Slashdot Mirror
A Composer's-Eye View of the Copyright Wars
bonch writes "As an experiment, composer Jason Robert Brown logged onto a site illegally offering his sheet music for download and contacted hundreds of users, politely asking them to stop listing the material. Most complied, some were confused, and a few fought back. Brown chronicles a lengthy exchange he had with a teenage girl named Brenna, which provides an interesting insight into the artists' perspective of the copyright debate. He also responds to several points raised in comments to the article and says, 'I don't wish to be the enemy; I'm just a guy trying to make a living.'"
It's share. And we have that right, should we decide to enforce it. Or we can placidly give it up, like so many of our other rights.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
An (Analogue) Artist's Reply to Just Criticism . Glynn Moody commented on this days ago
Ever since I heard Kid Rock starved to death, I've been really sympathetic to musicians. I promise not to ever download anything by this guy.
3.99 for sheet music to song....
0.99 for mp3 of song...
hrmm
I think people that actually own it as well as are offering the digital copy to the world are confused about what they can do with the owned copy. They're listing it because they want people to buy the physical copy from them or they want to trade it for something else.
Perhaps if he told them to stop letting people download his stuff? That's what he actually wants and it's still not aggressive.
As a 17 year old, I must agree with Eleannor or w/e on the fact that credit cards are often required to purchase things online. I would have loved to get TF2 and HL2 through steam when they were like $10 each, but I don't have a credit card and they require one, and my parents don't like using them online due to keylogger concerns (with which I agree). Sometimes access is restricted in such a way that acquiring it through legal means is simply not possible. another example, $100 "concrete mathematics" book, nvidia's gpu gems books...there's just no way my parents are gonna pay for that. although there's always getting a job...
I'm not convinced JRB has addressed one comment that seems to have been explained the best by Eleanor, and only lightly touched on by other comments attached to that blog post (e.g. voideka, clovis lark, george).
Put simply, people choose the path of least resistance, which is usually the path of least cost.
If Eleanor needed some music for an audition, any reasonable music would do. She wouldn't pay money if a popular work were available for free (but might pay a small amount of money for a popular work if it were easy to do that). If the creator of a particular work didn't choose to distribute a one-off version at no cost, Eleanor would probably search elsewhere for a gratis piece of music (possibly by a different creator). People do distribute sheet music for no cost, so this stuff will be around somewhere, even if only legal avenues are chosen.
It reminds me of a discussion about the costs of cellphone plans that I looked at recently. Someone compared costs of different networks, assuming a person sent around 3,000 text messages per month. They ended up with some costs on the order of $300-$500 per month, because their analysis didn't include limited-time plans. The reality is that no one would choose to pay that much for text messages, it just wouldn't make sense given that cheaper plans are available (around $10-$15 per month, maybe a bit less). Often, people in my country will keep two prepay cellphones (or two sim cards), so that they can take advantage of the best offer at a particular time.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
This composer clearly believes that when someone downloads a copy of his music, it somehow deprives him of something by the examples he gives.
NEWSFLASH: Not having a screwdriver or a book is not the same as having a copy of your music pirated at all.
To make his example work, here's how you'd have to phrase it:
A friend is building a house. He needs a screwdriver. I know a store with only one left at 80% off. I also need that screwdriver. I face a dilemma:
- Do I let the friend know where he can get that screwdriver for 80% off so he can save the money?
- Do I buy the screwdriver for myself first, then let him know and lead him to believe he "just missed" it?
- Do I lie by omission and tell him he'll just need to buy it at full price at a different store?
You see, that's the problem with suggesting you are deserved future profits. You can't get blood from a stone, and this girl schooled you on that.
That being said, it is your right to deny her your music. I'm certain she'll find a different composer to idolize (one who either gives away their sheet music free, or one from whom she can pirate) and there's only a small likelihood her "career" will take off so you really don't need to worry that in the future you might have just cut yourself off from an even bigger revenue stream. She obviously isn't going to buy your stuff, because she can't.
Of course, if you were a little bit smarter, I think you'd have offered to email her a copy if she sent you $4 in an envelope (or even a money order). But your ego is bruised. So sad. In business (and that's what copyright is therefore) there's absolutely no room for feelings; hell, there's barely even room for MORALS nowadays.
The problem is that small time composers/musicians/artists want to play both sides. They align with the large distribution channels when it suits them. They don't speak out when the RIAA sues everyone and their brother. They don't stop licensing their music through ASCAP. They don't get involved when their historical distributors fail to adapt to changes in technology. They continue to feel they "own" their creation (vs. actually owning a very specific, limited, license granted voluntarily by governments). They don't stand up against DRM. They don't stand up for consumer's rights.
So, essentially, I don't believe for a second, that he is "just a guy trying to make a living." He is manipulative; he is self-centred, and, now that is suits him, he is trying to play the role of the innocent bystander.
You made your bed, now lie in it. You had a chance, back when Napster was new, to change things. You failed to act then. Now, you are reaping the rewards -- or lack thereof -- of you short-sightedness. You (in collaboration with your fellow musicians) could have made easy, legal, inexpensive, distribution of music the standard. Instead, you chose to split it between expensive, legal, and restrictive and cheap, illegal, and easy.
So, in summary, fuck off; where were you 10 years ago, when you could have *actually* changed things.
Just to clarify - when I say "you" I mean content producers in general. I've never head about Jason Brown before.
Emotions! In your brain!
While the website is not breaking the law, Eleanor is breaking the law when she sends a copy of the sheet music via email. She is making an unauthorized copy, which is a violation of copyright law. There is no fair-use defense for what she is doing.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
What tends to get lost in this debate, is where does the money go? No one seriously disputes that the creator has a right to be compensated. In fact he/she should be be able to set his/her own level of compensation. But where does the number $3.99 come from? If Mr. Brown really is all that popular why not $39.99 or $0.99? How much of the $3.99 goes to Mr. Brown and how much to the dead tree outfits that print his stuff?
In arguing about how to protect the $3.99 price we overlook the main issue which is not how to protect the publisher of the $3.99 sheet music, but how to protect the creator of the song.
If there were a foolproof way (Apple iTunes like?) that Mr. Brown could publish his music in digital format and be certain of getting paid for it, we would not need to rely on publishers and libraries.
Mr. Brown could charge whatever he wanted for his music; he could adjust the price up or down depending on demand; HE could be in control of how, when, and for how much his music sold for, and not rely on publishers.
But the discussion never seems to get to that point. In most peoples' minds there are only two choices; obey the RIAA/MPAA lobby or steal it.
We need something better.
"I'm a part of the problem, yet since I'm not the only one, I don't feel bad about screwing you over."
-Securityemo, paraphrased
...says the guy who's never created anything in his life.
Amazing. slashdot is of course a tough crowd for proprietary IP advocates. Here's my own story. My ten year old got a CD from a friend who is a record producer in Hollywood. He liked it and wanted to make copies to give a few friends. I advised that he ask the producer for permission to do so. The producer, bein' from Hollywood an' all, of course said no. If they wanted a copy they could go to the music store and buy one. So my son, disappointed, did not share it with his friends, stopped listening to it, and no additional copies were ever made. OR SOLD! The fallacy seemed to be the belief that the kids would rush out and buy the CD if they couldn't get it for free. Of course they didn't. They went home and played with their Wii. The album died on the junk heap of history, as most do. And without at least a half a dozen potential ardent young fans.
The screwdriver and book stories are way off base as they involve the only "copy". If you borrow either, then I don't have them. If you copy either and leave me the original, it's all good. We both have what we need. Same old story we've heard before. They are not applicable to the issue.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
No, you are wrong, that is exactly what it means. That or you are just an evil, selfish, sadistic asshole.
You are like a person who says "Don't hate the player, hate the game". Well, skippy, the game doesn't exist without the players.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Hello there Jason.
Let me explain a few things to you, since you seem to have wrong information regarding "copyright" and other fictitious concepts.
Copyright isn't an inalienable right. It isn't real property. It is imaginary property. Copyright is a recent concept. As recent as the Renaissance. Before that, you could own physical property, but Ideas were free. If you created a magnanimous work of art, that work of art belonged to the human kind. Then, you could earn a living by performing live, doing work for hire, etc. During the Renaissance, the catholic church, in their unstoppable hunger for power, tried to control the output of printers. They already had a very tight control on scribes, and they wanted to extend that control over to the modern press. The motive: To ban unwanted books. In a word: Censorship. This concept of owning ideas and controlling what you did with them was nothing but lies, just like the rest of christianity.
Later, governments jumped in on the boat, trying to control the press, for mostly the same reasons. Many, many years later, with the church mostly obsolete, and government under the control of corporations, our beloved corporate overlords wanted to hold the almighty power over free speech. So they were the ones that wrote the modern copyright laws.
Nobody owns ideas. Nobody owns art. They belong to the human kind. Period. Any attempt to control ideas is nothing but another fascist atempt at control of this Orwellian society.
But I do understand the POV of the creator. I do, because I am a creator too. And yes, we need to make a living just like anyone else. Now, there is a hugI de difference between the NEED to make a living, and some stupid god-given right to be given money just because we create. That won't work because a) there is no god and b) we have no such right. We decided that we wanted to create. Great. That doesn't allow us to control ideas. I do believe, like many other creators, that our creations are like our childs. You don't own your children. You have to feed them, care for them, and protect them until they are mature enough to have a life on their own. And then they are gone. They are as free as you are. Our need for food and shelter (read: money) doesn't change that basic principle.
You CAN profit from what you do, but always remember, you DON'T own your creations.
P.S: Regarding your screwdriver analogy, it doesn't work. It's been debunked several times before. Basically, your screwdriver is a physical object. A more valid analogy here would be if you made a house that was a replica of the house your friend was building. And it would be totally ok.
Sincerely,
Sebastian.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I'm going to reply with my infamous trolly reply and get ignored in the wash of babies crying in the night because Alderan (or however u spell the star warsy planet) got blowed the fuck up.
A. No one consulted me when they put into effect copyright law.
B. I don't like how they enforce it and don't deem it fair.
Rights are something humanly innate, and I am not denying anyone any of their "right to do " when I copy the shit they provided to the public.
If you don't want your shit copied it should be 100% on the producer of the work to provide it in such a way and be wholly responsible for it to not get copied if it does, TOUGH SHIT, life happens produce something else.
Bards and minstrels and many more performance artists existed and did just fine before the U S of motherfecking A got raped by the British and copyright law existed.
And lets do some further studying of what Catholic monks copied back in the day at the dawn of the printing press.
Enforcing arbitrary laws on people for the benefit of a minority (very rich corporate executives) because the individual artists are fucked either way is not the way to go.
So ... FUCK YOU and your goddamn western civilization based on fucking lawyers and pencil pushers.
All misspellings and poor grammar is intentional.
"snacking on your soul"
That would make a great name for a goth band.
from the so-you're-saying-there-are-living-composers dept.
Of course there are, silly. The dead ones are decomposers.
Eleanor is justifying her own behavior, clearly. I enjoyed the "I'm not saying you're not right but you're totally wrong" line. I actually though his "photocopy my book" argument was quite compelling.
I will say, I understand Eleanor a bit. Sheet music seems amazingly expensive to me. Why does it cost $4 to download and print sheet music?
I can buy a large orchestration of a song, made with 100 musicians and a 50 person choir, for $1. But the sheet music, which is reduced to be played on one or two instruments, costs $4? That just seems off. The only good argument I could see would be to make up for people performing the music, but that requires a separate license payment (doesn't it?), so that can't be it. Actually, a song for Rock Band often costs ~$3. That's a full, high quality 5.1 sound, in 5 tracks, translated into 4 note custom note charts in 4 difficulty levels. That's a ton more work than went into the sheet music, but it's still 25% less money.
