Slashdot Mirror
Bono Hopes Content Tracking Will Help Media Moguls
Khalid Baheyeldin writes "In his New York Times op-ed column, Irish singer Bono, otherwise noted for his humanitarian efforts expressed dismay at losses music artists incur from internet downloads. He notes that 'we know from America's noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China's ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it's perfectly possible to track content.' He then goes on to wonder 'perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product.'"
From an Irish Slashdotter, I think it's only fair to say. I apologise most unreservedly to the world for not flushing this floater when we had the chance.
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
such kind of people harm society in multitudes of ways than they support it with their charities. imagine - this guy practically wants everyone to be tracked. totally oblivious to the danger that any and all governments or private interests can use tracking technology to suppress online dissent, any kind of dissent, even himself, expressing opinion that would conflict with the government in future. put this risk on the other side of the counter opposite of his charity ... a huge imbalance.
no sir. we are better off without such 'charitable' people. go fucking die in a corner, bono. you are little different than a charitable frenchmen advocating absolute monarchy in 1789.
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This came after Bono spent hours searching for his music on torrent sites. Apparently he still hasn't found what he's looking for.
Always proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
I think Bono shoud piss off, and I'm Irish. He can get his hands off my content. I download 1llegally all the time but it's for mainstream crap mostly.
The lesser known music, some of which I bought only a few weeks ago at the istore can't be found illegally, and most importantly, without free clips of it I got off youtube, I wouldn't even know it existed. So, I seem to be helping out the little guy a lot more than I was through the internet.
"Bono lives in Killiney in south County Dublin, Ireland, with his family and shares a villa in Èze in the Alpes-Maritimes in the south of France with The Edge, as well as an apartment at The San Remo in Manhattan and a small house in the quiet village of Middleton Cheney, England."
Yep. He's really hurting.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
This is his latest humanitarian project.
JoeR
Bono is an idiot to put it quite plainly. Does he not see that these treaties signed with underdeveloped nations to help them "defend" American businesses against "piracy" and patent infringement is exactly what is keeping them behind? If Bono would stop being such an egotistical asshole and actually look at the facts, he would see that eternal copyright and copyright treaties keep valuable medical information locked up from developing nations, valuable educational supplies from developing nations. Yeah, he seems willing enough to donate a few millions to "fight" AIDS but can't give up a bit of copyright in order to help the world as a whole? That isn't selfless, that is as selfish as you can get.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Good luck with making us "Americans" rally against that dude. Does he not realize that if it's not gay marriage, guns, abortion, healthcare, or bail out money, that we really don't give a shit? (BTW, I'm downloading avatar as I type this, long live torrents)
Bono should STFU. His arrogance is simply outstanding.
Someone should probably tell him that censoring the content doesn't actually make the crime stop. It merely hides it. As does charity with the real problems that affect the 3rd world.
Perhaps our two definitions of perfectly possible are different, but it seems quite a few people manage to evade the filters and legal prohibitions on these.
I think independent artists and creativity have flourished in recent years. The overproduced and overhyped "chosen" artists by the "Moguls" are mainly what's suffering. Madonna and Bono can kiss my ass if they think they are being "hurt" by downloads. They have made many times over the money they deserve for their media machines.
If you are a good artist, people will pay to see you live.
Let's go with a great band like Pink Floyd. I have bought about 10+ albums from them over the past 20 years. Millions of other people have as well. I work my ass off for $50K/year. They work their ass off too, and I would say that I am happy to give them a salary of $150K/year per band member. How much money would we as fans have to spend to make that happen. I can assure you it would be a FRACTION of what we have paid out of our pockets... and where does all that money go? Lining the pokets of those who had nothing to do with the art or us listening to it.
Bono has lost touh with reality and his fans... as he gets older I don't expect him to get more clue.
... who doesn't yet think that Bono is a sanctimonious hypocritical, posturing, corporate shill who is always willing to suck up to any big businessman or politician he can grab a photo opportunity with, no matter how venal?
Just askin'
Seriously. I wouldn't even waste my neighbors free bandwidth to download anything U2 has put out in over a decade...
U2 the band is purportedly worth about 700 million dollars.
I have given them my money, seen them 4 times, bought most of the albums but come on Bono, how much more do you require?????
If you steal music, these gentlemen couldn't afford to be charitable because they couldn't buy the fifth plane or sports car.
So, next time you steal music or movie, think of the children you take the food away.
Why the fuck would i care what an iggnorany celebrity has to say on the issue.
Sure Bono, and for the alternative perspective, how about Janis Ian's? "The Internet, and downloading, are here to stay... Anyone who thinks otherwise should prepare themselves to end up on the slagheap of history." ~ http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html
Personally, I wonder how much music has been lost and locked up bu the music industry? Or how many musicians don't own their own songs? Or how many CDs were never cut, remain unreleased or are locked up in out of print limbo land? How many fat cat executives live it up while new talent can't pay the rent? and so on and so...
Words to men, as air to birds.
Note to Bono: EAT A DICK.
The process of doing so will further require that you remove your head from your ass, so that should improve your ability to perceive reality at the same time.
The biggest problem facing most "small independent artists" is not people downloading their songs - it's NOBODY downloading the songs. Most (95%) of the 100k+ albums released every year sell less than a hundred copies; the problem for most of these artists is that many of the traditional ways of discovering new music (radio, CD stores) have been bought up and monopolized by the majors. While the new media channels are available to everybody, getting "eyeballs" (OK, "ears") is still the hardest part.
Put another way: most "small independent artists" would love it if enough people were interested in their music to upload a torrent to TPB - at least then, *somebody* is listening.
Artists are actually doing much better since the dawn of the Internet because of increased ticket sales from live performances, and box office sales are better now than ever. I highly doubt illegal downloading contributes very much to lost revenue since a very small percentage of the people who download illegal media would actually buy the product.
It's articles like this that make me think "where are we heading"? Consider this, all the information Bono is trying to reference is pure speculation, and has no substantiation. In the past, I've downloaded music, movies, etc., but ultimately I purchased them, and even more. My iTunes purchased collection is now over 2500 songs/music video's - far more than I've ever downloaded for free in the past. Grow up Bono! Maybe you'll find what your looking for - like generating more money via concerts - now that's something worth purchasing :-)
He managed to choose two analogies. One poor, the other extremely sinister.
Kiddie porn: A terrible analogy for online copyright infringement. Child pornography, possession or production, is always illegal. No "fair use", no parodies, no commentaries, no educational purposes, etc. Plus, it isn't all that popular. Online violation of copyright law is probably about as popular as ordinary pornography, not some obscure niche thing. In terms of police resources per unit kiddie porn, the porn is vastly more heavily policed(and, given the number of times that a computer search of somebody suspected for other reasons will discover some kiddie porn, it looks like our "content tracking" efforts aren't actually doing so well).
Great Firewall of China: Chinese "content tracking" is a huge(and probably fairly expensive) initiative, encompassing a substantial state censorship apparatus, a large amount of technical infrastructure, huge market distortions(notably, the enthusiasm for self-censorship among web companies that is created by the state's ability to just eliminate access to any of them, at any time, without comment or justification), and substantial support from private-citizen snitches.
Either Bono is just a fucktard, and hasn't really though this through, or he is willing to go to some very unpleasant places to protect his precious "content".
why are we waiting for a lackey of the copyright industry to make a shitty comment or release a dubious 'research' in order to take any action ? Why arent eff and similar organizations taking the initiative and producing research, education and publicity in regard to new ways of the digital age ?
its just stupid. we are just waiting. some idiot lays an egg, and we all go after to cleanse the resulting shit. instead we should be moving forward.
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Tell him to go skiing, really fast.
Table-ized A.I.
Supergroups:
Led Zeppelin
The Beatles
Metallica
The Rolling Stones
U2
So far, only one of these is largely despised, an outcast, and will never be respected again.
So far...
how about he does a fundraiser with Metallica to save the artists in need!
Greedy bugger.
The music industry is just like any other private industry who has to solve their own problems. Dont expect governments around the world to help you solve your money problems - suck it up.
It's hard to argue against control of the internet without appearing pro-piracy, and worst, pro-child pornography.
And that is just what governments want, because the internet is our best tool so far, for keeping government in check.
Once the mechanisms of control are in place, everything is screwed. I just wish the internet had had a few less single points of failure, and a lot more encryption built it; but then who could see that far ahead.
Nice to hear that number. I was a bit worried that economic growth will suffer while things inevitably converge to their copyright-free state. But no, even the perfect demolition of a 4% GDP industry would not ruin world economy.
cut the guy some slack.... maybe all he wants is to keep track of how many times his photo has appeared on the news or on the package of some gadget.
Your indignation would be a lot more interesting to me if it wasn't so covered in crap.
Everytime U2 are on the verge of releasing an album, they leak it online so they can have a story about their album being 'stolen' before its released and get a brick load of free publicity from the subsequent news stories. Its amazing how they're able to use the internet to their advantage while still being able to call it a disgrace!
There is no -1 disagree
This is why he is domicled for tax out of irland so that he & U2 pay minimum tax. The guy is a hipocrite - wants every one else to give but doesn't give himself.
So, Bono would like to turn the US and Europe into totalitarian states in order to make sure people like himself can keep making millions with unreasonable copyright terms and restrictions.
Some humanitarian!
...then I guess we should let music die. Music and other entertainment is not important enough by far to trade away privacy and freedom. I don't care for piracy, but I recognize that only by having complete control of what people communicate and hence their freedom of expression would it be possible to quell piracy. I hope most thinking humans would agree that this is too high a price to preserve the profitability of music.
shut the fuck up bono....diaf...
Regulating downloads is impossible. And if it's made possible, it will come with a GREAT PRICE to indie artists. Bono is not an indie artist, so he sees the world from his point of view, but there are more indie artists than major ones, so I fail to see why Bono should have his way. I actually wrote a blog post about all this, replying to Bono and explaining why he's wrong, on my own blog (I wrote it before I saw the Slashdot news post).
I really wish that newspapers would cite their information so we could understand what they're basing their claims on.
Looking at the US government's Bureau of Economic Analysis Numbers, they seem to paint a very different picture than what he suggests:
http://www.bea.gov/industry/gpotables/gpo_action.cfm?anon=343982&table_id=24753&format_type=0 [bea.gov]
The line for Motion picture and sound recording industries has been constant from 2003-2007 (with information from 2008 still not entered) at 0.3%.
Bono claims, "music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product". Assuming no tectonic shift in profits, that would suggest that video games are producing nearly 3.7% of GDP, but the line for all Publishing industries (includes software) floats at around 1% of GDP. So even including "real" software like Windows as well as books, we're not even close to 4%.
Another factor which he neglects to consider is the scale of damage that would be done, both in terms of freedoms as well as innovation. Even if America and all of its best buddies were to enact this type of draconian censorship regime he advocates, I doubt that America's enemies would be as eager to join in. That would suggest a net effect of simply forcing innovation to move abroad to places that don't sign on or enforce. One of the few areas where America is truly a global leader still seems to be in Internet services. If foreign Internet services provide more to consumers that they want than American services, I don't doubt that American services on the Internet would be abandoned in a flash. While I don't discount the importance of the export of America's pop culture abroad, the price to protect outdated business models seems like a weighty one. Bono talks a lot, but I wonder how much depth he really puts into his thinking.
