Brazil Considering Legalizing File Sharing

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like Brazil may be the country to watch if you're interested in much more consumer-friendly copyright laws (assuming US diplomatic pressure doesn't interfere). As that country goes through a copyright reform process, among the proposals is one that would create fines not just for infringing, but also for hindering fair use and the public domain. Also, there is a big push underway, with widespread support — even from some artists groups — to legalize file sharing in exchange for a small levy (~$1.74/month) on your broadband connection. Of course, one reason why Brazil may be doing it this way is because of the massive success the Brazilian musical genre technobrega has had by embracing file sharing as a way to promote new works, and making money (often lots of it) through other avenues, like live shows."

Comments

Who would have thought

[KillaGouge]

Yet another country that realizes you can make more money if the music is free. Didn't the Grateful Dead already figure this out?

Re:Who would have thought

[nomadic]

Yet another country that realizes you can make more money if the music is free. Didn't the Grateful Dead already figure this out?

Well the Beatles and Rolling Stones made hundreds of millions more than the Grateful Dead by not making their music free.

Re:Who would have thought

[TooMuchToDo]

Well the Beatles and Rolling Stones made hundreds of millions more than the Grateful Dead by not making their music free.

They might not had made hundreds of millions of dollars if not for insane copyright law.

Re:Who would have thought

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Well the Beatles and Rolling Stones made hundreds of millions more than the Grateful Dead by not making their music free.

Or they were just more mainstream and thus had a bigger audience.

Re:Who would have thought

[DesScorp]

Yet another country that realizes you can make more money if the music is free. Didn't the Grateful Dead already figure this out?

This is a silly argument on its face, and doesn't square with history. The Grateful Dead made a lot of money off of their model, but they were the exception to the rule, and their major contemporaries made vastly more sums of money than they did. The key to truly big time success is mass media exposure, not word of mouth. Word of mouth can help break an artist out of anonymity, but it's no substitute for being played on radio, TV, and for selling CD's and iTunes downloads. Lots of other artists... some of them already established... have tried the "give it away and charge for concerts" model, and no one since the GD has really made big money off of that model. There's no substitute for having a record company promoting you, and they're not going to do that if no one is paying for the music.

Re:Who would have thought

[blackraven14250]

You can't really isolate which factor made it happen.

Re:Who would have thought

[binarylarry]

Oh right, being paid for their art is just insane!

Re:Who would have thought

[TooMuchToDo]

And demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars per "infringed" song isn't insane?

Re:Who would have thought

[Nemyst]

You can say that comparing the Beatles to your average band is disingenuous at best. The context just can never be matched.

Re:Who would have thought

[DesScorp]

Well the Beatles and Rolling Stones made hundreds of millions more than the Grateful Dead by not making their music free.

They might not had made hundreds of millions of dollars if not for insane copyright law.

Sure they would have. Because copyright law was largely irrelevant as far as pirating music back then. Tape recorders were crude, and there was no way to make quality reproductions of songs for the average listener. If you wanted the record, you had to buy it from the store. Even into the 80's and early 90's, your best option was recording an album from cassette to cassette, and even with some higher end tape decks, you still didn't get sound quality as good as the original. Computer technology is what changed things, not copyright law. Now, suddenly any schmuck can make a perfect copy of a CD and distribute it to millions of his closest friends on the Internet.

Re:Who would have thought

[airfoobar]

They made millions to the detriment of other smaller artists. Back then the label/distributor system was absolute: there was no way into the music industry without being signed. The labels would only take up so many artists, who they promoted the hell out of, while all other artists were forced into obscurity.

That's a terrible system, because there's less music being made that way, and people are spoon-fed only what the labels want them to listen to.

Today things are changing, because the labels' promotional machine is being overridden by more open distribution systems. So--- today it's not about making millions, it's about making a fair living (fairer distribution of wealth, and a level playing field) and having a chance to fame based on the quality of your work rather than dumb luck of getting picked up by a bunch of professional marketeers.

I think Brazil has the right idea, and I'll really really hate it when the big WIPO/ACTA/TRIPPS bullies shit their usual brick.

Re:Who would have thought

[Lemmy Caution]

Also, their model required a dedicated group of followers who would attend as many shows as possible. This is not a very scalable model, when most bands would be lucky to have a (un-obsessed) fan attend one or two of their shows over their lifetime.