Then there's the fact that the sheet music is a byproduct of the process of making music. To make the "easy piano" version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" takes extra work, but the full version of the guitar part was already written for the song. By the same token, do you think Elton John never would have produced sheet music for "Candle in the Wind" if he didn't want to sell the sheet music? He would have made it either way.
I like tinkering around on my keyboard, and playing simple songs. But sheet music is expensive, when you can find it. Can you even find piano arrangements of video game themes/music in stores?
He certainly deserves to be paid, I'm just not sure the price is in line with the relative value... which is why I don't buy much sheet music (and when I do, it's usually large collections).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
And then there's these composers who are TOTAL PRICKS, like (cough) Philip Glass (cough) whose work is simply not for sale. You have to RENT the score to his work with the assumption of public performance, and renting a score of his is like $4000. No. shit.
so if I want to sit down and learn that crazy keyboard part from Einstein on the Beach, I have to fork over $4k! What a bunch of bullshit.
I would LOVE to find a sheet music sharing site. If anyone knows of some good ones, please let me know.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Ya, Google sure proves that information has no value
This quote sums up his position nicely, and really demonstrates why the underpinnings of his entire rationale are flawed:
that doesn't mean I surrender my right to get paid for providing the sheet music.
Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a "right to get paid".
He tries to hide it, but ultimately he still reveals himself to be a dick. Honestly, I'm not sure why he even bothered posting his "experiment". I guess he has no shame.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Friend of mine is building a house. He drew up the plans, he chopped down all the trees, he's got it all together. He doesn't have a screwdriver. He calls me up, says, "Dude, I need a screwdriver." I happen to have a screwdriver, so I give it to him, but I say, "Hey, I need that back later today, I have some work to do." He looks incredulous. "I have to build a house, my man. I'm not going to be done in a day. And what if someone likes my house and wants me to build one for them? I'll need the screwdriver to build their house too, yo." So I suggest he get his own screwdriver. "Why can't I just use yours?" he says. I tell him he can use mine, but then I need it back, it's my screwdriver, after all. He insists that he has the right to take my screwdriver, build his house, then keep that screwdriver forever so he can build other people's houses with it. This seems unfair to me.
But when I copy something, I'm not depriving someone of an original. If someone said "Hey, can I take your screwdriver for a few seconds, scan it in my computer and have my 3-D printer make me a replica?" I'd say sure. That is the closest thing to "piracy" in the physical world.
The screwdriver he wants is a tool that he is using to further his own aims. I went out, I bought a screwdriver, now I should just give it away to someone? Now let's say I wrote a song - it took a lot for me to write it, and it has been my full-time job for over twenty years to make sure that the songs I write go out into the world to be heard and sung. The way I support myself and my family is through the sale of those songs, on CD's, in sheet music, in tickets. Sheet music represents almost half of my yearly income. You seem to be saying that you should be able to take that song, that screwdriver, just take it for free, and go build your career and your happiness without ever compensating me.
If you don't want people using your stuff, don't release it. Don't write it down, don't publish it.
I collect first edition copies of the works of Thornton Wilder. I've been doing so for a long time, he's my favorite author in the world. Friend of mine comes over to the house, sees my collection, and says, "Wow, I've never read any of this stuff. This one looks cool." He takes down "The Bridge of San Luis Rey." "Can I read this?" Sure, I say. It would be rude of me not to let him borrow my book to read, after all. You might even say it would be "nasty." Two months go by; there's a big hole on my bookshelf where "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" is supposed to go. I call my friend, ask him for my book back. He comes over and says, "I love this book, yo. Make me a copy!" I look at him strangely. Why would I do that? He can just go to the bookstore and get a copy of his own. "No, dude, I love THIS book, you should just make me a copy of it." But the publishing company won't be able to survive if people just make copies of the book, I say, and the Thornton Wilder estate certainly deserves its share of the income it earns when people buy the book. He says I'm a jerk because I won't make him a copy of this genius book that I shared with him. I tell him he's a prick and he should get out of my house, and that's the last time I see him for years.
First off the guy is wrong in saying that the estate "deserves" to get a share of the profits. The book in question was published in 1927 just a decade or so shy of 100 years old. You don't "deserv
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I make my living writing software that retails for approx $1000 per license... and done fairly well at it... recently I was directed to a hacker site that had cracked copies of my code... I lurked for a few days to get a sense of the place and give myself time to think about how to react. The site's users were in two camps... those who use the software in an educational (usually self education) and those who are using it as a tool in their professional arsenal. Once I revealed myself I found that neither group said they would be willing to pay or stop using, even when edu discounts were offered... but the students were really cool about it and asked lots of informed questions and pointed out that when they moved to professional life they would recommend the tool... the others were really abusive.
In the end I decided to give the students my blessing as long as they didn't come seeking support... no lost sale, no money changing hands, no big deal and a potential for future sales. The love-wave that came back from those guys felt almost as good as actual sales.
The so-called professionals were anything but, their attitude was that in business it's all fair and if using cracked software gave the a competitive edge then it was crazy to do otherwise... no love-wave.
Yeah, anecdotal I know but this composer chappy has got the wrong end of the equation and 'elenor' is on the right track... I for one will be telling my musical friends how much of an a-hole this guy is and hopefully he will have more lost real sales.
When the **AA are at war with their customers, its the artists that suffer. A big part of the issue here I feel is that with all the crap the **AA's have done, people just don't care as much about whom it hurts. The **AA's have spent so much time and money showing people that they are the face of the artists that when people think of illegally downloading they don't have the real makers of the music come to mind and how that will hurt them, all they see in their mind is just a giant, faceless corporation that doesn't give a shit of them and will sue anyone and everyone they can just for a few more dollars. No one really has any sympathy for the **AA's, and in turn they don't care if they hurt the **AA's. The hidden issue though is while the illegal downloading does hurt the **AA's (which most people don't care about) it also hurts the artists too.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
The same argument goes for climate change presumably.
Why should I inconvenience myself by paying higher prices for green electricity just to save your planet?
At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living.
- Thomas Macaulay, 1841
This fine composer is the victim of the theft of the commons. He seems a reasonable guy. Unfortunately for him copyright is no longer a square deal and since people are now ignoring all copyrights, they're ignoring his too. That's not fair, but what is there to do? We as individuals have no power to make copyright back into a square deal again and to research every author and contributor to a work for each use to determine if there's net sanity there is just too high a burden. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. His loss is no greater than ours: he's lost some potential income; we've lost our culture.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"Rental or purchase of sheet music or the purchase of a record does not authorize its public performance."
Not saying I agree with that, but there are a lot of intricacies to public performance. See also: NFL threatening suit against bars that have Superbowl[tm] parties and show the game to their clientele. They also tend to sue (or threaten to) people who use the word "Superbowl," which is why all the radio stations promote their "BIG GAME PARTY!" in January, and not any sort of party having to do with bowls that may be super. But that is trademark law and outside the scope of what we're talking about here.
The point is whether he has the right to control what is done with his work. Whether people can make copies of it. Generally, I think the answer is yes. However, I think the real question is: do we want to live in a society where money is what motivates art? The true genius filmmakers, composers, they aren't doing it for the money, and if they are, well, I'll be disenchanted with their work when I find that out. Make art for art's sake. Artists and doctors, two professions that should be about sharing with your fellow humans, about the common good, not about profit. (*imho, of course — and my money is where my mouth is, I'm a filmmaker and people openly pirate my films. Huge pieces of them are on YouTube. I'm okay with it.)
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
I'm glad someone is finally taking the high road and acting like an adult. Instead of making threats, he politely asked them to stop, and it seems it worked. The fact is, piracy IS illegal and the fight for piracy isn't about committing crimes, its about fighting racketeering groups like the RIAA. I hope other artists learn from this.
Where has reason in the world gone? Have we abandoned it in favor of power and politics?
If a composer wants to make money composing he should find someone willing to hire him to compose rather than relying on income from work he did years ago. This idea of copyright is old and out dated. The Genie will never get put back into the bottle. Copying information is easy and free. It's like trying to charge people for the right to breath. There's just too much air and too easy to inhale.
I wonder how hard it would be to computer generate every possible combination of music in music sheet form. To the level of satisfying copyright "it's practically the same song" rule. That way it isnt a matter of generating every possible combination per bit. This would obliterate the copyrights of the future music industry. Placing all the copyrights in control of the distributed computing group that does it. A GPL equivalent or perhaps lesser one could be used. All music from day 1 on has to be released under that copyright. Which bars them from suing consumers.
the worst part of the USA is YOU!
Google doesn't sell information, it sells advertising space, Apps hosting and storage space.
1. How many hours did he spend on the particular sheet music in question?
2. What is his net profit on it so far?
3. What is the minimum net profit for him to consider the piece worth his time?
Once the answer to #2 is equal to or greater than the answer to #3, the entire purpose of copyright has been fulfilled, and in reality (if you want to stay true to the actual purpose of copyright) his work should already be public domain. I'd be willing to bet in his situation the answer to #2 has already far surpassed his answer to #3, in which case he ends up looking like a whiny, greedy kid who needs to learn when to STFU and quit making a big deal out of nothing.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
"I simply will not - the benefits to me are huge, compared to your losses from my activity"
You've got that backwards. The loss to you, from not getting some piece of music or movie or book for free, are absolutely minimal, particularly if the stolen work is mere entertainment (as opposed to a textbook or something). The losses to the artist are, well, his livelihood. Just say "I am a sociopathic thief, and I don't care because I'm pretty sure I can get away with it" and be done with it, instead of inventing a bullshit "cause" to justify for your behavior. Charging $12 for a Britney Spears CD is not the moral equivalent of segregation, and you are not Rosa Parks.
The losses to society are even worse than to the author, if reducing the rewards for creativity causes a reduced quality or quantity thereof, though again, only minimally for entertainment products, of which there are more than plenty. There's a lot of talk about how copyright is unnecessary, and certainly the terms are out of control (life + 150 years?!!), but we've had IP protection for the last two centuries, and, coincidentally, we've just had the two most prosperous centuries in human history, due pretty much entirely to the industrialization of ideas. Abolishing all IP protection, which is basically what your statement is tantamount to advocating, would be a fairly risky experiment, with our civilization on the line. If we decide to run that experiment, the decision should come after a bit more careful consideration than "lulz I can haz free stuffs for free and I don't likes to pay, aaaaarrrrgh!".
The responsibility for your behavior is, in fact, yours, and nobody cares if you feel guilty - just stop doing it and pay the $12.
You know, if you feel like an alien, why not go start your own country far, far, far away. With booze and blackjack and hookers. Or not. Just sayin'. Go on. And don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Or is it only not ok when it's done on the internets?
And people wonder why modern western culture is shit.
On both sides.
Copyright exists to allow the creative to earn from their works while society benefits from them. In theory copyright is reasonable - if everyone could freely copy a work the instant it was produced much fewer people would spend their time producing new works. Yes, some people do it for fun, but many of the best works we have are by people who make a career out of it.
Here's the rub: Copyright has been abused to the point there is no fairness in the rights afforded the creator vs. the benefit to society. Originally there was legal recourse for some fairly reasonable number of years and then the work became public domain. Then copyright term was extended. Then it was extended again. And again. Today copyright law is an unfair contract. By adhering to copyright laws today you ask people to respect a creators exclusive rights on works such that a work will never become public domain during their lifetime. Perhaps even during their grandchildrens lifetime. Even worse than that, as terms are continually extended the contract between society and creators is retroactively modified, always in favor of creators, essentially stealing value from the public.