Music will just become a "real" job, you know one where you go to play 9-5 (or 6-2 depending on audience) and you make your days pay, thats it, go home and have a beer. Not the lottery where everyone goes poor except for a few. Direct band to fan is where it'll probably end up being, a few will make it big and to be fair maybe the "rock-star" lifestyle should die.
Shh.
Why do people expect singers and guitar players to have a unique view on life for all of us to share?
Imagine that a football player gave his view on copyright and innovation. You'd laugh. But a guy sings a song on the radio, and all the sudden his utterances appear in the NY Times?
Crazy.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
They want you back.
.sig: No such file or directory
... and after all, isn't 4 percent of our current commerce, as things are structured now, worth sacrificing our natural right to privacy?
Or perhaps his record sales will zoom downhill into a tree like another copyright advocate of the same name.
This asshole is only interested in His Royalties, he is Bog Stupid and (dosnt understand / cares nothing) for Culture.
He is good! He is evil! He is good! He is evil! He is good! He is evil!
Person holds views that qualify him for either the Superhero League or the Den of Bad Men but also at the same time none! World ends at 5.
Bono is from the old business model with overpriced physical products, so his comments are predictable.
Is there a decent version of avatar out yet?
There is a torrent of the Avatar movie, but it's got fewer ThunderSmurfs and a lot more airbending than the one you're probably thinking of.
People who study history and learn from it.
So long as the intent to control remains, that intention will adapt itself to utilize any tools that become available. Technology does not change the intent; it changes only the tools.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Total spent on music this year: 29p (RATM KITN)
Total spent on charity: £10.00 (Donation fund for shelter curtasy of RATM)
I would give more but they always insist on taking a standing orders, what part of im broke and only want to give once, because i don't have a cushy job as a charity mugger don't they understand.
people seem to be more interested in free beer rather than free speech.
It's satire. Bono's tongue is so deep in his cheek he's practically gnawing it off. Go read the piece in question.
if that was the case then people would probably contribute music for free, in much the same way they contribute to Wikipedia for free.
There's a difference between ideas and expression. Wikipedia is made of facts, and it's fairly easy to produce your own original, Free wording of a given fact. It's also easy to use Google's full-text web search to find phrases that a contributor inadvertently or deliberately plagiarized. Music, on the other hand, is more pure expression, and any attempt to produce Free music will end up with some contributor accidentally inserting a sequence of notes that happens to match the hook of a non-free song. (See Three Boys Music v. Bolton for how that could turn out.) Google can't search MIDI sites yet, apart from song titles.
Besides, Wikipedia is on the Alexa charts, but what Free album have you seen hit the pop charts?
The People running the various recording firms may well fit the first two conditions, but not, AFAICT the third. The only "vision" they have is to maximize profits at any cost, including swindling the artists out of their fair share of the profit. No, what music needs today is one or more real moguls, who actually care about the music and understand that Henry Ford was right: sometimes giving your workers a raise results in higher profits.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
'perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product.'
Perhaps that would be a problem if it wasn't for the simple fact 99% of what both the "Movie Moguls" and so-called "contemporary musicians" make is utter bilge and a dire blight upon our culture. And this includes Bono's most recent record which was as forgettable as it was boring.
Musicians who have any sense have realised that a long time ago, and that it's really REALLY all about the music. The Music Industry Critic, Bob Lefsetz wrote in response to Bono's idiocy:
Oldsters are under the illusion that they can steer, that they can determine outcomes. What we've learned so far in the twenty first century is we follow the public. Rather than rant and rave at injustice, better to go online and try to figure out where it's all going.
The problem with Bono's precept is despite their protestations, the major labels no longer have a lock on distribution. Their power is limited. Most music is attached to no corporation, no one has power over the rights other than the creator. And the creator is doing everything in his power to get his message out to potential fans.
It's no longer the songwriter bitching at the publisher owned by the multinational that his songs are being stolen. It's now a college student, even a high school student, creating a song and instantly giving it away online, angling for some traction. .
. .
Old media is killing itself. By insisting the way it's always been done is the way it should be. That's the lesson that eludes Bono. It's not about protecting the old media monopolies, it's about them adjusting to the new landscape, in order to survive. What's a bigger threat, the ability to make an HD movie at home or theft on the Web? I'd say the former. Because we've learned in the twenty first century that he who grows up outside the system, a system that has very few opportunities for entry, will end up wanting to play by himself. MySpace sold out to Fox and is almost dead. Facebook is independent and thriving. The behemoth most feared is Google, not Viacom.
And old media and old people don't understand that we no longer pay attention to that which does not interest us. What Randy Phillips and the L.A. "Times" don't understand is we don't have to listen to "Empire State Of Mind" if we don't want to. That's the most interesting angle, not the limited penetration of the single. Ubiquity is a thing of the past. And just like those who watch Fox News don't watch MSNBC, and vice versa, those who like Lady GaGa don't give a shit about the Brooklyn scene. We no longer live in an homogenous society, with a common lingua franca, rather we're all heading to the hills in a different direction, in search of that which appeals exactly to us.
We live in a Tower of Babel society. Which cannot be fathomed by a music industry that believed in the silo of MTV exposure. And whereas every cable system has a limited number of channels, the Internet is inherently unlimited.
So the rules have completely changed. It's less about marketing than quality. If Bono wanted to get traction today, rather than rant in the "New York Times", he'd do what he does best, cut a record with his band. Something so good that the new avenues of distribution would pick it up and drive people to U2. Where you monetize in the food chain is an interesting question, but not as interesting as the death of the old paradigm, one of scarcity, with the public chomping like lemmings upon that which is fed to them.
Distribution has been flattened. Anybody can play. In news, music, movies, political opinion, you name it. Either try to establish a dominant distribution platform, or focus purely on content.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
> What if they don't want to perform live? Why is it perfectly acceptable to not pay for digital music as long as you pay to hear it live?
A live performance involves actual work. Selling copies involves extorting rent forever from society for work done once upon a time.
I'd like to not to have to work, either. Unfortunately, no one seems to believe that teachers should get even 1% of the income from their students, even though those students use the knowledge they've been taught for their entire lives.
Of course everyone with a brain knows that it's the labels that are sabotaging their own business and therefore hurting, not the artists.
And America's "noble effort"? Riiiiiiight. No one has done more to harm children than America's "child advocates". They're just the modern version of those who once wanted to "protect" women by keeping them at home, barefoot and pregnant.
And that is just what governments want
That is wrong. The enemy is not the government but industry think thanks and public relations organizations.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I'm not sure the short-sightedness was political in this case. Rather who knew what the internet would become, or that 640k was not enough for everyone.
You could argue that the problem is political/social vs technical, but there are some interesting overlay network topographies that I wish were standard.
Imagine if, due to encryption and cryptographic addressing, the internet was all or nothing for any given nation. All that ever passed your ISP was an encrypted data stream.
Oh how those in power would squirm.
"Losses" occur if you cant produce something worth buying. Provide something of value, and you will get paid. Oh, and another reason to boycott this annoying prick.
( ya mod me down, i don't care, he and all like him annoy me )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
From what I read, sales for the more unknown artists who do not get as much airtime as the big stars are also up, especially online sales. And it makes sense, too.
I don't mind paying for music. I don't even mind paying for music if the money goes to some rich asshole like Bono... he wrote it, he deserves to make a buck. All the music I've gotten during the past 10 years or so is from legal sources. Why? Not because I suddenly grew a conscience, but because the legal alternative is now almost as good as illegal sites such as AllofMP3, when it comes to quality and convenience. More importantly, many legal downloads are now DRM-free.
I only wish the movie industry would do the same, and I'd gladly pay for a legal movie site like AllofMP3, with a choice of formats and compression rates, and no DRM. For once I actually agree with our government (in the Netherlands), whose stance on illegal downloads is that they will crack down on it, but not before the movie industry provides a reasonable legal alternative. And the current offering of streaming to proprietary players only, with no means to watch content on anything other than a Windows PC (no Popcorn Hours, no iPhones), is not acceptable by any standard.
I don't think many musicians are hurting because of downloads (and there's plenty of research to back that statement up). I do believe that it's the established musicians like Bono and the record labels who are hurting, because their business model is a dinosaur from last century. Bono, pfft... he'd jump at a chance to flog a few records online before he made it big... and now he's made it so big that the great humanitarian decided that he doesn't want to pay taxes like the little people, and subsequently incorporated U2 in the Netherlands (which is a tax haven for foreign companies).
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Sure Bono, and for the alternative perspective, how about Janis Ian's? "The Internet, and downloading, are here to stay... Anyone who thinks otherwise should prepare themselves to end up on the slagheap of history.".
Of course he wont care, hes already bilked his millions out of people and doesn't need the free advertising 'downloads' could give a band..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
TI(RED) of Bono.
I'll take free beer over free software any day.
"He notes that 'we know from America's noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China's ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it's perfectly possible to track content.'"
Really? I'd point to America's failure to stop child pornography (making arrests only after child pornographers have been distributing material for months or years) as well as China's failure to suppress dissent and to suppress the Chinese people from obtaining illegal materials on-line as examples why we cannot track on-line content.
I think that the west are about to bite itself in the butt. I really dont think that we in the west will run around selling movies, patents, music and other IP to the rest of the world for very long. When we moved our factories abroad we also shipped out all of our knowledge. We have a short overtake on the research side that will be overcome in a not so distand future by other countries.
The same goes for music and movies. The best movies arent made in the US anymore. They are so far paid by the US and produced by US financials but much of them are in their entierly somewhere else. Its not that long of a stretch to imagine other people starting to put money into moviemaking. Music are as of now a matter of the industrys tight grip on the distribution channels and most of all the radio. Thats why i think the music industry is so afraid of the internet. If they cant influence what gets onto the radio and tv anymore the risk are that bands and artists get large fanbases by themselves.
Some artists are gullable and believe that pirates are really depriving them of silly amounts of money. I personally think that the hunt for pirates are hurting them in the long run. More work should be pstupidut into making the music/movies better so that it can withstand competition from emerging countries. Some Asian movies and music ive heard in later years could really wipe our collective arses once they manage to get a foot into our culture. We laughed about asian cars and look at our carpark today. If we build hars rules for IP we will eat it all up later when its us who have to get patents from other countries for whatever we try to do.
HTTP/1.1 400
First of all:
1) Whatever happened to live performances and the "work ethic" of the tour? If singers and entertainers want to get paid, then they have to get out there and entertain. I don't consider a DVD a moral obligation to the entertainer any more so when I use to listen to the radio and heard the songs for free.
Same thing with Movies. Movies are played, I buy a ticket, and I go see them. Simply because I see one of them being played on a screen some place, I do not feel obligated to continue paying for the rest of my life every time I see it.
2) This entire mess is created by the middleman, who simply refuse to die and just want a check to be delivered to their door without any work involved. It is such a sick and disgusting practice that now governments are taxing people for media that has no chance of copying songs onto it.
Its time for the middleman to die and any additional revenue that would be earned on TShirts, or songs go to the artists instead.