Re:Who would have thought

[MoonBuggy]

Being paid for your own work over a period of about 15-20 years, with reasonable allowance for other work inspired by it, is a completely fair expectation.

Keeping your grandparent's work under lock and key almost a century after it was created, however, is asshattery of the highest order and does nothing for the public good, nor does it encourage new work.

Re:Who would have thought

[Kjella]

Now, suddenly any schmuck can make a perfect copy of a CD and distribute it to millions of his closest friends on the Internet.

Long story short you could make many really good analog copies of the first generations, but it didn't last and one person with bad equipment destroyed the chain. What changed with perfect copies as opposed to near-perfect copies is that you can have infinite generations. You don't need to give it to a million friends, only a few as long as they in total pass it on to more people. It's a little bit like a nuke going of, if you have a ratio >1 there's a chain reaction until you run out of reactive material.

Fractional people sound silly so let's just start with 10 people having it and each giving it to 1.2 people on average. So those 10 give it to 10*1.2 = 12. Those 12 give it to 12*1.2 = ~14. Those 14 give it to 14*1.2 = ~17. Those 17 give it to 17*1.2 = ~20 and so it keeps going growing exponentially with 1.2^n until you run out of people who'd want it. And nobody did more than share a little over one copy. There is no big bad wolf, only many equal peers.

Re:Who would have thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Computers have also lead that there are a more than a dozen composer that create studio qualite work in each and every neighbourhood.
If I were dependent on a business where people would be willing to do my work for free just because they think it is fun then I would really reconsider what the fsck I was doing.

Re:Who would have thought

[cpt kangarooski]

Being paid for your own work over a period of about 15-20 years, with reasonable allowance for other work inspired by it, is a completely fair expectation.

Really? Why?

Copyright is an artificial scheme, and a utilitarian one. It isn't mandatory that it exist, and if it does exist, it isn't up to the author to make that decision, or decide what the specific details are; that's up to the public (via a legitimate government accountable to the public, working in the public interest).

If it is in the public interest that only works made on Tuesdays should be copyrighted, and that the copyright should only last for a week, then that's what should be done. That authors might want otherwise is utterly irrelevant, save for how their desires are a factor in determining the overall public interest. (Not so much to cater to them, but to find a way to manipulate them into doing what's good for the public)

I'd rather have everything on the table. I don't really care whether copyright lasts for a day or for a million years, so long as however long it lasts, and whatever rights it consists of, are carefully formulated so as to serve the public interests better than any alternative law, or no law at all.

Re:Who would have thought

[MoonBuggy]

My bad, that sentence should've contained "in my opinion" somewhere. I thought the 'public good' argument was somewhat implicit from the end of the post, but I guess I was unclear.

I entirely agree with you that the authors' wishes are generally irrelevant (except to the extent that those wishes impact the creation of future works). My opinion pretty much mirrors yours, I just happen to be of the opinion that 15-20 years, as it was originally, would serve the public good fairly well.

Re:Who would have thought

[blackraven14250]

I mean, yes, but you can't say exactly what caused them to be monetary successes, and to what degree each factor (openness of music, raw size, marketing) played in said success. The truest measure of financial success would probably be the amount of money they made per fan, but even that is lacking a definitive way to isolate the factor of openness. Isolating that factor, and seeing how much each band made per fan because of it, is the only way to truly tell what effect the degree of openness has on a band's financial success.

Re:Who would have thought

[cpt kangarooski]

Ah, well, that's fine then. I apologize if I came across as too harsh or anything.

Myself, I'd rather see strict registration, renewal, and deposit formalities, and then have numerous, short terms. The number of renewals might vary depending on the type of work. The maximum length for the most protected works might easily wind up being in the 15-20 year range, however.

Re:Who would have thought

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

No system that tries to implement any sort of monopoly can address the fundamental problem with copyright that the internet has amplified - that it is human nature to copy stuff we like, on both a wholesale and a piecemeal (derivative) basis. It seems like common sense that we would settle on a system that channels human nature to incent creators instead of fights it.

Re:Who would have thought

[h4rr4r]

Mandatory licensing can solve that.

Re:Who would have thought

[westlake]

Yet another country that realizes you can make more money if the music is free. Didn't the Grateful Dead already figure this out?

The Grateful Dead in its most recognizable form was active from 1967 to 1995.

