I feel that the view spewed forth by the Article author is one that believes that some form of "culture" or "art" is better than other forms; and that a group within the state or economic system should filter and decide what is allowed and what isn't. I understand the fear and panic some that might come when you realize that your current distribution model for certain products is quickly going the way of the Dodo. But certain things are inevitable.
There is no doubt, or at least I hope, that there will arise a new system that will allow people to, in some way shape or form, pay those that produce literature, music or other forms of entertainment or art. But even so I expect those with a real interest in such to continue creating. If for nothing else then for the fact that most bands make most of their money of gigs and concerts (and some from merchandise). And I guarantee that regardless of how easy or how cheap it is to download; people want to see bands they like LIVE. And people don't mind paying for the privilege. However this is money that goes almost directly to the band (in many cases) and the Distributors don't get to leech of a significant cut like they do with record sales.
My point I guess is that some things will change, through technology and social changes, fighting them will only push people harder and further into groups that oppose an insistence upon holding on to ageing distribution models. As many bring in to these debates; Musicians are almost to a man holding their tongue in the arguments; simply because there are very few among them that want to sue or otherwise antagonize their own fans. There might be fans that download songs illegally; but if that person later goes to one of their concerts, buys one of their shirts, or even buy their albums when the person in question have the economic capacity to do so; then it is a net profit for the band. Even if it might be appear like a loss to their record label.
The Long Now Foundation
This idiot seems to be a Nazi with his calls for censorship and so on. He acts like there is some terrible danger, yet copyright infringement is already illegal under present laws and nothing more needs to be done. I think what he is rally concerned about is that people can now publish their own music, art, literature etc, independantly, without having to go through large corporations who have to approve their work and control it. The idea that people can express themselves independantly scares them and they want the internet to be like every other medium, they control, that is filled with the same corporate controlled crap that fills the other mediums, basically an online version of MTV, the crappy noise that passes for music today and so on cooked up by recording company marketing departments and computer processed and synthesized that could make any bad singer sound like Elvis.
The biggest difference between the real "guard rails" on highways and the proposed ones on the internet is maybe that the real ones serve me, the user of the road, to guard me and to keep me safe.
I can't see how such "internet guard rails" would serve me. I could well see how they could put me in a straightjacket and limit my freedom.
If anything, "speed bump" would be the suitable analogy. Wonder why he didn't choose speed bumps. Maybe because they are as popular amongst motorists as those internet speed bumps would be amongst internet users? But even the (real) speed bumps serve a sensible purpose. You have to slow down and thus fewer accidents occur, and those that occur are less severe.
We don't put them on highways for very logical reasons, though. We put them where pedestrians are crossing the road. Kinda like, say, laws concerning the internet that outlaw pyramid schemes and the like?
But last time I checked there were little if any laws, regulations or guards on roads that protect trucks from pedestrians or convertibles. Maybe because trucks hardly need protection from those.
Quite the other way 'round...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
just as the interstate system needs guardrails, so too does the information superhighway.
Yes, there should be laws protecting the common people on the internet from abuses by large corporations like RIAA backer and rootkit maker Sony, "trusted computing" Microsoft, and anyone else who buys judges and politicians or wants to take rights away from people in an underhanded way via the internet.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
A craftsman makes 4 wooden masks. Someone takes one without paying for it. The craftsman now has 3 and someone has stolen 1. This is theft.
A craftsman makes 4 wooden masks. Someone makes an identical mask. The craftsman still has 4 masks. This is not theft as the craftsman didn't lose anything.
I don't care how hard they try, you cannot redefine theft. As a wise man once said, "I DO NOT BELIEVE IN IMAGINARY PROPERTY."
The Internet exposed a simple fact is all. Information is not a product. So laws that for centuries relied on the concept of phsyical assets are scrambling to catch up. industries built on that are trying to catch up.
The whole concept of copyright law was built, for centuries, that copying something had an implied labor cost, it took some measure of effort to copy. Now with the digital age, the Internet has exposed a series of seriously flawed assumptions on how fast information ages.