I am sure people remember the Western Digital Drives that would refuse to store .mp3 files??? Put there by the middle man. Oh and did I mention it is immoral to sell backup devices which DO NOT BACKUP YOUR STUFF.
3) Finally, the intrusion on our liberties and property rights by these middleman to place rootkits on DVD's, or media to subert the use of property is really outrageous. Even more outrageous practically nothing was done too Sony.
They should be out of business, period.
I have seen a great deal many posts about this topic and people have to understand Bono is not dumb. But, he is not constrained by the same life everyone else on here leads and in many ways, has way too much money and free time on his hands to understand why anyone would be opposed to giving any entity the right to track anything.
It is sad, that people who have wealth very rarely see any of the real problems in the world.
I call it the Marie Antoinette "Let them Eat Cake" syndrome.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
What a fucking joke that this is +5 insightful. Yes, I do not agree with this opinion piece, but your wholesale dismissal of any good this person has done in their life and apparently wishing for them to die on that basis is absurd. I'm not naive enough to think that such morons don't exist on the internet, but lets try and maintain a higher standard here, please.
Yeah, society would totally be better off without his work for Amensty International, AIDS awareness, Band Aid, Live Aid, etc. I'm sure you've done more than him, right?
we know from America's noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China's ignoble effort to suppress online dissent
Clever use of analogies there, make out that "protecting artist's rights" is akin to preventing the abuse of children, but then yank the reins by saying it is wrong to censor content. What exactly are you trying to say? Or are you just babbling so people get used to the idea of having their online privary infringed upon.
it's perfectly possible to track content
Yes, it is, but let's forget about artist's 'rights', what about mine? As a so called 'humanitarian' I am quite suprised at his ignorant and narrow-minded comments.
Not to mention the fact he falls into the media-hyped trap that downloads = losses.
What a tool.
is it U2 or Rolling stones or maybe both do all their tax through Netherlands & the Antilies(etc)?
So he's living proof that Christianity has nothing to offer the modern world. :P
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Bono is thinking about the future artist.
Bono wants that future artist to be able to turn a profit by selling the rights to their artistic creations to a large corporation which will have absolute control of those rights indefinitely.
And the only cost will be the "outing" of every political dissident anywhere in the world.
Fuck you, Bono.
Bono comes off as a pious f*ck when U2 is more than happy to dodge taxes. Reality Check: Bono is a business folks.
I reckon the real dismay will happen when they stop the free distribution of music (pirate or otherwise)
and watch the sales plummet..
mainly because artists will remain unknown due to the lack of distribution..
I think thats the real crime...
sure for someone like U2 who is a household name downloads might be a problem..
but the internet is the best Radio EVER!!!
I know if i was an artist, i'd be giving my music away, and making all my money from Touring like REAL artsists do!
"losses music artists incur from internet downloads"
Music artists don't incur losses from Internet downloads. Rather, they fail to incur profits.
There's an important difference.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
... didn't you know? Sharing is caring! =)
I think he might get some sympathy if it weren't for the RIAA...
1. Trying to overturn the doctrine of first sale.
2. Preventing artists from distributing their works outside the RIAA.
3. Audits showing that the RIAA was 1000 times more likely to make mistakes in their favor rather than in the artists favor.
4. Buying off congress for copyright extensions.
5. Buying off congress for the DMCA.
6. Trying to impose DRM.
7. Running a litigation extortion racquet.
8. Claiming copyrights for material that is not theirs.
And a few others I'm sure I missed. The RIAA is the wrong structure for the internet and they know it. They won't be happy until they disrupt the internet.
Don't forget that he is equating downloading and listening to a U2 album with child pornography. One is a horrible abuse that I wouldn't wish on any child, and the other is child pornography. (sorry. poor taste). Bono is despicable, greedy douchebag for invoking child porn in order to fatten his wallet.
blog
... fuck him and his stupid hat.
Do you see what I did there?
Actually "once the mechanisms of control are in place" we'll just work around them.
All the internet has done for piracy is to make "content" accessible to more people, more convenient to use and easier to detect and monitor. Imagine for a second a world where all content was tightly controlled and their was no internet piracy, what do you think would happen? Would piracy stop? Would illicit information/data cease to flow? Nope, sorry, it would just move to higher bandwidth channel such as post and courier ("never underestimate the bandwidth of an envelope of microSD cards") and still move around the "user communities" in the same way it did 10-20 years ago.
And even then, new technologies would spring up bringing us an "undernet", but one with lessons learned. Consider for a second just what the rather silent "wireless revolution" would mean if someone dropped something into the stack to attempt to route data via wireless networks only, and queue transmission in a similar manner to UUCP of years past...
As they say, necessity is the mother of invention, perhaps the 21st centuries problem is going to be that we will *need* for so little but want so much...
That there is no way of modding you up to 6. Im still laughing my ass off.
The only time the powers that be can keep up with the masses is when the tech has been standing still for to long and became ultra public. IRC has been here for years and ftp has been used along with direct transfers and per chat channel credit system for upload/download(virtually the same as say the Wildcat BBS with the credit system. They didn't get busted cuz there are no masses using the tech. Back in the day you had actual pirates selling disks that has big mixes of stuff, like when you could cram 200 apps in 2 CDroms. Downloading 1400mb or so over even a 56k baud modem was slow as hell. So some people got these big mix disks then copied them all they could. The US government has ground sensors at the border with Mexico and all this high tech stuff but the smugglers still get drugs/people through. That's with low tech solutions. Not the collective thinking power of every hobby coder in the planet. Look at DRM it takes weeks or days for some 15 year old to break a unknown (see DVD John) encryption scheme. So "let them eat cake", all they want.
help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product..."
And bootlegging accounts for the other 96%..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Most people that have grown up with the Internet will never, ever pay for content. They will download it for free, legally or illegally. Trying to get them to pay will simply force more illegal downloads.
The older people that are paying - because mostly they don't know how to download for free - will die soon. When they pass on, there will be nobody paying. Period.
Failure to understand this leads to discussions about piracy.
In episode 1109, titled "More Crap", Bono is discovered to be the worlds biggest turd. And to think this episode was done over two years ago - brilliantly insightful.
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Crap
I am open source, and Linux baby!
I new there was a reason I viewed slashdot. It's not because I understand half the geek speak it's because I think like a slashdot'r. I've always thought that Bono was to self impressed and righteous floater...
You could argue that the problem is political/social
Perhaps. Or it may be that it's just a matter of evolutionary pressure; previously people may not have bothered as there have been few advantages to using highly protected communications forms, but as surveillance and tracking increases people may shift over to cryptographically protected and anonymous/pseudonymous/f2f routed networks.
If governments go on bowing to lobbyists agendas I suspect we'll see exactly that all-or-nothing shift within the next decade.
with a god complex
Music Lovers are still mad at lars and metallica for their attacks on Napster. Even now, metallica gets hounded online by people anytime they are mentioned as being greedy jerks who hate music.
And that's bad, because...? Fuck it, people, stop being scaredy-cats. Say it out loud: I do support piracy! I do support unbridled copying! In the deal of copyrights, we the people have been screwed real bad. It was supposed to be an incentive, to enrich the public domain. But nothing goes to the public domain anymore. Why play the game clean when they have the dice loaded against you?
Circumcision is child abuse.
"perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world..."
WTF?!?!
Hasn't that idiot actually watched any of the crap that's been churned out in the past decade or so? It's mostly remakes, reboots, or just plain derivative.
Their definition of "Content tracking" probably means "Snoop on everybody, all the time, for any reason, or for no reason". I guess I must be old fashioned to find that unacceptable under any conditions.
This guy is just a scum of an hypocrite. Worried about the poor????? Plain BS. Take a look at this article. Unfortunately it is in spanish, but try to translate if you do not understand. Worth the read. http://fortunaweb.com.ar/bono-desafina-con-sus-inversiones/ MF!
- This can't be... - Be what? Be real?
Well said, recognising someone's good work does not mean you have to agree with everything they say, in fact you don't even have to like them personally. I don't agree with tracking files either but I do agree with him on a lot of other infinitely more important issues.
There were very few Irishman with the balls to publicly denounce the IRA during the 80's. At a concert in Boston, he went into a rant about "irishmen who hadn't been home in 20yrs enthusiatically asking about the revolution" and ended the rant with "fuck the revolution".
Boston was the main source of funds for the IRA and he was speaking directly to their sponsors, naturally the IRA responded with real death threats as opposed to the OP who mearly wishes him dead for his opinion on file tracking.
Speaking of Band/live aid, I think the best refutation of the OP's attitude is the skeletal baby sitting in the dust who's photo was used in the first campaign was on stage as a healthy 21yo woman at the second concert.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Now, now... if Bono wants to compare the music industry with Child Pornographers and the RIAA with a tyrannical Government, who are we to argue with him?
Or Slashdotters will boycott his music and no longer download it and ... Oh wait.
Regardless, google/youtube flagged the audio and the dispute has been open for a month. In the dispute filing, I pasted the relevant text from the license and linked to it.
The video itself clearly has a link to the artists site at magnatune (as required). So if any person were to intelligently go to the site and read the license or just read the dispute data I filed, the problem would cleary seen to be valid and legal.
But I'm still waiting to hear back from WMG. The point I have is that Bono's technical suggestion to track everything will not work. In a very closed and controlled environment like youtube, the false positives are so numerous that legal content cannot be cleared and shared.
Here's the license from magnatune (from link above).
.
Maybe "moguls" should be able to monitor your internet activity to make sure you don't embezzle any money from your charitable works?
Please explain the difference.
Or perhaps your whole gang of mogollums will fail miserably and take your exploitive business model with you.
Digital information processing is already decades behind what it should be, thanks to these idiots impeding technological progress in order to enforce a failing concept of what information is.
The same disease is responsible for the BluRay/HDDVD format war and resulting delay, the DMCA, and patent trolls.
Fuck the lot of them. They are parasites on the technological society.
Not only does dumping free food depress the prices the farmers can get for what they do grow, thus making it not worth their while to try and feed themselves, but it doesn't address the problem they have without free food of getting what they do grow to market and storing it for bad times.
We not only do harm by discouraging them from growing anything by undercutting their prices, what little good we otherwise do does not help them distribute what they would grow if we weren't discouraging them.
It's a double whammy, the ultimate do-gooder example of the law of unintended consequences.
Infuriate left and right
"And that is just what governments want, because the internet is our best tool so far, for keeping government in check."
Really? I thought it was the Three Boxes:
Soap.
Ballot.
Bullet.
Once I had learned about encryption, I figured that was the next step. 15 years later, I'm still waiting...
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
with compliments to the bard...
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
He's just mad his latest album flopped. Did he ever consider maybe it sucked and no one wants to hear rock anymore?
I buy music, mostly jazz and house. Most of it isn't on major labels. You stop piracy I still won't buy a U2 CD.
We had to destroy the village to save it.
Welfare has worked rather well for US corporations.
I managed quite nicely before Bono and will continue without him. If I decide to donate monies to a worthy cause, I will do so directly, unfiltered or skimmed by Bono. I do not condone or support surrogate Philanthropists like Bono or Bill Gates, they only use monies bilked from their customers. This is not charity but extortion with a tax benefit.
