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EMI Sues Beatles Usurper Off the Net
blackest_k sends along a Wired piece on EMI's successful suit to get Beatles music off the Net. Here is the judge's ruling (PDF). "A federal judge on Thursday ordered a Santa Cruz company to immediately quit selling Beatles and other music on its online site, setting aside a preposterous argument that it had copyrights on songs via a process called 'psycho-acoustic simulation.' A Los Angeles federal judge set aside arguments from Hank Risan, owner of BlueBeat and other companies named as defendants in the lawsuit EMI filed on Tuesday. His novel defense to allegations he was unlawfully selling the entire stereo Beatles catalog without permission was that he — and not EMI or the Beatles' Apple Corp — owns these sound recordings, because he re-recorded new versions of the songs using what he termed 'psycho-acoustic simulation.' Risan faces perhaps millions of dollars in damages under the Copyright Act. And copyright attorneys said his defense was laughable and carries no weight."
also known as the World's Largest Open Air Mental Institution.
P.S. Sorry, but you'll probably only get this if you've actually visited the place.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Psycho-acoustic simulation sounds like a real good pseudo-science. Maybe they can create an agreement in exchange for some platinum covered cables!
my band is more brutal techno punk than yours
Maybe now they'll 'beat it'
The copyright lawyers are laughing at this guy's defense, but these are the same lawyers who think that file sharing is immoral and that record companies should have the right to sue people into poverty because of a few kilobytes of uploads.
I wouldn't put too much weight on what they think.
As for this guy in the article, it's pretty clear he was just trying to make a buck by ripping off the Beatles' music. I'm surprised that the judge didn't hand down a larger fine, actually. His "psycho-acoustic simulation" argument was laughable at best. Facepalm worthy, at least.
...I just make trans-electronic digital impressions of the originals.
Soon they will patent greed.
Psycho-acoustic simulation sounds like a real good pseudo-science.
It's what most of us call mp3 or m4a.
The blame falls on the lurid headline over at Wired, which completely mischaracterizes the actual article. But it's Slashdot's fault for repeating it both in the headline here and in the summary.
For shame.
Is it just me, or is EMI not suing the Beatles (half of which aren't even going to show up in court), but really some fuckwad that sold illegal copies of their songs?
np: Burial - Distant Lights (Various - 5 Years Of Hyperdub (Disc 2))
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
If you've ever been to Santa Cruz then what the rest of the country would laugh at as ridiculous makes perfect sense there. I think its the magnetic waves from the Mystery Spot
'nuff said.
THIS is the sort of piracy that the RIAA (and member companies) should fight against. THIS is the sort of piracy that I think any intelligent human being opposes. THIS is the sort of copyright violation that the laws were written to combat.
Considering the old copyright case where you had "Achy Breaky Heart" and "Achy Breakin Heart" many, many years ago...
If you added backmasking, or subliminal messages to an audio recording, does that count as altering the work significantly enough to make it your own? If that's what psycho-acoustic stimulation is, he might have more of a case than we thought.
Or that could be what the Abby Road album told me when I played it backwards...
I actually RTFA, and Beatles music is still available in internet jukeboxes. What happened is some guy tried to twist copyright law in a foolish and illogical way, saying that resampled Beatles songs are his, and he actually registered copyrights of them. The judge PREDICTABLY and logically ruled against him. I'd have laughed him out of court.
EMI holds the real copyrights, sued, and won. The guy posting Beatles songs was clearly in the wrong. As is the summary.
The true evil here is that the Beatles' music should be in the public domain by now; they broke up in 1971, almost forty years ago. You should be able to reuse their art in your own art by now; that was, in fact, the whole purpose of giving Congress the power to write copyright law in the first place.
Free Martian Whores!
Seriously, the article uses the term several times, the summary uses the term...googling "psycho acoustic simulation" just brings up various regurgitations of the same article.
I realize that it's just some term the guy made up. But if he's going to use it as a defense, and people are going to talk about it, it seems *someone* should define it. Neither of the documents in the linked article have the text "psycho" in them, either, so that's a no go.
I just wanted to find out exactly how crazy the guy is, that's all. :/
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
down to Penny Lane and see Elanor Rigby.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Are we against this because he was selling the songs for profit? If there wasn't a price tag attached to his download page it'd be OK and we'd be railing against the lawyers and laws right? Just checking where our moral line falls today.
Is it safe to say this is an action of debugging for the whole internet? They did remove some Beatles after all.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
I find it hard to believe that these guys actually thought they would get away with this in the long term. Claiming that their psycho-acoustic simulations are anything other than copies seems incredibly unlikely to fly. They may have thought it was sufficiently legally muddy that they could get away with it for long enough to make a bunch of cash before a judge stomped on them, but I'm thinking the whole thing might have been to generate publicity for the company. If so, they've certainly succeeded, made the national news here in the UK at least.
Oh no... it's the future.
Actually sounds Psycho-acoustic simulation like a really good indie band.
I just wish EMI would hurry the fuck up and put the Beatles music online before everyone stops caring.
Jonathanjk.com
The guy posting Beatles songs was clearly in the wrong.
I just wrote about this in my journal last night and would like to point out that Media Rights Technology (MRT, owners of BlueBeat.com) has a long history of neurosis when it comes to the legal system. Although not cross referenced above, you may recognize MRT as the very same people who sued everyone in 2007 for not implementing DRM. If you're Hank Risan, you've probably been asking yourself "How can I twist the law in a bizarre way to get rich quick?" And here we are.
My work here is dung.
If we had sane copyright laws (like the original 1790 act with a 28 year limit), the Beatles catalog would be in public domain for the enrichment of all 6,000,000,000 humans, rather than just the 2(?) remaining band members.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Before taking more agressive action, I wanted to reach out to you because it struck me as odd that you would be running a site without licenses. [...] What's going on?