Dear Sony, we do not need safty rails on the Internet. It is like space (hence we call it cyberspace) in which it is nearly an infinite space with no center, up, or down. You can't "fall off" the edge. Like it or not, this is now the 21st Century and the last 30,000 years of recorded history is not much use in charting a course into the 21st century.
Relgion must adapt
Science must adapt
Business must adapt
Government must adapt
Cultures must adapt
People must adapt
Litigating a false nostalgia of how thigs "should be" based on how "things were" is irrelivant.
The 21st century is now and we need to move forward. The Internet is not a series of tubes, it is what it is, the Internet. It is not analagous to a phone network, a highway system, or a giant Rube Golberg machine. It a a complex collection of communication protocols and presentation layers most easly conceptualized by the phrase:
"Please Do Not Tip Strippers Poorly Again"
(P)hysical = The hardware that connects stuff
(D)ata Link = How do get stuff from hardware A to B
(N)etwork = Logical segmenting of 1 network from another
(T)ransport = How do we get stuff reliably from A to B, especially across more then 1 network
(S)ession = how can we tell we are working with A and B
(P)resentation = how do we move data from A to B
(A)pplication = What tools do we use to move data from A to B
While the descriptions are simplistic they should be sufficent in understanding what the "Internet" is, a very larger interconnected network of computers that operates largly based on that model listed above.
The Internet is PING, ARP, TCP, UDP, HTTP, XML, XVID, GIF, PNG, AVI, FLAC, FLASH, IRC, NTP, and so on and so on interoperating with one another to present information from A to B.
If I must dumb it down, then I offer this:
"To describe the Internet I can offer this: it is the canvas by which people communicate with, not only wth a wide variety of paints, but all the colors each paint makes available." - Ken P.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
"testa di cazzo" in Italian roughly means "asshole".
Literally: a person whose head is a dick, or in other words one who uses his dick to think instead of his head.
"Once upon a time, if you wanted to see a show, you had to watch people perform it. Now that these talking films are out there, there's gonna be a whole lotta actors and actresses outa work. Why, one performance of a show could be shown to millions of people in just a single weekend! No nuance between performances, just the exact same thing, copied over and over. Plus, that poster would have known it's supposed to be 'cue', not 'queue', if only the movies hadn't deprived him of experiencing the creative art of live theater!"
- Michael Lynton's Grandfather, who "never saw anything good having come from mass-produced motion pictures".
I don't understand this guy, he's complaining that people are making it really really obvious what they'd like to buy. If I were running a company, I would quit complaining and sell it already!
People don't want DVDs with copy protection notices, and DRM and region coding? Don't sell them! Sell DRM free downloads for a sensible price - that is after all what people are saying they want!
Yeah, but we're not talking about murder here. He's complaining that consumers want the products on fair terms, and this guy is basically complaining, "the free market is a chaos which doesn't allow us to guarantee that we get to sell whatever products we want on the terms we want them."
The restraint we're talking about here isn't like, "You can say whatever you want, just so long as you don't kill me." It's more like, "You can have the car in any color you like, just so long as you like black."
I respect Sony for bringing future technology to the masses. I owned several Vaio's and they were worth every penny I paid for them. Their hardware/electronics division are sort of the AAPL of Japan. However, I hope their imaginary property division goes bankrupt as fast as Universal, EMI, and all the other leeches. Artists can sell straight to the customers, no need to give out 70% of their profits to bunch of greedy MBAs.
We were here first, dammit.
(And your track record precedes you, thief.)
I can see the fnords!
I've been wondering the same for ages.
Take an immigrant from Scotland selling Haggis. You know, those delightful dishes made of liver, heart and other selected throwaway parts of sheep, seasoned in a blend of secret spices, kept secret to protect the guilty. He's convinced that this is the best dish ever. And he is complaining without end about those burger joints next door that steal his customers.
Fortunately, nobody could understand him through his accent, so we were spared with the big burger chain crackdown and today we don't have to resort to eating nothing. Because nothing beats haggis. Read that however you like...
DRMified content is the same. Their argument is that everyone would buy it if it wasn't for those pesky places where you can get it without (i.e. the way you want it). No. We wouldn't. Believe it or not, content is not like food, water, light or air. We don't need it.