Yes the big picture is the same but I think the difference between a real mob and an internet mob is that on the net the least bright member is visible to all, also there's nowhere to physically lynch people from.
Oh and I found the "fuck the revolution" rant I was talking about. The rant starts at around 3:45 but the whole clip is worth watching. If anyone doubts the balls it took to make that speech then I would similarly doubt they are old enough to remeber the IRA in the 70's & 80's.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Karl Fogel's cross-referenced summary debunking the "party line" of the copyright owners:
http://questioncopyright.org/promise
Nina Paley's delightful comparison of slaves as "property" versus ideas as "property":
http://questioncopyright.org/redefining_property
-Robert
. . . to pirated music. Nice Bono(r).
Can I bum a sig?
keeping your gov in check?
that sounds extremely funny i itself, and then YOU MENTION INTERNET
oh god, where do they breed such stupid dorks as you?
it already exists, it's called freenet, and it's slow as all hell. it's ok for text communication, but graphics and movies will take forever, but that's not so bad since all the graphics and videos on freenet are child porn anyways.
the biggest reason such high-security networks have not taken off is that the existing system does just fine for whistleblower type stuff, just use an untraceable gateway, such as an open wifi point or untracked library / mall machine and post the info to a login-less place like wikileaks or 4chan.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Dear Bono, I have been a U2 fan for many years and have purchased all of your albums. Unfortunately, your short-sighted view of downloading music over the internet means that you have lost me forever as a fan and purchaser of your "product". If you change your attitude I may reconsider, but at this point you have one less fan. Sincerely, and voting with my wallet, A Former Fan of U2
"People Power and the Upside-Down Pyramid"
This opinion is so far from reality where a few very powerful people step on other people, take their property, deny them their rights, etc. on a regular basis.
Perhaps for those areas where a wealthy person like Bono backs them up, people power works.
Mostly, corporations and the wealthy just step all over you and as long as they don't physically injure you, the legal system has become such a farce, that the worst result is some rich, powerful attorney makes several million dollars, and you get a check for $42.50 to cover your being ripped off for a few grand.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Waaah, sniff... These poor over paid entertainers...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
+1 Informative
b-b-b-but with encryption, how will we keep the internet secure?? If I can't monitor every single packet moving through a node, how will I know if someone's attacking/?!!?!?
From ripping off countless artists, to collusion on CD prices, to attempting to shove mass-market crap down the public's throat; the music industry deserves whatever it gets. I consider this a much needed correction. Maybe someday they'll start signing real musicians and create a fair usage distribution model acceptable to consumers and artists alike (without skimming the vast majority of the proceeds). To me, this would either be lossless compression digital files at 50-99 cents per song with no DRM (with artists getting at least half), or a lifelong guaranteed license with DRM that allows fair usage (for approximately the same price).
On a slightly off-topic note, has anyone else watched "It might get loud"? "The Edge" is a complete joke next to Jack and Jimmy. Not that I ever thought much of U2 to begin with, but it was pathetic. I cant believe he let them publish it.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
I think it was "More Crap". Everytime this guy opens his mouth, someone should just copy and paste a link to that episode as a reminder that Boner is the world's biggest piece of crap. Matt and Trey must've had a premonition of Boner into a bigger piece of fecal matter when they came up with that episode. http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/111250/
i think bono is just another illuminati puppet. and i don't like him, he's such a snob.
"I AM NOT A LEADER, BUT I AM NOT A FOLLOWER EITHER." _METAK RAMAH_
Bono has never come right out and said he is a Christian. Everyone just assumes he is.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Welcome to Slashdot: where your value as a human being depends you supporting their self-entitled, twisted demand for free entertainment. Ah look, they modded you "flamebait". What do you expect, reasonable discourse? At this point, so many commenters just remind me of Gollum and his all-consuming desire for the ring. Logic won't dissuade them any more than logic would persuade Gollum. All they want is for someone to say what they want to hear.
The Internet is just a very powerful extension of the first box, also useful for organizing usage of the second two!
Bono, LOL! You're the biggest piece of shit.
'rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic'
He does mean the music industry as an integral part of the most creative economy?
Did the music or movie industry CREATE the internet?
Did it CREATE file-sharing protocols?
Did it manage to CREATE a solution to the piracy problem?
I see three big NOs there... Would the music industry please step forward and enlighten me as to the creativeness involved here?
So far, the most notable positive thing in the music industry in the last decade seems to have been Amy Winehouse, who the music industry did not manage to protect from her own drug problems.
But - did the music industry CREATE Amy Winehouse? Do they really want to say that the mindless shagging around of music stars in the past few decades counts as 'the industry creating new talent'?
Meh. It's not that hard to defeat. You can: setup a computer as a honeypot - it serves up the "pirated" material people are trying to download and logging their IP addresses. You can write an application/custom installer that phones home. When pirates install some application, they're also notifying you that they just installed a pirated application. I'm sure I could come up with lots of other ways. "Oh how those in power would squirm." Yes, along with all the movie makers, musicians, software developers. You'd set back the creation of digital media in a big, big way if you undermine the creators like that.
The pages about some topics of nuclear physics were removed from the university textbooks. In some cases the textbooks were collected and destroyed. Knowledge do can be a dangerous thing.
Now after some secret international consultations the Open Source is about to go this way. MySQL was already bought first by "Sun", then by "Oracle". PHP will be bought before long by "IBM".
Network computing will be available only to selected ones, who have an access to the proprietary IDE, like Visual Studio, etc.
More about these international consultations from this podcast http://feeds.tvo.org/tvo/searchengine from Canada. Actually the new World Order is in the making.
What would you expect from someone who was such a big supporter of George W. Bush
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
true story: years ago i worked at a certain music publishing company... many times i was sent to "storage" which was a huge rotting building basement several doors down; rat-infested, dangling bulbs, echoing emptiness, etc. Think the end scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark"
During my forays i stumbled on several sagging, water-laden cardboard boxes full of such wonders as:
1. the original HAND-ANNOTATED "Star Wars" score from John Williams.
2. several tapes of unreleased jams between Jimmy Page and Jimi; demo reels and song sketches by Steve Winwood (Traffic era), Cream, the Doors, Genesis, Yes, Talking Heads...
3. an entire unreleased demo set of unpublished and unreleased/never rerecorded Peter Gabriel material (recorded in his home studio) predating the first solo release lp. ... and on and on and on and on and on... for 3 city blocks. Rotting in darkness. Stuff people would kill to buy, raw or not. But you'd never get any of that material...
it is also widely known that since approximately the late 70s, almost every single mid- to large concert by mid- to superstar-status bands has been recorded directly off the mixing board by The Company. But you won't get those releases either (unless you like The Dead :)
As a musician, recording engineer and fan, i can say, DIE DINOSAURS DIE! And that includes Bono for being such an ass.
as for me, i have a collection of extremely-rare and unobtainable music with which to gift friends on special occasions... and i'm sure no one ever missed a few boxes in that tomb ;)
from Ireland to jump on the protectionist bandwaggon.
Feargal Sharkey, of the "punk" band The Undertones joined the Dark Side when his solo career tanked in the early 90's. His subsequent career has not been particularly edifying.
Hmmm just read an article saying that avatar broke the $1,000,000,000 mark at the boxoffice... Only if we had known how bad things were in the movie industry
Yes, Bono, I'm sure you're more than happy to make statements about the media industry grubbing more profits than they've already grubbed from us - God forbid that the rich shouldn't get richer - all from a mediocre artist/musician that would have not gotten far without a huge record company's promotion in the first place - and Mr. Bono, as you so comfortably sit up there in "Richland" with the rest of the well fed, well taken-care-of, well paid pigs, we, the underdogs, the underpaid, the underfed - the BASE OF ALL ECONOMY - will plodge along and listen to your philanthropic banterings about the "less well off" and the "starving people". Too bad you can't just bloody retire and take what you've already raped - along with the RIAA and their ilk - and just sit back and live quietly without your pigish rants and demands for more money, more profits. Make what you make, make it honestly, and don't whinge. Why didn't anyone jump on this bandwagon back in the 60's and the 70's when folks were already taping music from the radio? Anyways, Mr. Bono, if you're such a good soul, cut your living expenses to $40AUD a year, give the rest to the starving, the waterless, the sick and the poor, and then I'll admire you. Better yet, give it all away, and start again from scratch...shouldn't be that hard if you're a really good musician...
YankDownUnder Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire
I only wish the movie industry would do the same, and I'd gladly pay for a legal movie site like AllofMP3, with a choice of formats and compression rates, and no DRM. For once I actually agree with our government (in the Netherlands), whose stance on illegal downloads is that they will crack down on it, but not before the movie industry provides a reasonable legal alternative. And the current offering of streaming to proprietary players only, with no means to watch content on anything other than a Windows PC (no Popcorn Hours, no iPhones), is not acceptable by any standard.
Exactly this.
Give me spotify already! Mail order and live shows already do their magic, luckily. I would personally not even have a problem with spotify not being open (though, I have no idea whether it is or is not). Really, why won't they put it out here? Isn't my money good enough?
South Park gave us one of the more plausible representations of Bono (a floater and maker of floaters). The creators of South Park also let you download the shows for free, providing an illuminating contrast with Bono and his ilk.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Bono has come out in favour of tracking content to help 'deserving' artists. Given that the general public consider Bono to have a massively inflated sense of his own worth, and a massively inflated bank account, this can only help those who are on the side of a free Internet.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Waaaay back when U2 was an edgy (ha!) band, I was in high school. We generally agreed that The Unforgettable Fire was either their last honest album, or their first descent into whininess.
Yeah, they've written some catchy tunes, but have they had anything to say as musicians since "Sunday Bloody Sunday" that justifies their arrogant, angsty, self-centred attitude?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
No he is not.
at no point in the article does he vaguely do that.
but here on slashdot retards like yourself will grasp at any bullshit claims to try and defend living your life leeching free content from everyone else who actually sees the sense in paying creative people for their work.
Fuck off and die kid.
All the community, all the good works, but without [...] any involvement with volcanoes.
Why do you hate xenu so much? :(
I don't recall you having any basis in study for your uttering. Just because you got rich hopping around on a stage wailing into a microphone doesn't make you an expert in everything.
No, all you have done now is discredited the good work you *did* manage to do.
I do not steal music, but I am just as likely to be dragged into court as anyone else because the detection methods used by the RIAA are (a) flawed and (b) irrelevant - they are not interested in the conviction per se, but the chilling effect. Well, they have chilled two things: (1) my respect for the legal system, as I have seen it abused in many ways over the last 8 years and (2) my enthusiasm for buying music - I switched to web radio instead. In the last 5 years I have bought ONE (1) CD, and I know I'm far from the only one.
You see, the RIAA idiots forget two things. Firstly, those they sue now would have been their future customers. Instead, by manipulating the amount of fines they will be denied a future. So, no future sales. Secondly, we age, which means what we like now is old tomorrow but we'll hang on to those records. Again, no new sales.
Last but not least, there is another chilling effect. For someone who is so-called "creative" you appear to have a short memory, or maybe that has been bought by the RIAA as well? Any creativity has roots, has examples. I have seen fantastic new ways in which music has developed based on examples people grew up with and experimented with.