The "tapers" were just that - fans recording live performances to reel-to-reel or cassette tapes.

Fans who had paid for their tickets exchanging copies 1 for 1 with fans who had also paid for their concert tickets.

The Deadhead played by Deadhead rules.

Garcia performed in over 2000 concerts - around 70 a year. The price you pay for that is seeing major talents dying young. That Garcia survived into his fifties is something like a miracle.

   

Re:Who would have thought

[h4rr4r]

I think that had more to do with the drugs than anything else. Playing 70 Gigs a year is less work than most folks do.

Here are the current stats for the rest of them:
Vince Welnick: sucicide 2006, so unrelated
Brent Mydland: 1990 dug overdose, so unrelated
Donna Jean Godchaux: Alive, 63
Keith Godchauz: Car crash 1980 unrelated
Tom Constanten: Alive, 67
Mickey Hart: Alive 66
Ron "Pigpen" McKernan: Congenital medical issue and alcoholism 1973, so unrelated
Bill Kreutzmann: Alive, 64
Phil Lesh: Alive, 70
Bob Weir: Alive, 62

You ready to admit you're wrong?

Re:Who would have thought

[harlows_monkeys]

How is a tax for music on your broadband connection "free"?

Re:Who would have thought

[santiagodraco]

How exactly does that apply to the discussion of whether or not the beetles made millions of dollars SELLING their music and not giving it away free? The discussion wasn't about the merits of current law.

Re:Who would have thought

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, could we try distinguishing between non-commercial infringement by natural persons, and everything else? My suspicion is that most people would accept being able to copy things so long as it was just between real people, and no money was involved (nor other things of value, such as advertisements, or even ratios), but that if the copying is in some way commercial, or involves businesses or other artificial entities, then the author ought to have rights over that.

Re:Who would have thought

[rtb61]

Lets be honest, digital is already an imperfect copy. Music is intrinsically analogue and lots of data has to be stripped away to generate a digital copy. Which is why the live performance is always the best and recorded dead music only function is to recapture the emotion of the shared live event.

In music copyrights only function nowadays seems to be greed, selling destructive ideas to impressionable children, creating lame drugged up drunken one hit wonders and of course to flood the courts with B$ legal actions. The question is, is that particular industry worth keeping or does it do more harm than good, is it more of burden upon society than a benefit?

That is the function of law, to create a uniform application of generally accepted behavioural morals, to promote the social good of the majority and to protect the individual. So you have an industry that in order to maximise profits, promotes a destructive lifestyle to the most impressionable element of human society, children. Upon that basis is that industry worth protecting, especially when it is inherently parasitical in nature consuming resources whilst providing no substantive for society.

A live music venue inherently protects itself and provides a shared participatory event and does provide benefit for society, as shared joyous social interactions promote a cohesive society (smaller venues). So truthfully speaking society is better off promoting live venues and downgrading dead music because of the inherent anti-social elements associated with it.

Re:Who would have thought

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I don't think it's a question of what some group of people think is fair. It's human nature to copy in all aspects of our lives. For example, software piracy is rampant in business for the same reason entertainment piracy is rampant among individuals - it is easy to do and the chances of getting caught are minuscule. And that's just one type of widespread violation, I'm sure you are aware of all kinds of other classes of corporate copyright violations, like those along the lines of American Geophysical Union v. Texaco which are still the norm at places with profiles less than that of Texaco (and common enough, despite being in violation of official company policy, at the others). Without a significant, and essentially impractical, increase in surveillance, people will always feel that they should make a copy just because they can make a copy. Thus what is fair in the abstract will differ from what is fair in the moment. I think we should have a system where such a dichotomy is irrelevant.

I think that if there is an incentive model that can survive widespread uncompensated person-to-person copying, then there is probably a good chance that something very close to that model will also work for commercial copying. It might make some businesses infeasible, like encrypted satellite television which relies on the DMCA to protect the encryption. But I'm just as willing to believe that it will enable other kinds of businesses too, ones that perhaps couldn't have competed with monopoly-dependent businesses otherwise.

Re:Who would have thought

[Rockoon]

Well I can tell you this about the Beatles and the "mania" of the United States.

For a significant period of time American radio stations would not play any Beatles songs, and this was in spite of the fact that in England they had many #1 hits. 4-piece guitar bands were "on the way out."