It's my opinion that in order for copyright to be held with any kind of respect by anyone then works must be guaranteed to come into the public domain within a reasonable timeframe, and I believe that must be well within the lifetime of a person who would value the work when it was first created - no more than 30 years at the outside. Various studies have shown the effective period to be much less than that.
If you're an artist and you want to benefit from a work your entire life do what the rest of us do - make some investments, set up a pension, go out and perform the damn thing. Stop trying to wield your effectively limitless copyright term against the public and stop allowing your various industry bodies to use them as a scare tactic - and that's really what copyright comes down to now in many cases. People adhere to these insanely unfair laws only because they're scared of what will happen if they don't, not because they understand the value proposition of copyright. If you want to claim otherwise agencies must stop these campaigns where they publicize their actions of suing thousands and thousands of individuals, and they must accept changes in the law which provide more reasonable terms.
I don't agree with the GP in that it's okay for everyone to pirate whatever they want, but neither can I support the ridiculous system copyright has become. Neither side of this argument has a strong leg to stand on. Unfortunately one has much more money and influence than the other.
This thread has crystallized what I suspect is the "Slashdot-approved" stance with regards to protecting material. Correct me if I get any of these points wrong.
1. If you want to make a living creating works that exist in a data format (music, books, video) just accept the fact that nobody owes you a dime for your time. If some people choose to drop some money in your hat, that's awesome - but don't count on it.
2. If your music is so great, tour and make money that way. If you get moderately successful locally, each band member might be able to clear $80 a night! Of course you'll need a huge cash infusion (i.e. debt) to start touring big, but I'm sure the banks will be happy to help you with loans for such a riskless endeavour.
3. Always remember - costs like studio time, special effects, actors, musicians, props, sets, insurance, essentially every cost involved in the production of your work magically disconnect from the work itself at the moment it is finalized. A ripped copy of that work has absolutely no moral, legal, or implied connection to any of those costs.
As the entity "Slashdot" I hereby decree that the whole idea of "Professional Artist" is forever banned. You have been demoted to busker.
If that's how you feel, then he should get a "fucking job" - not making art, then you won't have any to enjoy. And you'll have nobody to blame but yourself.
Wait, no - I've got a better idea: you quit your job and create the content instead and give it away for free. You can get your food from the dumpsters, there's plenty to go around. The rest of us will appreciate it, so thanks.
The capability to copy something easily does not automatically grant you the legal right to do so.
Clearly not the legal right but what about the moral right to do so? Creative works used to be funded by either patronage or live performances so clearly copyright is not required for composers, singers etc. to make a living. So is it morally right to prevent people from sharing simply because creators want to earn more money or be supported in a particular way? Perhaps a case can be made if the current copyright system could be shown to produce a larger variety of higher quality material than its predecessor but I've yet to see that argument made, or at least made convincingly.
"And I say to you that just because technology makes doing a bad thing easier doesn't mean it's suddenly not a bad thing"
To me this quote embodies the disconnect between "pro" copyright individuals and reality.
Copyright came into existence *because* of technology and is an artificial means of creating what is meant to be a temporary monopoly on an idea. Copyright infringement is not a "bad" thing, it's just a violation of current law which happens to be outdated. The law is outdated because technology has continued progressing to the point that everyone, including Mr. Brown himself I'm willing to bet, is in violation of the law. When a law makes everyone a criminal, it's not a practical law.
Copyright came into existence because of technology and will continue to be shaped by technology over the long term. All the moralistic nonsense is myopic bombast.
Considering how many great composers lived and wrote before copyright was even invented or could affect them (*cough* J.S. Bach *cough*), it would make more sense to call this "one composer's view of copyright". Especially given how much every composer -- Brown included -- is indebted to other composers.
http://questioncopyright.org/minute_memes/all_creative_work_is_derivative
(See the embedded video there.)
http://www.red-bean.com/kfogel
From the article: "I have also heard from a continuing stream of extraordinarily hostile young men (always men) who insist on "educating" me on the ins and outs of cybermorality, the definition of "stealing," and why I deserve to choke on my own obsolescence."
He is talking about YOU guys from slashdot. Way to go! Don't you understand that you get more bees with honey than vinegar? And further than that, that whole nasty behavior of yours make us all who tries to change mentality to look even nerdier and jerks than before. *sight*
Intelligence shared is intelligence squared.
Would a solution be to allow teens to have "credit cards with zero credit limit"? (Not sure what that would be called.)
...meaning that it can only have a positive balance, and that overdrafts can't happen.
- Zero risk for overspending, meaning zero risk for banks and zero risk for parents.
- Electronic transfer of pocket money.
- Perhaps parental overview of transactions.
Perhaps it might also help teens with early budgeting of pocket money, if the "kids" look at their online statements.
Copyright law exists for the advancement of society
Copyright law was created for the advancement of society. It currently exists because of a historical precedence. Whether copyright law still benefits society is a debatable point.
One is for personal entertainment and the other is for providing a performance tool.
Except that the sheet music you buy does not allow you to perform the piece in public - you also need to purchase the right to perform it as well. So the only legal use purchasing the sheet music gives is personal entertainment as well.
Yup - the value of the information is that 1) you see ads and 2) Google can figure out how to better stuff ads in your face based on what you're searching for. It's like ad-funded television - the product isn't the shows, it's the commercials. The shows are just a way of getting you to watch the commercials.
Let's say the record producer asks your son if he likes the idea of making some money by selling the CD to his friends. Sure, it beats running a lemonade stand. The producer asks your son to give back $2 for every copy he sells, but he can sell it at any price he wants (the producer suggests $5). So your son starts making some money. And then one day, he notices that his friend is giving free copies to other friends, and your son stops making any more money. Knowing your son is the only person allowed to sell copies around the neighborhood, wouldn't you and your son get upset at that friend?
Human greed is only obvious when you turn it around against you.
I once had a signature.
Yeah, what's with all that "music" and "movies" and "books" and "video games" etc crap? I just can't understand how anyone in their right mind could need to make or enjoy that stuff, when they could instead go work for a couple more hours per day in the fields or in the mines or something equally real and worthwhile. If everyone worked 16 hours per day instead of just 8 and then wasting the rest, just think about how much more advanced a civilization we'd be.
Spot on
In order:
/. crowd are mostly dyed-in-the-wool capitalists. There are better ways, like a tax on media and publicly administered content (e.g. the BBC), but then, that's socialism, isn't it?
1. That's the way capitalism works. Not that I agree mind you, but the
2. It took me 5 seconds on google to find this: http://www.negativland.com/albini.html. $80/night is pretty good for a bands. Most are making about what a 7-11 clerk makes (about $60).
3. Studio time is now cheap, has been for a long time. Computers + cheap sound proof foam let me make a home studio for about $4,000. Auto tune makes music engineers obsolete. What is not cheap is building the mystique that goes with stardom, but that's not music, that's a circus act.
You can still be a professional artists around here. What you cannot be, good sir, is a douche bag.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Am I the only one that notice the girl wasn't unwilling to pay $3.99 for the sheet music? It was that the transaction required a credit card, and she didn't have access to one. Perhaps Mr. Jason Robert Brown could contribute his voice and credibility towards getting sheet music carried on iTunes, so Eleanor could go to her local Walmart and drop cash for a gift card that she could use to legally purchase it.
Transaction costs are much higher for teenagers than adults.
Demand for what? As the cost of something goes down, the demand goes up.
" 'I don't wish to be the enemy; I'm just a guy trying to make a living.'" Well, then go perform your music and be paid for it.
I'm so tired of this tired old intellectual property horseshit keeping musicians from making a living. If you want to make a living making music go f**king make it. That's how you get paid without getting screwed out of your music by a middle man. Go damn perform at a paid damn gig. Give away your music if you want it heard, those are the people who will end up paying to see you..
You don't need the services of the industry any more than you need the services of a colonoscopist. Take your promotion into your own hands. Screw the Industry, work your own goods on the market.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Random late thoughts:
Society as a whole gains from having more people getting access to quality education, arts, tools, communication, etc...
The unlimited copies now made possible through the internet do change the game just like print did and allows us to elevate the society to a higher level.
I do want to see artists making a living if that helps them continuing to deliver great things for society.
But the gain from having culture cheaply available to all far out weights the lost to the artist.
I do think the network effect is also very much downplayed in this linked argument and that a lot of people I listen to and pay to see their concert would never be on my list if it wasn't for copying and the internet.
What it seems to be doing is spreading the wealth to smaller players, not destroying it, just like it was in the 50s before the big majors killed diversity.
I also don't think there is ever a direct link between artists being paid and the quality of their work.
Artists who are really passionate will still manage to produce their art form no matter what.
I'm hoping we'll find a way to encourage new talent, pay a decent wage to those well know who have contributed something worthwhile and still allow free copying of everything to everyone for the greater good...
I'd also suggest those books: Remix, Piracy and The Wealth of Networks.
Here's the question that lies at the heart of each person's position in this great debate: Mr. content producer values his money _________ I do. 1) less than 2) the same as I think this basic emotional feeling (are most of the people on the content chain rich / do they deserve the money) is the heart of all the other reasons we create for our position on piracy.
No one seriously disputes that the creator has a right to be compensated.
Well I will seriously dispute that... The usual argument goes like "I put in a lot of effort, so I deserve to be paid for my effort". Counterargument: I put up a webpage recently, documenting something that took a lot of effort on my part. High learning curve, time spent, equipment use, internet use, making photo's & editing those, editing HTML, testing in different browsers, etc. So I deserve to get paid for that effort too, right?
Here's why not: nobody hired me for an agreed-upon hourly rate to do this work. I chose to do this myself, fully aware that there might not be anything in return for the effort. Also: what I might consider a job worth doing, or a valuable result, might be considered worthless/waste of time by everybody else. Whether it is or not, is just a matter of opinion. Let's assume 99% of people think it's crap, why should I deserve being paid to waste time producing that crap? Or the other way round: if 99% of people love it, would that make me deserve more to be paid for the effort than if I made something that only 1% of people like, but took similar effort?
What we really need is an easier way to say "thank you", and express that "thank you" in cold, hard cash. Let's say you download an MP3 somewhere, and after listening there's a button in your MP3 player that says "donate 1c/2c/5c/10c/20c to musician". If you like it, would you mind sending that 20c his/her way? 10c? 5c? 2c? 1c? With just that 1 click? I think most people wouldn't mind, if:
Right now 1) doesn't work because payment systems aren't that easy to use, and no system works everywhere. 2) Doesn't work because only a small minority of users are paying (and thus they pay more), 3) doesn't work because current business models rely on middlemen to collect the $$. Unfortunately I don't think there's an easy fix for these problems, or that we'll see significant progress in this area soon. But who knows...
Except that, under the Berne convention, anything you write down, sculpt, perform in public, etc. is automatically copyrighted. That applies to your mashed potato sculpture from last nights dinner, any papers you've written for school (although your school probably claims the copyright), and the stick figure doodle you did of Wolverine attacking King Kong on a giant frisbee (although that one violates several copyrights and trademarks, but is still a copyrighted work in its own right). So, pretty much everyone has created something by those definitions. Sturgeons law applies. Well over 99% of it all is crap. But some of it is the really good stuff that lots of people want. Some of that really good stuff is created by hard working professionals who feel strongly that their work is being stolen by copyright violators. Then there's the hard working professionals who think that it's ok for people to copy their stuff. Then there's the slacker professionals who think that it's ok for people to copy their stuff. Then there's the slacker professionals who are incensed that anyone would dare copy the one work of value they've managed to cobble together. Then there's the amateurs, some of whom want to be one of the various varieties of professional some day and others who just want to create. There's a whole spectrum between and beyond those categories and no one group produces the best work. Some of those amateurs, perhaps only a small number, produce works that beat out 99% of the professionals. Some of those hard working professionals who knock themselves out to produce can't hold a candle to some of the slackers who, through genius, a moment of inspiration, just plain luck or some bit of serendipity produced something that no amount of just hard work can ever touch. Then there are the hard working professionals who consistently churn out genius. And they all have different opinions on the copyright question, but, just because they have produced something that has consumer demand doesn't mean that the opinion of those of us whose work isn't in demand, and are therefore branded as just consumers, don't get a say.