What the RIAA is doing is chilling the experimental, the new growth. That leaves only the manufactured bands, with a few exceptions (when the singers accidentally have talent too) - and that is on the decline because it's unoriginal crap which requires (costly) marketing to sell. You could get a computer to make that stuff, and most sounds like it too.
So it's not just a child that dies every time you clap your hands (did you stop clapping?) - it's also the market that gave you the money to change from a moderately interesting singer to an idiot used by politicians and sales droids, and I haven't failed to notice that quite a few things you have been promoted involved making more money for the parties involved (like "RED" - buy our stuff and we'll give a -small- percentage to the cause). Yes, money ruins a lot - U2, it seems..
Insert
before internet downloads people use to copy off the radio, when will they stop acting like piracy is so new with the internet, get over it
I absolutely agree that church-like but secular organizations would be a tremendous boon to mankind.
While we're on the topic of starving children, take note that the Christian churches of the world do their utmost to keep condoms and other forms of family planning out of the hands of the poor buggers in developing countries, thereby GREATLY exacerbating the problem of unsustainable, miserable, squalid overpopulation.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
I think Bono should help the poor media industry by doing good will tours for the Taliban in Afghanistan. It's said they love music and musicians.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
Nope, that's not his rebuttal. His rebuttl is "if you don't like to do the job, don't do it".
I don't become a janitor because I don't WANT to clean toilets. But a janitor has to, on occasion, clean toilets.
If you don't like performing music, then don't become a musician. After all, that is WHAT A MUSICIAN DOES: PERFORM MUSIC
AllOfMP3 is legal. If it weren't then the uploader on P2P would be free of charge. Jammie would disagree.
AllOfMP3 is only illegal if the copy being made is where the recipient is. They have a license in Russia to make the copy and the cut required is made available (except the RIAA refuse to accept the money waiting). So they have 100% license to make the copy.
They can only be illegal if the copier who paid for it is the one who needs the license.
But if that were true, "making available" is not a crime. P2P seeders would not be at fault. Because they don't need the license.
If both ends need a license, then they're double-dipping and it's up to RIAA to collect from the purchasers, not AllOfMP3.
I remember Bob Geldorf explaining that his campaign in 1985 (Live Aid) was different in that they were going to put in place systems and structures which would mean that the problem never happened again... big joke.
They were saved, their vilages flourished, they had more children, and twenty five years later the problem still exists. Pop stars and the star struck politicians who fawn over them should learn to take themselves less seriously.
Still, it provides a good year out for college students to feel that they have done something wonderful before returning to civilization.
Calling yourself a "pirate" is counter-productive, akin to giving your enemy a loaded gun. Spanish newspapers are used to do this trick to support the policy of the government. This way they hide the fact that, if most people knew what "piracy" is about, the local RIAA would be kicked out of existence.
If you are in favor of private copy and you state your opinions on the newspapers, how do they describe you? Not with your profession, they don't call you a "lawyer". Subtlety be damned, they say "X, a pirate". Then the reporter asks partisan questions such as "why are you against artists?", or "why do you hate our cinema industry?".
If you want to bear it as a badge of pride, if you feel like going the Black Power way, be sure of having a Martin Luther King with you to provide verbal suppressing fire. Other way, they are automatically against you, and won't surrender to reason --why, because subconsciously you are a pirate, rapist and murderer, spoiler of the seas and/or intellectual/imaginary goods.
Well if downloading a U2 album is comparable to downloading child pornography, is creating a U2 album comparable to creating child pornography?
I'm from Canada, eh!
Our floaters are Celine Dion, Bryan Adams
We're sorry... we're so, so very sorry for those two. So very, very sorry.
Sorry.
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
How unerringly true. Might I suggest that we take a new approach to the problem? Perhaps we can put our efforts toward removing the stigma attached to cannabalism. It seems to me that this could only result in a positive outcome for all parties involved. The hungry would be either fed or eaten and we would no longer have to be annoyed by Bono's calls for help.
big labels/studios etc always make ridiculous claims about how much they are losing when in fact if it were not for such easy free access to their products most people wouldn't even consider buying them. Many steal products they don't think are worth buying, as far as Bone-on is concerned I don't think it's even worth stealing. Out of the ones who do steal what they would have bough many do end up buying it and simply use the free copy as evaluation. I don't tend to steal music since if it's not worth buying I don't think it's worth my time listening to really. Some artists I have downloaded to see if I considered it a worthy purchase since I can't return jack shit to an actual store counter due to "piracy" the way I used to be able to hence driving me the piracy route. If it was I bought it, and even from a selfish or unethical POV a hard copy and one I could encode in format/bitrate to my liking is always usefully anyway.
Meh. It's not that hard to defeat. You can: setup a computer as a honeypot - it serves up the "pirated" material people are trying to download and logging their IP addresses. You can write an application/custom installer that phones home. When pirates install some application, they're also notifying you that they just installed a pirated application. I'm sure I could come up with lots of other ways.
Your definition of "pirated" sounds a lot like "Distributed by an entity authorized by the copyright holder" to me.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
I think child porn is a bad comparison, since that's basically what they're doing. The problem is that the whole point of the anti-child porn campaigns is destroying the market. Best thing to do is work on shutting down distribution and leaving the end users alone. The key should be to make it worth their time to spend $.99 rather than download.
Then start a public relations campaign to make stealing from artists seem uncool. Rather than using the 20 biggest artists in the world, use hard working artists who are having trouble getting by. Like Ian Mcdougall of the River Boat gamblers, who made about $12k/year before getting hit by a car and being left with thousands of dollars in medical bills. It's much harder to justify stealing from someone like that.
We've gotten what we've wanted. You can buy pretty much any music you want in an open format. We won. I've read your slashdot posts. You said you'd start buying music again once that condition was met. So do it.
Because the majority of the people who make that content depend on it for their livelihoods and don't make much money. So while your argument might make sense when talking about a Disney movie from the 1920s, it makes almost no sense when referring to anything made within the last decade, which I have a hunch is the time period most people are pirating.
I don't hear a lot of calls to go after people pirating Gershwin tunes.
>
(PS captcha should be media and not mediums)
unless they mean psychics?
Mr. Hewson, after very careful consideration, sir, I've come to the conclusion that your thoughts on pretty much anything suck.
Good God, man, get your facts straight! I like what you're saying but when you make such a basic error, it reflects poorly on your entire argument.
Child porn is legal in most countries. When you add together the countries in which it is illegal (U.S., France, Canada, etc.) with the countries that theoretically ban all porn (China, India, most Muslim-influenced states), then it's true that for the majority of the world's population, child porn is at least somewhat illegal.
But in most countries, it's legal to possess. In a lesser number, it's legal to sell. There are a few places where it's technically legal to make (though other laws tend to get broken in the process).
While I feel sure the number has gotten higher over the last 3-4 years, according to the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, as of the date of their last full study of the issue in 2006, only 5 countries in the world completely and specifically outlaw child porn.
[Without some of the restrictions Bono argues for,] people would probably contribute music for free, in much the same way they contribute to Wikipedia for free.
Wikipedia is on the Alexa charts, but what Free album have you seen hit the pop charts?
I'm not quite sure what you count as free music
Musical works and sound recordings distributed to the public under a license that meets these requirements. Of the examples you listed:
If you're going to do a stupid analogy you could at least make it a car one.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I think there is now a market for laminated Bill Gates/Bono Time Magazine cover dartboards. The hardest part of the game is who to aim for!
To remind you, the crux of the GP's argument is that "nothing goes to the public domain anymore."
In the United States, this wasn't the case prior to the Copyright Act of 1976, which changed copyright from 28-56 years (the second 28-year term wasn't automatic) to the author's life plus 50 years / 75 (?) years for corporations).
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
No, it was supposed to be a way for artists to earn money while they were alive.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'm against not paying for entertainment I truly enjoy that the creators of that content didn't provide me for free one way or another (where I live, we have a lot of free open air concerts paid by the City via taxes, so I feel no compunction to pay that artist additional money at the concert).
However, we should police illegalities on the Internet the same way we should be doing them in the physical world -- through real detective work as a result of actual crimes, not by spying on everyone so we can catch them tripping up.
People's Internet usage should be private and personal up until they're suspected of actual crimes that actually involve the Internet and a warrant is given to wiretap them. Until then, you should only have to fear the hackers online, not your own government.
I don't live in Communist China and don't want to.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Absolutely. Further, the point isn't whether or not you support or oppose piracy: the point is that you shouldn't be giving up 99.9% of your FREEDOM so that a bunch of idiotic rich pricks can block the .1% of people that might possibly have engaged in some sort of piracy.
Yes, there are bad people out there. People who steal for the sheer purpose of depriving a person of something or causing them anguish. But stealing something over the Internet in the way that the RIAA, MPAA, and various other idiotic money-centric organizations/people explain it is ridiculous.
This whole thing revolves around the RIAA and to a lesser extent the MPAA. The whole thing is a ruse in a (hopefully) futile attempt to exert more control in order to make more money. Instead of innovating and making technology that allows people to purchase their products with less effort than it takes to steal them (or with more quality), they blame their inadequacies on that which they cannot control.
What if everyone that used e-mail had to use a system that registered every email they sent or received with the government? People are now horribly inconvenienced and penalized for using what used to be a convenient method of communication while those that are abusing the system (spammers) are still sending unregistered emails. This is exactly what those money-grubbing jerks are trying to do to the Internet: punish the masses for the sins of the minorities in an attempt to recoup imaginary losses.
They spend massive bundles of cash to build broken technologies like DRM to keep people from copying these files. Joe Schmoe down the street doesn't know what it is, but gets pissed-off when he has to spend a week without his computer after "installing" a music CD onto his computer, waiting for his grandson to come over and fix it. Meanwhile those that had been copying files before DRM continue to do so with little mitigation. Now normal people find out about these services that allow them to get digital versions of their stuff for free and require very little technical knowledge beyond being able to use a keyboard and search.
Sanity is like a condom: rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.
Yes, I understand. I am absolutely for copyright reform.
I was pointing out that the solution isn't to fuck over today's artists because you're pissed that Porgy and Bess is still under copyright. Most of the people being ripped off are people actively making music today. The number of "Beatles" is very small and the number of "Spoon"s are very high.
Obscure Music Finds An Outlet On The Web -- an NPR story about people on the Internet playing and/or distributing old, obscure content. In it, a music industry executive rails against it, because those folks aren't going through the right sources, tracking down the people who own the "publishing rights" so they can get their money.
You're right that this is the exception to the rule, but I had to mention this because it immediately came to mind when I read your comment.
You failed to mention Malthus or cycles of growth & famine. To every biosystem there is a maximum of people it can sustain. It is likely that the villages you talk about have grown until that limit was reached. What happens next is a you described: one resource runs out. But digging deeper wells will only help until those run out too.
What did not happen is that the villagers have adapted to the new situation, or hat they have a brighter future. In the west less then 1% is active in farming, but you forced another generation into farming, which does not have a very bright future without modern practices.
You brought in manpower, which Africa has more then enough of. When you were done, the knowledge your engineers had is leaving the country again. Your African co-workers might have learned something too, but they will want to cash in on that and will likely move into the city.
