Slashdot Mirror
Judge May Take "Fair Use" Away From Jury
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In what I can only describe as a shocker, the Judge in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum has, on her own, issued an order questioning whether the jury will be allowed to decide the 'fair use' issue at all, or whether the Judge herself should decide it. Judge Nancy Gertner's decision (PDF) notes that the courts have traditionally submitted the fair use defense to the jury, but questions whether that was appropriate, since the courts have referred to it as an 'equitable' — as opposed to a 'legal' — defense. This decision came from out of the blue, as neither party had raised this issue. IMHO the Judge is barking up the wrong tree. For one, all across the legal spectrum in the US, 'equitable' defenses to 'legal' claims are triable to a jury. Secondly, as the Judge herself notes, the courts have traditionally submitted the issue to the jury. It also seems a bit unfair to bring up a totally new issue like that and give the parties only 6 days to do their research and writing on the subject, at a time when they are feverishly preparing for a July 27th trial."
Hey... that's not FAIR, to take away FAIR USE. :)
It almost seems like the judge is begging for an appeal to kick it upstairs and make it somebody else's problem. IANAL but isn't this like asking for an appeal?
Ballot, Soap, Jury, Ammo; they should be used in that order.
Great Intellect...
NYCL, perhaps you can enlighten us all - it seems to me of late that more judges are going beyond what I understand is the scope of a judge's job (to adjudicate the law) and into "deciding" cases based on matters OUTSIDE the scope of law.
Am I misremembering what I learned back in 6th grade about the role of the judiciary in the legal system, or are these judges indeed going beyond the scope of their position?
www.eFax.com are spammers
There are dull incandescent bulbs hung down by wire over a set of towering oak podiums. Behind you are endless rows of rusty metal folding chairs, all occupied by elephants and donkeys, except for a few rats toward the front. The bailiff is an Argrue, standing in the shady area against the wall. You don't know what an Argrue is, but you can guess it's like what Arkansas is to Kansas and it looks vicious.
The judge uses a battle axe in place of a gavel, which would be fine if it didn't leave so many marks on the wood when it's banged, and wears an ancient Norse viking helmet. The smaller podium has a guillotine attached to it near the front, with the microphone being placed in front of the slot where you would place your head.
You have in your inventory a rope, which is binding your hands together, and a bright orange jumpsuit of -255 AGI, which you are currently wearing. The only exit is DOWN, through a trap door.
This is just another example of Judges emasculating juries, dis-empowering them.
I long for the days when juries (before the 2nd half of the 20th century) actually decided cases and where not treated like mushrooms by all.
Jordan
Having been a party in a lawsuit that was decided by the US Court of Appeals on the basis of an issue that was neither raised nor briefed at either the trial level or the appellate level, all I can say is that this sounds quite normal to me.
what I can only describe as a shocker...
THL phish sticks
Makes perfect sense. After all, fair use has been taken away from everyone else.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
...because that's the only female US Judge I'm familiar with. (Well her at that copy cat from "People's court", but I can never remember her name). If that's representative then your judges are opinionated, pre-judge everything, apply the law in a slipshod way based on wether or not she likes you and wether or not you show her respect. The number of times I've seen her behave in a way that I considered irrational and inequitable is amazing. So this would fit right in!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The Law is complicated--it's not a simple system of rules, it's a question of what words have people used to describe what they think the rules ought to be for the past five hundred years or so, how have those descriptions changed the rules as people have decided what they should mean, and it's not easy to get it right 100% of the time--particularly when you realize something about the law that may be inconsistent or mean that it should be handled in a slightly different way than how people thought. The issue here isn't necessarily the judge going beyond the judge's duties--especially since if that's really what's happening an appeals court will generally say so--as it is the fact that the judge only gave the lawyers a few days to research it. The law moves at a lethargic pace; six days is like a clock cycle in ALU-time.
> This is just another example of Judges emasculating juries, dis-empowering them.
Exactly. Judges these days want to rule. They don't want to be constrained by having to bother with juries, legislatures, laws, constitutions, and certainly not the executive. This case is a poster child for judicial activism.
So the 6th and 7th Amendments go into the toilet now... to join the 1st, 2nd, 9th and 10th, big parts of the 4th and 5th and the 8th. But we still have the 3rd Amendment inviolate!
Folks, when do we say ENOUGH! These idiots only get away with this foolishness because we just bitch and moan and don't make them pay a political price.
Democrat delenda est
Unfortunately, these rights like many our other rights have been eroded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Rule_Book
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/rulebook.html
The American Form of Government
The judge is attempting to countermand the authority of the jury? Ah, I think someone's rusty on their Constitution. Jury's in this country have the ability to declare the law itself unconstitutional or cruel and unusual and have it struck down. It's not something judges like to advertise, and this one is probably concerned that they might wake up and say "hey wait a minute...", remember their Constitutional readings from high school, and put a big fat bullet in the entire debate.
Either that, or the judge wants to guarantee a whole new trial, because that's what a move like this is going to cause.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Has the judge been bought out or does she just not care about the rights of the defendant?
Judges decide matters of law, juries decide matters of fact.
Something like fair use could be either, depending on the circumstances. Contract law is a good example. Suppose that there is a case about a contract: If the contract is clearly written, and its meaning is easily determined by reading it, a judge will decide; based on law. On the other hand, if the contract's meaning isn't obvious, witnesses might be called to clarify what the intent of the signing parties was. In that case, there may be a dispute about facts and a jury would decide.
Of course, the judge may make a mistake about who decides and, in that case, there would probably be an appeal.
So this court and law stuff is supposed to be all about fairness?? It seems like it's always a lawyer fucking somebody, the judge fucking you over, or lawyers fucking each other, or a lawyer fucking their client, or two people fucking each other, while their lawyers fuck them too and the judge is just watching.
Yeah I really though court was just about fucking people.
Even though Slashdot has sued websites in the past for copyright infringement
I was gonna mod you up, but I'm just too darned curious about this line. I must've missed it, assuming you're not making it up. Anyone remember such a thing?
> jury nullification is something we inherited from English common law, and was never really codified
Well yes and no. It is sorta implicit. Combine "no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined" with jurors being immune to retribution by the courts for their verdicts (barring jury tampering, etc) and jury nullification kinda falls out as a consequence. If the jury decides you are guilty according to the law but that law is stupid they are free to return not guilty. It is then pretty much impossible to try the perp a second time (unless it is a civil rights case... then the feds can have a second try. grr.) and the jury is in no fear of consequences for their actions even when they do something really infamous like set OJ free.
This judge obviously fears exactly such a thing so is attempting to bypass the jury. The correct response is impeachment. Anything less sends a signal to other judges that this sort of thing is acceptable, even if some higher judge rules she can't do it in this particular case. Violating the right to a trial by jury is something no judge should be allowed to even contemplate.
Democrat delenda est
But we still have the 3rd Amendment inviolate!
You wish! A case can be made that NSA wiretapping violates the third amendment.
Is the new DEX
Can anyone say appeal. Wont matter who wins..
- I've had Judge Gertner save my ass. She's very smart, sees through nonsense, very willing to take on authority, government, etc. - It's not whether you can send fair use to a jury, it's whether you have to. If it's equitable with no damages, it can be handled every time by summary judgment even if there are issues of fact. - Juries are shitty at all complex civil matters; terminally shitty at intellectual property; and the U.S. marriage to civil juries is unusual and kind of stupid. If imprisonment is what's at stake, juries make sense. If it's about a TRO or civil damages for some kind of abstract infringement, juries make no sense. Other countries under common law and substantially similar copyright law would not use a jury. - Don't get all patriotic. Civil jury mistakes and artifacts are a core reason why the U.S. is polluted with so many lawyers, and so many rich lawyers. - Don't assume fair use is better before a jury. It's just more random. - It's odd for Judge Gertner to bring it up, agreed. But if it's a watershed issue both parties obviously should have been pursuing given their positions, but were afraid to touch, it's something she would do. - Slashdot is such an incredible fountain of ignorance, isn't it?