YOU need US. Not the other way 'round.
Instead of complaining that those pesky customers don't like your product and demand that the customer has to change his tastes, produce what he likes and he will gladly buy it.
It's not "pirating is communism". Communism, actually, is producing what you deem "right" and expecting your customer to buy it because you deprive him from any alternatives. Ask anyone who grew up in the "Soviet states".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Have a little empathy. What we have is a group of rich, powerful and intelligent people who imagine a changed future in which their personal fortunes may not grow as fast as they do currently. Realizing that an argument like "The Internet is bad because I may not be as wealthy as I'm used to" is not a very persuasive they modify the argument to be: ""The Internet is bad because it means the END of CIVILIZATION as we know it" or something similar.
As far as I can tell there is fortunately hardly any correlation between creativity and monetary rewards. Great works of art, literature, music etc are far more often created by the impecunious than the wealthy.
Ok, let's keep the car-analogy meme going here...it seems that this joker's viewpoint is a little more like this:
You can have this car in any color you want, as long as it's black. Oh, and paint, brushes, spray guns and air compressors are now illegal, and if we suspect you may be inclined to change your car's color, we can preemptively search for and seize afrementioned equipment which surely is only useful for committing unauthorised car recoloring.
Or something...
the idea that we need a corporate filter on our culture is a false assumption
actually, you did need a corporate filter on our culture... before the internet, when vinyl and cassette tape were our distribution options
now artists and fans can reach each other directly
so now the corporation is looking forlorn and feeling insecure, and its shills (this retarded author) are attempting to justify and extend its existence artificially
the job of the average media company right now is simple: just die already
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you really believed that piracy was no worse with sneakernet than it is now, you'd be too stupid to have learned to type.
Flamebait aside, you apparently have no clue what you are talking about.
**AAs consider giving your friend a CD/DVD/etc to be also a theft. And in the time of sneakernet, that was all over the place. Decade ago, probably half of my CD collection was constantly in other hands. And **AAs consistently consider that to be a "theft" too. Internet changed only one thing: most of my CD collection now is buried below thick layer of dust as MP3/OGG/AAC are exchanged by all possible means. (And I'd say external hard drives play not so little role in friend-to-friend (sneakernet's analogue of P2P) content exchange even now.)
Internet or sneakernet, human nature hasn't changed by a bit: if we enjoy something, we want to share that with others. And copyright laws cannot change that.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
"On what basis does he claim that newspapers have been harmed"
Its the same thinking as Rupert Murdoch, i.e. "News Corp will charge for newspaper websites, says Rupert Murdoch"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/07/rupert-murdoch-charging-websites
Rupert Murdoch and this Sony CEO are the same type of person. People like them don't get to become high up in corporations without being power seeking control freaks. Their ruthless arrogant self serving behavior provides them with a competitive advantage which allows them to fight their way high up the corporate hierarchical power tree structures to gain power over others. This is why their kind of personality type feature so prominently in very competitive environments like business and politics.
So its no wonder the people at the top of these corporations think in terms of how to apply pressure to control others. They do that in their jobs to stay at the top so its no surprise they apply that same kind of thinking to the Internet.
For so many decades these control freak kind of people ruled over the old school media to control what people could see and when they could see it and for how much. These control freaks can't cope with a new open world where people can choose what they want to see and when they want to see it and even see it for free. Its an alien world to the control freaks. They want to be in power, to control others, they don't want open sharing of information.
The new and media companies are not going to die. Its simply evolving into media outlets that provide content that attract like minded people around open information that appeals to this group of people. The companies that work like this will gain advertising and other incomes like in some cases merchandising and cross promotional incomes etc.. while the old control freak media companies will die out as they fail to control what people can see and do.
The sooner the better.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
+1 Insightful.
You've hit it spot-on. The rich aren't going to be getting richer quite as fast as they used to, and they're upset about it. And of course you know the golden rule, "he who has the gold, makes the rules."
Re: The Bible, you can see such a scaminario right now.
Just look at the two most recent large-scale cults in existence: Latter-Day Saints and Scientology.