So he's just a guy trying to make a living. And he made this little experiment where he tried to stop his sheet music from being traded, and it seems like he was successful doing this. But then the more important question he did not address is: how did it help him to make a living? How much more does he make now that his work is more difficult to find online? Did it actually help him to make a living?
I guess the answer is: no.
I'm a small-time composer, and I think $4-5 for a single copy of sheet music is ridiculously over-priced. I have always believed that all this huffing and puffing over copyright law just clouds the basic business problem: the music industry is not giving its public the products it wants, in the forms that they want it, for a price they are willing to pay. Here are some things I think people are looking for: - $5 for a single piece of sheet music that is downloaded is $4 too high. The cost of the sheet music shouldn't be five times (!) the price of the song itself. That feels like gouging. Which it is. - When people buy more than one copy of something, they should get a bulk discount. That's the way they do it at Costco, and that's the way it should work for sheet music. - When I buy something, I don't want any stupid restrictions such as trying to prevent me from printing more than one copy, or printing to a file, or anything else like that. I've got a $50 printer with a 1200 dpi scanner; you think I can't make a perfect copy? It's just insulting, and the user experience is horrible. Just give me the bleepin' file! I'm gonna convert it into a PDF anyway. The push-back to all this will be "oh, but we'll lose all our money!" Not so. If something's only priced at 99 cents, it's not worth my time to steal it for my friends. It's the price of a small fries at Micky-D's. Get your own, cheapskate. Likewise, if you're going to give me 15% if I buy 5 copies for everyone in my band, I'm going to take the 15%. Duh. And lastly, if you make it drop-dead simple to buy something online (see: amazonmp3.com), I'm going to buy from your online store because it is easier and a heck of lot safer than trolling illegal sites. -
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Hmm, something went wrong here. I was replying to the GP who was saying the composer should get a real job if he wants to make a living, instead of trying to sell information. Or something like that
Here the first bit to the mp3 format of the song Nothing Else Matters from Metallica: 1 Share it people. Nothing else matters. We will overcome! (first bit 1 also)
I'm sorry that you've been modded as Flamebait (Disagree). I agree with you...
When the girl wrote that she was an aspiring actress/singer who wanted his work but could not afford it, I thought he should have sent her a copy gratis, not snarked that if she wanted to see a Broadway show it is $140 or you don't get in.
The link in my sig goes to a book for sale on Amazon. $20. If someone emails me and says they like the book but can't afford it, I will send them a pdf, no charge.
At least until I am as famous as this guy who I never heard of before.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
As the entity "Slashdot" I hereby decree that the whole idea of "Professional Artist" is forever banned. You have been demoted to busker.
Most "professional artists" make their living through teaching or performing; they need to buy tons of sheet music and other copyrighted materials to earn a living. Copyright is a net cost to them. Only a few stars actually manage to live just off of copyright-related revenues and not do anything else. In effect, copyright on sheet music ends up transferring money from a lot of artists with modest means to a few stars. It's far from clear that that's a good system.
Always remember - costs like studio time, special effects, actors, musicians, props, sets, insurance, essentially every cost involved in the production of your work magically disconnect from the work itself at the moment it is finalized. A ripped copy of that work has absolutely no moral, legal, or implied connection to any of those costs.
Perhaps those costs simply exceed the value that the end product has. That way, people are willing to listen/watch when the music/video is almost free, but they aren't willing to pay for it and they wouldn't consider it a great loss if the music/video hadn't been made in the first place. And some people even consider productions that involve large investments made in hopes of a large financial return to be generally bad, so that if elimination of copyright would discourage their creation, that would be a net gain for culture.
See, the arguments and background is a lot more complicated than the simplistic mantra of "copyright helps creative people get paid".
Personal computers and residential Internet connections have put the final nail in the coffin of copyright. Ever since the player piano technology has been eroding the business models of the entertainment industry. Selling recordings, sheet music, etc is a dead model and creators should stop using it. Of course in this period of transition the folks getting the short end of the stick are freaking out, calling broke students criminals and lobbying our elected officials.
It really sucks that he won't make a living selling sheet music in the near future but that's where we are as a culture. Do something else. I work in IT and my skills become worthless all time. No one wants to pay me to admin an NT4 box anymore. I spent a lot of time learning how to admin NT4 boxes. I don't think there should be regulation in place to prevent newer operating systems from being released so I can keep making money admining NT4 boxes. I learn new ones to keep my skills marketable.
If the composer was losing his house because of copyright infringement I might feel sorry for him but I'm pretty sure he's doing OK with the other half of his income that isn't effected.
Just another whiny buggy whip manufacturer.
In fact, Bach's situation is still the rule, not the exception: most composers, musicians, and other creative people have teaching or performing jobs. That's not just financially prudent, it's arguably artistically a good thing. Composers that live only off revenue from their sheet music are a small minority. Furthermore, for most people, copyright-related expenses are a net loss because the money they have to spend for their day jobs far exceeds what they themselves may make in income through copyright.
$3.99 is too much for a sheet. I say big pro composer guy should understand that. Maybe a couple of (IMHO) hack musicals shouldn't make him as much. They should make him something though.
I'm a long time professional who has probably lost big publishing $ to file sharing but saw it coming 20 years ago so wasn't surprised. (and yes my music would probably not be on musical theater girls iPod)
Times change. I still make a living in meat space - playing live - but there's a lot less work to go around.
I also make $ coding, have had clients that said they didn't like it, didn't want to pay and then found my code live on their site. They knew enough to copy the html, css and javascript. It's digital so my labor was worth nothing. Small claims court? I didn't bother but I wonder how it would have played out.
I wonder how all the people who scream that any IP restriction is EVIL feel when they work away at OSS and make very little money. Did they see it coming?
Not that I'd advocate some DRM / IP technological scheme imposed by the state. It's not that you can't put the genie back in the bottle, there is no longer a bottle.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
After reading the composer's argument against sharing his sheet music, I have come to the conclusion that he is quite stupid (unfortunately I cannot phrase this any other way at the time that I'm writing this). During his discussion with the girl (Eleanor I believe), Mr. Brown states that his work is available for purchase through only one distributer (I have not investigated this further). This limits his market, and forces people to pay using credit card, or a credit gift card. For certain people such as myself, I would much rather pay cash (to not let a credit company get my money) and receive my product whether it be a CD, DVD, or paper.
By forcing people to pay using credit of some form or another, he has effectively limited his market and given people an excuse to share his work.
Instead of trying to crack down on the sharing, he should have instead asked the community how much they would be willing to pay for a copy of it (physical and digital). He could then contact multiple distributors such as Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, Borders, or actual music shops to hock his product.
This can succeed, and has succeeded. Examples include the indie gamer pack, the unreal development kit, various NIN albums, and the list goes on...
The file sharers are not to blame, its a deaf corporate america that is to blame.
I post anonymously because I'm too lazy to make an account.
While I'm somewhat sympathetic to this composer's viewpoint, like others here I cringed upon reading the bad analogies between copyright infringement and stealing physical objects. It's not surprising if the girl he was talking to didn't find them convincing, because they are fundamentally really bad analogies.
However, reading this really crystallized for me how to express the nature of the error: when someone infringes on your copyright they're not stealing from you but they are cheating you. Copyright infringement doesn't fit neatly into the analogy to stealing, which is a convenient one because it's something everyone understands. Instead, copyright is a sort of social contract between society and creators, which says that we will respect an artificial scarcity on those creative products because we recognize the value in them and want to incentivize creativity (or you could look it as trying to internalize positive externalities). When someone infringes copyright he is violating that social contract, going back on the agreement and cheating the creator.
Although I'm sure it's possible to think of a better analogy, one that comes to mind is if you built a sports stadium and convinced a vendor to spend a bunch of money to build and stock a hotdog stand, on the promise that those would be the only concessions available in the venue. Then the next week you started having free hotdog night, and consequently the vendor ends up loosing out on his investment. While that might not be a particularly moving analogy, I think people arguing against copyright infringement would be much more convincing if they stuck to some such analogy that had a sound connection to the actual problem. Analogies about screwdrivers and the like are never convincing because they are horrible analogies. I suppose a large part of the problem is that while property is a natural right that has been intuitively recognized for ages across many human societies, copyright is more of a pragmatic strategy that our society has adopted, which is not universal and is relatively recent (on the scale of human history); there is no reason to expect that copyright infringement should seem intuitively wrong. Indeed, the notion that spreading the wealth of information is wrong makes little sense if not considered in the context of the particular social contract we have established.
The other half of the battle (at least among those who are aware of the issues) is that copyright, as a social contract, is a two-way street. While it was once a contract between the creators and the people at large that was limited, reasonable, and clearly mutually beneficial, copyright has grown and changed and is now the product of laws that are bought by corporate money with little input by (or, indeed, even knowledge of among) the public. In effect, first the artists broke their side of the deal (or, at least, the organizations purporting to represent them did), and now the people have ceased to honor their side. Each party feels wronged, and there is a lot of bad blood. It would seem to me that the best way forward would be new alliance between moderate, pragmatic groups on both sides that seeks to establish a new compact that will again be limited, reasonable, and one both parties can recognize as mutually beneficial. Unfortunately, I think the popular but fallacious of "intellectual property" only hinders this goal.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Not sure I understood your point there...
Brown chronicles a lengthy exchange he had with a teenage girl named Brenna
"label" not "lable"
Lets say that one goes to the library and either borrows a book with notes or actually copies the pages that one needs. You then go home and scan the pages and now you have the notes in your computer. What is the difference if one directly downloads the notes from the net or does a little work to obtain the same result ??? What is the difference between one ripping his/her own CDs compared to downloading the same songs from the net ? How come one of the actions is legal while the other action is illegal ? The result for the user is still the same.
Many people actually tried doing that, but were forcibly stopped.
Where would you find the land to start your own country? All land on earth is currently claimed by some existing country, and they won't sell it to anybody trying to make a new country.
Not to say that I agree at all with the racist GP, but your counter argument is flawed too.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
This.
You cannot claim the moral high ground once you've engaged steadily in immoral behavior, that includes you're leaders and agents.
Gandhi and MLK took and held the moral high ground absolutely. IRA, ETA, Palestinians, etc. are always happy talking about peace when they think the peaceniks might help them, but then sacrifice any wider moral support by committing murder for internal political reasons. MLK helped insure his victory by rejecting people like Malcom X.
In this case, Apple and Amazon took advantage of the chaos claiming for themselves an enormous slice of the pie analogous to brick and mortar retailers. Congrats morons, you just gave away all the financial gains that cutting costs through digital distributions brings.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Our rights are clearly enumerated in the constitution. Outside that is just agreements. It could change depending on the opinion of the majority. Good for you those who will die for your copyrights that you are in the majority. Having said that, one gripe I have for those who are fervently against copyright is why do you even give a shit to these contemporary garbage when there is an unlimited source of inspiration that is classics. If I wanted a good piano sonata, I'd download a free recording of Rachmaninov instead of this third-rate composer that is JRB. Why? seriously. Last time I checked, Mozart was not living in a multi-million dollar beach house living off his "creations", which according to JRB's argument should've produced gazillion times more income than what JRB gets paid for this garbage.