Good question, hard one to google, try a search for "Slashdot suing website" ;-))
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
I vaguely remember there being a site that posted the popular Slashdot articles of the day, like a "best of Slashdot," and Slashdot sent a legal takedown notice due to copyright infringement.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/Rule49.htm
...the judge is either an ex-lawyer of SONY or has a family member working in a high position in RIAA/MPAA.
It always is the case.
In fact i wouldn't be surprised if he has a financial interest in a RIAA member.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Touché.
Back when the scientologists first sued him for breaking copyright on one of Hubbard's sillier screeds (he made a copy to give to the judge in Grady Ward's case), he wasn't allowed to claim that copying a work to bring it to the attention of law enforcement was fair use. The jury never got to hear the argument.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I heard there was one that formed in Canada. Has one been set up in the US yet?
Don't mod him up just yet. There's some truth and at least a little insight in the post, but it's also got quite a few inaccuracies (whether the poster means to lie or is just inadvertently wrong is hard to say). Don't assume he is not making anything up until you get a reliable reference or two.
I do know that from what I have seen, there are a lot more posts to slashdot that assume that there are right and wrong ways to make money than claim either that making money is always wrong or always right. I'm sure you could find a post or two that say making a profit is always immoral, but how many of them do you think their are, and how many posts from people who think that there are both moral and immoral ways to make money do you think there are in a typical slashdot thread on copyright. Now what does that make the poster, who has misrepresented at least 90% or so of the people who post on this subject. Maybe he's not doing it deliberately, but why mod up someone who oversimplifies things to the point where he is claiming 90% or more of the posts he has seen don't exist?
Who is John Cabal?
Hm?
You spent several hours going to a website and typing Ray's name into a form to autogenerate a rambling complaint letter? Poor little troll, either you have the slowest Internet connection of us all, or someone must have punched you in the nose and broke all your little fingers.
Who is John Cabal?
U AND I SHOULD ANAL
that is equitable relief, and the Queen would approve!
Don't mod him up just yet.
Couldn't do it if I tried, now that I've asked. I can't claim to fully agree with the poster, but I likes it when folks raise on-topic issues for debate. Notwithstanding my derailment, of course.
Good question, hard one to google, try a search for "Slashdot suing website"
Tell me about it. Although the AC under you might be on the right track...
I vaguely remember there being a site that posted the popular Slashdot articles of the day, like a "best of Slashdot,"
I'm not sure why, but that spurs a memory: Remember Diggdot? They got C&D'ed, but by Digg, not /. Might be what the OP was thinking of. Looks like their operating as Doggdot these days.
This copypasta is posted in every article even slightly related to IP... nothing interesting about it.
NYCL and others who know a thing or two about USA law:
My understanding at the moment is that if a Judge decides that the issue is an equitable one rather than a legal one, there is no need for a jury. And that in an equitable case, the Judge's duty is to determine what is fair compensation for the actual damages done. It doesn't seem like there can be any punitive damages awarded in an equity judgment.
Would this mean that Judge Gerstner could decide in favor of the RIAA, and award them compensation based on $0.79 per proven instance of copyright infringement, if that seemed the fair thing to do?
It would seem that if she decides this is an issue of equity, then the awards written into the DMCA would be guidelines that she might feel would only apply to commercial infringers who press a hundred thousand copies of a CD (which is apparently the kind of infringement that the USA Congress had in mind when they wrote the law). That it would not be equitable to impose those fines on a casual copyright infringer who may have cost the record companies a dozen sales (if that). So maybe this is a good thing?
I am so confused.
Will
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ballot, Soap, Jury, Ammo; they should be used in that order.
"Fair Use" usually boils down to the question of whether the geek with a broadband connection is entitled to his free movie fix - or has to stand in line with the peons at Blockbuster.
I have said this before:
The juror is not your comrade-in-arms, he does not share the geek's sense of entitlement. He is a middle-aged, middle class, small-C conservative who respects the system and has come to do a job.
Let him define "fair use" and you risk being hammered into the ground like Jammie Thomas.
Loose talk about guns casts the geek as a psychopath.
You get points for a cleverly presented argument. Here are a few thoughts of my own, slightly less entertainingly put:
Consider the music industry. Originally, musicians were recompensed for performances. Musicians were service providers. Then the ability to record music came along, and the model switched from service provision, to primarily widget distribution. In this instance, the widgets were LPs whose manufacture and supply was limited due to the difficulty of making perfect copies (each generation of copy would degrade the signal).
The current music industry organisations would love to perpetuate the "widget distribution" model. Unfortunately, the advent of digital technology means the constraint on perfect copies has been smashed. The industry is trying its hardest to close the stable door after the horse has bolted by throwing up various technical and legal hurdles to "perfect copy" distribution. Despite their best attempts they are failing. The market quite clearly is answering with its feet. If copyright violation is a crime then a massive chunk of the population are criminals.
What the music industry need to accept is that the business model is changing back from widget distribution to primarily service provision (i.e. performances). This is similar to the effect open source is having on the software industry, changing the model (in some spaces) to profit from service provision rather than box sales.
Having accepted that the industry model is changing back to service provision, free digital music distribution can be considered low cost advertising for the performers. The fact that some segments of the music industry around packaging and sales (arguably less important than the artists) will be made redundant is just tough. They will find other jobs and the title of "record industry executive" will join blacksmith, phrenologist and horse-and-buggy repairman in the history books.
The same transition happened with performance art: live performances/plays turned into movies. What will movies turn into? Will there be a resurgence of live performances? Or perhaps the astronomical costs of movies needs to just come down a bit to make them more statistically likely to be profitable?
Software is already making the transition as stated before. Open source as well as the advent of leased services from the cloud are putting a slow but inexorable end to box sales.
Books are an interesting case. I don't know how that industry will pan out. Some authors however are embracing the new opportunities. Some people - even "selfish leechers" like myself - are happy to pay for books. On that point, I should point out that in the last 12 months I have been to the concerts of three big acts and forked over almost $500 in tickets and merchandising. A large proportion of that money will go straight to the artists' pockets - far more so than if I had spent $500 on their CDs/DVDs.
The tax payers are the ones who take it in the neck while these endless court cases go on and on. How many billions in tax dollars does it take to support courts hearing copyright cases every year? It's like pornography or abortion in the courts and in congress. It just keeps running up expenses. Maybe these types of cases should not be allowed in the justice system at all.
Stuff like this just makes me shake my head...
Common law seems to be very much alike to the imperial measurement system. Almost no one use it any more, except some former british colonies [*]. It seems extremely counterintuitive, against a clean separation of powers (because precedents are essentially law), full of historical bullshit like the issue at hand and extremely impractical (because you have to dig up all those precedents).
Oh, and it requires almost exactly twice as many lawyers to function[**]. Which is probably why it will take even longer than the imperial system to be abolished...
[*]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LegalSystemsOfTheWorldMap.png
[**] Germany: 150,375 Lawyers, 82,217,800 citizens, 546.75 citizens/lawyer
USA : 1,118,386 Lawyers, 305,548,183 citizens, 273.20 citizens/lawyer
Sources:
http://www.brak.de/seiten/pdf/Statistiken/2009/Mitglieder_klein.pdf
http://www.abanet.org/marketresearch/Lawyer_Demographics.pdf
Dear misinformed,
Due to the advent of technological advancement and the internet, formerly scarce works have become common and easily downloaded due to the non scarce nature of information, this has got westerners and excessively pro corporate, pro business peoples panties in a twist from which they have never recovered. Capitalist philosophy only makes sense when an item a person wants to consume is scarce, otherwise the "evil" socialist economics can work (and piracy is a lesson in that it works FYI). Therefore copyright has become a highly charged issue because nature of information and political economic ideology of western capitalism are at odds.