This quote is from the personal email by the RIAA vice president, read more here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/22140609/Bluebeat-TRO-Opposition-Ex-A
:)
Read to the bottom of the conversation to find the nice way of kindly informing about the infringement without first sending the lawyer-hordes.
I would love to see him take such an open and inquiring attitude towards other pirates (a.k.a. normal consumers) and just listen to the community before unleashing his well known more agressive action.
And even if he let's his lawyers send the pages of ALL CAPS LEGALESE, it would be nice to include the "I hope you are doing well" from the top.
These guys are giving those of us trying to sell legitimate copies of stolen music a real bad name. Shame on you BlueBeat!
If Timothy Leary was born a few decades later, he'd patent psychedelic trips. Then we'd be stuck in the bland 50's forever singing doo-wap tunes.
Table-ized A.I.
Why, why, why must people who might otherwise help argue the case that today's copyright is broken spoil their credibility with exageration and mis-statement of facts?
1 - Not every person on Earth benefits from public domain music. Some are too damned busy trying to remain alive.
2 - The Beatle's copyrights do not funnel every penny made off of sale of their music to the surviving band members.
Yes, their music should be out of copyright by now. You'd be a greater help to the cause of copyright reform that would make that happen by sticking to reality and sounding like you've thought the issue through, than by spouting off feel-good numbers that make it sound like you're wearing blinders so you can reach the conclusion you want.
The Mystery Spot is one of the most hilariously lame points-of-interest I've ever been to. Basically, some guy's old mountain cabin collapsed and he said, "Ma, I've got a great idea to make some money." The rest is history.
> Santa Cruz, California
>
> also known as the World's Largest Open Air Mental Institution.
> P.S. Sorry, but you'll probably only get this if you've actually visited the place.
Except that Santa Cruz is synonymous with crackpot on slashdot due to people with silly names working for SCO.
Parent deserves to be modded up for pointing out what most people will likely miss. Psycho-acoustic simulation is the process by which audio compression techniques remove bits of audio recordings in ways that the human brain is likely not to notice. It's part of the reason MP3 files can be compressed at all.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Hey, I just added white noise to your song and copyrighted it as a derivative work! Next I'll add pink noise and call it the "Radio Remix" and copyright that.
The strange twists of what is and is not an original.
I don't know if this concept is technically possible but interesting either way.
Your band makes a cover of "Hard Day's Night". You have some software that compares your cover song to the original and creates a diff based on pitch changes, speed, attack, decay of the notes etc .. Once completed, this sound "diff" applied to your cover song generates an ouput that is something very close in sound to the original copy from the Beatles. What part of this process would the current laws for copyright enfringment apply to? The diff, the cover song (assume it was made legally), the software used to make the diff or the software used to apply the diff? How far away from the original recording is considered legally to close that it is no longer considered a cover but a copy of the original? What if you distribute a diff that makes it closer to the original but some completely unrelated third party provides yet another diff that makes it even closer if both are applied? Most importantly for the RIAA, who is in the wrong and who can be sued for the copyright infringement?
Another situation taking it a step further..
Someone uses the mp3 in binary form of the Metallica song "Master of Puppets" to hash other Metallica songs they own to generate a unique output and distributes those diffs. All you would need to generate your own Metallica collection of songs would be to buy the original "Master of Puppets" mp3 and download those hashes. The hashes distributed are not copyrighted and you are not distributing the songs, how would the RIAA handle this and what would be the illegal file? What instead of using "Master of Puppets" for the source, you used notepad.exe as the source? What if your hashes contained a disclaimer that those files were encrypted and any attempt to defeat any encryption would violate the DMCA?
The world of copyright is riddled with potholes.
The notes and beat of the national anthem is data
So are the notes and beat of "I Want to Hold Your Hand". The "publishing" copyright in Lennon-McCartney songs (as opposed to the "recording" copyright) is owned half by Sony and half by Jacko's estate.
You mean: "It's part of the reason MP3 files can have LOSSY compression at all." Lossless compression doesn't have anything to do with psycho-acoustic simulation.
Just because everybody on earth does benefit does not mean that they could not. Public domain is about making things available, not about actually getting them.
Dear Slashdot editors,
please slow down with the new topics, poor Anonymous Coward keeps missing his shot at first post.
Signed,
Nobody really cares about first post.
Their debut album "Mind Vortex" is for sale on the Santa Cruz boardwalk as we speak. Each copy comes with a book (well, xerox) about Mindwaves and Crystal Dousing.
>>>1 - Not every person on Earth benefits from public domain music.
This isn't the 1950s. In today's world even isolated tribes have access to solar-powered radios (give by UNESCO and other charitable organizations) so they can access the world's music or news via AM shortwave. Some, like the Amish, may voluntarily choose not to participate in this global culture, but the access is still there if they want it.
>>>2 - The Beatle's copyrights do not funnel every penny made off of sale of their music to the surviving band members.
Thank you for supporting my viewpoint that copyright has been hijacked. It's meant to benefit the originators of the idea, not suits that were not even born when the songs were first created.
>>>You'd be a greater help to the cause of copyright reform that would make that happen by sticking to reality
And you'd be helpful if you stopping this pointless in-fighting.
All you are doing is nitpicking my original statement,
like a shrew
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
P.S.
>>>1 - Not every person on Earth benefits from public domain music.
Strawman argument. I didn't say "every person". I said 6 billion, but the actual population is much higher than that, so I did not include "every" person in my first statement.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I can answer your "why? why? why?" question.
The answer is AVARICE. People want STUFF. They are not happy with what they have, so they covet things that other people have. Nobody needs the Beatles, but people really want to possess instances of their music.
Instead you just pulled a number out of your ass. Yeah, that's so much stronger an argument.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed"
Lets help the beatles eliminate that unauthorized distribution, and copying of their music by just not listening to it.