Admittedly, I started skimming about eight paragraphs in or so, but I didn't see any point where JRB asks her (or any of the contactees, for that matter) what she thinks his sheet music is worth. Is it $4 because "that's the going rate" from the old skool supply-controlled market, or what? It seems to me that he isn't trying to just sell his music, he's selling the music at *his* price. This is so atypical of the media market in general, it has squat to do with a demand-based, free market. The mentality that a supply-controlled market is needed is so misguided; it is probably the single least desirable thing the general economy needs right now.
And, really...how futile is arguing with a penniless teenager about a transaction that was never going to happen anyway? I suggest if JRB wants exclusivity, he needs to foster a small group of well-heeled patrons, looking to profit on his work - he can write for them, they can maintain the lifestyle he demands of them, and they can play the music through live orchestras, in their own controlled environments. If citizens were to start insisting that if media producers have to provide their own environment, to take in the content, then I suspect most people (on both sides) affected by filesharing would meet at a common ground without loosing their individual rights. I mean, wow, all this shit over a minor luxury as trivial as digital media?
Libraries buy at the same price as everyone else (or lower, due to volume). We all have the right to lend things out under the first sale doctrine.
Further, libraries keep and maintain photocopiers expressly for the purposes of making copies from the books they lend.
Are you really under the impression people are expected to return their photocopies?
The product is the viewership. You aren't the customer -- Advertisers are the customer.
wow
Funnyhacks - Wierd, unusual, and fun hacks
As a mathematican, I know that none of my work can be copyrighted. Proofs are discovered, not invented. Which is great! Copyright is not required for a field to survive.
Things are getting muddled a bit here. Perhaps there is no "right" to "copy", but don't toss the whole idea of "certain unalienable rights". The idea of those rights, and founding a government based on protecting those rights (and not granting them) seemed to work well for quite a while...
Simply dismissing "innate/natural rights" [as] the realm of philosophy and theology... may sound good to you, but when you think that way you come up with thoughts like A right is an agreement among society and Rights are established by governments...
Which leads to where it would be OK if society and government start taking away your "theoretical rights". Some cultures suck. The trick is to maintain a culture that only metes out punishment fit for a crime, lest it become one of the cultures that suck too.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Could somebody explain how to rationalise that copyright infringement is OK for music and films but heinous when it's a GPL infringement. I'd just like to know how to reasonably maintain both seemingly contradictory positions. Thanks.
You're a leech and a "soul sucking jerk" plain and simple. Don't even bother to try to hide this fact. You can try to justify your leeching to yourself, but spare us the bother. We've seen it all before.
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
Wolfram Research claimed copyright on the proof of the Turing completeness of the "Rule 110" cellular automaton. It obtained a court order excluding author paper from the published conference proceedings.
The term "inalienable right" was coined in the 1600s.
And the term "copyright" was coined in the early 1700s.
Copyright law allows the spread of new ideas, but does not allow the unauthorized replication of old ideas.
Then how does an author distinguish a new idea from an old idea*? What, for example, could George Harrison have done to avoid copying part of that other song into "My Sweet Lord"?
copyrights expire
No, copyrights used to expire. Some interpretations of Eldred v. Ashcroft imply an unrestricted power of Congress to keep extending the term of subsisting copyrights 20 years at a time.
* Technically, "expression".
He is a bit of a jerk.
Should have used the example where her friend "borrowed" the shoes she had to persuade her parents to buy or her kid sister "borrowed" her favourite lipstick to prettify the hamster.
Copyright is copyright.
Fair use is fair use. Rent-seeking amendments to copyright are rent-seeking amendments to copyright. Senseless tautology is senseless tautology.
If I like a song, I listen to it, learn the lyrics and the music, and figure out how to play it in a way that I'll remember it.
Then good luck figuring out chords like the Dm7add11 that opens "A Hard Day's Night". That eluded even the experts for a while.
she could also get a frickin' job.
Can't. If you can't get a credit card due to age, child labor law restricts your job prospects.
Or go to the music department at her school for assistance.
Not only is it underfunded, but it's also probably taxpayer-funded, which offends some of the libertarian-leaning people around here.
Whether copyright law still benefits society is a debatable point.
Let's find out. Burn your computer.
possible combinations of notes
I worked this out back when I was using my old /. account from my college days.
Then we have variations of song length, timing, down/up tuning, major/minor/seventh/ninth and tempo.
Which a judge is likely to ignore. Songs need not be identical; they need only be "substantially similar".
Jason Robert Brown is a douchebag. Never heard of any of his work before, and I'm certainly not interested in it now.
I would argue that, if a work still has value and currency after 15 years, then it is an important piece of cultural property that _Desperately_ needs to be in the public domain.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
You are not the one who makes the decision how a creator of a work should distribute that work, unless YOU created that work. Take GPL-ed software. That's IP, if you want it or not. Why? Because that's what the law says.
If I take a GPL-ed piece of software and embed it in my proprietary piece of software and sell it, slashdot and the rest of the open source world would be up in arms, like they have been in the past. That's exactly the same thing as what this composer did.
I.o.w.: it's exactly the same as with the GPL: a work created by a person has distribution rights, and the owner of the work decides which ones, no-one else. Don't like it? Don't use the work. It's that simple. Same with GPL-ed software.
Furthermore, this isn't about some RIAA douchebag bullying some teen. This is about some composer who rightfully wants freeloaders to pay for his work, the same as what a software engineer who wrote a piece of GPL licensed code wants: s/he licensed it as gpl-ed code so users of it in other pieces of code have to follow the rules: it's not their code, they have to follow the rules what the OWNER of the code has stated.
The 'brenna' person is really not that bright. The claim that people can't afford expensive sheet music and really need it because they otherwise will never have a chance in the profession they've chosen is utterly lame. Not only does the composer show that the sheetmusic costs 4$ (which is on par with a starbucks latte in some cities) but what does this brenna person tell the cashier at the local grocery store? "Please give me this food for free, I can't otherwise make a living in this tough profession"? I don't think so.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
They took our jarbs.
Imagine a device that copies physical objects perfectly, at negligible costs. In JRB's world, people with this technology would still be poor and hungry. The truth is that he is an old man rowing against the tide of history.
It's shocking how much people here bash this composer, as this is a site which always has taken the stance against GPL violation.
If a person X writes a piece of code and licenses it under the GPL, it's X' decision. If I take that code and embed it in my own code, not giving credits to X nor open my own code, I thus 'stole' X' work. It's the same thing as with this sheetmusic: the composer asks money for his work, that's HIS choice, not anybody's elses. If someone else wants to use / have the sheetmusic, that person has to pay: obey the rules the creator of the work has stated.
It's strange that on a site where every GPL violation is big news and a lot of people show their support for the GPL etc. etc. it's apparently 'ok' to violate the rules some composer has stated for HIS work. It's not YOUR work, it's HIS work. Don't want to pay? don't download it.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Only a tone-deaf retard could call a song played in a different key, to a different tempo with clean major chords swapped out for heavily distorted power (fifth) chords "substantially similar".
The idea of disregarding the key, tempo, and what instrument something is played on is that changes to these are mechanical, in theory requiring much less creative effort than changes to a melody. See a collection of case law, especially the distressing Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music .
classical music (Mozart, Beethoven) gets ripped off all the time
Pre-1923 music gets ripped off because it lacks the special legal status afforded to music first published after that cutoff. Anything published before 1923 is in the public domain; anything published later is under perpetual copyright on Sonny Bono's installment plan.
Copyrighting sheet music is as pointless as copyrighting blocks of code
Case law in music and case law in computer programs differ. Because code has a useful function, short blocks of code have a thin copyright. CA v. Altai is the seminal case here.
I write software for a living. I have worked for 2 years full time on a new version and I sell that version for money. I can do so because copyright law exists: I _own_ the work I created.
I therefore fail to see why this is a bad thing. Who are you to say what *I* should do with the software I worked on for over 2 years full time? (mind you: I payed my bills from my own pocket) Copyright is a right given to people who create stuff to make THEM decide what they do with it, instead of the people who want to USE it. You for example are not in charge what should happen with my work, I am. And I think that's fair, as I wrote it, spend all my time on it and payed for it from my own pocket, you didn't do a thing for it, so why should you be entitled to use it freely? How am I then going to pay the bills?
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
You do realize he's a COMPOSER, not a PERFORMER? The whole "go perform your music and be paid for it" thing doesn't quite work here.
Over the years, I have bought many CDs (tho not in the past 10 years), DVDs (tho not in the past 3 years), and other entertainment media. At the moment I do not. Part of the reason is lack of income. The rest is this:
Entertainment IP owners have bought legislation through their lobbyists, campaign donations, and other means to extend copyright from it's originally-intended 14 years to ridiculous levels. Productions were originally meant to become part of the public domain after that time, and instead every time the first Mickey Mouse cartoons threaten to become public domain, Disney lobbies congress to extend all copyrights another 20 years. So while I agree that copyrights grant legal ownership of IP, I believe the companies do not deserve those extended protections, so MORLALLY I feel no guilt in "stealing" their work.
I also do not like how the media companies like to play both sides of the object/license debate, favoring whichever suits them at the time. Sometimes your music/movie is an object -- if you want it on a different medium, or damage your copy, or something else, you must pay to replace it. Other times, it's a license -- you may not "perform" (play) it in a public / commercial setting, you cannot sell your CD to a record store for resale because it's a "license" not an object, etc.
Further, there has been ample evidence of industry collusion, price fixing, price gouging and other unfair business practices among the record companies, which makes me even less inclined to want to support them. And again, rather than penalize them, when they are caught, our (paid off by campaign contributions and promises of future BoD positions) government representatives see fit to "settle" with a voucher program instead of demanding fines or payment checks.
These reasons, and the fact that I just don't listen to music like I used to when I was younger all contribute ot the fact that I do not buy any music anymore. And I don't feel any moral obligation to pay for it on the rare occasions I do download a song. I know technically I should pay for it, and recognize it's the right thing to do, but I feel that the owners of this media have done so much to screw me that I feel it's only proper I return the favor.
I've built up so much character I have an alter-ego
Do you think all those photocopiers in libraries are for?
Word for word copying is of course protected, but proofs themselves; results, are not. Noone cannot copyright a new for example, if I were to prove Rule 110 Turing completeness, then I can publish the result. The same is not true for music; listening to a song written by someone else, and then playing it on my own instrument is in some cases illegal if I play it for others, or put it on youtube.
If you make it so I can get it foe free, by golly I will. You think I'm stupid and throw away money when I get it for free? You are HIGGGHHH!!!! If an armor truck full of money crashes and all the money flies out, what are YOU going to do? Same thing with downloads. If the driver (YOU) is stupid enough to crash (get it on the internet) don't blame me for picking up what's to be picked up.
Go on the road. If you are any good they will pay to see you. If not then you aren't that good so don't tread on me!!!
I don't agree with his argument (again, bringing up permanent deprivation of a property when music, sheet music especially, is more of a "license" to play - at least that's what the record companies tell us), but he is *technically* correct that she shouldn't be doing it. However, I find his treatment of a "teenager" obnoxious. He says himself that she's articulate, argues well etc. but for some reason just HAS to insert the "You're only a teenager, I know better" crap into the conversation, and even attacks her spelling/grammar in an email. At first, I was sort-of understanding his side, but by about the third/fourth reply he just starting being the jerk that she accused him of.