According to neoclassical economics because of the non scarce nature of digital works, their worth should be driven down towards zero and many businesses should be going bankrupt, note that this has not happened and the Movie industry has recently broken box office records. Please refer to Dark Knight released in 2008 in the following list below of top grossing box office movies of all time.
http://www.movieweb.com/movies/boxoffice/alltime.php
The nature of copyright and software licensing has always been questionable from the outset, because the public was not informed enough to mount resistance to the idea of software licensing and EULA's. So many industries got their way by way of public ignorance. Industries later gathered together lobbying more as the internet rose to power and their response to non scarcity of information was in the form of the DMCA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act
Which added to the already dubious practice of licensing software (individuals never own their software) which most nerds have always thought dubious at best (See: Linux)
The advent of the DMCA and licensing prevents legitimate owners of software from outright owning and modifying what they bought due to crazy EULA's and liscensing that weaseled it's way into "normalcy" due to public technological ignorance, which attempted to limit software owners rights to ownership and rights to develop their own software to work with the software they already own. This has pissed off the informed who understand these issues. See: Bnetd
http://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd
Corporations and the bad kinds of capitalists alike have been trying to wrest individual ownership from the people by infringing on their individual rights to own the products they buy. Software companies have always been one of the worst industries due to the idea of licensing software to individuals, rather then individuals being able to own software outright and do whatever they wish with it.
Enterprising individuals like John carmack who released open source doom, etc, and Volition Inc of Freespace 2 fame (see: http://scp.indiegames.us/ ) have been breaths of fresh air for the informed among us as they understand the deeper issues of software patents, copyright and software ownership by and large.
John carmack does not believe in software patents, and is tired of the stupid shit that such patents and overzealous and excessive copyright abuses, to see his frustrations and problems with such see here:
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2004/07/4048.ars
The slashdot community has been getting pissed at the lack of reasoning power in hypercapitalist america, it seems in general that america has an excessive amount of brain dead people and anti-intellectualism, and the rise of super corporate indoctrinated nerd drones, this anti intellectualism and lack of intellectual depth increasingly found in certain americans or others so indoctrinated against intellectual understanding is epitomized in the following link
What the decision is saying is this:
1) historically, a type of legal question known as an "equitable" claim (or equitable defense) has been decided by the judge, not a jury [for ancient historical reasons I won't get into here on Slashdot]
2) there are some cases which refer to copyright fair use as an equitable defense but it's not clear if those cases are using the term "equitable" as that term is used in (1)
3) some cases have put the fair use defense to the jury to decide, but without considering the issue I have described in (1) and (2)
4) I'd like the parties to tell me, in writing, what they think the correct answer to this issue is, and why
5) once I get the written submissions in (4), I'll decide whether the judge or the jury should rule on the copyright fair use defense
copyright is nothing more than a courtesy paid to the creators of non tangible things. never treat it as anything more substantial than that.
To add to my earlier post, it occurs to me that its the "widget" view that has led to the viral broadening of what is considered to constitute intellectual "property". When I observe a performance there is no "property" involved and certainly none changing hands.
Another thought that comes to mind is the million-monkeys-bashing-out-Shapeskpeare view that says, if it can be thought-up someone will eventually think of it. It seems to lend itself to the view that its the use of the creation that adds value not the creations in and of themselves regardless whether that value is inspiration from art or the utility of some service provided. Its better to enrich the commons by contribution rather than deny it by exclusion. This does not deny the possibility for the creator to earn a living from the service provided through their work.
Shakespeare's value is in the countless thousands his works have inspired. Is it possible to calculate how much poorer we would culturally be if the use of his work was strictly curtailed?
with some reservation in some areas i certainly undersign it!
And Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes think so for an entirely different reason "As much music as musicians can hear, that will only make music richer as an artform,". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8097324.stm
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
Right, so... Whether the terms content creators / publishers impose on your "ownership" of a product are fair or not, you still want to be able to use the product they sell? Yet you want all of this at the terms you? Who gave you the right? If you don't want to abide by a specific term or condition, you don't get to use the product. That's just not how a free market works, and you know it.
I have absolutely no issue with any of what's going on except for two things:
1. Corporate lobbying. Corporations should not be able to buy legislation. End of story.
2. Government bailouts. In a free market, a business which fails is a business which fails. There's a reason for that failure; It's a sign that the business model or product is no longer financially lucrative, and the business needs to shape up or ship out. I'm bordering on refusing to pay any tax and risking imprisonment for this blatant disregard for free market economics. If the gooberment propped up every single failing business in the western world in this time of financial crysis, the World Bank would be (metaphorically, at least) empty.
Nice rant, though. Eloquent, cites sources, and emotionally provocative. Too bad you missed the bigger picture.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
That makes it ok to download NIN and Fleet Foxes, in the unlikely event that Reznor and Pecknold are the sole copyright holders for the music they encourage people to download. It doesn't make it ok to download other artists.
Actually it's pretty unlikely that Reznor and Pecknold are the sole copyright holders - bands often sell copyright to a label and even if they didn't copyright would be shared among all past and present band members. Reznor can't give out a free copyright license anymore than Linus Torvalds can unilaterally change the license of the Linux kernel.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Juries are populated by the populace, and the populace are sheeple. They're inconvenienced by jury duty! They hold the whole service in contempt!
I was on a jury for a GBH case, lasted 5 days. At the end of the 5 days, I realised that:
- Three of the jurors didn't understand what the judge told them or what the barristers were asking, and didn't bother to ask for clarification. They just looked at the people in the dock and made up their mind based upon whether they "looked like they did it."
- Four understood, but didn't really take it seriously. It was a holiday for them, a time away from work. Needless to say these were the people who worked as a subordinate to someone else, so they still had income.
- Two were self employed. They didn't talk about anything else apart from how much money they were losing, and constantly rushed any decision.
- Two (myself and a young lady, of like mind to myself) took it seriously. We were deciding the far-reaching future of some young people charged with a terrible crime, and we did our best to help the others understand points of law, asked pertinent questions of the judge, and pretty much lead the deliberation.
There's one more person in this jury that i've not mentioned. I've saved the best until last. A young man, early twenties. All I can say about him is that he was bored. Bored by the whole thing. He constantly shuffled in his chair, hummed to himself in court, and as we entered court before we gave our verdict he hummed the death march.
If those are the people who decide my future, should I ever end up in court, I sincerely hope it is left up to a judge.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
It isn't an equitable defense. The equitability of the defense relies on what you DID being what would be considered an action that copyright should not control.
E.g. quoting and plagiarising a section of content are both in so far as the *action* is concerned the same. But copyright SHOULD control plagiarism and should NOT control quoting. The argument of fair use is then not whether that use is fair and the case dropped but whether that use is quoting or plagiarising. If it's quoting, then it is not a copyright controlled action and there is co case to argue against.
Remember:
"Do we really want this sort of action to be punished like this?"
and
"Was this what they had in mind when they wrote that law?"
THAT is the reason why Jury Nullification exists.
An unjust law can still be passed. A police officer can decide not to prosecute it. If he does, the prosecuter can decide not to persue. If he does, the judge can decide not to judge the case. If he does the jury can decide not to pronounce guilty.
A bad law without the jury deciding if that law needs to be applied here is a bad law that can be finessed into reality despite it being bad.
What will movies turn into? Will there be a resurgence of live performances?
Well, since the most expensive movies are not worth watching outside of a *good* movie theater, I'd say the trend is clearly there.
Another problem with music, though, is that in terms of quality of the music itself, live performances are much worse than recorded music.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
I agree with most of what you say...apart from the blacksmith being included with phrenologist and horse-and-buggy repairman.
Blacksmith is still a viable industry (ok not as much as it was in "olden times") but the blacksmith I used to work at has expanded and had to open a second workshop in the nearby town to keep up with business. It's not just making horseshoes these days.
Disagreeing is not trolling.
Let the author rebut my arguement, but don't mod me down because you disagree with my point of view. Hell, reply yourself if you have an opinion.
That's how ideas are shared.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I don't understand why this is modded troll. Sure, it's well thought out and glorious in its self-loathing - is that such a bad thing on Slashdot? Seems like a fine post to me - one that actually made me think about my own media purchasing & pirating habits...
Signed.
You are right about the use adding value. It occurs to me that licensing to internet radio stations is an alternative for RIAA execs, but in reality something like that isn't nearly as complicated as what goes into fine-tuning a final recording these days, and could be handled by indie music makers with some minor counsel. Let's not get into the pay-per-use argument for media though, if the public let that model succeed, we'd all be daily criminals. No, the way forward is for the market to adjust to the conditions it now faces, but I'll not be redundant about digital media from above.