Foreign aid needs to improve all aspects of life, not just digging a well and call it a day.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
So encourage people to find agreeable ways to support artists. Forgetting all the issues of entitlement, money is power. Spending money is exercising power. Supporting one's favourite punk band while avoiding any money going to the next Britney Spears can be purely for self interest.
Entertainment is one of the most clear cut cases for economics there is. There's none of the universal welfare complications of healthcare or utilities, just pure economics where it works best - providing what people want by market forces. With the developments through the digital age we've come to the point where the primary scarcity is talent, yet people still want to quantify everything by record sales. Instead of encouraging everyone to continue to think of artists in terms of how many mp3's they've sold they should be encouraging people to think of artists in terms of how much more music they would like them to produce.
People keep bringing up the numbers of live shows, here is a key issue many are missing or not thinking about enough - not everyone is interested in live music. Most of the MONEY (not sales) the music industry has lost has likely been from people who aren't interested in live shows but are unhappy with whatever is being offered in the way of 'buying' music. All the time an artist spends at a live show they aren't spending making a new record, why aren't the record companies coming up with as many ways for people who want new music to spend money on it? Either because they're stupid or because they're not interested in more music being made, just how much money is being paid for what is being produced anyway.
While trends and logic would suggest their current business model is unsustainable that doesn't seem to have dissuaded them from continuing to milk the cash cow of copies as a commodity for as long as they can get away with it.
Wikipedia: A basic income is a proposed system of social security, that periodically provides each citizen with a sum of money that allows the receiver to participate in society with human dignity. Except for citizenship, a basic income is entirely unconditional. Furthermore, there is no means test; the richest as well as the poorest citizens would receive it. The U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network emphasizes this absence of means testing in its precise definition, "The Basic Income Guarantee is an unconditional, government-insured guarantee that all citizens will have enough income to meet their basic needs."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I'm honestly just trying to point out that people need to stop thinking of stealing music as ok, regardless of justification. I'm not simplifying this into saying all music downloaded online is stealing. I think that listening to an album before buying is fine. But if that album goes into permanent rotation in your music collection you're stealing. It's important to buy music and support artists you like. Whether that's through buying mp3s, cds, t-shirts, or attending concerts. Not supporting artists is stealing and does make you an asshole.
That said, I think the current model is probably very efficient. It's exactly how all other branches of the arts now work. You have large producers who do things that are intellectually unexciting (or who get large government grants to do intellectually exciting risky works). You have medium sized producers who provide a marketing outlet for individual artists to utilize economies of scale, and you have individual artists selling directly to fans. The only real flaw to market based art is that conservative(not political, artistically) work is going to bubble up to the top. That's really the one thing that record companies had going for them. They have taste-makers who could see potential and could nurture bands until they became more skilled. That's the one thing that's been lost in most of the other arts. It's difficult to dedicated yourself to your art and work on developing your skill and so the aggregate quality goes down somewhat.
As a playwright with a day job, I'm averaging 3 short plays a year, and 1 full length every 2 years. If I were paid to dedicate my time to it I might be able to up my throughput substantially and my technical skills would improve thus improving the overall quality of finished product. As it is, I'll probably get there, but in 30 years, rather than 5. Most people drop out before that.
The other side lies in grants and a somewhat socialized art, but I think while that can lead to aesthetically beautiful art it tends to get neutered by the need to continue to receive funding. The federal government is a very conservative audience.
Your definition of "pirated" sounds a lot like "Distributed by an entity authorized by the copyright holder" to me.
Yes, the copyright holder would have to be involved in setting up the sting, but they don't have to actually give anyone anything. For example, they could give pirates a demo application, or a hobbled version of the application (less functionality, or limited to seven days, or something different entirely). I think I remember copyright holders putting recordings of static onto Napster as a way of frustrating downloaders.
I always thought my sig was just a joke.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Incorrect. The benefit of the creators was never supposed to be a concern at all. The US constitution makes it clear :
Perhaps people would respect it if we still had an actual limited time, and not the "theoretically limited" but pretty much eternal copyrights we have now.
Circumcision is child abuse.
My brother is a lesser-known artist, a drummer in a band signed to a small label (Fat Wreck Chords), who have produced several albums. I think it's very easy for techies here on Slashdot to opine about how piracy actually helps lesser-known artists, but the reality is that it is becoming more and more difficult to develop any sort of middle-class living as a musical artist (as opposed to fee-for-service session player). Pirated tracks can help "blow up" the rare act that makes it big, but this is the musical equivalent of making it from the street court to the NBA...doesn't happen 99+% of the time. It used to be that musicians could make an ok living from being moderately popular, but that is less and less true.
Even with the increased interest driven by pirated music, touring constantly is a terrible life which produces not much money. It has been hell on my brother's relationships with girlfriends, friends, and family. Think of the worst business travel schedule of the busiest tech consultant, but replace planes with a van or bus, and hotels with bunks or floors, and subtract most of the salary. His shows are attended by thousands of people, but he has to work 2 other jobs when at home (catering and bike mechanic), rents a room from a friend, and can barely afford health insurance.
Look up the recent history of The Roots, now the resident band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. This is a well-known, popular, Grammy-winning hip-hop band that has been around for many years, and they were starting to struggle to the point that they took on the TV show gig.
Maybe some people will say that this is his choice and he should just choose a different career path if he can't make it big. The problem with that is that it cedes musical art to the few lottery-winner bands. Where do the niches go? How can new acts survive long enough to grow an audience?
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=955999&cid=24911097
In other words, you believe in a system where the lazy leach off of the industrious.
Yes, I am sure people who work for a living will have no problem paying the huge amount of taxes that will be required to support those that do not wish to work or wish to work on something that produces little or no income.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I'm honestly just trying to point out that people need to stop thinking of stealing music as ok, regardless of justification
Stealing music? bla bla bla, not stealing, bla bla bla. Let me rephrase that. The closest approximation to stealing you can get in terms of intellectual property is denial of the rights to use that property, e.g. the literal stealing of the copyright whereby you gain the rights in place of the original assignee. At 'worst' copyright infringement is unfair competition, no matter how much someone infringes they are not denying the artist use of their property. Peer to peer file sharing doesn't even necessarily mean competition because as you give your own example for, there is absolutely nothing stopping the person who downloads then buying a copy, not even a measurable cost associated with the transfer (unlike commercial piracy for instance).
It seems strange for you to use the word stealing as it is usually the 'don't break the law!' crowd that go down that route whereas you admit to the try before you buy scenario yourself.
That said, I think the current model is probably very efficient. It's exactly how all other branches of the arts now work. You have large producers who do things that are intellectually unexciting (or who get large government grants to do intellectually exciting risky works). You have medium sized producers who provide a marketing outlet for individual artists to utilize economies of scale, and you have individual artists selling directly to fans.
There is a difference between 'it works' which is what you describe and 'very efficient' which is what you claim. Perhaps we first need to make clear what we consider to be the goal, in terms of creating jobs and moving money around then the current system may be efficient indeed. In terms of the quantity of stuff produced the current system may also win out. In terms of providing people what they want and not wasting resources on excess the current system has adopted the limitations of selling tangible goods.
From my point of view, you can meet demand AND ensure that the demand is better matched to what people want by doing things differently. The bigger picture effect is that while the industry may be smaller that just leaves more resources to meet other demands. If there really is a demand for million dollar movies, rather than just a desire, then economics says that demand will be met.
The only real flaw to market based art is that conservative(not political, artistically) work is going to bubble up to the top. That's really the one thing that record companies had going for them. They have taste-makers who could see potential and could nurture bands until they became more skilled. That's the one thing that's been lost in most of the other arts. It's difficult to dedicated yourself to your art and work on developing your skill and so the aggregate quality goes down somewhat.
A reasonable explanation of the effect artificially setting prices has on a market. By forcing everyone to pay a price that does not reflect either cost or demand you get a market controlled by what people in suits think will be the next best thing. This happens because the amount of money they get isn't proportional to the actual demand for what they're producing. This happens because essentially they are competing with themselves. Even without different companies collaborating to fix prices, one record label might have thousands of popular artists on its books.
One example: who's going to let a band that had little investment to sell for a low price (even if that is their market value) when it would draw sales away from their big names when the little band probably has a less exclusive contract and might jump ship once they become popular. When prices are set artificially people end up paying more than what they're worth to the undeserving and not paying at all for the more deserving because they can't afford to.
The biggest problem facing most "small independent artists" is not people downloading their songs - it's NOBODY downloading the songs. Most (95%) of the 100k+ albums released every year sell less than a hundred copies
You pivoted in that sentence. First you're talking about downloads, then you're talking about album sales. Not the same thing. There are plenty of bands whose music is widely downloaded or streamed, but who sell few albums. From the musicians' point of view, you've identified the problem perfectly.
The problem for most of these artists is that many of the traditional ways of discovering new music (radio, CD stores) have been bought up and monopolized by the majors. While the new media channels are available to everybody, getting "eyeballs" (OK, "ears") is still the hardest part.
It is much easier today for new bands to get exposure, thanks to music review sites like Pitchfork, services like Pandora or Spotify, discussion boards by the thousand, and of course MySpace, the original online home of independent musicians. Plus with MP3 players and smartphones, it's way easier to play a song for a friend whenever.
My brother is the drummer in a band signed to a mid-size label. They've put out several albums and tour nationally and internationally. Their songs have been streamed hundreds of thousands of times on their MySpace page. I'm sure there are torrents of them. Yet he still lives hand-to-mouth, working as a caterer and bike mechanic when he's not touring, living with friends. The lead singer makes ends meet by running a contracting business with his wife. They are not lacking for attention; what they are increasingly lacking are reliable ways to turn that attention into dollars.
Think back to the dotcoms of the late 90s. It's not that hard to grow an audience by giving things away to people; but audiences are worthless if there is no reliable mechanism to turn them into dollars.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Thom Yorke, the band's lead singer, explained in an online interview for Wired magazine that Radiohead would never have been able to pull off the stunt without years of support from its former label, Capitol EMI.
"The only reason that we could even get away with this is the fact that we'd actually gone through the whole mill of the business in the first place," Yorke said. "It's not supposed to be a model for anything else. It was simply a response to a situation. We're out of contract. We've spent a huge amount of money on this server. We have our own studio. What the hell else would we do? This is the obvious thing to do."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122006767
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
"Stealing music"
I realize it's loaded. But what would the correct term be then if I invited a plumber to my house to fix a leak, then didn't pay him (and I realize we have entire legal ideas of implied contracts, but I think they're codifying this exact problem)? There are expectations of payment and expectations of having to pay. It is not perhaps "stealing" in the traditional sense, but I am circumventing the expected transaction. If the artists puts a file online to be freely downloaded I am not circumventing this transaction. The implied transaction exists in both cases.
"If there really is a demand for million dollar movies, rather than just a desire, then economics says that demand will be met."