Their stuff is 40 years old; lets get something new and different and just leaven them alone.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Which would be relevant if MP3 wasn't a lossy format...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
So if I compress the Beatles music into a 20 kbit/s HE-AAC file, then that should be okay since I'm only preserving ~2% of the original song.
That's fair use? (shrug). Or not. If I did create a radio station or catalog along those lines, it might sound like this: http://yp.shoutcast.com/sbin/tunein-station.pls?id=979360
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
They didn't lose because their theory was preposterous, they lost because they couldn't back up their defensive claims. basically they made sound-a-like recordings. They modeled them with regard to psycho-acoustics (a very real discipline which studies how acoustical phenomena are interpreted by the brain) thereby they might make one noise at the same time as another to actually get it to sound like a noise on the original album (think of optical illusions but for the ear, aural illusions). They lost because they could offer no evidence (ie. no recordings, instruments they used, tracks they had assembled, etc.) to back their having re-recorded any of the works they were selling, and because the tracks being sold sounded identical it was assumed they were. But theoretically you could re-record an album and then craft it with regard to psycho acoustics (changing reverb tails, adding and subtracting frequencies, etc.) model it in such away that two recordings sounded identical, and then you'd be in the clear. Cause the courts didn't decide the defense was invalid, they decided that the defendant's making that case while offering no evidence was ridiculous.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Thank you for supporting my viewpoint that copyright has been hijacked. It's meant to benefit the originators of the idea, not suits that were not even born when the songs were first created.
Actually, that's incorrect. Before copyright, there were no artists or writers clamouring for "protection". The people pushing copyright were the publishers, who wanted copyright to benefit themselves (which is exactly what we have right now.) The whole "think of the artists" stuff is propaganda invented to create support for copyright from artists and "average" people.
Before copyright, artists considered it a complement that their work was replayed and enjoyed by others.
This, of course, doesn't make the hoarding of our cultural works and the impingement on free expression right, but I just wanted to point out that it was never meant to protect artists, only publishers.
But EMI don't own the particular soundwaves which comprise the Beatles' songs. Instead they own the very idea of these songs. EMI has sole and total ownership over the platonic ideals of which any particular instance of a Beatles song is merely a shadow. This ideal encompases any sound resembling the songs, any text resembling their lyrics, any album cover resembling theirs, any musical notes close enough to a Beatles tune.
In a very real sense, EMIs ownership of this music is analogous to them owning the number 537. A platonic ideal. No matter who sings it, or performs it, or records it, or sells it, or even hums it this music belongs to EMI because they own the very idea of it. They own it now, and will probably own it in perpetuity, for the rest of eternity.
So which is crazier; this guys argument or the concept of copyrighted music itself?
May the Maths Be with you!
P.S.
>>>1 - Not every person on Earth benefits from public domain music.
Strawman argument. I didn't say "every person". I said 6 billion, but the actual population is much higher than that, so I did not include "every" person in my first statement.
Speaking of nitpicking...
It was not, giving 28 year terms of copyright to a populace that would live only 35 on average.
Statistics. You fail it.
If you have 1000 people, 500 of which died before they reached one year, and 500 of which die when they're 70, what is the average life expectancy?
In that time period, most adults lived into their 60's, not mid-thirties. The "35 year lifespan" is a garbage statistic spouted by people who don't understand math.
>>>So listen up: don't proclaim the 1790 act was "sane"
Last time I checked I'm neither a slave nor a serf, which means my mouth is not your property. And I'm not obligated to follow your orders, creamwobbly. I can say whatever I want, thank you very much, and in MY opinion the original 28 year span was a reasonable length of time. Furthermore...
None of us engineers, programmers, or other laborers get a multi-decade monopoly over our creations.... we get paid an hourly rate, then we get laidoff, and that's it. No more money. I'm not entitled to a lifetime of free cash for a schematic I created at age 25, so why should an artist be entitled to a lifelong cash payment either? Fair treatment dictates they should get an hourly wage same as us engineers/laborers, and that's it. The 28 year monopoly is just a generous extra, and not required.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Ok, I did RTFA, and also some public court documents.
Well, Mr. Steven Marks, representing the "Executive Vice President & General Counsel" of the RIAA has decided to share his email with us, so please everyone, please feel free to send him your thoughts, feeling, etc on the subject of music copyrights, which may include but mot be limited to pictures of feces if you deem it to be appropriate.
SMarks@riaa.com
The Beatles disbanded nearly a decade before I was born, yet their music will still be under copyright protection "When I'm Sixty-four"
(I know, a bad pun, but fitting.)
+ 1 .
Thanks for reminding us all of this basic fact. Copyright (actually a monopoly privilege granted by government) was intended to protect the owners of printing presses, not for the benefit of authors like Paine or Milton or Shakespeare
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Okay, I get it. "Psychoacoustic Simulation" means he compressed it with MP3. See? It's not the same anymore.
One might call this the "lame" defense.
I'd say they're about equal.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered a Santa Cruz company to immediately quit selling Beatles and other music on its online site, setting aside a preposterous argument that it had copyrights on songs via a process called 'psycho-acoustic simulation.'
Who'd have thought it? Preposterous arguments from a Santa Cruz Organisation.
As another poster mentioned, life expectancy is skewed by infant mortality. If a lot of infants die in the first year, then the life expectancy number plummets. Discounting infant mortality, the age a person could hope to live to was younger than today's but not by such a huge amount.
From http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-LifeExpectancy.html :
"Genealogical data yield an expectation of life at age ten of almost fiftyseven years for white males in 1790-1794"
So if 1790 had an average age of 57 years and 1990 (which was the most recent data on that page) is 76, we're looking at a 33% increase in life span. Meanwhile, copyright went from 28 years to 95 years *AFTER* the death of the creator. Even in the "best case" (work published as author dies), this is a 240% increase in copyright terms. A 33% increase in copyright terms would give us a copyright length of 38 years. This would mean that works created before 1971 would be Public Domain. Coincidentally, the Beatles broke up in 1970 so all of their works would be Public Domain.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
But along with longer life expectancy we have reduced costs for production, reproduction, replication and packaging.