When American radio stations DID decide to start playing The Beatles, they introduced many of those #1 hits to the American audience at the same time. And thus, Beatle Mania was born. There was a period where half of the top-10 was Beatles, and not because of marketing genius, but because of the initial reluctance to play them.

Re:Who would have thought

[cheekyjohnson]

Being paid for their art isn't insane. What's insane is that people actually think that piracy hurts anyone even though absolutely nothing is being taken (certainly not the product itself, and the "potential profit" argument just falls flat on its face).

Re:Who would have thought

[KingAlanI]

holding back the product to build up demand can work as an intentional strategy, I suppose it can also work as an unintentional strategy

high quality product = good
high quality marketing = good
combine the two = really good

Re:Who would have thought

[KingAlanI]

I saw the obsession as following the band around and seeing several shows in one tour.
Seems logical to me that if you'd like the act, you'd see them when they came close to your town if the schedule allows.
However, if the band tours a lot, they might swing by your neck of the woods only once or twice each time.
I suppose obsession can also be marked by the distance one is willing to travel if the band doesn't come locally.

Re:Who would have thought

[drsmithy]

Being paid for your own work over a period of about 15-20 years, with reasonable allowance for other work inspired by it, is a completely fair expectation.

How is being paid multiple times for a single piece of work fair ? Should a janitor get paid every day, even though he only cleans on Mondays ?

How are your children being paid for your work fair ? Should a janitor's children be paid his salary for 20 years after he dies, even though they're not mopping any floors ?

How is being paid because someone else's work was "inspired" by yours fair ? Should a janitor get paid even after he's quit because the excellent job he did "inspired" his replacement to do as well ?

Re:Who would have thought

[Radtoo]

Also think of the context in which this was granted. It was mainly meant against profiteering publishers with larger outreach than the artists themselves. Well, that did not really work out - because copyright is transferable they very often ensure they can buy it... or if not, they'll use the fact that they're the only ones that can "provide" many stores to get the lion's share of profits anyhow.

Instead -as the intent of copyright law as it was granted- the law serving to help artists against publishers, it is now more of a law used against the very people which grant it, in general.

Re:Who would have thought

[Peeteriz]

Studio recorded music often sounds much better than the live recording - in live concerts the emotions rule, but the sound is often just so-so even if you are standing in the best spot - and most of the listeners aren't.

Re:Who would have thought

[Undead Waffle]

It partially depends on the band. Many musicians these days rely way too much on studio equipment to make their music sound good. Also, most of the people operating the equipment at a live concert have no idea what they're doing.

Re:Who would have thought

[sjames]

Actually, it does square once you consider that the RIAA uses hollywood accounting such that a band can still be in the red on a double platinum album.

Bands make money on concerts. The recordings rarely bring them more than promotion for their concerts.

Re:Who would have thought

[dave420]

Christ. Not this bullshit again. The original purpose of records was to serve as an advertisement for the band in question, so when they played somewhere, people would come see them live. That is all albums are - advertisements. Bands, to this day, make far more from live shows than any amount of record sales. That is one constant across the spectrum from solo-unheard-of-artists to supergroups. That doesn't change. Artists definitely should be paid for their art - that's why they play live. Being sued into oblivion for copying and distributing an advertisement for a band is fucking retarded.

Re:Who would have thought

[bzipitidoo]

Monopolies on copying would still be a burden. Limiting the burden to "commercial" activities helps, but maybe doesn't go far enough. The attractive part is that it may be possible to track commercial activities. If it can be detected, and is practical to monitor, it can be regulated.

But it is still ultimately subjective to determine whether a commercial activity is infringing. The cases I keep in mind are George Harrison's My Sweet Lord, and now Men at Work's Land Down Under which was recently revealed to use a few bars from Kookaburra. In the latter case, how could it have gone unnoticed and unresolved for 28 years? To me, that's the most damning part. No one can reasonably guard against such a possibility. No one should have to. Seems there should be a statute of limitations on that, at the least. If Men at Work had mocked Kookaburra, that'd be parody, but they paid a little homage to it, and now they're really paying. No good deed goes unpunished.

Re:Who would have thought

[mad_minstrel]

I believe being paid hundreds of million dollars for art is indeed insane. I don't think anybody really deserves to be paid that much, no matter what they do. Especially artists, since their work, unlike that of doctors, engineers, scientists or farmers, is of little benefit for humanity.