Except this isn't really true. The captialist system is very good at finding existing demand and filling it to the point where demand is effectively eliminated or static. The system is actually very bad at finding new markets. We are not good at putting capital into developing new markets. If what you were saying is true, we'd see thousands of hollywood movies trying to create new forms in hopes of creating a new market. Instead we get very few of those and lots of movies trying to exploit tried and true formulas (many failing expensively because the market is saturated). Our system is very good at filling demand for incremental and conservative change. It is horrible at creating innovation. Innovation is really only something that happens because the market is so good at oversaturating itself. And unfortunately most of the time the big players in a saturated market figure out ways to lock out new players, thus insuring no new markets will be created.
"Artists are in a unique position to take advantage of the phenomenon of the truly competitive market due to near zero costs for distribution. In the current system your success is likely as likely to hinge on some sort of lucky break as it is the amount of talent you have or work you do. In a truly competitive market your success hinges more on demand for your talent and the amount of work you do."
I wish this was true, but it's patently false. Your success is still a mix of your ability to market yourself and your product. The cost of marketing is huge. That's why even though people keep talking about the move away from albums to singles the market has actually just moved to EPs. You simply can't justify the cost of marketing individual songs. This is one thing that we've been talking about in my community (theater) a lot. Now that we have this decentralized system that is so good at getting people started, how do we get the marketing efficiencies of scale that these large organizations have, and can we do so through some sort of coop even though the members of the coop are effectively competing against each other. It's a real puzzle. I generally spend at least double the time marketing plays for my production company that I do writing them. And so far I'm just holding steady. We've got a fairly steady audience base, and that 2:1 ratio just keeps us at current audience levels. Expanding my market would probably require an exponential investment.
One of the easiest places to look when trying to decide if this is actually true is movie production. Contrast independent movies now with independent movies in the early 1990s. The cost of making a movie has been driven to effectively zero. Yet when you look at today vs. the 1990s there are far fewer independent films in theaters. The difference is that marketing makes a huge difference. And even though you can make a movie for $100 it doesn't mean that you can spin up the marketing to convince even 10 people to see it at $10/ticket. During the early 90s you had a group of experts who were actively taking these movies and marketing them (think John Pierson). I think that's what makes the difference.
"I have to wholeheartedly disagree with the notion of 'socialised' or government controlled art."
Many people do, but it provides a function. There are amazing things that can only be done with
People aren't pirating Gershwin because a lot of it is in the public domain.
I realize it's loaded. But what would the correct term be then if I invited a plumber to my house to fix a leak, then didn't pay him (and I realize we have entire legal ideas of implied contracts, but I think they're codifying this exact problem)? There are expectations of payment and expectations of having to pay. It is not perhaps "stealing" in the traditional sense, but I am circumventing the expected transaction. If the artists puts a file online to be freely downloaded I am not circumventing this transaction. The implied transaction exists in both cases.
Copyright is not 'implied' it is codified. An implied contract is a mutual agreement. Copyright was supposed to be some sort of 'social contract' akin to taxes. If you really want to try and construct a compelling analogy then start at taxes.
You can certainly use the word stealing as a simile but don't be surprised when people ridicule you for the fact that the word already has a proper use in the context of copyright.
Except this isn't really true. The captialist system is very good at finding existing demand and filling it to the point where demand is effectively eliminated or static. The system is actually very bad at finding new markets. We are not good at putting capital into developing new markets. If what you were saying is true, we'd see thousands of hollywood movies trying to create new forms in hopes of creating a new market. Instead we get very few of those and lots of movies trying to exploit tried and true formulas (many failing expensively because the market is saturated). Our system is very good at filling demand for incremental and conservative change. It is horrible at creating innovation. Innovation is really only something that happens because the market is so good at oversaturating itself. And unfortunately most of the time the big players in a saturated market figure out ways to lock out new players, thus insuring no new markets will be created.
I'm struggling to see your point here, you're talking about making lots of films to 'make new markets' and other stuff that makes no sense in the context of what I'd said. The statement was about meeting demand, not creating markets. If there is demand to meet then there is a market because demand is part of the market process. I can only guess what you're really on about is innovation, you're worried that in a truly competitive market there will not be room for innovation because you somehow believe that competitive markets can't afford to innovate. All evidence points to the contrary however, competitive markets tend to encourage innovation because it increases demand.
While your idea of innovation might be The Matrix or Avatar, which happen to be big budget films, the fact that they were innovative allowed them to be expensive. Innovation doesn't mean making random films and hoping there's demand for them it's about finding some demand and using innovation to make sure your product is the one people choose. In a truly competitive market innovation is likely to be more common because it tends to aid success. The idea of creating new markets would really be addressing demand but using innovation to be competitive, much more efficient than the current system of having more money than sense.
I wish this was true, but it's patently false. Your success is still a mix of your ability to market yourself and your product. The cost of marketing is huge. That's why even though people keep talking about the move away from albums to singles the market has actually just moved to EPs. You simply can't justify the cost of marketing individual songs. This is one thing that we've been talking about in my community (theater) a lot. Now that we have this decentralized system that is so good at getting people started, how do we get the marketing efficiencies of scale that these large organizations have, and can we do so through some sort of coop even though the members of the coop are effectively competin
I think you've missed that I'm for severe restrictions on copyright. That said:
"While your idea of innovation might be The Matrix or Avatar"
Um, no. Those are fun and all, but they're derivative movies that are mainly about marketing based upon special effects. I was talking more about something like Clerks that showed there was an entirely new market for movies with lots of dialog and inexpensive production values.
"Another good example of how the current system is screwed up, really your last two paragraphs have quite nicely supported my case by showing how bad things are currently. You don't tell me how lack of copyright would make these situations worse."
My point was that low barrier to entry does not necessarily equal good product. And if your idea of innovative movies are "The Matrix" or "Avatar" then you definitely would want to preserve copyright. There's no way you could recoup investment on a movie like that without the kind of financial shell game that depends on an extremely solid way to make money in perpetuity. No banked would loan you $300 million dollars to make a movie, no matter what you think the market will bear.
"Spending more money on art and entertainment than there is genuine demand is akin to hedonism. If I could eat an infinite amount of chocolate I would probably still decide it wasn't worth it."
Spending more money on entertainment than there is genuine demand for is hedonism. Art should have some transcendent value to our culture. And thus should negate your chocolate argument. If we're talking purely about entertainment here, sure. Let's abolish copyright today. The problem is that there's very rarely pure-art or pure-entertainment.
I'm not arguing against taking copyright back to something like 10 years. I am against people deciding they have the right to do whatever they want because they feel a law has been hijacked.
The easiest way to get new workers is to make babies and raise them
what about all the adults who are making the babies? perhaps they could actually do something useful....? just a thought.
Well, are you lazy because you are leaching off of 5000 years (and more) of innovations made by our ancestors? Do you reinvent the science and technology from scratch when you want a new computer? At what point after all that hard work by so many will we be able to stop working so much?
Over the last 200 years, the US workforce has gone from about 90% farmers to about 1% farmers, using mostly machinery like tractors and harvesters. Over the last 50 years, the US workforce has gone from about 30% manufacturing workers to about 12% (with some imports, but much has been productivity increases). We now have massive and increasing unemployment. Industrial productivity continues to increase exponentially. Where are all these things that people need to be working at? Services? Robots are doing more and more, as is computer software, and most (not all) service jobs doing things like telemarketing or being a restaurant employee are not very good jobs. A relative handful of people maintaining Debian GNU/Linux are supplying software to billions. Technology is an amplifier. The whole nature of economics is changing.
What we have now is actually vast amounts of effort that go into non-productive activities because of the attitude you outline, where in the end a greater and greater percentage of effort goes into "guarding" rather than production. RIAA or SCO are great examples of this, with endless lawsuits trying to get income for some few and wasting everyone's time and energy. But much the same is true even these days about basic material things like cars. Here is something I wrote on why taxes would go *down* if everyone got a free luxury electric car, because of the savings on health care costs, pollution remediation, and war taxes:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en
The "conventional wisdom" assumptions about work and income are out of date for the 21st century. Let alone they are *cruel* given people are homeless and hungry amidst so much abundance in the USA, and those numbers continue to grow. As is said at the third link below: "The continuance of the income-through-jobs link as the only major mechanism for distributing effective demand -- for granting the right to consume -- now acts as the main brake on the almost unlimited capacity of a cybernated productive system."
Related:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.html
Two by me on why robots are changing the nature of employment:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005926.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004216.html
Here is something I wrote on why even *millionaires* would be better off with a basic income:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/basic-income-from-a-millionaires-perspective.html
You are voting against your own self-interest because of obsolete 20th century ideology. The age of one-for-one trade is coming to an end (even if there may always be aspects of trade in our society). We're in a new age of emerging abundance from advanced technology, one that makes possible aga
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
My self-interest does not include supporting whiny assholes who demand part of my hard-earned income so they can sit on their asses.
Tell you what, Paul, you send me half your salary so I don't have to work and I will agree with you. Until then, your belief holds no weight.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
What is "income"? What is "money"? Seriously? What is the value of pieces of paper with pictures of dead people on them? Or the meaning of a few numbers in a banking computer somewhere? What is the meaning of all that? Is that what you are working so hard for, to have a few bits flipped in a computer somewhere? Is that what you are asking for, for a few bits to be flipped with little effort on your part? :-) Why, in a world of so much abundance do you still have to work so hard? Industrial productivity has gone up several times since the 1940s. Why can't we all work a lot less, or some who want to work do it, and others who have other things to do (like raise children or be musicians) do that instead?
Related background:
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
"""
Old habits die hard. In fact, we still have a "leisure class". As capitalism has grown so has the wealth and privilege of our leisure class. The old mythologies - gods, the "great chain of being" etc. - are no longer available to justify the existence and perpetuation of our leisure class, something our elites are definitely interested in perpetuating. What was needed was a new "rational" world-view that justified the existence of privileged elites.
That rationalization came in the form of a brand new science known as economics, which included a brand new mythology.
According to the new mythology, human beings are economic competitors. The "marketplace" is the new "Valhalla", where "economic man" frolics. The "market" we are told, contains its own "rationality". It rewards the efficient. It rewards that list of virtues George Will cites, like "thrift", "delayed gratification" and of course, "hard work". Free competition in the market place "rationally" selects the more "worthy" competitor. Thus, the wealthy are the superior competitors who have "earned" their elite status. If you haven't succeeded it can only be because of your "inferiority".
"""
"The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe's" ...
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47
"""
Of course eventually, these guy realize that not only are they not millionaires, they're not making much progress toward that noble goal. That's when they get ugly. You see, they see themselves as capable, intelligent, hard working people - and they are for the most part - who "have what it takes" to "make it". They believe that the difference between those who "make it" and those who don't is being "capable, intelligent and hardworking". Things like "having rich parents", "getting just plain lucky" or "being a crook" don't factor into the equation anywhere. No, American society is a natural hierarchy where the most capable are "rich beyond their wildest dreams", and the non-rich are chumps that just don't measure up. Only they are capable - some of them actually are - and they're not rich. Clearly, something is broken, preventing these wannabes who "have what it takes" from reaching materialist heaven. Now here's where it gets interesting. Since they "have what it takes", there must be somebody else to blame.
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Why do trillions of dollars just given to bankers? What did they do to deserve that? Is this the system you are eager to defend? How much did you get of that? Nothing? Why?