As to Shakespeares' value, you're right about the works inspired by him, and you are right about the current scene being poorer if his material was managed with modern mindsets about media, but no matter how much the media companies would love to push it, having multi-century monopolies on anything not only cripples innovation, such as adaptions of Shakespeares' work, but would also create a slow pressure of discontent from customers and artists alike, much like the public backlash to DRM or tongue-in-cheek slang like the Copyright Term Extension Act being synonymous to "The Mickey Mouse Protection Act", only worse.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The quality of live performances certainly is almost* always worse than studio recordings, sometimes even dreadful. But no one really goes to live performances for the technical quality of the music do they?
* folk and classical music spring to mind as exceptions.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
I wonder if the Judge is deliberately giving the Defendant an easily-appealable point (bad/missing jury instruction), so that if it goes the RIAA's way, the Defendant can raise that issue on appeal, and the whole verdict would almost certainly be thrown out.
Bad/missing jury instruction is a oft-won appeal issue; so methinks this is a clever strategy by the judge to "help" the Defendant, without appearing to do so.
Otherwise, the Judge should get a brain scan, so they can actually find that brain tumor.
IANAL (nor a neurosurgeon for that matter), but jus' sayin'...
You are right about the rule you cite: it exists. Like everything else in law, a single rule can't be taken out of context.
The issue behind SCO vs Novell revolved around whether or not SCO got the Unix copyrights. No copyrights, no case. SCO's strategy was to try to get the question in front of a jury; that's well documented on Groklaw if you're interested. If they could prove that the contract (Asset Purchase Agreement) was unclear, they could bring witnesses to testify about what the intent of the original signers was. The underlying strategy was that they would have an easier time confusing a jury than a judge.
Judge Kimball decided that the contract was clear and didn't need extra facts to interpret and didn't, therefore, need a jury. That effectively gutted SCO's case.
Right, so... Whether the terms content creators / publishers impose on your "ownership" of a product are fair or not, you still want to be able to use the product they sell? Yet you want all of this at the terms you?
There is nothing wrong with "wanting" to use a product some creator/publisher creates, or "wanting" to set the terms of the transfer. It's called demand, something I am very sure you are aware of, seeing as how you are so insistent on maintaining a Free Market.
If you don't want to abide by a specific term or condition, you don't get to use the product.
This certainly would be a great rule to use, in the case where each party in an agreement offers fair terms. However, in the cases where one party imposes terms and conditions that a significant portion of the public perceives as unjust, then the public pirates/steals/recreates their benefits of the agreement. In each of those cases, the victim of the piracy/theft/recreation does not gain a thing. This is the public's revenge for creating unjust terms in the first place, and unfortunately the piracy/theft/recreation victim does suffer an actual loss in the case of theft (I like to think that if the public could just as easily create an actual copy of the desired device as steal it, they would make the copy, so this loss in the case of theft is mostly a secondary effect caused by physical constraints rather than a primary effect of obtaining the technology of the device). And the public gains technology.
I have absolutely no issue with any of what's going on except for two things: ... Corporate Lobbying (and) Government Bailouts
I agree that corporations shouldn't be allowed to buy legislation. That's just stupid for any government remotely close to democracy. I don't know if corporations are 'buying' legislation so much as just spending an outrageously disproportionate amount of money on legislation compared to money from person-oriented PACs, which is still stupid, in my opinion, though the blame in this case isn't so much on the system, as it is on the players.
As far as Government Bailouts, and letting businesses fail when they fail go, I would agree with you, in a world where a business goes down because it was out-competed by some other company, who is there to pick up new customers marooned by the failed business. In some cases, however, like the case of AIG, etc., I don't think there were other businesses capable of providing the same services AIG/etc provided on the level AIG/etc provided them. The unfortunate thing is that there isn't much in the way of alternatives for dealing with AIG-like situations, so our congressmen came up with the great idea of copying the big-bank business strategy of giving/loaning out large quantities of money it never had. The only way to 'solve' this crisis completely is to go back in time and keep it from happening to the scale it did; basically to force AIG/etc to be a significantly smaller business, so that when it failed, it didn't take half the world (exaggeration) with it. For now though, we just deal with the fact that we screwed up, and try to regain normalcy as quickly as we comfortably can (hence the strategy of loaning/giving out money).
Sorry if this isn't entirely understandable. I'm not the most eloquent writer. And for the record, I would mod your post up, so that at the very least it gets refuted by more adept writers, or confirmed by more advanced thinkers. I just figured nobody would ever actually come back to this story and reply to you.
By what measure is a live performance worse than a studio recording? Cost? Portability perhaps? Even in the worst cases the band is just playing their CD over the stage speakers and lip-syncing to it, I don't see how that's worse than a record.
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
No justice, no peace.
If it's war they want, well, they'll get it. We have not yet begun to fight!
This certainly would be a great rule to use, in the case where each party in an agreement offers fair terms. However, in the cases where one party imposes terms and conditions that a significant portion of the public perceives as unjust, then the public pirates/steals/recreates their benefits of the agreement. In each of those cases, the victim of the piracy/theft/recreation does not gain a thing. This is the public's revenge for creating unjust terms in the first place, and unfortunately the piracy/theft/recreation victim does suffer an actual loss in the case of theft (I like to think that if the public could just as easily create an actual copy of the desired device as steal it, they would make the copy, so this loss in the case of theft is mostly a secondary effect caused by physical constraints rather than a primary effect of obtaining the technology of the device). And the public gains technology.
And all you do is show demand. Even by pirating the product you prop up this broken business model. The only way to destroy this model is to ultimately give up the product entirely, but that isn't going to happen because people feel entitled to the product which they aren't. We're going to stay in this shit cycle until those who don't like the current business model -entirely- give up the music produced via it. As long as you continue to pirate it, you perpetuate the very thing which you hate.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
That used to be true, but isn't any more. From personal conversations with successful bands (The Living End and Hilltop Hoods) I know that the days of bands being screwed around by record labels – the Courtney Love model – are in decline. Bands can now make plenty of money off CD/electronic music sales. Plenty of bands even use tours as "loss leaders" to promote themselves in areas where their exposure is low to guage reception and generate music sales. As example I again refer to the two aforementioned bands' tours in (continental) Europe.
Conclusion: some bands make more from touring, others from music sales. The relationship varies from band to band, from tour to tour, and even from album to album depending on what sort of contract they have. The popular generalisation that merch and concerts support bands more than CD sales isn't as true now as it was 10 years ago.
(As an aside: the rest of your post is insightful and I agree with near all of it)
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
Information is not entirely non-scarce. The distribution/copying costs are heading towards zero, true. But the creation of information has costs tagged to it. So it's kind of mixed in comparison to "natural" goods that actually are completely scarce.
It's a copypasta troll. Is your sarcasm detector broken by any chance?
Our goal is to convince people that piracy is something the good guys are doing in a fight with the evil corporations. Making money is wrong, even though Slashdot displays ads, and it cost me money to buy the computer I'm using to pirate stuff.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
so you basicly saying "its the law now therefore its ok"?
This is the public's revenge for creating unjust terms in the first place
That is unethical. "I don't agree with your terms, so I'm going to steal your product to spite you!" isn't the answer. Boycott, and voting with your money would be both ethical and effective, if enough would engage in it. The company has not straw-man of "piracy" or "theft" to brainwash shareholders terrified by slumping profits and bamboozle courts over infringement of imaginary property rights.
The trouble is, everyone seems to want their cake, and eat it.
TNSTAAFL.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Exactly my point, thanks for the clarification!
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
No, I'm saying that believing that you have a right to someone elses property or creation without being expected to adhere to their terms is ok, and that just so happens to be how these laws are worded.
The issue here is that people believe that they are entitled to so much, when in fact it's up to the creator / owner how much use / ownership you get of his works.