Re:Who would have thought

[Rockoon]

holding back the product to build up demand can work as an intentional strategy, I suppose it can also work as an unintentional strategy

This is like saying that Prohibition was an intentional or unintentional organized crime profit strategy.

It was the radio stations that refused to play them, not the Beatles producers or agents. The radio stations didnt benefit one way or the other. The Beatles had a stroke of luck befall them, pure and simple. Not that they werent good, but they just wouldnt have been nearly as successful... probably more like Eric Clapton level of success instead of Beatles Mania level of success.

Re:Who would have thought

[KingAlanI]

That's what I'm saying; it was unintentional/accidental from The Beatles' perspective, but the effect was the same, except for not having the bad PR that might have come from doing this on purpose.

Some people don't like The Beatles as much; maybe there's this as a reason in addition to wanting to be difficult/different.
Also, they did play soft/smooth/etc. stuff most of the time; I understand if you want something somewhat heavier. (That's one reason I took to Zeppelin so well, I suppose.)

Re:Who would have thought

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

No system that tries to implement any sort of monopoly can address the fundamental problem with copyright that the internet has amplified - that it is human nature to copy stuff we like

A few years ago in my country, people would have said the same about driving home after "just a couple of drinks", or driving on a mobile phone, or smoking in a restaurant. When laws were proposed to make these things illegal, there was a lot of opposition from people with the "me, me, me" attitude and/or who felt it was an unwarranted government intrusion.

Today, with much greater public awareness of the real consequences now that the laws have taken effect, there is much less opposition. People do still use mobile phones while driving, and they do still have accidents because the raw power of their egos does not actually prevent them from driving less competently than someone over the legal drink-drive limit. But these damaging activities have become socially unacceptable to a large chunk of our population.

The problem with copyright is that it is difficult to educate the general public about the real consequences of changing or removing the legal protection for several reasons, not least that no-one really knows what the consequences would be. All we can make are educated guesses and logical arguments based on limited information and "reasonable" assumptions, which will only convince significant numbers of people if they are willing to accept that the assumptions concerned are in fact reasonable (see numerous Slashdot copyright debates passim).

The other problem with mostly unenforced copyright is that it appears to function like progressive taxation: those with the resources to spend (often correlated with those who are the most appealing targets for real enforcement) wind up subsidising those who can't or won't pay for the material. However, in the system as it typically works today, a lot of people who don't have money to burn but don't want to break the law are subsidising people who actually have more money but don't care about breaking the law. That isn't somehow progressive and ethical, it just means the freeloaders are screwing the law-abiding.

I see only three possible outcomes in the medium term.

One possibility is that copyright law (or some replacement) will be adapted to a system that most people on both consumer and creator sides find fair; infringing will become socially unacceptable as a consequence; and targeted enforcement will deal with the serious cases. This is the "good" outcome, IMHO.

Another possibility is that in response to continued mass infringement, ever more draconian laws will be introduced, resulting in ever less reliable technology with ever more compulsory surveillance built in. Those who use this technology will wind up paying more for content because Big Media will have a lock on the market and it appears that no government is currently willing to go after them for anti-competitive/cartel-like behaviour. Those who do not use the technology will be relatively few, as most people won't know how to circumvent it safely, and absurdly draconian penalties will be applied pour encourager les autres.

The final possibility is that things swing too far the other way: the everything-should-be-free crowd actually win; putting in the effort to make original, good quality content becomes economically impractical; and new works are mostly reduced to the level of volunteer-run OSS projects, fan fiction, low-budget inde films, and the writing on Wikipedia. In other words, some works with real value will get created, but probably only a few that are better than entry-level work produced under the commercial system today, and most will downright suck.

It is regrettable that the first outcome seems by far the least likely to happen in practice, given the tendency of controversial political debates to polarise and ultimately to be decided in favour of whichever extremist view wins.

Re:Who would have thought

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

That's because I don't believe I've ever heard of an alternative "scalable business model" that could credibly replace the function that copyright provides today within realistic overheads. There are some alternative models that I think might have potential, but I can't see a viable implementation of any of them becoming the norm in what I meant by the medium term (say 5-10 years).

Re:Who would have thought

[Jane Q. Public]

Not only that, but 2 other big issues as well:

(1) In this kind of scheme, people who don't do filesharing explicitly pay for those who do.