Take her response as that of an atypically understanding teenager / consumer of music. She's being quite reasonable at places, quite unreasonable in others, but the overall majority opinion is: your copyright and your way of licensing your music is getting in her way of paying tribute to an artist she adores. Amplify this by the number of people you *didn't* contact (or who only stopped listing your sheet music because they were scared you'd sue the hell out of them). She recognises your genius and wishes to include herself in a small part of that. If you were to have offered, say, a copy of the sheet music posted direct to her in exchange for, say, the dollar price you quoted plus a little for postage, but let her pay in cash posted to you in an envelope, she'd probably have jumped at the chance. Why couldn't you have done that, as a "special" favour... you would have earned your money on that sheet music (chances of you earning anything from library-exchanges after their initial purchase are about zero), you would have satisfied a fan AND you could have done something really nice like sign it with a little anti-sharing note so that she would always have a personalised reminder of why she shouldn't arbitrarily share such things. The library thing is also a bit ridiculous in this day and age - I can name several libraries in my area that have no idea how to order a book they haven't got, let alone sheet-music, even though they are all part of the same borough library-exchange software system. It's quicker to go online onto, say, a trading site and get some sheet music from someone who already has it.
She is *wrong*. She *does* want something for nothing. But you know, in the old days, people sometimes gave the small people that. And, sometimes, people recognise that something they wrote 10, 20, 50 years ago is not going to sustain themselves forever.
The problem I would have with his stance (and I have no interest in copyright-breaches of any nature) is that small theatre productions of his work, especially those performed by teenagers, probably form 0.01% of his revenue stream - and yet he enforces them heavily, discourages use of his own works, provides meaningless and irrelevant copyright analogies and, at the end of the day, is holding a stance that makes *him* appear the enemy to his biggest fans, even if he's not the enemy personally. As someone who's tried to understand copyright licensing for hymns to sign in a school assembly, I know this is an industry-wide problem. Every time their forms dropped on my desk, I felt like I was being interrogated.
It's bad business, if nothing else. If he'd sent her a copy of the sheet music (costing him only a handful of dollars, which judging by his About Me page probably wouldn't be missed), but attached a proviso that at the beginning/end of her performance she was required to drop in an ad for his work (either along the lines of "there are CD's from the composer of one of the show's songs at the back" or "With many, many grateful thanks to the composer Jason Robert Brown for granting us special dispensation to arrange this performance") and he would not have alienated more of his fans than necessary. To be honest, I'm not saying the girl even deserves it, but there was a time when a fan was a fan and you did everything you could to help/encourage that into
I just realized that downloading music is kind of like going to the library. PS - most young musicians pirate music (even professionals). I think this argument is mostly an age thing (though trent reznor is getting kind of old).
PSS this guy's music sucks anyway, maybe he was just writing to make money.
Or she can just go to the music school's library and either check out a copy or legally make her own photostatic copy.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
JRB writes:
"Listen, Eleanor, I'm frustrated on your behalf. It really sucks to be a teenager. I'm not being sarcastic or ironic, I really get it. I wrote a whole show about it. But being able to steal something doesn't mean you should."
As much as I want to believe him, I sense a bit of a problem here. I mean, first of all, who says "I get it" to a teenager? Unless you're an actual teen, or 20 years old and 1 month, or have a glandular condition and are some kind of perpetual-teenager, or share something special with the particular teen (e.g. both of you have had an arm bitten off by a shark or a RIAA lawyer), you don't say that to teens.
And second: He's paid lots of money to make good stories up.
So whenever I heard something like "Listen, Eleanor...It really sucks to be a teenager... I really get it," I feel like I'm being whisked away on a puff of air to the bright lights of Broadway where I hear him singing:
Listen, Eleanor,
I'm frustrated on your behalf.
I know the sound of popular girls
right behind your back, you can hear them laugh.
It really sucks to be a teenager.
I'm not being sarcastic or ironic, I really get it.
It really sucks to be young and confused
but whatever they say, just forget it -- don't sweat it.
I wrote a whole show...
about it,
Eleanor.
Tell the ticket-buying teens anything
to keep streaming through that theater door,
Please remember, Ellie,
that just "because you can,"
is probably the sorriest, darnedest, worse excuse
in the entire history of man.
Don't forget this simple playwright,
with a soft heart, not one of wood.
But being able to steal something
doesn't mean you should.
'Cause being able to steal something
doesn't meaaaaaaaan.
Youuuuuuuu
Shouuuuuuuuuuuuld!
....hmmm... now I'm kind of tempted to make a song out of that.
coding is life
Here's a brief excerpt from JRB's blog:
I bought a fantastic new CD by my friend Michael Lowenstern. I then ripped that CD on to my hard drive so I can listen to it on my iPod in my car. Well, that's not FAIR, right? I should have to buy two copies?
No. There is in fact a part of the copyright law that allows exactly this; it's called the doctrine of fair use. If you've purchased or otherwise legally obtained a piece of copyrighted material and you want to make a copy of it for your own use, that's perfectly legal and allowed. Your friend Wikipedia has some useful thoughts about "fair use" and "fair dealing", in case you want to read further. Here's the beginning of the relevant section:
I think it's great that JRB supports this view, and I'm really hopeful that more content creators like JRB will take a stronger stand to defend a consumer's Fair-Use rights to time- and context-shift their legally-purchased copies of copyrighted art.
While content consumers can "vote with their wallet" to try to encourage producers and publishers to get rid of DRM on songs, videos, and eBooks, I believe that artists such as JRB can be a very welcome ally in helping the consumers to get rid of DRM.
Think about it: If JRB says that he's not going to put his audio work on CDs or DVDs unless they are DRM and region-code free, then he enables his customers to actually transcode the content. Until then, his customers may not be able to exercise their Fair Use rights per the DMCA.
coding is life
Capitalism is dead. We have new tech and racial equality. Its time to rely on human decency as there is no longer a lock-in mechanism for copyright protection. People will create artistic works for free. We just need to educate them to share with each other. Donations will work for now - but long term we're going to have to rethink economics and human value sharing.
As an experiment, composer Jason Robert Brown logged onto a site illegally offering his sheet music for download and contacted hundreds of users politely asking them to stop listing the material.
I applaud Jason Robert Brown for offering his sheet music for download, even though he still logged on to the site illegally.
That link states that the court order was based on an alleged NDA violation (nondisclosure agreement) which is either contract law or employment law; nothing to do with copyright law.
Are ideas not property? If you really think that, then why is it not ok for a programmer at a company to take all that company's code and sell it to a competitor? The first company is not being deprived of anything, right?
Imagine the consequences for the coders-for-hire on /. if this were really the case!
(hint: they wouldn't be better-off!)
Wolfram Research [wikipedia.org] claimed copyright on the proof of the Turing completeness of the "Rule 110" cellular automaton [wikipedia.org]. It obtained a court order excluding author paper from the published conference proceedings.
Well! From your second link there:
Matthew Cook presented his proof of the universality of Rule 110 at a Santa Fe Institute conference, held before the publication of NKS. Wolfram Research claimed that this presentation violated Cook's nondisclosure agreement with his employer, and obtained a court order excluding Cook's paper from the published conference proceedings.
Assertion of NDA violation != assertion of the proof being copyrighted. In fact, Wikipedia specifically says:
The character of Cook's proof differs considerably from the discussion of Rule 110 in NKS.
So it's pretty obvious you haven't got the faintest clue what you're actually talking about, Mister.
If he's a composer, he'd makes his money writing music and selling it to performers. If he's trying to make money by selling books with his music, then surely he's actually an author?
Are you a complete fucktard? That is exactly what he does. He composes music. He sells copies of the sheet music to people who want to perform the music.
Authors, get off your butts! Stop a-writin' and start recitin'!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Prior to the copyright act, anyone could copy anything on whatever scale they wanted. The copyright act restricted the ability to legally do so.
So at what point did copying suddenly become a right granted by law?
Palm trees and 8
I create things all the time. I recently just sat down in the bathroom and created something. I'd love to share it with you, but you MUST pay me for it. I value my product and so should you!
It's simple really. Not all "trading" and "downloading" is a bad thing. Here's my take;
First: I started to really get into a band... I'd heard two or three rockin' songs on the radio and decided to make the trip into the local record shop for a listen, but they didn't have the record in stock. So I went to another music store, but they didn't have any listening bays. So I paid the asking price at the second store and went back to my car to give it a listen. Unfortunately, the few songs I heard on the radio were the only good ones on the album. OH NO! I wasted my money. Worse, I realised that if I'd simply listened to the "hit" songs a few more times, I probably would have been over it before long anyway. I should have just listened to the radio or grabbed the tracks using a cassette (you remember those days don't you?).
Now I am not saying that I should have NOT bought the albums - but I did feel duped. This wasn't an isolated incident either, and I am sick of buying filler tracks. So, with some albums hard to find, and even if you do, no way to "preview" them before purchase (no listening bays), I decided to perform my own "preview" of the tracks. I locate them online and download them. If I listen to the album and like it, I go and buy it... if I don't, I may keep the good songs for the occasional (and private) listen, but mostly I just delete them. What's the lesson here;
a) If you want your album to sell, don't make/buy a few hit songs and make the rest a completely different and inferior style.
b) If you, as a record company or retailer, want to get sales. Put the listening bays back in and make sure you have stock of the item.
c) Consider making the product cheaper so that the albums with filler on them don't hurt so much when you want to buy it for the few good songs on it. And I don't mean cutting artist profits either - they make next to NOTHING on record sales... cut into those massive RIAA lawyer costs or something and make the albums cheap enough to not waste bandwidth on.
Second: This is a fun story (IMO). Having decided I wanted to preview a new bands works, I downloaded the album. I liked it so I bought it. I used a variety of "you may also like" search methods and found a list of other similar artists. I then proceeded to download a variety of compilation albums that featured those artists. On those compilation albums, I found more artists that I liked (but not all of them). I then downloaded an album or two from some of those artists, and so on... You may, at this point, call me a dirty pirate. But what happened next was the good bit. i deleted all the rubbish compilation albums, and started to actually collect the artists real albums. Two, in particular, I own several albums and DVDs of. I picked up another two today (in fact).
What's the lesson here;
By providing me a method to search and download songs from like artists, I eventually found a few new artists that I had never heard of before, and that rocked my world. I am now a fan, and have spent my hard-earned money on their CDs, DVD, and concerts (where possible). Some of these are small-label bands with low distribution (in foreign countries only), and yet they have made sales thanks to acts that would label me a pirate and cost me hundred of thousands of dollars should the RIAA sue me.
In the case of the sheet music in the article... I feel a good, strong argument from both. Eleanor has it right in some respects. The artists deserves to be paid for their good work... but I'd never have known it was good unless I had access to it first. And access, I am afraid, came by "illegally downloading" them first. I have now paid the artist... but that wouldn't have stopped the RIAA (in my case) for seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in "damages" for my acts... and that is what stinks. More effort should be put into the "honour system" than the punishment system.
Sounds like it was a non-disclosure agreement, not copyright. Read links before posting them.
"My wife is a musician and she paid a hell of a lot of money for her education"
Speaking as a musician who trained since he was four, that's *interesting* information, but largely irrelevant. It has no bearing on what your wife's knowledge is worth. That education simply gives her training so that she can convince someone to pay her money. For a musician, that's usually not a lot since lots of people are really good musicians, and the demand for musicians is relatively small.