I can advertise a car for sale which clearly has stated in its terms and conditions that you don't own the car, you're paying a rental and I retain full ownership. You have the choice to then either:
- Accept the terms and buy (lease) the car, or
- Find another car salesman.
That's the beauty of a Free Market; You can walk away, and take your money with you. Don't expect me to smile sweetly when you try and steal my car, though, just because you think you're entitled to it.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Bullshit.
Courts have repeatedly ruled time and again that if the transaction takes the form of a sale (see: Softman V Adobe for one example) then it is governed by the legal rights of a SALE, and any restrictions of those are unconscionable and therefore unenforceable.
Those rights include, among other things, the right to modify what you have purchased and the right of first sale.
Where it gets fucking stupid is that the software companies - and even some companies selling plastic bits these days - want to try to classify everything as a "license" rather than admit it's a sale. All we really need to do to fix the system is to abolish the "license" crap in the legal code.
By what measure is a live performance worse than a studio recording? Cost? Portability perhaps?
Audio quality?
Screaming fans, nosebleed seats, and wind (in the case of open-air venues) pretty much kill the signal/noise ratio,
What percentage of music that is available today do you think would be available had there NOT been a recording industry for the last 100 years? In other words, how many of the currently recorded artists would still have chosen to enter the business if the only way they could make any money was by touring? What people like you fail to grasp is that the only reason many people choose to enter the music business is to make money, and YOU are the richer for it. Take away that incentive, and the music landscape will be far different, and not for the better.
That is unethical. "I don't agree with your terms, so I'm going to steal your product to spite you!" isn't the answer.
That's rather subjective. "Your rules are wrong and unjust, and we're going to ignore them" has worked rather well in the past.
I don't know whether your misuse of the word "steal" is intended as the easily-recognized rhetorical overload, or if you honestly don't know the actual difference. You can't steal something that doesn't physically exist.
Boycott, and voting with your money would be both ethical and effective, if enough would engage in it.
Now you're bordering on naive. See below.
The company has not straw-man of "piracy" or "theft" to brainwash shareholders terrified by slumping profits and bamboozle courts over infringement of imaginary property rights.
It doesn't matter if there's not a single instance of downloading a single item in the company's entire library, if you think they're going to stop and go "Maybe we fucked up." to their shareholders instead of blaming faceless Pirates/Hong-Kong Bootleggers/Terrorists, you're living in fantasy-land. They're scapegoats that facilitate buck-passing.
Or go home, get out your tools, and make your own copy of the car.
Not talking about pirating a game for your personal use -- that just seems wrong.
But about copyright in general, the book "Free Culture" makes a point that many of the current defenders of extreme copyrights made their business by breaking or evading existing laws. The author makes a point that, without creative sharing and public domain, Western culture would suffer greatly. And that, in fact, the music, book and movie industries have misbehaved in the past, and in fact made their fortunes by stifling competition and/or evading patent and copyright laws. It's just that now it suits them to have them enforced. This puts the issue in a different light, doesn't it. They cannot argue that unreasonable copyright like it exists today is good for culture and business, just that it's good for keeping the current copyright holders safe -- an issue far less interesting for Joe Public.
"Free Culture" also argues that copyright law AND IT'S PRACTICE as it currently exist in the US makes it very hard, if not impossible, to take advantage of Fair Use to make, say, an indie documentary. In fact, everything "indie" (note: indie, not pirated) suffers, simply because they don't get to employ expensive lawyers to fight a protracted battle against big copyright owners to prove they can show, say, a 5-second clip of the Simpsons (there is an anecdote in the book about this, where it's argued that Fox are greedy bastards that will go after you just because they can and have the deeper pockets).
None of what I said justifies pirating anything, of course. It does justify fighting for Fair Use and the Public Domain.
Well, keep in mind that lawyers try to weed out potential jurors that may be able to think on their own. They want the sheeple they feel they can manipulate.
That being said, I'm almost 30 and have never been on a jury. I've only been summoned once but in that month I had 2 business trips planned that would keep me away from home for half the month so I was automatically dismissed. I fear, though, that because of the professions of my parents that I'll never get to see a jury box anyway. My dad is a retired sheriff and my mom is still a court reporter for the county common pleas judge. Every lawyer in this region knows my parents, I'd probably get dismissed by the defense attorny right away.
Of course I have also gotten out of a few speeding tickets, so I've got that going for me!
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
All the more reason to not give them a penny, and not consume their resources. The more we duplicate and distribute their creative works, the more strings to the "We are still commercially viable" bow they have.
What we should really do is allow MediaSentry and all of the other investigative folks onto the file sharing networks, but share CC licensed or free music instead. There's plenty of it, bands who just want exposure. You can send them a few dollars by googling their name, plenty have MySpace pages with PayPal links.
Like I said, naive as it is (as I know people want their Beetles back-catologue and their latest Metallica album) we should just ignore everything they touch. Make the corporate whore music indistry commercial pariahs. It's the only way to bring back the Free Market.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Yes, the author was mistaken.
If you can do that, wonderful. You could sell your skills as a car manufacturer, and sell them.
This is where the car analogy fails, though, as car manufacture requires raw materials which duplication of information does not. That's why I didn't talk about copying the car; It falls out of the scope of the issue at hand.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Nice rant, except you're 100% wrong. What happens if you open a hardware store and refuse to sell to black people? Or open a theater with no handicap seating? Or use bait and switch advertising?
The fact is we have a lot of laws about what you can do with YOUR product and how you can sell it, and what rights you have, and what rights the consumer has, regardless of whether you agree with them or not as the property owner/seller.
free digital music distribution can be considered low cost advertising for the performers
Independant performers realise this. The RIAA labels probably do too, but they know who their competetion is - the indies. The majors have radio (oddly, it's freww, and you can sample it easier than downloading it, and usually at better quality).
The same transition happened with performance art: live performances/plays turned into movies.
Yet stage plays are still performed, and never stopped.
Books are an interesting case.
See the forward to Doctorow's Little Brother. If the RIAA labels were correct, it would be odd that a book available for free on the author's web site could make the New York Times' best seller list. He points out the very obvious truth that if I've never heard your music, it's damned unlikely that I'll ever buy any of it.
Free Martian Whores!
I can see what you are getting at, but I'm not sure your analogy is correct.
Ignoring the fact that if I steal the car, the dealer no longer has a car to sell, whereas if I copy the car, he still does, there is still the issue of power.
To have a real market, the buyer and seller have to have an equal footing, which is why attention is paid to things such as price fixing and other anti-trust issues.
In the case of the car dealer, he does not have a monopoly and so his competitors can offer the same car under different terms and you, as the customer, can choose which offering suits your requirements the best. In this way a true marketplace exists and, other than the "no stealing rule", the government need not be involved.
In the case of the entertainment industry, there is a monopoly - if you want to listen to a track by your favourite band, being offered the choice between that band and one you don't want to listen to, is no real choice at all.
In this case however, rather than looking at this situation as a monopoly one and regulating in favour of the customer, in order to balance the market position, governments (perhaps as a result of lobbying) instead legislate in favour of the music industry, thereby distorting the market further and significantly disadvantaging the consumer by reducing their legal rights (e.g. not being able to take advantage of their fair use rights as this will contravene the industry's new rights to protect their encryption, etc)
You might not agree, but it is not necessarily entirely surprising that, being put in such a disadvantaged position, the customers look to subvert the status quo, by circumventing the controls the seller tries to impose.
This [ ] left intentionally [ ]
Tennessee, Mississippi, and New Jersey also have separate courts of equity, known as "Chancery Courts".
May chance smile upon you. You did not quite cover every single point, but you hit a lot of big ones. I undersign as well.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
I think most people here would agree that copyright does have a valid place in society. The problem is that copyright terms have been overextended and copyright powers overemphasized. It used to be that your copyright on a work only lasted 14 years. Then you could apply for a one-time extension of 14 years. After that, your work landed in the Public Domain. Now the terms are 70 years after the author's death or, if owned by a company, 95 years after publication. Under the 14+14 rule, works created in 1981 should be hitting the Public Domain now. Instead, they'll hit in 2076 (assuming corporate ownership and no more copyright extensions - big assumptions, I know). This means that I likely won't live to see works hit the Public Domain which were created when I was 6 years old. Heck, a work created in 1974 (a year before I was born) and owned by a company is currently due to hit Public Domain in 2069 - when I'm 95 years old! It's even worse if the ownership isn't corporate. Take Michael Jackson, for example. Since he just died (and assuming he owns the copyrights to his songs), his copyright will end in the year 2079. His youngest child is currently 7 years old. When the Jackson copyrights end, his youngest child will be 77 years old!