(2) The money from the "tax" almost NEVER goes to who it's supposed to... the copyright owner.

So it simply doesn't accomplish the goals it is supposed to achieve.

Re:Who would have thought

[Omestes]

False dichotomy.

Music can be free (IP wise), and you can charge for it.
Music can be free (as in gratis), and you can charge for live content and merchandise.

Or better, copyright can make the slightest shred of sense, and actually be geared towards the good of those "We the People" blokes, and not giant multinational corporations.

Re: Levy

[SilverHatHacker]

I'd gladly pay a buck seventy-five if it would keep the legals off my back. Just like up here in Canada where we pay extra for CDs and they leave us alone; I'd rather not have to pay at all - seems like extortion - but it's a fair compromise.

Re: Katrina

[MrEricSir]

Sometimes a levy breaks.

Brazil (Gilliam)

[billybob2001]

This is information retrieval not information dispersal

Re: Levy

[Lemmy Caution]

What is a little weird about this model is that it ultimately creates a quasi-governmental funding basis for the arts: everyone pays a flat fee that gives them unfettered access to all the world's music (film, etc.) - then, who decides how that money is allocated?

Gee, what a concept

[Phrogman]

Musicians making money from performing music to live audiences. You know, the way they did for thousands of years (figuratively speaking).

Its only in the last 200 years or so that we have had the idea that musicians should make money for a recording of their performance. Perhaps that was the real mistaken concept, and filesharing/easily created copies of musical recordings are merely bringing things back to normal.

I don't download music at all. I also don't buy it. I barely ever listen to it outside of occasionally turning on a rock station in the car. I don't miss it much either.

Honestly, since there is no way they are ever going to stop filesharing, its not a bad idea to legalize it IMHO. Its like legalizing marijuana. It wouldn't hurt anyone if they did that in my opinion, but it would let the government tax the sales. Perhaps thats a solution? Let the government tax your time on a P2P network? Nah

Re:Gee, what a concept

[nomadic]

Its only in the last 200 years or so that we have had the idea that musicians should make money for a recording of their performance. Perhaps that was the real mistaken concept, and filesharing/easily created copies of musical recordings are merely bringing things back to normal.

In other words, only musicians who play the kind of music that you like to listen to should make a living at their music. Those of us who like to listen to music that cannot be easily or cheaply played at live performances should be out of luck.

Re:Gee, what a concept

[airfoobar]

Are you paying your musicians to perform on stage, or are you paying them so they can keep composing? When an artist you like asks for donations to record his next album, you have a choice: either pay or not pay. If you don't pay, the album won't be created in the first place. The idea is that musicians need to learn to interact with their audience and make them want to give them money, not demand payment from their ivory tower.

Re:Gee, what a concept

[h4rr4r]

Yet, that music would still be played. I make beer, cider, wine, paint and produce lots of other stuff that no one pays me to make. I give most of it away as I could never use it all. I still even have a day job. We would be far better off with more people creating art/music/culture and them making less money at it. You might still have a few big stars, but not everything is done for love of money.

Re:Gee, what a concept

[pitchpipe]

Its only in the last 200 years or so that we have had the idea that musicians should make money for a recording of their performance. Perhaps that was the real mistaken concept, and filesharing/easily created copies of musical recordings are merely bringing things back to normal.

In other words, only musicians who play the kind of music that you like to listen to should make a living at their music. Those of us who like to listen to music that cannot be easily or cheaply played at live performances should be out of luck.

Yep. Sounds like he's saying that if your music isn't that popular and the musicians can't make a living at it, maybe they should just play anyway because they love it. Music, for many of us, is a hobby - a passion.

Re:Gee, what a concept

[Jarik_Tentsu]

While I do hold your point of view, one could also argue that for thousands of years there was no way *to* enjoy someone's works *except* Live. You had to go to a live performance to hear someone's work. While now, you can enjoy their work at home, in the car, wherever...and in fact, a very small portion actually go to watch it live.

I am in agreement though. I think they should view recordings as advertisement for gigs really. Make money off commercial licensing royalties and performances.

Not even because of what is 'right' and 'wrong', but more on what is the only real viable commercial model they have now. No one is gonna stop file sharing - they need to get used to it.