We have faster and wider promulgation of works to more and more people all the time (more people because we live longer), therefore the limit of time that ensures an appropriate level of renumeration for the work to act as incentive to take up art creation as a full time job has gotten much shorter.
Far, FAR shorter than 1790.
And what's wrong with saving for your pension like ANYONE ELSE?
Due to a process I invented I call "Pseudo-Digital Misanthropy" I now claim ownership of slashdot. You all owe me back user fees.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Hey, I modded you up, but dude, lay off the coffee.
Psycho-acoustics doesn't have anything to do with compression. It is a methodology of making something sound like it's coming from somewhere other than where its really coming from, such as surround sound from two speakers. This is usually done by delaying and attenuating different frequency components of a sound to fool the brain that the sound has been delayed and attenuated by reflection off the outer ear by coming in from a particular direction that it otherwise is not coming from.
This is most effective when done during live recording where each sound component can be treated discreetly, placing them in any direction in a sphere around the listener. Singer in front, drummer in back, horn above, bass below, guitar left, keyboard right, etc.
Changing the format through file compression actually is detremental to Psycho-acoustics. It works better the higher the resolution (Sample depth, rate)and is optimal in analog.coming from somewhere other than where its really coming from, such as surround sound from two speakers. This is usually done by delaying and attenuating different frequency components of a sound to fool the brain that the sound has been delayed and attenuated by reflection off the outer ear by coming in from a particular direction that it otherwise is not coming from.
This is most effective when done during live recording where each sound component can be treated discreetly, placing them in any direction in a sphere around the listener. Singer in front, drummer in back, horn above, bass below, guitar left, keyboard right, etc.
Changing the format through file compression actually is detremental to Psycho-acoustics. It works better the higher the resolution (Sample depth, rate)and is optimal in analog.
I bet you good money that when copyright protection was first introduced that most artists were their own publishers. With digital distribution this will likely start to be the case yet again.
As for artists who use a third party publisher and feel that they got ripped off? No sympathy from me, they knew what there were getting into when they signed on and if they didn't they got what they deserved for being too stupid to understand.
No I did a "back of the envelope" calculation and figured about 90% of the world's humans have access to music (via phoneline internet, radio, et cetera). Even somebody who lives in a desolate place like Afghanistan, if they have a phone, could listen to western music like this stuff - http://yp.shoutcast.com/sbin/tunein-station.pls?id=367385 Or they could use solar powered radio. Or tapes. Or records.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
(Something strange happened to my text when I saved last time)
Psycho-acoustics doesn't have anything to do with compression. It is a methodology of making something sound like it's coming from somewhere other than where its really coming from, such as surround sound from two speakers. This is usually done by delaying and attenuating different frequency components of a sound to fool the brain that the sound has been delayed and attenuated by reflection off the outer ear by coming in from a particular direction that it otherwise is not coming from.
This is most effective when done during live recording where each sound component can be treated discreetly, placing them in any direction in a sphere around the listener. Singer in front, drummer in back, horn above, bass below, guitar left, keyboard right, etc.
Changing the format through file compression actually is detremental to Psycho-acoustics. It works better the higher the resolution (Sample depth, rate)and is optimal in analog.
No matter who sings it, or performs it, or records it, or sells it, or even hums it this music belongs to EMI because they own the very idea of it.
That's not entirely true. US Copyright law carves out some "compulsory licensing" exceptions that copyright holders are obligated to accept particular amounts of payment on and cannot deny permission. Web radio, for example. Mechanical reproduction for another (cover bands, etc). Which I believe may have been the exception this guy was going for, by trying to ride the fine line of what constitutes a new recording of the work. Even the makers of Guitar Hero did this (albeit in a much more legal way, by actually playing and rerecording the songs), and resulted with what sounded to the amateur as identical to the originals.
So this guy's idea wasn't necessarily *crazy*, just too close to literal duplication for this judge's taste (seems even the legal system applies some common sense now and then).
Depends who you are. If you are a guy trying to sell MP3s of Beatles songs then yes, they own the very idea of the song and anything even remotely related to it. If you are another EMI signed artist and you happen to produce a tune that sounds a bit like a Beatles song in parts well then that's okay. After all, there are only so many combinations of notes that sound okay to a human ear so there is eventually going to be some repartition.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
[citation needed]
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
But EMI don't own the particular soundwaves which comprise the Beatles' songs. Instead they own the very idea of these songs
O RLY? Even the parts in "All You Need Is Love" that are blatantly stolen from the French National Anthem, Bach, and Glen Miller?
To suggest that this music doesn't belong to all of us is absurd.
How much would you be willing to lose?
Because I've been eying that Tesla Roadster, and it sounds like you might want to help me buy it.
But EMI don't own the particular soundwaves which comprise the Beatles' songs. Instead they own the very idea of these songs. EMI has sole and total ownership over the platonic ideals of which any particular instance of a Beatles song is merely a shadow. This ideal encompases any sound resembling the songs, any text resembling their lyrics, any album cover resembling theirs, any musical notes close enough to a Beatles tune.
This isn't quite true for copyrights, at least in theory. EMI has a claim on basically any work which is derived from a significant portion of a Beatles song. They don't have a claim on work which is similar to a Beatles song, unless it is derived from that song.
Copyright law is about provenance, not content. If someone who has never heard a Beatles song (nor looked at the score of one, etc) composes and records an exact replica of "Yellow Submarine", EMI doesn't own it. But good luck convincing a judge or jury of this.
So if this guy is "psychoacoustically simulating" a Beatles song, he's illegally preparing a derivative work.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
You'll notice I said "part".
I am scientifically inaccurate.