In addition to this, copyright owners are making more and more ridiculous assertions about their copyright ownership. The RIAA, for example, has tried to claim that ripping a CD to MP3 (purely for personal use) is a copyright violation. Of course, they aren't going around suing people for ripping their CDs, but they would love to get CD ripping banned.
Copyright was supposed to give a balance between the author's right to seek a profit from his work and the public advancement of the arts. Authors would have an incentive to create works thanks to the temporary monopoly that copyright granted. In exchange, the public would get to do what they wanted with the work when that monopoly ended. In addition, since the copyright would end soon, the author had an incentive to make more works. What we have now, however, is the author being granted a monopoly that persists for generations after they pass away and little to no incentive (from copyright expiration) to create additional works. The public, meanwhile, is robbed of songs entering the Public Domain and fueling new works.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Do a little public service and inform your fellow citizens about jury nullification. This is a vastly UNDER-utilized tool that the citizens can use to protect themselves from tyranny and idiocy in the law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_Nullification
" . . . if a pattern of identical verdicts develops in response to repeated attempts to prosecute a statutory offense, it can have the practical effect of invalidating statute . . . Jury nullification is thus a means for the public to express opposition to an unwanted legislative enactment."
The jury can do what THEY think is right and fair and ignore "orders" from the judge. As an aside, I've always wondered why the hell we have to treat judges as if they were royalty. You have to rise when they enter the courtroom, and they sit on a throne in their black robes looking down at everyone. WTF? They're nothing more than appointed government officials, and these procedures serve to reinforce their image as an authority figure to the jurors. If a law is idiotic and un-just, I think it's the DUTY of the jury to toss the case. Of course every case is unique, but I'd be inclined to nullify any offense related to piracy without profit, minor drug possession, civil disobedience or other victimless "crimes".
Whether the terms content creators / publishers impose on your "ownership" of a product are fair or not, you still want to be able to use the product they sell?
If you sell me a thing, I own that thing and I have the right to use it any way I wish, so long as its use is legal (I can use a firearm to hunt rabbits, use it as a crutch if I hurt my leg hunting raabbits, use it as a club in a half-dead rabbit, but not to hunt people). Your use of quotes around the word "ownership" is not just a lie, but a damned lie.
If you sell me a book, I can do anything I want with that book except distribute copies. I can sell it, loan it out, mark on the pages, shoot it with my rabbit gun, ANYTHING. The same goes with software.
I think it's you who is missing the bigger picture.
Free Martian Whores!
Why not? There is a large American contingent who maintain that the views of men who died 200 years ago is better than a rethink of the current system. In the narrow case of juries deciding civil trials, and especially of deciding damages, the experiment is over. We read daily about screwball rulings from juries, especially in RIAA cases, but also in other areas. Personal accounts from jurors suggest their peers didn't have a clue or didn't care in many cases.
I think all would agree that, if one were to start over today, the American legal system wouldn't have these pernicious features. So why not start to think about changing the broken system?
(BTW, last week I asked a Canadian lawyer friend if Canada allowed juries to decide civil cases. His response: "Why the fuck would we do that?")
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
I think you misunderstand the argument against. He didn't say the rules should never be changed (even if he does think that, that's not what he said). He said "this is what the rules _are_". The judge should not be changing rules mid stream. They should abide by what is present. If it needs to be changed, there is an established process for making that change. This process does not involve a single judge deciding the old rules are obsolete.
Right, so... Whether the terms content creators / publishers impose on your "ownership" of a product are fair or not, you still want to be able to use the product they sell? Yet you want all of this at the terms you? Who gave you the right? If you don't want to abide by a specific term or condition, you don't get to use the product. That's just not how a free market works, and you know it.
If the publisher imposes conditions on a product, and they are the only sellers of that product, where is the free market? Take a Madonna album, how many different publishers are there and how do their conditions and prices compare? If there is only one how can it be a free market?
If you like a song and want to play it to an audience, who gave them the right to stop you or charge you money? Why?
The most dangerous drug
if you want to listen to a track by your favourite band, being offered the choice between that band and one you don't want to listen to, is no real choice at all.
It is the bands choice to join a label which attempts to limit the rights of those who with to listen to their music.
If they choose to go with an RIAA-supporting record lable, let them rot. When the cash (what cash there is for artists) stops, they'll leave. When they see the successes of Trent Reznor releasing two albums without a lable behind him, they'll imitate, innovate, or deteriorate into nothing. Lable promotion will be pointless; I've found plenty of bands on CC listed websites, and paid money for the privilage (in the form of donations, usually a little over half of what a recent release retail CD would cost). Jamendo is my homepage at home.
Once again, if a corporation tries to impose tight controls which you don't agree with, you can walk away. That applies to creators as well as consumers; The internet allows for distance selling of physical as well as intellectual property, so don't think that you're limited to a choice few sources.
You're still thinkingin the "old way", man.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Or the alternative; Don't give them your money, don't use their product.
Am I speaking voodoo here? It's not rocket science: You want my product, you abide by my rules. You don't want it? Piss off and spend your money elsewhere.
Imagine every retailer you buy from is saying this directly to your face; You'll probably find you save quite a lot of cash, and realise just how draconian some of these restrictions can be. But, you always have the right to walk away and never talk to them again.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
No, you think you have the right to do anything you want with it, when in fact you have the right to either agree to the terms, or to not use the product.
You always have the right to walk away and use another product; S&W Ts&Cs state you can't shoot rabbits with their gun? Fine! Go buy from H&K instead!
You change the terms by limiting the revenue. When they can't sell because the terms are too restrictive, the terms will change or the company will die. It's that simple (or should be; Consider point two in my GP post).
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Except copying the music in this case generally requires special equipment which can be expected cost >= US$1000.
If you don't want to abide by a specific term or condition, you don't get to use the product. That's just not how a free market works, and you know it.
If I don't want to abide by a specific term or condition, THEY don't get to sell me the product. That is how a free market works, and you know it.
> The judge should not be changing rules mid stream.
You got it in one. :)
Judges don't make laws or decide which ones to use. That is what We The People elect a legislature for. They make the laws constrained by the limits spelled out in a Constitution. The Constitution (State or Federal) isn't sacrosanct, but it is designed to be hard enough to change that it provides some protection against poorly thought through changes made in response to momentary passions.
So if enough folks can be convinced that trial by jury creates more problems than it solves just go in and strike those parts of the 6th and 7th Amendments. I won't be joining that movement any more than I join the perennial calls to abolish the Electoral College. I understand why those things are important, in spite of their downsides.
Democrat delenda est
What people like you fail to grasp is that the only reason many people choose to enter the music business is to make money, and YOU are the richer for it.
Richer how? You mean because of the RIAA I get to hear all kinds of lovely hits from Chamillionaire about his awesome car and fly bitches?
Artists who create music purely for the money are usually artists that suck. Though I don't have a metric to prove it, I'd stake my life that artists who create music purely because they love it or because they have something to say are creating much better music -- and those artists are the types who the RIAA doesn't like to sign.
[citation needed]
Free Martian Whores!
I agree, the few good alternative viewpoints in that post are sitting at the bottom of a sea of troll. The downright offensive generalization you pointed out is just one example of where he takes the worst and most outrageous viewpoints some pirates have and makes them out to be the mainstream opinions of anyone on the side of the fence he's attacking. It's the IP discussion equivalent of the mocking "ignorant redneck/dirty hippie" posts you find in political discussions. I always read the whole post before moderating but my troll-o-meter redlined a quarter way through that post.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Other than the rants against Capitalism, this was a great post. However you to are "misinformed" at least in your view of Capitalism and Capitalists.