LDS gives away their book. For free. To ANYONE who wants one, two, three, whatever. Yeah, they're kooks and irrepressibly gullible, but once you get past that, they are actually usually pretty good people - strong morality, strong family bonds, strong ethical sense, hyper-polite. If I were looking for a sales force I'd hire them in a heartbeat. Yeah, their men spend 2-3 years on "mission" trying to peddle their religion to others - but if you can walk away from a job like that, from KNOWING you will have doors slammed in your face or worse, you can sell anything. Yes, when you get closer to their central enclave in Utah, they get downright clannish and antisocial towards anyone who won't be converted after repeat attempts. Yes, I would describe their system as ultimately a "Cult." But they're a cult I can put up with and they don't spend their time trying to hide their doctrine, as opposed to our next exhibit...
The Cult of Scientology. What you have here is essentially a giant ponzi scheme that rolled a cross in the door and put collars on the "clergy" (whoops that's "auditors") in order to dodge the law. Scientology is famous for charging you into intense debt just to learn the "religious doctrine", and launching lawsuits and worse at anyone who exposes them. Hell, they even have an official policy for ordering a murder. Be very careful if you ever hear one of them mention R2-45: that's their newspeak for "murder someone", coming from the idea of shooting someone twice (R2) with a .45-caliber gun.
If you're in the Cult, the only way you keep your skin intact is either to (a) become a high ranking member (top level of the ponzi scheme), (b) an indentured slave of the Cult, or (c) be a rich celebrity (Tom Cruise, Greta Van Susteren, etc) who functions as a "recruiter" for the Cult and gets the "services" of the Cult for free.
As someone pointed out in the last article about this asshat, he used to be the CEO of AOL Europe
The point is exactly right. Does anyone honestly believe XKCD would be published in any major newspaper? Yet look at how far it's going as a webcomic.
And my point is this: the major content businesses of the world and the most talented creators of that content -- music, newspapers, movies and books -- have all been seriously harmed by the Internet.
It's right there. There's the proof. Which is first on his list? The *IAAs, not the creators. Then to solidify Moryath's point, he goes on and lists newspapers. Newspapers are not being hurt by piracy. Newspapers lost the battle in the 90's when they couldn't get their act together, just like how the *IAAs are suffering now because of clowns like this CEO.
The creators can do just fine without the businesses. Are you telling me you actually think XKCD or Penny Arcade could exist without the internet? Or that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah becomes an international success without it (I can go to a karaoke place in BFE Japan and sing their songs and I can count the number of westerners on one hand there)? Or that the Simpsons are parodying OK Go - Here It Goes Again without the internet? Does Serenity get made without the internet? Creators will be perfectly ok with the internet, the monkeys on their back, however, are up shit creek without a canoe.
Copyright is a temporary ceding of our right to our culture to be an incentive to encourage people to produce. The businesses, afraid of losing their free money, panicked and extended it to outrageous lengths and the people rightly revolted. The problem with intellectual property is that it's also our culture. It's who were are, it's how we talk to each other. But with the stranglehold that these leaches have on it, we're losing it.
And I can't beat you with that, I'll fall back on, "the more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
You're right. My point was that "freedom without restraint is no freedom at all" is incorrect. Restraint is necessary to preserve freedom in the long run.
The restraint level necessary to preserve Sony in the long run under this kind of management, though, would give us Stalin style freedom.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
I think the most interesting thing is that he doesn't actually comprehend what he himself is saying:
Internet users have become used to getting things when they want it and how they want it, and those of us in the entertainment business want to meet that kind of demand as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Okay so far...
But what has happened online is that if it is 'beyond store hours' and the shop is closed, a lot of people just smash the window and steal what they want.
Yes, what you are saying there is "we realize that to compete on the Internet where there is a lot of choice available to potential customers we need to meet their expectations for service, pricing, experience, and so forth. If we don't they may end up going elsewhere, and that's a huge problem for us!".
Perhaps if all the big players had spent as much time investing in the internet as they had fighting it in past they would be in less of a predicament.