So which is crazier; this guys argument or the concept of copyrighted music itself?
This guy's argument. Also, you are an idiot.
Technically the diff you make between your cover song (which you legally produced by paying a little money) could be considered a derivative works of your song and the original song, which would mean you need to acquire licenses to both songs.
The same might apply to the 'hash', as you call it, but what you really want is an XOR or similar operation applied to your song and the original song. XOR basically mixes your song and the original song such that applying XOR again unmixes the song.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
I bet you good money that when copyright protection was first introduced
Actually, when copyright protection was first introduced, writers were not even allowed to publish their own works (unless they were stationers), nor were they regarded as owners of such works. The stationers guild was, and the stationers member who printed a book became 'owner' of it.
Letting the creators have the right was mostly a propaganda move when the stationers risked losing the whole deal. Most authors, after all, have a crap bargaining position compared to the owners of the presses and controllers of distribution, so it was a fairly cheap way to attempt to purchase some form of support.
90% of the world's population probably have listened to the Beatles at some point in time. Not just could, but have.
You can find most out-of-the-way, obscure Beduin tribe in the middle of the Sahara desert, or the most distance Amazon jungle tribe, and discover they've traded with people for a battery power tape deck at some point, that they pull out once every three months for celebrations and get new batteries for every year. Seriously. The lucky ones have hand cranked or solar players, but plenty have batteries.
Sometimes they have a hand cranked battery charger for everything, or even a small gasoline generator. Just because they live in huts or whatever without electrical lighting doesn't mean they have no electricity.
And every single Amish person has certainly hear a Beatles song at some point. They go out on their own for a year or so when they become adults, and it, frankly, is impossible to spend more than 10 hours in public places without hearing a Beatles' song as background music.
In fact, 90% is probably a low estimate. 90% of people have probably knowingly heard a Beatles' song. Another 9% have probably heard one without realizing it.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Didn't Cap'n Crunch (Draper) hang out there back in the day? That kinda proves your point.
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited
Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective
Writings and Discoveries;"
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Is that you, Ringo?
Nice babbling, but wrong. EMI owns the recording of the Beatles performing the song. If someone else records it, they own the copyright to that recording (for instance, Aerosmith's recording of Come Together is owned by Columbia). The ownership of the rights to record is held by someone else (I don't know who, probably McCartney).
What I wish is that I could copyright a year of my work and then be paid for that same work the rest of my life without ever having to perform that work again.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
What Colour are your bits?.
He thought mathematically turning bits into something else could alter their color, a classic mistake when programmers try to apply computer science to copyright law.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
...as this methodology finally proves that nothing on the X-Factor sounds anything like music.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The rest is history.
I thought the rest was mystery!
Also, you forgot the obligatory links to their website and the Wikipedia article thereunto appertaining. There, fixed that for you.
Last time I checked I'm neither a slave nor a serf ...
No, probably not - literally, but your further comments suggest you are not getting what you think you are worth. Think about that.
None of us engineers, programmers, or other laborers get a multi-decade monopoly over our creations.... we get paid an hourly rate, then we get laidoff, and that's it. No more money.
Sounds like you accepted a bad deal. I certainly get paid regularly for the software I've written. Take some responsibility for your decisions.
I agree that copyright should be reduced, but you lost me when you said:
If you are a programmer, you have the choice to write code, copyright it, and make money on it for as long as it is relevant.. mind you that's probably not decades, but it's also not an hourly rate then "No more money."
Just because you choose "work for hire" doesn't mean that's the only choice out there.
# (/.);;
- : float -> float -> float =
The judge PREDICTABLY and logically ruled against him. I'd have laughed him out of court.
I wouldn't. I'd impose Rule 11 sanctions against their attorneys for making an argument that no one with any knowledge of copyright law could have made in good faith. There wouldn't be much laughter at all.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If you've ever been to Santa Cruz then what the rest of the country would laugh at as ridiculous makes perfect sense there. I think its the magnetic waves from the Mystery Spot
Haha, good ol' Mystery Spot. :)
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
A laughable defense that carries no weight has been working for the record industry for decades...
SLashdot, slower and more bloated by release...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Actually, that's incorrect. Before copyright, there were no artists or writers clamouring for "protection". The people pushing copyright were the publishers, who wanted copyright to benefit themselves (which is exactly what we have right now.) The whole "think of the artists" stuff is propaganda invented to create support for copyright from artists and "average" people.
Sort of. Did you actually read the Wikipedia article you linked to? While you're right that generally speaking the benefit was generally to the publisher rather than the author, those benefits were not necessarily monetary, a big distinction from the modern situation. When authors were paid for their work, it was more common to be paid a lump sum, rather than modern royalties, since generally in the 16th and 17th centuries many works were only intended to go through one printing. The situation was not "exactly what we have right now."
Read your linked Wikipedia article:
The printing press brought the possibility of compensation for literary labor. Very speedily, however, the unrestricted rivalry of printers brought into existence competing and unauthorized editions of various works, which diminished prospects of any payment, or even entailed loss, for the authors, editors, and printers of the original issue, and thus discouraged further undertaking.
Not just printers.
Protection for the authors and their representatives was sought through special privileges obtained for separate works as issued.
Furthermore, there's more explanation of why publishers as well as rulers might want to grant copyright. Again, from the article:
Most early Italian enactments in regard to literature were framed not so much with reference to the protection of authors as for the purpose of inducing printers (acting as publishers) to undertake certain literary enterprises which were believed to be important to the community. The Republic of Venice, the dukes of Florence, and Leo X and other Popes conceded at different times to certain printers the exclusive privilege of printing for specific terms (rarely exceeding 14 years) editions of classic authors; not so much to secure profits for the printers, but rather to encourage, for the benefit of the community, literary ventures on the part of the editors and printers.
There's a lot more information out there, but I thought it might be nice to quote from the very source you provided.