Capitalism is the best method for distributing limited resources.
Never before in the history of the world has there been an infinite resource. In order for socialism or communism to work you need an infinite resource, which outside the digital world will never exist, however it does exist when it comes to digital goods.
There is still the cost to power the infrastructure housing the infinite resource and the resources used to house it. Who gets the equipment to view it is still best distributed via Capitalism, however onces the minimum threshold to view such data is reached all should have equal access.
The current model is broken and is in serious need of reform.
So if it sucks so bad, why do you want it? You (and everyone else) are perfectly free to listen to any 'give it away for free' music you want right now. If that is all you want, we don't need to discuss copyright, do we?
That is a ridiculous argument, and (I hope) you know it. A Madonna song is not a commodity, so there is no 'free market' for Madonna songs (just like there is no 'free market' for Chevy's). If you absolutely have to have the Madonna song, agree to the conditions.
What we should really do is allow MediaSentry and all of the other investigative folks onto the file sharing networks, but share CC licensed or free music instead.
That's of dubious value in a climate that allows industry groups to force artists to pay royalties for public performance of their own songs even if they aren't members of said group.
I thought your Mom grounded you from the Internet for failing English?
So if it sucks so bad, why do you want it? You (and everyone else) are perfectly free to listen to any 'give it away for free' music you want right now. If that is all you want, we don't need to discuss copyright, do we?
(Assuming you are the AC I originally responded to)
You're taking my point in the wrong direction. Your original point was that without copyright laws on music, many important music artists would never have made music (because they only wanted to make money and would have no incentive). My point in response was that without those copyright laws, several of those artists would still make music for other reasons. However, the fact that they could make money too... well, why the hell not?
Again, to clarify: I don't believe that, without copyright laws, we would lose any significant part of our important musical creations. I could be wrong.
I am not sure you can have what is going on without the two things that you listed. Bill Gates saw 30 years ago that there would come a point where the United states would no longer manufacture anything, and that the only wealthy people would be those who would control the processes to how things are made. He applied this model to computer software, licensing it to companies (IBM) who would actually manufacture the product and sell it, while he would collect Royalties. Watch as Microsoft sheds a lot of its workforce over the next 10 or 20 years and become more of a patent holding company collecting royalties for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundataion. (There is nothing wrong with this in and of itself, but there will most likely be no true innovation for the next 20-30 years or more, and those who survive will be the ones who can monetize what has already been done. The corporate lobby will extend this to eliminate fair use and the public domain. Everything will be covered by a copyright, patent, or trademark. Want to learn 2+2=4 you will have to pay a royalty to the owner of the copyright to the numbers 2 and 4, the copyright of the symbols "+" and "=" and the patent covering the addition of numbers. (ok I am being a little sarcastic)
The return of music to being a service would mean the death of the "recording industry."
Record companies are not going to reinvent themselves; they're too set in their ways. They're going to fight, tooth and nail, to continue to do what they've been doing all along. Most dying industries eventually die (buggy whip industry), but some are big enough to legislate their way to survival (tobacco industry). The RIAA is trying to do the latter, and probably a lot more successfully than we'd like to admit.
Of course, I like to think their success is temporary, but with Biden as VP, I'm not so sure anymore.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
That is unethical.
Do you hold the same belief for the Boston Tea Party? Unethical to take hold of that tea?
"I don't agree with your terms, so I'm going to steal your product to spite you!" isn't the answer.
It always has been the answer. When the rules imposed from above fail to seem legitimate in the eyes of the population, the population no longer follows them. If you sell bread to a starving population at too high a price, the populace breaks open your warehouses and takes it for themselves.
You're not speaking voodoo, the problem is that it's much too late in the game for your free market solutions, so people are suggesting regulatory solutions. These corporations are doing much of their damage at the legislative level so that's where you have to fight them. Even if it were possible to fix a (partly legislative) problem of this magnitude with a free market solution (the fact that the problem exists tells you that the market can't fix it in its current state), most people and businesses are far too complacent and/or dependent to take the level of action needed. Even if you cut off the money supply tomorrow and eventually DRM fell out of use with the new media and software companies that came into being, the IP laws would still be broken and things would quickly degrade to the state they were in before.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You mean this site? It's still up, being updated, and in general shows no sign of having received a take down notice.
I dunno about that really. Many people out there, self included, have invested in some pretty good gear to watch movies on at home. I have pretty high end projector, I have a screaming good stereo system (I do need to upgrade my surround processor) and can pretty much duplicate the best of a movie theater. In addition, I have an open bar, access to the kitchen, I can pick and choose the company I keep to watch it, and I can pause things whenever I need another drink or potty break.
I've only been to like two or so movies OUT at a public theater in like the past 7 years.
I can't be the only one out there doing this...as that the equipment, decent stuff is getting to the price level of more of the general public.
Besides, if you have a chick over to watch a movie...you are MUCH closer to your bedroom, than if you are at a movie house.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
"No, I'm saying that believing that you have a right to someone elses property or creation without being expected to adhere to their terms is ok,"
If I want to use Einstein's E=MC^2 equation in my scientifc calculations, I must agree to his terms? Or don't scientific theories count as creations?
But let's go back to art.If I make a painting and display it, some people will photograph it.
Some people will make copies -- either of those photographs, or with paint and canvas.
Some people may put those photos on the Internet. They may even choose to gift those paintings of theirs to more people.
Same with statues.
Same with buildings.
And lastly, same with music.
And yet I'm guessing you would frown at a law that would ban the photography of statues or buildings or even paintings without the author's express permission.
And if you indeed would oppose such a law, your argument collapses.
Let musicians earn their money same as painters or sculptors do.
Depends. It depends on the quality of the performers, both as musicians, and as showmen.
I can speak mostly only from a historical standpoint on this. But, an example is Led Zeppelin. They did stuff on record that would be impossible to reproduce exactly the same on stage. However, their live performances (get the Led Zeppelin DVD if you don't have it) were something amazing. These guys would often put on 3+ hours concerts. They were talented musicians, and a talented group together, and would often improvise on stage, playing some fun and interesting stuff, different versions of songs, etc. In his day, Jimmy Page was a blast to watch on stage they way he moved around and emoted with music and movement. Sure, he probably has flubbed more notes in one show that some performers today could ever attempt, but, hey, he was playing 90 mph and drunk and on heroin, so I give him a break. :)
Another group, the Rolling Stones. They don't sound much at ALL live like they do on record, but, they are fantastic (especially in the mid 70's, get a copy of the bootleg "Ladies and Gentlemen The Rolling Stones" from '72) to go see live. They had stage presence, and would just get into a groove that made the audience jam with them.
One last example...Pink Floyd.
Ok...well, in concert, they can sound almost exactly like the album quite often, but, they also do some improve or extended versions of their songs. And I've yet to see anyone beat their stage show. You can't get that on a record, and I've seen the DVD's from the tours I went to, and the DVD cannot do the live show justice.
I think many of todays groups, have lost the performance ability. To lock into their audience and rock the whole place out. No lip sync'ing. And if you're really good...you don't need a huge spectacular stage and light show either. Again, look at those old Stones and Zeppelin performances. It was mostly just them on a stage with a light on them playing. And it was hard to beat.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You are an example of my point:
"The slashdot community has been getting pissed at the lack of reasoning power in hypercapitalist america, it seems in general that america has an excessive amount of brain dead people and anti-intellectualism, and the rise of super corporate indoctrinated nerd drones, this anti intellectualism and lack of intellectual depth increasingly found in certain americans or others so indoctrinated against intellectual understanding ...."
I'm sorry but you are not even well read enough to take place in the discussion, this is what I mean, you are inexperienced and ignorant of the larger issues.
Your pro market bullshit ignores the infringement on peoples rights having taken place, not only that you ignored
Thomas Babington Macaulay's speech in the House of Commons, 5 February 1841 on the extension of the term of copyright protections:
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1233629&cid=27957631
The man predicted everything that is happening NOW and even he thought it was unjust.
Non scarcity exists, excessive anti intellectual free market types don't like it... too bad nature's not going to change her non scarcity of information policy.