I want service on my terms at a reasonable price without abuse of our relationship through the likes of DRM. If you can't even come close to my terms then we don't do business. It works that way in the real world, why do you think it should work differently online? Too often studios are so threatened by piracy that they impose such abhorrent terms on potential customers that nobody wants to be an actual customer. It's a self fulfilling prophecy perpetuated by the studios themselves.
Why can't I download FLAC from the majority of online stores for the same price I can download an MP3, or even at all? Why can't I download a movie in high quality without DRM? We both know it's technically possible, we both already know I can get the content elsewhere, and so far as the studios refuse to cater to what I'm looking for at a reasonable price realistically they can't expect anything other than what they're seeing.
Not censorship.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
"the free market is a chaos which doesn't allow us to guarantee that we get to sell whatever products we want on the terms we want them."
Actually what he complains about is that they want to make out of the Internet a market, something isn't foreseen by the it's creators.
The problem though isn't on side of users, as those were big labels and publishers who failed to agree on common DRM. As analyst have said from the beginning, marking part of Internet as proprietary market would have worked, but only if it was made on the same principle as Internet itself.
Compare DRM to TCP/IP and HTTP. While Internet creators cemented that TCP/IP and HTTP are free for everybody to implement and use, DRMs remains largely proprietary, with many strings attached. Worse: the DRM is heavily fragmented, since **AA also try to squeeze out of every deal every penny they can. Obviously different business deals lead to different DRMs. With iTunes I presume Apple wanted to set an example, yet labels decided to experiment with different subscription models, thus perpetuating DRM fragmentation.
P.S. To the murder analogy. The laws are playing precisely the role of demarcation: they tell what is right and what is wrong. But not only that: they also say where it is right or wrong. If you go into desert or wilderness where there is no law, then a murder might be pretty "lawful," as there are no laws in force there. Well-implemented DRM might have played the role of state borders. Yet, actual situation is that you can't move from one "DRM state" to another without being literally reborn.
Please... as someone that grew up in a "Soviet state" I perfectly know what Communism should have been... and what we had was not Communism. A part from this (old, re-hashed, western propaganda/ignorance) mistake, I agree with what you said. But please drop the "Communism = Soviet Dictatorship" examples... really.
Well if you want to get that far into the car analogy, let's assume that the only reason he's selling cars is that we (the people) have granted him an exclusive license to sell cars, and we did this expressly for the purpose of encouraging the progress of car manufacturing. And if we (the people) ever decided to stop granting that license, it would mean free cars for everyone, but reduce the incentive to produce new car models.
Or something...
This makes no sense because the internet is not a dumptruck it's a series of tubes. How are you going to fit guardrails inside of a tube?
By extending copyright forever then we'll talk. Until then STFU.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I would say less 'speed bump' and more 'toll booth'. These companies are less interested in protecting anyone, including the artists that they allegedly server, and more interested in extorting as much money out of everyone as they can for as long as possible. Given the extension of copyright laws (and the likely extension they'll see again.) over the years it's as though they've started erecting the toll booths on public roads as well.
It is rare when the entirety of Slashdot is united behind a single message, and so I feel no need to elaborate further on that which should be obvious. But I will anyway, because I feel like I've got another angle on this thing. . .
Micheal Lynton is a million-dollar corporate tool who probably really, honestly for-real sees the world in black & white while everybody else is getting along just fine in full color. That we get.
Here's the new bit. . .
Joss Whedon, had he not screwed up the last episode of Doctor Horrible (thus setting back direct-to-internet-television-by-actual-paid-professionals about, oh, 5 years), showed us a glimpse of the future. Every media outlet in the West which had anything to do with pop culture TV was singing the praises of that little project. But while the world was going electric with excitement for two days, a sad ending on the third threw a bucket of cold water on the whole parade, so not a peep from big media was to be heard again and all the little studio execs pulled their heads back into their little shells. Or saw their shadows perhaps. . .
All of which is to say that awesome content will continue to exist, and for a while it will probably suck waaaaay less than the current fare, because only daring people with imagination will have the gonads to go West.