I've worked with a lot of printed books from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, and early on many of these grants of copyright were certainly more to protect the work of both printer and by extension author/editor so that it would encourage the publication of quality books. And again, most of the early copyright terms were for 5-15 years, enough time for publishers to sell off their stock while preparing more projects. Some of the more elaborate publications of thousands of pages could require months of typesetting and printing, and prominent authors sometimes required the patronage of aristocrats (even kings and emperors) to fund the production of a major work. A printer (and/or a patron) had little incentive to take such a risk when a rare successful publications would immediately be followed by low-quality bootleg abridged copies generated by another publishing house. Hence, copyright for a very limited period after publication to allow the recouping of costs.
So, while you're right that generally publishers were the ones granted copyright, the reasons were not always the same as they are today, and the situation is simply not analogous to the modern corporate greed that tries to keep works out of the public domain for generations.
This story makes me wonder if something more complicated might be going on.
Imagine if you had a library of standard sounds (notes, chords etc. from different instruments)
and the various voice clips, and modifiers (echo, distortion etc...) needed to create an equivalent sound recording.
In effect an method for creating a virtual cover band.
So imagine you buy OMG_Famous_Track, ran it through some sort of computer program, which selects the best samples from your library in order to stitch together an equivalent sound recording. Then an human comes along and touches things up until its virtually indistinguishable from the original recording.
You then proceed to sell THE [ARTIST]'S - [TRACK] by [Company]. That is you sell the equivalent recording made up of all your properly owned samples, with a name that indicates that it should sound like the famous [ARTIST]s [TRACK].
Hell for all that work, I'd probably just start a site for cover bands.
Click on the track you want, we'll give you a list of cover's that we sell.
They don't own all of the rights to the Beatles songs. There are also the publishing rights, which are owned separately. While this page doesn't describe the part that EMI owns, it describes the publishing rights in the context of clarifying (IMHO "debunking" qualifies, in terms of the layman's original idea, even though they term it "Mostly True") Michael Jackson's ownership. http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/jackson.asp
For example, Heather Mills. I saw Paul McCartney in an interview (I'm almost positive while they were happily married) talk about how Heather would hear a song on the radio and ask Paul who did it, and Paul said (approx quote) "Oh, that's one of ours."
Nice semantic posturing. Total bullshit but nice.
s/amateur/vegetable/.
I'm the second most tone deaf git in the known world and I can tell the difference. So much it hurts.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
1 - Not every person on Earth benefits from public domain music. Some are too damned busy trying to remain alive.
Don't argue with parent. Why can't you
Before copyright, artists considered it a complement that their work was replayed and enjoyed by others.
Yup. Martialis for one appreciated it so much that he coined a new word to describe it. You might have heard it: to plagiarize.
He was also very glad that book sellers created compilations of his work and sold them without giving him even a complimentary copy.
Wow, you really have a gift for misinterpretation, mischaracterization, and selective quoting. Have you considered a career with Fox News?
That's not actually true. EMI, as with most record labels, only owns the particular recordings of the songs. There is a separate songwriter copyright owned, in most cases, by Lennon/McCartney. EMI doesn't own the copyright to live recordings of Beatles songs, for example, though the Beatles might be contractually prohibited from separately publishing CDs of them.
That's one reason there are many more live recordings on YouTube of many bands not yet taken down. Apart from often being lower quality (and thus of less interest to take down), in many cases the record label doesn't own their copyright, so can't be the one to send the DMCA notice.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I like my idea for a file-copy-that-is-not-a-copy loophole.
1) read a byte.
2) generate a random byte.
3) is the random number amazingly identical to the number in the origional file? if so, jump to 5.
4) goto 2
5) write the new, randomly generated byte into a new file.
6) if not at end of input file, goto 1.
This process may (as there is a chance the program may never generate a particular byte, and loop to the end of the universe) create a file of completely new bits that just happen to match the input file. Such an astonishing co-incidence is truly amazing, and should be shared with the world.
Here
Let's just say that BlueBeat is an interesting company.
VPS-like shared hosting, on under-crowded servers.
Have you considered a career with Fox News?
It's ironic that you say that, since those who want to act like 16th and 17th century copyright was only about publishers making money overlook the fact that publisher guilds were often, in fact, a old version of "Fox News." Those in power preferred to have only one guild to deal with, since it made censorship of published literature easier. Thus, particularly in England (which is the only place anyone ever seems to talk about early copyright) the monopoly of the authorized presses was as much to benefit the political whims of the government and church by spouting propaganda as it was to secure the financial stability of the printers. Of course, the difference today is that the government doesn't use copyright as a method of censorship; Fox News chooses its format because it's good business.
As I said before, pre-1700 copyright was about many things and took many forms in different regions and time periods, but claiming that it was only about excessive and undeserved profits for publishers (and thus exactly equivalent to copyright abuses today) is "misinterpret[ing], mischaracteriz[ing], and selective[ly] quoting" historical documents for some modern agenda.
Psycho-acoustic simulation sounds like a real good pseudo-science. Maybe they can create an agreement in exchange for some platinum covered cables!
No, it's just reverse engineering.
"But EMI don't own the particular soundwaves which comprise the Beatles' songs. Instead they own the very idea of these songs."
It's actually pretty well-known and well-documented that EMI owns the recordings, but that for many of the Beatles songs, it's actually Sony/ATV publishing who owns the publishing rights, which covers performance, licensing, covers, and most of the other ways you can make money off of a song other than selling a copy of the recording.
"No matter who sings it, or performs it, or records it, or sells it, or even hums it this music belongs to EMI because they own the very idea of it."
This is, of course, not correct based on the generally understood and documented state of ownership of the Beatles catalog.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
"None of us engineers, programmers, or other laborers get a multi-decade monopoly over our creations.... we get paid an hourly rate, then we get laidoff, and that's it. No more money. I'm not entitled to a lifetime of free cash for a schematic I created at age 25, so why should an artist be entitled to a lifelong cash payment either? Fair treatment dictates they should get an hourly wage same as us engineers/laborers, and that's it. The 28 year monopoly is just a generous extra, and not required."