I'm reminded of something in the Smithsonian Museum in washington dc. I don't think they show it anymore, but it was a large model of the capitol made with strands of glass. It's an amazing structure and I'm sure it took someone years of effort. But to me, it's worth nothing. I wouldn't put it in my house if you paid me.
Now to your point with this poor schmuck who's hawking his sheet music. I would pay the guy the $4, not because I think it's worth $4, but rather because I feel most composers are basically one step up on the economic scale from a homeless guy and I feel bad that no one took them aside when they were a kid and let them know that they simply aren't good enough to be a musician. As I said, I trained from an early age and I had fun, made some money (still do, I perform weekends), but I was self-aware enough to realize that probably of all the good musicians that you or your wife know *just aren't that good*. And what's sadder is watching these kids go to college and then having to work in another field (at least the music teachers can get a job). The saddest are the mediocre performance students who have a large student loan. Yikes. Somebody should have been cruel to them at an early age so that they could have been employable.
This is a conversation between a composer (I've never heard of before) and a truly devoted teenage fan of his who performs his music and is apparently pretty smart. So smart that at some point, he stops arguing because according to him,
No comment.
Fan's conclusion:
Couldn't agree more.
He created that post.
I was being facetious. It wasn't a serious suggestion.
i clame copyriht on rule 23!
???
INFINIT PROFIT!
The composer expects to be paid forever if somebody makes money using his work. On one hand I agree with it, but the level of it should be limited. Also the composer said that he also transcribes music for hire and would also expect to be paid again if the person who hired him (and paid for the transcription) sold the transcription and made money.
So, how many times he gets paid for his work:
Some singer likes his work and wants to learn and perform it - he needs to buy the sheet music, so the composer gets paid for his work.
Said singer goes on to record a CD and sell it. Now he must pay the composer a percentage of the profits in addition to the initial price of the sheet music.
Let's say a radio station wants to broadcast the song. It has to buy the CD (paying the singer and in turn the composer), but it also has to buy a license to broadcast the music (part of the money goes to the singer and composer again). At this point, the singer has been paid twice and the composer three times for their work.
A restaurant wants to play the radio station to it's customers. It too has to buy a license to do it (even though the radio station already paid for the right to broadcast) paying the singer and composer yet again.
On the other hand, non-art people usually only get paid once for their work. I don't continue to pay HP for the 11 year old printer that I have (I buy ink refills) and I wouldn't have to even if I made money using the printer. I don't continue to pay the builder who built my house. A company pays once for the computers that it uses to make money, even Microsoft does not ask a percentage of the profits in order to use Windows (well, you do not have to upgrade to each new version). If I fix a PC I get paid once and not a percentage of the profits that were made using that PC.
How being hired to transcribe music and being hired to fix a PC differ so that one of them entitles the worker to get paid again for the work, while the other does not?
Our economics no longer matched our technics (if it ever did). I outline four alternatives (basic income, gift economy, subsistence, resource-based planning) here: http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/38e2u3s23jer/2#Four_long(2D)term_heterodox_alternatives
"""
Whether or not mainstream economics ideas can pull us out of the Great Recession and a jobless recovery, in the long term, the problems posed by increasing automation and environmental concerns suggest that some form of heterodox economics will be adopted in the long term to avoid deeper recessions with more permanent job losses. There are at least four major alternative forms of social change that we might see in the future to deal with these issues of increasing joblessness in the face of abundance produced through high technology. These correspond roughly to the alternatives being suggested at the time of Keynes' General Theory in the 1930s, and which lost out to it in the USA, of communism, technocracy, social credit, and a Gandhian swadeshi movement. In modern terms, these might be considered a gift economy, a resource-based economy, a basic income, and communitarianism (or localism). These will be discussed in the next four sections in relation to jobs. Given exponentially increasing technological capacity in AI/robotics and computing/communications and materials/design, each of these approaches are really just different paths to a common converging point of abundance for all, where people only work on things they want to do on a primarily voluntary basis in the context of a sustainable and resilient society. But how we get there depends on what path we take. These paths are not mutually exclusive. To some extent, our society is exploring all of them at once right now in various ways, and has been for a long time.
These alternatives can be seen as reflecting two major choices. One choice is between emphasizing individualistic control versus emphasizing communal decision making. The other choice is between emphasizing one-for-one exchanges (like with currency or barter) versus emphasizing acting mainly from values. These choices are summarized in the chart below: ...................Exchange-based..............Values-based
Individualistic....Basic Income................Gift Economy
Communal...........Localism/Communitarianism...Resource-based Economy
This chart is not meant to suggest these alternatives are incompatible, since any real community could have aspects of all of them. A community might have taxes for welfare, a LETS system for local currency exchange, much volunteerism, and some central planning for intrinsic security needs for sustainability and resilience. For example, Ithaca, NY would represent a community with all these aspects to some obvious degree. Ithaca is a US community with one of the oldest and largest Local Exchange Trading System system. It also has the standard US income assistance programs of Welfare, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (though they are still needs-based and age-based, so not quite a basic income). It has a major university (Cornell) that does long-term strategic central planning for itself and also has an academic department of City and Regional Planning that claims to "provide the tools, techniques, and strategies you will need to design more equitable, vibrant, beautiful, and sustainable places".[97] Ithaca also has some citizens developing and giving away free and open source software, free information, and even free designs for 3D printing technology (Fab@Home).
"""
The composer is just caught in the middle of this ongoing social change. he could instead, say, be lobbying for a basic income for all so he would not need to charge for his digital works.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"arguing with teenagers is a zero-sum game" I love this line. Anyway, I completely understand and respect Jason Robert Brown's opinions and I admire that he has managed to make a living writing music and selling sheet music. That said, being a musician and composer who has worked on countless musicals, I've seen the flip-side of this equation. I have seen producers lose their shirts because of the prohibitively high cost of obtaining the rights to full scores (notably more than $4.00 a song). Simply put, it's not pretty. Brown is right to defend his rights and defend his trade, however I think there is room for modernization in the copyright model employed by broadway show rights holders. Personally, I am a fan of (and often employ) creative commons licensing. I like the idea that if you're not going to make any money on my material, I won't either. This gives me and my material exposure (and hopefully a little popularity) and doesn't lose me any money. If, on the other hand, you're going to make a killing using my works, for sure I want a piece of the action. Most broadway shows do work on a sliding scale, however the scale does not slide low enough to accommodate most amateur productions. The other issue with the current copyright model is that it is only concerned with short term gains. The actual term of a copyright before it is released to public domain is obscenely long. Obviously, this is to benefit the publishing houses. This means that even decades after a work is published, it can be extremely difficult to obtain the rights to put on the production. This has been shown to actually diminish the popularity of works since it is easier for amateur productions to find older public domain works, instead of fresher newer works (hence the continued popularity of Gilbert and Sullivan). Releasing works into the public domain (after the initial run) can help to boost the authors popularity and prevent them from dying in obscurity as so many composers do.
Get a job where you do something useful. Just like the rest of us do.
The entertainment industries are in a Bizarro world. Where the rest of the capitalist world looks for a demand and tries to fill it, the entertainment industries first create something based on what can be considered selfish needs of expression, then tries to make people want what they made, propped up by exploiting state-granted monopolies and getting away with market collusion and price fixing that would be deemed illegal in any other industry.
Go get a decent job and let culture return to the people and amateurs where it belongs.
This thread has crystallized what I suspect is the "Slashdot-approved" stance with regards to protecting material. Correct me if I get any of these points wrong.
1. If you want to make a living creating works that exist in a data format (music, books, video) just accept the fact that nobody owes you a dime for your time. If some people choose to drop some money in your hat, that's awesome - but don't count on it.
I honestly don't think this is the case here. It's a case or morality and ease of action. The younger generations (myself included, I'm 27), are being taught by their peers, and sometimes their parents that copying music is okay. It's against the law.. but so is speeding (but that's another debate). With both speeding and music/movie/etc copying, it's a case of "The populous has spoken". Upon looking for some stats on the Wikipedia:
These are clearly not insignificant numbers, especially the current young adult generation. Seventy percent! That's the MAJORITY. We're clearly dealing with a global, quickly spreading phenomenon. Back when I was in high school (99-03), during my freshman year you needed to be in the "leet" crowd to know about file sharing, kids charged 5 bucks a cd to make you any album you wanted. By the time I was a senior no one was charging because everyone was just downloading. It was the dawn of the napster era.
Our culture is changing, and it's changing worldwide whether you like it or not. Computers are getting faster, bandwidth is getting more plentiful, and people are becoming more 'educated' on how to get things they want for free. They are also being taught that these ways of getting things for free are culturally and morally acceptable.
The majority of this culture (as you can see from Jason Brown's escapade) clearly isn't the "I don't owe you a dime for your work" crowd. Most of the traders that were contacted actually stopped the trading. Which seems to me that it's more of an "oh whoops, I didn't know you weren't cool with that" type of crowd.
2. If your music is so great, tour and make money that way. If you get moderately successful locally, each band member might be able to clear $80 a night! Of course you'll need a huge cash infusion (i.e. debt) to start touring big, but I'm sure the banks will be happy to help you with loans for such a riskless endeavour.
3. Always remember - costs like studio time, special effects, actors, musicians, props, sets, insurance, essentially every cost involved in the production of your work magically disconnect from the work itself at the moment it is finalized. A ripped copy of that work has absolutely no moral, legal, or implied connection to any of those costs.
For the most part, none of these items fit into the mindset of the culture involved in the sharing. How do I know? If these costs were considered, people would pony up for them. Our society as a whole is a compensation based society. People go to the supermarket for food. They pick out the food they want, then go to the register and pay. My inkling is that they pay because it costs money, time, and labor to produce these food items. But it's illegal to take the food without paying, so of course they pay right? Well it's also illegal to distribute copies of music. But, the thing is you don't see 70% of young adults shoplifting, because shoplifting is also morally and culturally wrong. What about the people who grow food at home for 'free'. They still have to buy or barter for seeds, which take time to collect and p
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
He is right though. She could have borrowed the sheet music legally through the library using inter library loan and made her own copy without contravening any copyright laws and probably for free too.
The library is providing a free, near equivalent to their product. Therefore, few would pay for the companies product. An online library would require a huge shift in how the industry makes its profits, which brings with it huge risk of failure.
I cant think of why it wasnt clear I was refering to the demand for the companies product.
Let me give you a short example on how copyright works.
I see some junior politician using doublespeak on TV.
Since my English teacher had an unorthodox sense of humour, I still subconsciously associate that language with puns, so I notice a connection between the politician's name and the situation in question.
It seems to be a halfway decent joke to me, even if a little elaborate, so I write it down and, when we next meet in a bar, I tell it to you. We both have a good laugh about it.
25 years later, that same politician, now a member of parliament (or an equivalent), is on the news again.
You see it, recall that joke, and tell it to your son. You both have a good laugh about it.
25 years later, that same politician, now a president/PM (or some equivalent), is on the news again.
Your son sees it, recalls the joke and tells it to his son. They both have a good laugh about it.
25 years later, an obituary for that politician is on the news.
Your grandson sees it while drinking with friends in a sports bar, remembers the joke and tells it to his friends. They all have a good laugh about it.
Two weeks later my estate sues him for a public performance of a copyrighted work.
Now, I admit this is a simplified example because, assuming that the current copyright terms of life+70 will not get extended (a pretty tall assumption), it would not be your grandson but your great-great-grandson who will get sued.
Copyright is a way of locking down culture for the purpose of monetizing it for 3 to 6 generations.
Unfortunately, both creators and potential audiences are currently being directly harmed by the layers of unnecesary intermediation.
Until these are disposed with, both will continue to be harmed.