I one third wonder if Dollhouse was renewed just to keep Joss where they could keep him under thumb. Doc Horrible, even in all its un-wisdom, made enough money to pay the crew and turn a profit. Imagine if it hadn't sucked at the end? We'd be up to our necks in direct to Web content right about now. Kind of like George Lucas and his weird obsession with selling those silly three-inch plastic dolls that nobody could understand until he founded an empire on the things.
-FL
If we push aside the whole copyright question temporarily, as just a question as it is, there's an even more disturbing element I find to the argument this person and so many others associated with the large media companies, enforcers and copyright lobbyists espouse.
As the internet has developed and evolved, I'd wager all of us Slashdot readers have witnessed and recognised its potential to revolutionise countless aspects of humanity. The Internet provides unique and fundamentally different ways to provide information in all kinds of forms to individuals, often at incredibly rapid speeds, for little to no cost, with a very high degree of accessibility that is only going to improve as Internet connections permeate all aspects of society everywhere around the globe, and consequently, costs further decrease as it becomes even more of a basic and fundamental commodity. The result being that human knowledge and culture is now more readily available and in vaster quantities than at any time in our history.
The extreme copyright and intellectual property protectionism that these people espouse, and the ideas to realise and enforce them that they inevitably generate, if ever implemented, I think would fundamentally alter the way the Internet functions and significantly damage its potential to enrich mankind and further develop. The results of implementing such ideas would turn the Internet in some ways into nothing more than an evolution of TV/Radio/other forms of "content delivery" that the media companies are so familiar with, and so easily able to control. The result would be disastrous for the continuing development of the internet, and devastating in terms of negating the benefits, both short-term and long term, that it currently is and is likely to further provide in the future. The copyright lobby may purely be interested in keeping their pockets lined, but if their ideas were used, they'd have far-reaching consequences across the Internet that would likely spread outside the domain of standard media. The copyright agenda is just how this could happen, but the result would be far greater than the sum of its parts.
I know this post likely comes across as dramatic, but I've grown up on the Internet and witnessed from a young age its potential, and the concepts thrown-about and in some cases being used right now (see: France, etc..) terrify me in their potential ramifications.
Lyntons' company, "Sony Pictures Entertainment" was created when Sony purchased Columbia Pictures. The guy that started and ran Columbia, Harry Cohn, was famous for saying "Give the public what they want and they'll come out for it."
It appears that Lynton actually knows what his customers want - he just chooses to ignore them, at his company's peril, even as other companies such as Apple have clearly shown the way.
The greatest artists of the past, Mozart, Bach, Shakespeare, worked for a pittance comapred to what artists make nowadays.
Yes and no. Yes, they worked for a pittance, because the only way an artist could survive then was to use his craft for the benefit or enjoyment of his patron. But the majority of artists in our age (unless they manage to hit an uncommon seam of luck) have to find other means to feed themselves and their families.
Many current artists make ends meet by using their talents either under corporate sponsorship or (more directly and lucratively) in the advertising industry. I don't think we can truly draw much of a distinction between the environments of most modern artists from that of Johann Sebastian. (Though for my own part, if I were forced to make a choice, I would have to say there has never been a musician whose stature equals that of JSB.)
I'm pretty certain that most of the crazies will still be crazies whether or not they're able to find a religious excuse to rationalise it.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Is just another form of oppression.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Fuck you.
Read radical news here
QED, the ideal form of any given economic system cannot survive contact with reality.
GP poster renders moot OP's silly argument about soviet != communism, and your post is true--- and also is apropos of nothing anyone claimed. Good job!
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I disagree. I think both iTunes and the experiences of Radiohead and Trent Reznor disprove this statement.
I think this article sums it up reasonably well: "The Great Apathetic Revolution". In summary, people will do whatever is easiest as long as it isn't absolutely insanely expensive. iTunes makes it easy to pay $0.99/track, so people do that. It's easier than finding what they want on the torrent sites. It's also easier than finding and buying the album that has the song they want, which is why Sony gets so jihaddy at them.
This is true. It isn't fair, but it's less unfair than it used to be: It's easier for a poor person to become clever than to become rich. The Digital Divide is self-imposed to a larger degree than previous divides have been.