Content creators were granted those rights by the public, that was the whole original purpose of patent and copyright and they were to be for LIMITED TIME, not the other way around.
The fact that you believe the current system is ok shows your profound ignorance of the matter.
Unfortunately you are incorrect, ideologies don't create progress, people do. Wealth has always been created in all societies, it's a western/american mythology "capitalism is the best" you or most people have no idea what's the best because you will never live long enough to see radical social changes beyond your own life, the people decide what is best depending on the changes in their environment.
Communism had technological and social advancement, in fact when they implemented market policies in russia they went backwards, I know people in russia that preferred the former system because the west certainly did not have a clue of how to implement market reforms and so russia ended up with a shiteload of problems.
The world is not an ideology, and capitalism is a political ideology.
Not to mention law of supply and demand could not be chosen to be ignored (in the case of piracy), the non scarce nature of information makes socialist economic elements possible, since every extra free copy once a business has made enough money is not going to effect their business since those people wouldn't have paid for it.
There's the ideology (captitalism) and the actors (men), no one lives according to ideology if you looked at how they behaved, even "pro market" types pirate, they are hypocrites and thats what I hate most about humans who are ardently pro market if you looked at their computers you'd find a huge amount of hypocrisy.
History us far from over the idea that socialism or communism failed is a misnomer because elements of all ideologies are always being practiced in any system, and people react based on changs in their environment.
This is what I mean by people not being well read or informed. Any system always has pro's and cons and drawbacks, anecdotes or stories from school do not substitute for serious scholarly research into complex matters. It's takes a lot of slog to see through the mythos of our societies and go read about the facts from other sources then pro propaganda institutions of your own society.
The fact is technological advancements are on collision course with older capitalist dinosaurs, and it will take a few generations to shake them out while the kiddies/kids growing up will accept non scarcity of information and find new ways to monetize it.
I'm not saying the market is bad, I'm saying the actors are bad, any system can be good or bad depeneding on it's actors behaviour.
As nerds we always have be skeptical of over enthusiasm for any idealogy / socio economic system, since we should always subscribe to truth and making the world a better place for our children and if ideology gets in the way of the facts and making our world a better place we have the option of updating it/ignoring it/changing it, etc, to suit the times and changes around us.
Think of all the radical social changes that have happened in the last 400 years, like they are suddenly going to stop.
The end of black slavery in america for instance and the advent of the civil rights movement, we tend to see the world through our own narrow perspective because of what we are taught and because we've never truly *known* anything else.
Most people are not serious about the truth, if we called out all the ideologies on slashdot and see what kind of scholarly articles, research and science and history they read on other nations and their development, we'd find a lot of people that know next to nothing, and this is the problem, there is not enough time in the day to digest it all unless one is committed to hard slog of seperating fact from fiction, and few people are charitable or dedicated to wanting to know rather then just accept what they are being fed by their home nation or a few anecdotes from people that claim x is evil, y is good, etc, etc.
All systems have positives and negatives and I think you'd agree finding the truth in complex issues is important not naive ideology.
Most eloquently put. I second this statement.
You are actually going to compare selling bread to a starving population with copyright violations? Are you insane? You are aware that bread is pretty much the bare minimum required to survive, and entertainment is nothing but a luxury, right? A more appropriate comparison would be with the scumbag looters that come out during a power failure - it has suddenly become easy for me to take things I don't want to pay for, so therefore it is OK. Oddly enough, I have never seen looting portrayed as some sort of noble rebellion against the high price of jewelry.
As for your equally asinine comparison to the Boston Tea Party - well let's see. On the one hand we have a group of people who are willing to risk arrest or death, and at the very least are willing to sacrifice by going without something they want (tea), to protest against someone who forcibly takes their money and gives little in return for it. On the other hand, we have a bunch of yahoos who hide behind anonymity, are willing to sacrifice nothing at all, and whose 'demand' is that OTHER PEOPLE (artists, publishers, whatever) sacrifice FOR THEM (by giving away their work), so they can have stuff for free. Great comparison.
I thought you might find this interesting:
http://www.p2pconsortium.com/index.php?s=e8cf8a9cb0038199f63fd87e1c69bf61&showtopic=15260&pid=130042&st=0&#entry130042
Juries are populated by the populace, and the populace are sheeple.
xkcd
If your favorite car is a Corvette, you are going to have to buy it from Chevy, not Ford. Therefore, the only competition is at the retail level, just like with music. You can buy the same song from Best Buy, FYE, Amazon, or any number of retail stores. You can hear it for free on the radio. You can buy it from iTunes or another online store. You can subscribe to a service like Rhapsody and listen to it when you want. You can use Pandora and hear it for free. All of those are legal, and they all have different prices and terms. So please stop with the silly 'no competition' and 'unbalanced markets' crap. What you really want is to be able to dictate the terms by which you get something, and if the other party does not agree, you take it on your terms anyway. And that is extremely unfair.
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If that's what you need, pay me.
More hyperbole & red meat for the believers.
This is not a decision to take away the issue from a jury, but rather the judge noting a conflict between binding caselaw and what other judges have done.
These *are* rather high profile cases, and a judge being hyper-careful is hardly surprising. In fact, it's encouraging.
When I initially saw it, I also shrugged, assuming that the decision was based on lack of sufficient eveidentiary showing to send it to a jury (which still wouldn't surprise me--the fair use notion strikes me as far-fetched [that has nothing to do with what would be a *good* policy, simply what current law *is*]).
hawk, esq.
Ah, complacency... Don't get me started on that particular bugbear.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
So... reading this post without paying for it when the author intended for you to pay for it... is OK?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
You would be an excellent economics teacher. Your thinking is "reality-based"! I respect those who deal with Facts & Reality.
I really am not an anonymous coward; but I lose passwords, and then the sites will not let me re-register; and because I am a computer illiterate, I throw my hands up.
http://publiushuldah.wordpress.com/
What does "weaseled it is way" mean?
Please re-learn 2nd grade grammar.
Sincerely,
The informed members of Slashdot.
Thanks for expanding on my "no one really goes to live performances for the technical quality of the music". ;)
You managed to mention just about everything i was implying.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
*** This article may require cleanup to meet Slashdot's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. ***
> This is just another example of Judges emasculating juries, dis-empowering them.
Exactly. Judges these days want to rule. [citation needed] They don't want to be constrained by having to bother with juries, [citation needed] legislatures,[citation needed] laws, [citation needed] constitutions, [citation needed] and certainly not the executive.[citation needed] This case is a poster child for judicial activism.
So the 6th and 7th Amendments go into the toilet now [citation needed]... to join the 1st, [citation needed] 2nd, [citation needed] 9th [citation needed]and 10th, [citation needed] big parts of the 4th [citation needed] and 5th [citation needed] and the 8th.[citation needed] But we still have the 3rd Amendment inviolate!
Folks, when do we say ENOUGH! These idiots only get away with this foolishness because we just bitch and moan and don't make them pay a political price.
Actually, I don't know what political price you are referring to, but judges, at least federal ones are appointed and not elected specifically to avoid bringing playing politics into the court room for fear of not being reelected.
What will movies turn into? Will there be a resurgence of live performances?
Good point, and the answer is yes. Once CGI gets to the point where the studios can create bespoke virtual 'actors' and no longer have to pay tens of millions per movie to the meatspace variety, we will see a renaissance of live acting. Thespians who can really act as opposed to looking good up on a big screen will flourish. Those who got by purely on looks will have to go back to sweeping floors.
BTW, to see where CGI and the use of virtual actors are headed, just watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Hint: the old dude is mostly ones and zeroes.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
What a pile of horse manure. Tell me, did you willingly give up the ability to think when the Neo-Cons sent you their bullet point list, or did they make you drink Kool-Ade?
Jesus Christ, there are many cases where the judge decides.
Fuck, please start to think.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I wondered if anyone knew what projects are lined up for Jury ? I know he and his girlfriend were at the Irish Film awards a few weeks ago. I'd be surprised if ROME doesnt result in a lot of work for him. harie real estate