Your comments might be more effective if you could focus on the ideas more than the person. I'm just the messenger here. Anyway, thanks again for participating in the gift economy. :-)
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
And, where will the necessities of modern life come from? If people only do the work they want to do, who will do the dirty jobs?
Who will collect the trash?
Who will work in the sewer plants?
Who will raise the crops and slaughter the animals?
Who will mine and smelt the ores?
Who will work on the assembly lines doing the same three things for hours on end?
Who will do anything, especially anything even slightly unpleasant, if they can sit around doing nothing and get the same return?
Do you suggest we do away with money? Are you suggesting a collectivist, socialist society? Haven't we seen how well that utopian pipe-dream worked out in real life?
Or, are you suggesting we all return to a tribal hunter/gatherer society? Return to the good old days of huts and an average life expectancy of 40 years and no birth control?
Your little propaganda site is pretty poor substitute for history and common sense.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
> "And, where will the necessities of modern life come from?"
Where does free software come from? Or music put under a Creative Commons license? Well, where that comes from, so can other things come from.
> "If people only do the work they want to do, who will do the dirty jobs?"
Seriously, what percentage of jobs are there that are "dirty"? 1%?
People who think they need to be done. Do you ever vacuum your house or take out the trash or clean up after dinner? If no one wants to do them, then we can either re-engineer the work to be fun, we can re-engineer it to not be needed, or we can re-engineer it to be automated.
If, for example, no one liked working on cars, we could probably re-engineer them to require less maintanence effort, or design them for automated maintenance by making them more modular. Electric cars may require much less maintenance, for example.
> "Who will collect the trash?"
Well, what about home recycling systems based on nanotech disassembly? Or what about robotic garbage trucks which pick up standard containers (see the DARPA Grand Challenge to see how trucks can drive themselves)?
Besides, why not just create a public logistics system for moving packages, where the same trucks or robotic vehicles or subway tubes that bring stuff to the homes take unwanted stuff away?
> "Who will work in the sewer plants?"
Well, John Todd developed biological sewage treatment plants that are pleasant greenhouses. Lots of people like working in nature. Just because you can force desperate people to work in today's chemical monstrosities of water treatment systems does not mean their are not alternatives.
http://www.oceanarks.org/
> "Who will raise the crops and slaughter the animals?"
Most US crop land is used for animal production and people would be healthier with a mostly vegetarian diet. That would reduce the amount of people working in agriculture from about 1% to maybe 0.1% of the workforce. Lots of people like working with growing plants, especially with machines and robots to do the hard work. As for actually slaughtering the animals, people are learning how to grow meat in vats, so that won't be needed.
"Lab Meat: Tastes Like a Million Bucks"
http://blog.peta.org/archives/2008/04/lab_meat_tastes.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_meat
Not perfect yet, but closer every year. One by one, all these assumptions about scarcity and labor are becoming untrue.
> "Who will mine and smelt the ores?"
Even decades ago we had all the technology to do this almost entirely automatically much more safely. This has been resisted by unions who are stuck in the same economic paradigm you are endorsing.
> "Who will work on the assembly lines doing the same three things for hours on end?"
Robots. Also, you can print things fully assembled with 3D printers.
"Jay Leno's 3D Printer Replaces Rusty Old Parts"
http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/jay_leno_garage/4320759.html
And we can design things to be easier to assemble and to recycle. Like in the South before the Civil War, or like in Ancient Greece, the presence of slaves, either formal slaves or wage slaves, reduces the motivation to build better tools and better processes.
> "Who will do anything, especially anything even slightly unpleasant, if they can sit around doing nothing and get the same return?"
People who sit around and do nothing are unhealthy and mentally ill. As James P. Hogan points out in "Voyage From Yesteryear", it is the collective responsibility of society to take care of such mentally ill people. The only reason people in the USA aspire to that is because our collective socie
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Please list where they can be purchased today.
Please explain how to re-engineer the job of miner to be either fun or automated. Remember that mine work requires large amounts of manual intervention and dangerous. List all the technology involved indicating those that do and do not exist today.
What will power this "public logistics system"? Please list all the known self-guiding robotic vehicles in existence today. Who will build the subway tubes?
citation needed Please list all the technology.
Please list all advanced mechanical devices that are completely assembled by robots. How much does that 3D scanner and the 3D printer cost? Are you going to buy one for everyone?
Quoting an opinion piece from an anti-capitalism website is not proof of anything. I could just as well use the quote "Greed is good" as it has the exact same support as your quote.
Using sites such as adbusters.org and primitivism.com to bolster your point is foolishness. They are opinion sites with no real scientific research behind them. They propaganda, not fact.
You say in ten years we will have cars that drive themselves, but flying cars have been ten years away for the last fifty years and we still don't have them. The dream of ubiquitous robots has been much closer for almost as long, yet the most common autonomous household robot is the Roomba, a robotic vacuum that is more successful as a niche product conversation piece than a vacuum cleaner.
Everything you have posted relies on non-existent technology, most of which is not even close to being available. Some of the technology would be incredibly dangerous (how do you contain a nanotech general disassembler? What happens if one falls in?)
The society you describe depends on everyone cooperating and being completely altruistic. The history of the humans shows this not to be case. Just look at the USSR for a good example of what happens when a system requires human to be completely altruistic. Or, you could look at both your own link concerning the aboriginal Americans and Columbus, or go talk to some said same about the ancient laws.
Your whole post is at best wishful thinking and at worst failed sociological and political systems.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I'm glad you are asking for evidence. General evidence:
http://roboticnation.blogspot.com/
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005926.html
I mentioned robot garbage trucks as an alternative and cited the DARPA grand challenge as evidence such were possible. Just look at US military plans for self-driving vehicles for more predictions by hard-nosed people of what is likely to be around in ten years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_car#History
Just because flying cars did not happen for everyone (there are some prototypes by the way), doesn't mean logically it makes sense to deny self-driving cars won't happen for most people. Safety concerns alone with an aging population who wants to stay mobile will drive their adoption. You can already buy Hondas in the UK that drive themselves on highways.
"Honda Accord ADAS auto-pilot system takes the reins"
http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/30/honda-accord-adas-auto-pilot-system-takes-the-reins/
"We've heard of radar assisted cruise control, that has certain luxury cars running at set speeds on the highway, but slows them down or speeds them up when they get too close to a car in front or behind. Well now Honda UK is taking it to another level with their Advanced Driver Assist System (ADAS) that not only regulates your speed, but manages the turning, allowing you a full auto-pilot system for your Accord when you're out on the freeway. The Adaptive Cruise Control is your regular radar variety, but the Lane Keep Assist System keeps you headed in the right direction by using a camera on the rear-view mirror to watch the white lines and turn accordingly. Honda was quick to point out that their system isn't exactly set up for you to take a nap, since the ADAS system will beep every 10 seconds to make sure you're paying attention, requiring you to touch the steering wheel to inform the car you're still in charge, but we're sure someone is going manage an accident and an ensuing lawsuit or three out of this "convenience"."
So, your skepticism is way behind the reality of these things.
Note that compared to a century ago when many women and children worked in mines, mining is much more pleasant and already heavily automated (including the use of explosives to do the work of many people). Here is an NPR story on that:
"Could Robots Replace Humans in Mines?"
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12637032
"So far, the U.S. mining industry has shown little interest in funding such research. The robots are expensive and mining companies have little incentive to spend money developing and deploying them. Advances in other technology have already reduced the number of miners in the U.S. by more than two-thirds, compared with 40 years ago. Today, only about 100,000 people work in the coal-mining industry. Partly for that reason, and partly because of advances in safety, mining is not nearly as dangerous as it was in the in the past. Since 1990, fatalities have declined by 67 percent, and injuries by 51 percent, according to the National Mining Association."
So, they are not really trying very hard because humans are forced to do the jobs for money. But it could be mostly automated if we wanted to.
As for robotic material handling systems, there are plenty of them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWsMdN7HMuA
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
One more thought about this in relation to taxes.
The Tax Foundation suggests "Tax Freedom Day" in the USA falls roughly one third of the way through the year, meaning people in the USA work about one third of their time to pay their taxes. They say: "Five major categories of tax dominate the tax burden. Individual income taxes, both federal and state, require 38 days' work. Payroll taxes take another 27 days' work. Sales and excise taxes, mostly state and local, take 15 days to pay off. Corporate income taxes take 6 days, and property taxes take 12. Americans will log 4 more days to pay other miscellaneous taxes, most notably including motor vehicle license taxes and severance taxes, and about 1 day for estate taxes."
So you already are paying a lot of taxes. But what do you really get for it?
What the Tax Foundation leaves out are some other things that are funded by taxes in other countries like health care and road tolls and other user fee things like media production, the arts, and so on, where in the USA you are nickle-and-dimed for each thing or are forced to watch advertising everywhere. In Western Europe, these things are often free-to-the-user and without advertising. And in Western Europe, they don't see on third of every health care dollar disappear to paperwork costs like in the USA, so they can provide health care to everyone for less than it costs in the USA to provide health care to only some of the population.
So, even though people in some Western European countries may pay a little more up-front, they are not constantly hit with fees and as much advertising, and many services can be provided to all because they don't have the extra costs of guarding and paperwork (like with health care). And people there don't have the stress of knowing there is not much of a social safety net, like in the USA. Also, since everyone gets these benefits, there is not stigma of being on "Welfare" or "Medicaid" or "Food Stamps". However, even in Europe, there are different approaches, but in general, they all see welfare as something everyone is entitled to, not just the poor:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_welfare_state
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_welfare_state
In the USA, the closest to a basic income is the Alaska Permanent Fund:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
So, what do you get for taxes in the USA? A trillion dollar military budget that actually seems to be *increasing* terrorism and hatred against the USA like in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere (granted that has more to do with foreign policy and not our brave and dedicated young people)? A school system that dumbs-down kids (John Taylor Gatto)? A physical infrastructure of roads and bridges that falls apart? Little mass transit or good urban planning for walkable communities so you have to pay for a car for one or two cars or more per family plus fuel (so, another sort of tax in a way)? Building codes that don't require energy efficient new housing (so a lot more paycheck money goes to operating costs)? An energy system dependent on oil which is intrinsically insecure and coal that is very polluting and causes health problems? And on top of all this, there are few community centers except for creed-agreement-requiring churches?
So, if you are in the USA, you pay vast amounts of money for taxes already (probably at least half your income if you throw in these extra costs people in Western Europe don't pay out of pocket), and you get next to nothing for it as a taxpayer. On top of that, business is still highly regulated in the USA with a minimum wage, family and medical leave act, affirmative action, and a variety of other things that prevent business owners from running thing the way they want. So, that is sort of an extra tax, too.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
You'd set back the creation of digital media in a big, big way if you undermine the creators like that.
Spoken like a businessman (ie, not an artist). The truth is that while the current media moguls stood back wringing their hands, actual artists would still be creating and exploring the new medium, and many of them would be quite happy to have a more direct link to the public.
There's no shortage of artists in the world who create simply because they feel compelled to, and plenty of them are finding ways to make money at it that don't depend on antiquated business models based on artificial scarcity.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
He earns money with a microphone, but it's a sure bet he can't explain how that works. So please stop that kind of nonsense argument.