How can you use my intestines as a gift? -Actual Hong Kong subtitle.
What the fuck is "a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet" doing on the internet in the first place, and how can "a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet" think that the internet "had a transformative impact on our culture and holds enormous potential to improve the prospects of humanity, and in many instances already has." Isn't improving the prospects of humanity a good thing?
"ow many people will be as motivated to write a book or a song, or make a movie if they know it is going to be immediately stolen from them and offered to the world with no compensation whatsoever?" I would. Imagine a world where only people who have a real message go out and say something. Where people who don't give a shit about their message, don't utter it. Wouldn't that be great?
"if we don't figure out some way to prevent online chaos, the quantity, quality and availability of the kinds of entertainment, literature, art and scholarship we need to have a healthy, vibrant culture will suffer." This dude needs to visit an image board. Even if quantity suffers; there's already more material coming out each second then any one person could possibly experience in an hour. What about quality? Is that people will copy it really a reason to adher a lower standard? Also; who defines `quality'. According to my standards; the `quality' of TV has been staggering downwards even before anyone not an university had a connection capable of reasonably downloading video content, or the ability to record it.
"But I also want their future to be filled with the kind of music and books and films and other creative sparks that have enlivened my life and our culture through the years." sounds like a good reason to download it from the internet. Music by pretty much any band which has not made it to #1 in the charts multiple times cannot be found in the stores any more. The same counts for music. And good luck finding books from that age as well.
As long as there is freely modifiable software (read GNU/Linux) and the internet, no-one will ever be able to stop 'illegal' file sharing. No matter what measures are taken to protect digital content, someone will always be able to hack it through reverse engineering and release the hack into the wild. bits and bytes will always be able to be copied in some way or another, as a perfect replica of the original. The *only* way I see this being stopped is if everyone on the planet were forced to use an OS and software and hardware that are completely locked down and ultra-controlled by a corporation or government: It's never going to happen so content producers need to accept this and move on to another business model.
Organisations like this are living in the pre-internet era where solid tangible goods could either not be copied or it required specialised manufacturing processes that the general public could not afford, to produce a replica of the original object.
Now most media (books music film etc) is code. That they think they can stop a piece of such content being copied is laughable, but they can maybe create business mechanisms to control production and distribution processes that in some way hinder pirating such that it makes it tedious for the public to copy the content. Or they could just create a business model where they seel content online for a reasonable price and people would probably pay for it if it was easier to get it at an official publisher than a pirate (think better download speeds at the publisher site).
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
How much do artists, say songwriters for example, actually get paid out of the total revenue for distribution of their CDs? How much to the recording companies get?
I think if it wasn't for the Internet, and for all of this 'theft' and piracy, these artists wouldn't be as widely known. Musicians can still tour around the world doing live concerts to make money. I'm sure there are thousands of bands, songwriters, movie directors out there that a lot of us know nothing about. If we happen to see their stuff on the Internet and download (or "steal") it, we may find we like it a lot and want to go see them live, or want to go buy an official branded CD or DVD.
All this piracy and "stealing" isn't preventing people from purchasing music or movies. If anything, it's exposing more people to the content and potentially increasing the number of people who will buy. The ones that don't buy probably wouldn't have bought the content in the first place.
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
But, without standards of commerce and more action against piracy, the intellectual property of humankind will be subject to infinite exploitation on the Internet.
But isn't that just it? Copyright is there to encourage new works for everyone to exploit infinitely, modulus a formerly moderate incentive at the frontend to kick start the process. It's not there to line the pockets of gatekeepers. The gatekeepers are a side effect, and increasingly irrelevant. No sense encouraging them further.
Ironic that this moron is fromSony - The most schizophrenic company ever! Let's see, they make hardwrae for copying CDs/DVDs (and in the old days - tape) and they make media. The HW guys are trying to sell us ways to copy the content while the content guys are suing us for copying content... Wow!
...
what a mess
The author is very funny too, talking about "...after store hours...", you can tell this bozo has absolutely no clue, and he is in charge. Next he will be talking about how the tubes distort the sound