It is your choice -- and your choice alone -- if you want to work for an employer in a work-for-hire capacity (in which your employer owns your inventions) or strike it out on your own and work in an indepent capacity, licensing your software or engineering designs. Some are happy with the first method, as they get relatively steady employment and all the perks that go with it. Others prefer the second method. It can be a lot more risky, but if you're lucky and skilled enough, your code or your engineering designs can be making money for you even when you're not working.
"I'm not entitled to a lifetime of free cash for a schematic I created at age 25, so why should an artist be entitled to a lifelong cash payment either?"
Because you chose to create that schematic as an employee and gave up any opportunity to license it. That was your choice. You chose that route because it meant a more comfortable lifestyle for you at the time -- you got a guaranteed paycheck. You chose what you thought was best.
The artist, on the other hand, chose to hold on to his copyright. Perhaps he didn't have a family to feed at the time, and was able to try to eke out a living writing songs. And, since this artist receives a "lifelong cash payment," it means that he got very, VERY lucky. He effectively won the copyright lottery. What percentage of songs written in the 90s, 80s, or 70s are still making money for their creators today?
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Your employer will protect your work (assuming it was useful) with patents or copyrights. These devices ensure a monopoly for some period of time. That you only got your hourly rate is a trade-off you made when you took the job.
Not trying to hate on you, but your comparison is wrong.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Great idea, unless they license it under an open (hardware?) license.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I wouldn't call a 13.55% difference "much higher" (there are estimated to be slightly less than 7 billion people on earth). So no, by saying 6 billion, you were in effect saying "every person on earth," and so the argument was not a straw man. What you are doing is technically called "arguing in bad faith," i.e., changing the terms of the argument rather than responding to valid criticism. That makes you an official jackass.
Why do we need to monetize ideas?
I could care less if Steven King had trouble making a living. In fact, if the only way he could make a living is writing the junk he writes, I'd just as soon contribute part of my sub-standard wages to pay him a welfare check. (There are lots of people getting by on welfare checks with much more interesting stories to tell.)
Professional creative class? Classed society is a good thing?
Ideas are valuable?
Ideas are valuable???
Okay, tell me. If Ideas are so valuable, why can't I get on the train, daydream on my way home from work, and find a big wad of money in my bank account when I get home?
Why is it that, a month or a year or decade later, someone who managed to copyright or patent the idea that I had a long time ago is making big bucks on the stupidest ideas that I ever threw away -- deliberately did not write down when I got off the train?
There have been many points like this in history. There is always some swelled head telling everyone else that HIS ideas take precedence. He has lots of arguments that sound good and logical (until you look at them for more than a moment). Patronage is exactly what is going on here.
Sorry about the steam. I don't like your arguments.
But I do agree with the conclusion. The true problem is that copyright is not being honored.
Just don't like your arguments.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Nothing to do with copyright. (Bears repeating.)
Just in case you didn't get it from what the other guys said. Copyright is not the law that protects ID information.
And people who can be blackmailed are not free, just in case you really didn't understand that there are two kinds of privacy. You have secret "sheep sex" photos, or some other embarrassment? Own up to it to the people who you are most scared would find out, get it behind you, get yourself free. But it's a different kind of private information than identifying information. (It can be used as ID, but rumors really aren't good for society in general.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Actually, I'd be more tempted to correct that as "It's the only reason MP3 compression is possible", not least because both of your statements imply (with varying degrees of subtlety) doing something to the MP3 rather than the source that became the MP3.
Totally. Who the fuck even consider platonic ideals anything other than some ancient philosophical curiosity on par with crackpot stuff like "the harmony of the spheres" nowadays? EMI owns a piece of paper saying that they own something the Beatles did. From this piece of paper, the judge estimates what else falls within the bounds of EMI's intellectual property. That's all there is to it. No need to involve angels dancing on the tip of a needle to explain such a simple everyday phenomenon.
There are plenty of museums (Louvre in Paris, Del Prado in Madrid, Picasso's in Barcelona, Antropologia in Mexico City, and many, really many others) that allow you to take pictures as long as you turn the flash off, and some not even that.
There are of course museums that are anal about the matter, but by no means is all of them.
Galleries is another matter, but it is more a matter of accepting the rules of behaviour in somebody else's private property rather than copyright issues.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Before copyright, there were no artists or writers clamouring for "protection"
Too often and too easily the geek rewrites history to serve his own needs:
In 1842 there was still no international copyright law, a condition that was stunting American letters and depriving authors on both sides of the Atlantic of a living. American letters and depriving authors on both sides of the Atlantic of a living. Britain was willing to recognize the copyright of foreign writers--but only if their countries reciprocated.
This American publishers adamantly refused to do. Instead, they competed in bribing English pressmen to get early sheets of British books. The sheets were rushed by boat over to the United States, where the jolly pirates churned out cheap editions in a matter of hours.
But it was not only British authors they were robbing. Few publishers were willing to pay American authors for books when they could purloin better-known British ones for free. Herman Melville was hurt by the lack of an international copyright, and such eminent American authors as Emerson, Longfellow, and Hawthorne had to pay publishers an advance in order to have their books produced. The early giants of American literature had to scramble for work at customhouses and in other government jobs, and Edgar Allan Poe, according to his biographer Sidney P. Moss, had to raise advance money for one collection of poems by soliciting 75 cents a head from his fellow West Point classmates, to whom he then dedicated the book.
Dickens was never forced into quite such desperate straits, but neither was he so indifferent to "heaps and mines of gold" as he made out in Boston. He had, after all, spent part of his childhood in a debtors' prison, and as the most popular writer in the world, "of all men living I am the greatest loser.