The creators will be harmed by people not paying anything for their stuff.
However, this is a logical reaction to the twisted set of current laws.
We as a people have supported these artists through our contract as a society, which they are certainly a part of.
We deserve to have the ability to play with works that have been produced within our own lifetime.
This is our culture, not theirs. I imagine that by now, everything in my youth should be a free for all. 20 years or so. This stuff is part of who we are. You are what you eat, and most of us have eaten quite a lot of ideas produced by other people.
People are not there to satisfy a particular business model. You cannot treat them as cattle to be herded this way and that by spurious laws that only are written to line your own pockets. There it is.
Until the horrible inequities that currently exist in Established Law have been redressed, it is really premature to go about blaming the victims, err, "consumers".
Regards.
If he's a composer, he'd makes his money writing music and selling it to performers.
But this is exactly his point: he is a composer, Eleanor/Brenna is a performer, and because she is ripping his music illegally instead of paying him for it, he doesn't get to sell it.
It sounds like he is already making a loss on some of his activities, just to get his music out there. How is this fair on him, as the guy who is actually putting in the effort to make something valuable and contributing it to society?
It's not like he was asking for an obscene amount of money for a legit copy of the sheet music: any one person wanting a copy only has to pay up about $4. It sounds like this guy is a practising artist who makes new work on a continuing basis and derives a significant fraction of his income from those little payments. This is exactly the sort of scenario that copyright is supposed to promote, but the whole economic foundation of the arrangement breaks if one side doesn't keep up their end of the deal.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Composer=musician that needs to get off his butt, lose the shy act and rake in some fruits of his labor.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
This content featured in this article is very similiar to the talking points highlighted by astroturf organizations funded by organizations such as the RIAA, MPAA, CRIA, etc... For example: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100420/2228169126.shtml http://balancedcopyrightforcanada.ca/about
I'm seeing a new layer to the problem here. It seems to be universal of most copyright controversy. The friction lies not in whither fair use, piracy and such. It seems to be unworkable business models as the problem. Complications arise when technological evolution outpaces business evolution. ,there is no need for an industry to stand as a middleman to farm artists for the money they stand the potential to bring. Artists are capable and now well connected enough to live better on their own than with the promotion of an archaic unworkable business model.
Picture if you will,and I have many famous artists through history to back me on this, music is a force. It is independent of mankind which is used as a conduit to transform this energy to audio. Music is an energy, a constant. The music industry impedes the flow of energy but are not greater than the volume ft/lbs of energy they purport to control the valve on. Simple physics should tell you what happens when the monkey can't hold the cork in anymore as the industry is now failing to. We will always have music
In a nutshell, Sheet music sales are more outdated than industry audio product. As I said before a composer is a musician who needs to address his shyness and go perform. Now that's a workable business model.
If you struggle against the flow of the universe, you just waste energy and get swept away against your will. If you flow in harmony with the universe, it's energy aids yours.
The Music industries business model struggles against the universe. I'm not sorry to see it swept away against it's will.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
If intellectual property is 'real' property then why are there no property taxes on it? Or is it that specific classes of people are too special to pay taxes like the rest of us?
The spelling and grammar police can kiss my ass
Not right to murder, right to life. But the way you phrase your rights as something you want to do to someone else rather than do yourself is rather telling in this "me me me" culture.
Many people actually tried doing that, but were forcibly stopped.
Where would you find the land to start your own country? All land on earth is currently claimed by some existing country, and they won't sell it to anybody trying to make a new country.
Not to say that I agree at all with the racist GP, but your counter argument is flawed too.
If they're too lazy to form a army and wipe out the current inhabitants, then how are they ever going to run a country. I don't feel sorry for them.
Ask the Estate of Charles Dickens:
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/pubd/dickens_usa.html
The US did NOT recognise copyrights for foreign authors. They didn't recognise it for software. So given these two incontrovertible facts, please tell me how copyright is inalienable and not a construct of government.
My difficulty with this argument is always the same: it essentially implies that copyright-based business models as a way to incentivise the creation and distribution of new artistic works are not viable. That may be true as long as ripping people off is socially acceptable. However, there is little evidence that the same quality and quantity of works will be produced without such a commercial incentive. Artists still have bills to pay, and even the best artists can produce better work given time to plan, refine and edit their material with a roof over their head than they will produce ad-hoc in their spare time while holding down another job to pay for the food at dinner.
I would suggest that the real problem is that technology has outpaced social models: most people are not in the position of directly depending on sales of artistic work for their income, and view copying as a victimless crime. This is, to some extent, because they feel they have been ripped off by Big Media middlemen for years and see turnabout as fair play. But of course it's not just Big Media middlemen who lose out, because these industries also provide for millions of hard-working people, many of whom contribute to making better products for us all to enjoy but will never be in the limelight themselves. I don't think the average person really thinks through the consequences of breaking the copyright model in the Internet age, even if they would miss the benefits of all those people working in creative industries were they not there any more because there was no longer enough money to pay their salaries.
Perhaps in future, we will evolve some other model or models, where those who put in hard work that contributes to valuable artistic output can be recognised and rewarded by those who enjoy the results. I think many people, even in today's world where bought-and-paid-for copyright laws no longer reflect the original spirit of the idea, still feel that it's fair to pay someone who creates work they find useful or enjoyable. Maybe copyright is too far down the path of lost credibility and something newer that is more socially acceptable needs to take over. But no-one has really come up with that something yet, and I wish a few more people thought through the long-term consequences of just ignoring copyright until we have a better replacement.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
In what way is the music industry involved in this story?
This bloke is trying to sell his sheet music from a website for $4 a time direct to music performers. That the product he is selling is pure information and can therefore be duplicated at no/negligible cost has resulted in a subset of people taking the product without payment, thus leaving him financially disadvantaged and therefore disincentivised from future musical composition (although I suspect this bloke is not going to change careers over this).
We don't see a similar argument in other information based industries - fashion design for example it seems to be a shameful thing to wear copies.
I agree that the music industry in its current form is a parasite sitting between musician and audience, serving no more purpose than a mediaeval guild, but I really don't see how that's the issue here.
The page you link to claims that Wolfram Research claimed that presenting the proof violated the author's nondisclosure agreement with his employer. It doesn't say anything about copyright.
Looks like YOU are wrong already!
Write a program that generates music algorithmically. Set it churning and copyright (and put under a GPL-style license) everything that it produces.
After a few million compositions, it should be trivial to find several that have been subsequently "composed" by would-be musicians.
???
Profit!
Stick Men
A signed copy for $4 would be a more than fair exchange.
When you get right down to it, while not exactly the same as stealing or shoplifting, copying someone else's work without permission is still a bad thing, but of course there are degrees. If I download a song to listen to, that is one thing. If I'm doing it because I don't like it enough to pay for it, that's one thing, as arguably I haven't cost the owner anything since I wasn't going to pay for it anyway. If I download it, burn discs and sell it for a profit that is the other end of the scale. Both are wrong, but the latter is much, much worse. This is where I get really pissed off at the *AAs, because they apply the law meant for the latter to the former, which IMO is an abuse of the civil law system, but I digress.
Anyone care to comment on the long term social effects of raising several generations on the notion one doesn't have to respect copyright, no matter the degree? How about other rights, especially when one can say, "well I can get away with this, why not that"?
That isn't just a teenager who wants something.
She's willing to STEAL it to have it because she can't (or won't) pay for it.
Talk about a lack of ethics. I wonder if her parents even know about this?
Understanding is much like a 3-edged-sword. in this: there are always 2 sides and the truth.
Contra example:
"Afternoon Delight" - still has value and currency, should be banned from public performance :-)
So what you are saying is that Wolfram Research now owns (Under US law and political/military might) a fundamental law of the universe.
Humanity will never cease to amaze me...
film at 11.
|= Forallthingsconsidered(Wolfram Research = Monsanto)
QED
What is at stake here is the fundamental definition of freedom itself. Patents and copyrights stand in the way of full non-coercive freedom, as a once carefully drafted social contract for utilitarian purposes.
The utilitarian doctrine doesn't stand up for freedom but for the amount of happiness output, meaning the amount of well-being that can come out of certain policies.
Copyrights and patents have been put in place as a compromise between freedom and utility. At some point copyrights where only valid for about 14 years, and then intellectual works would go to the public domain to benefit mankind. This was not such a large compromise then, and it seemed "fair".
But what happened is that fair is not always right, and once the genie was out of the bottle, and the government started granting monopolies on ideas and information, things started to go out of hand. Copyrights are now granted for 70 years, or more, and trading of information and ideas has become a dangerous business. The monopolies the government granted are now out of control. And people is confused about whether to follow common sense and freely share information, art and ideas for the benefit of all, and the "poor" artists, composers, and creators that are "being left out".
I think the dimensions of it are becoming frankly ridiculous, and the spirit of sharing and solidarity that is the foundation of the growth of our entire species, is being struck by a few arrogant individuals that think they "own" the intangible, and a group of sheep that follows them without ever stopping to think that the status-quo is immoral.
Law isn't perfect. Sometimes errors are made. Patents and copyrights should be entirely abolished to allow for further and faster growth of our species. I applaud the clarity of mind of Eleanor, and I invite her to participate in the copyright wars in the freedom defender's camp.
The crime of all is the crime of none.
I'm also a small-time composer. I was a full time composer for two years before also having to work as a software developer. Now most of my income comes from the software side, while most of my time is spent on the composition side.
Most people here understand the cost to produce a quality piece of software, but fewer realize that a quality piece of music takes tremendous amount to time and resources -- it's way more costly than sitting at the piano and playing something by ear.
Take a typical modern symphonic work for example: there are at least 20 instrument parts to write (from piccolo to timpani, considering a typical orchestra that doesn't have less common instruments readily available). And a 5-minute movement usually takes me 4-5 weeks of full-time work to write (and I'm a relatively fast composer). This estimation is, however, mostly on the labor side -- producing clean, readable, page-turn friendly sheet music for each instrument and the conductor takes tremendous amount of time (and not all of us get paid enough to hire a music copyist). To write something that's likely to be accepted by 2nd/3rd rate orchestras as a contemporary work worth playing, the time it takes will easily double or tripple. To make it worse, most pieces only get performed once or twice, because of the competition among composers in this tiny market.
Among my colleagues, only film/game/media/pop composers can survive solely on composition. Most others have to teach music in universities, and many of them are not teaching composition. In my case, only a fraction of my musical income is from composition (mostly from performing/conducting), and most of that is from writing/producing commercial music (arranging or soundtracks). It's a tough field, and it's understandable that why many composers in this field will try to get as much compensation as possible whenever they can.
I think the current copyright laws are very problematic. For example, I'm not even sure whether ASCAP is actually encouraging more people to play my piece. Performers tend to play pieces by composers that are dead a long time ago. The audience does not like new pieces, and ASCAP seems to make new works even less accessible. I gave away a lot of performing rights for free to climb the ladder, but many of my colleagues think I'm ruining the market. It's soft of like free software threatening commercial software.
On the other hand, copyright does help us get paid. High profile orchestras or performing groups will have to buy/rent the sheet music, but most college or high school bands just "borrow the set once". And there are only this many high profile groups to pay (those big-time composers). Selling sheet music becomes an important revenue of us. There are much fewer people to buy sheet music than the recording, so pricing sheet music at the same level as recording is not quite feasible.
I don't like the current system -- it doesn't seem to do good to the human society as a whole. Current system work for big-time composers, but not for the genreal public, and not for small-time composers either. However, I am not smart enough to figure out a way that'll work for all.
Perhaps composers are not meant to exist as a profession.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-12-21/