In private he sarcastically mimicked his hosts: "The Americans read him; the free, enlightened, independent Americans; and what more would he have?... As to telling them they will have no literature of their own, the universal answer (out of Boston) is, 'We don't want one. Why should we pay for one when we can get it for nothing.'"
Copy Wrong
Before copyright, artists considered it a complement that their work was replayed and enjoyed by others.
Before you can write or draw, you must eat.
Before copyright, the writer had a substantial independent income or he had a sponsor or patron.
The church. The government. The merchant price. Each with their own agenda.
A J.R.R Tolkien or C. S. Lewis can navigate that environment and thrive.
But the American writer - particularly the writer of genre fiction - mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, suspense, the thriller - and so on - tends to be an outsider. He and she didn't come into this business to serve their betters - to win their way into the Establishment.
American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to Now, The Philip K. Dick Collection
Instead they own the very idea of these songs.
Of course, this is completely untrue, but still gets modded up to +5 for some reason.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Thanks for reminding us all of this basic fact. Copyright (actually a monopoly privilege granted by government) was intended to protect the owners of printing presses, not for the benefit of authors like Paine or Milton or Shakespeare
So, why did you argue the exact opposite in your previous post? Contradict yourself much?
... and then they built the supercollider.
There were albums of "sound-alike top hits" - top 40 songs played and sung by unknown bands and artists. These albums were only ever bought once, by people who were fooled into doing so by the label on the album - nobody ever bought a second one after hearing how terrible the first one was...
And, is it me, or is it totally stupid of EMI & company to limit as much as possible, exposure to The Beatles' music? I have many acquaintances in their teens and twenties who think The Beatles are just lame, and don't get what all the fuss was about, because they never hear their music played (except maybe in TV commercials, which they never watch anyway). . .
Ask Me About... The 80's!
I'm not sure there's any evidence of that. However since the GP's claim is that Sony, EMI and Disney traveled back to 1776 and lobbied congress I'd say you win on balance of probabilities.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Maybe 50%. You underestimate their reach, and the state of the worlds population significantly.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
and screw the positive reputation you garnered by selling non-drm laden cds in the last decade despite you are a member of the mafiaa, by going the way other riaa cunts went. and observe how the attitude and behavior against you change on the net. and how will this affect 'other things' as well.
Read radical news here
Actually, when copyright protection was first introduced, writers were not even allowed to publish their own works (unless they were stationers), nor were they regarded as owners of such works. The stationers guild was, and the stationers member who printed a book became 'owner' of it.
Once again, people quoting the history of English law as though it is the history of the entire world.
Let's be honest here -- English copyright law certainly has been influential, particularly on the modern American system. But the real beginning of that influence started with the first real copyright act in the Statute of Queen Anne in the early 1700s, which incidentally granted rights to the author. But the stuff you're talking about from the 1600s is only one out of many early copyright situations in Europe. (And even in England the stationers guild was initially more about royal power and preventing sedition than it was about rewarding printers. That's the reason you weren't allowed to publish your own book -- you might be writing something treasonous.)
Copyright was granted in various domains for a multitude of reasons, e.g., to exercise control over the presses by a ruler, to grant favors (whether to author, printer, or another person) by a ruler, to protect printer, author, or editor from bootlegging, to ensure amicable relations about printers, to protect the rights of patrons who were funding publications, to promote high quality books or to encourage a variety of publications, occasionally to even protect the ideas or writings of an author, etc., etc.
Basically, the situation was complex. The way it was in England, however, was not the way it was everywhere. And your description somewhat misrepresents even how it was in England.
Before copyright, the writer had a substantial independent income or he had a sponsor or patron.
True enough. That was the way it worked for most people before about 1700. Then English law introduced copyright for the author, and after that it became possible for more and more authors to make at least part of their living off their writings. I'm not sure what that has to do with your cited article about international bootlegs in the mid-1800s. Dickens had copyright in England, as all authors had had for over a century. Those lobbying for international copyright were trying to enhance their profits, not assert copyright for the first time.
The church. The government. The merchant price. Each with their own agenda.
A J.R.R Tolkien or C. S. Lewis can navigate that environment and thrive.
I'm confused. You cite the publishing conditions that prevailed pre-1700 in England and then cite two 20th century authors as if they had to deal with the church and the government controlling printing. While there still were censorship boards, it's not as if Tolkien and Lewis were living in the era of patronage and government monopolies on the press.
But the American writer - particularly the writer of genre fiction - mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, suspense, the thriller - and so on - tends to be an outsider. He and she didn't come into this business to serve their betters - to win their way into the Establishment.
WHAT?!? Again, Tolkien and Lewis were not living within some sort of Elizabethan patronage culture. Plenty of English writers of their generation made their own money. You can argue that the social stratification of English culture well into the early 20th century made it more difficult for a lower-class writer to succeed, but very few English writers after the 18th century were writing "to serve their betters" and satisfy a patron.
Finally, I should note that plenty of British writers wrote "genre fiction" just as American writers did, though we can argue about the origins of the various genres.
But what the heck does any of this have to do with the early (pre-1700) days of copyright?
Wow - are you *really* so stupid that you don't understand the difference between trying to pass off someone else's work as your own, and publishing something giving full credit?
"I hope you were doing well... now please sit down and take your prescribed medicine to read the rest of this multi-page letter explaining our intentions to bankrupt you for downloading some MP3 files."
In reality these people are also just guys with jobs, making the same mistakes as most guys with jobs at big companies: They are pushed to produce short term income increase. You can't blame them for doing what the company and the shareholders require of them, but you can blame the top-dogs like this man for failing to see the unethical course they are steering, and even the shareholders could blame them for undermining their good chances of long term profit! I would love to see some shareholders try this out in court, but sadly it is more likely they are their own largest shareholders so they don't answer to anyone anymore...