Re:Gee, what a concept

[blind biker]

In other words, only musicians who play the kind of music that you like to listen to should make a living at their music. Those of us who like to listen to music that cannot be easily or cheaply played at live performances should be out of luck.

You're twisting the OP's words. He/she didn't say musicians (of this or that kind) shouldn't make a living, or that fans of this or that music shouldn't be able to access it: in fact, the gist of what the OP is saying is that one should be able to listen to any music, for free, as long as it's a recording. Hence nobody is "out of luck".

Re:Gee, what a concept

[Knuckles]

Musicians making money from performing music to live audiences. You know, the way they did for thousands of years (figuratively speaking).

Its only in the last 200 years or so that we have had the idea that musicians should make money for a recording of their performance. Perhaps that was the real mistaken concept, and filesharing/easily created copies of musical recordings are merely bringing things back to normal.

It was also an artistically very liberating concept. It allowed musicians to create music that is not meant to be reproduced in front of and by live audiences., or which cannot be. It freed music of some of its functional restraints. In this way, it increased the range of the arts and contributed to an extension of our view of the world and the way we experience it. Much of the "serious" music of the 20th century belongs into this category, but also large parts of contemporary electronica.

At the same time, and intertwined with the former, it created economic independence for hitherto unknown numbers of musicians, exploitation by large and small labels as well as ridiculous excesses of accumulation by a few notwithstanding.

You may be right that this concept has reached the end of its economic feasibility, and you certainly are right that it will have to be replaced at least partially with something else. But just as well you would be wrong to pretend that nothing of value would be lost.

Re:Gee, what a concept

[LambdaWolf]

Musicians making money from performing music to live audiences. You know, the way they did for thousands of years (figuratively speaking).

It's okay, money and music have both existed for more than 2,000 years—you're safe from the grammar Nazis if you use the word "literally" here!

Re:Gee, what a concept

[dnaumov]

In other words, only musicians who play the kind of music that you like to listen to should make a living at their music.

In other words, only musicians who play the kind of music that people are actually willing to pay for should make a living at their music. Fixed that for you.

Re:Gee, what a concept

[wvmarle]

It sounds indeed like the business model of the future is the business model of the past: from before recordings and copyright existed.

Re:Gee, what a concept

[wvmarle]

My music money is to go to artists that I like. Plain and simple. That are the artists that I want to continue playing.

Yes that's egoistic. But I couldn't care less if Britney Spears ran out of money and stopped producing music.

However my taste is not everyone else's taste. Other people may want to support other artists, which is also fine with me. There are a lot of other people who do like Britney and are happy to support them with their money.

Nothing wrong with that either.

And in the end we have a huge field of musicians. Some make lots of money, as they have many fans. Others can come by nicely because they make some interesting innovative music that appeals to quite some people. Others maybe don't make much, maybe they are not that good, or just not well known (yet), still they will continue to play because they like it. And that's good too. Maybe they are good musicians, then good chance they will get known and start receiving more income. If only from ticket sales for their concerts.

And incidentally it's this last and largest group of musicians that can benefit most from file sharing, as that's how they can gain an audience.

Re:Gee, what a concept

[kramerd]

Small error here, only musicians who play the kind of music that you like to listen to should make a living at their music out of your wallet .

Those of us who like to listen to music that cannot be easily or cheaply played at live performance should pay more for those performances due to the relative value of such performance .

We already have this in many cases. For example, if you like to listen to marching bands, you either go to professional festivals (tickets at $100+) or football games (tickets at $100+). If you want to see local bands, you pay a $5 cover at your local bar.

To be fair, I have never heard a cd and done anything but used it as background music; something to mostly ignore, hopefully with enough to distract me from the boredom of whatever I'm doing. If I need to concentrate on something, the music goes off. In contrast, I have been to concerts where my $200 ticket seems cheap, or where my $20 ticket seems disgustingly underpriced. I have never spent $20 on a cd and not felt ripped off, and I havent bought a cd since the 1990s.

Re:Gee, what a concept

[Registered Coward v2]

Its only in the last 200 years or so that we have had the idea that musicians should make money for a recording of their performance. Perhaps that was the real mistaken concept, and filesharing/easily created copies of musical recordings are merely bringing things back to normal. In other words, only musicians who play the kind of music that you like to listen to should make a living at their music. Those of us who like to listen to music that cannot be easily or cheaply played at live performances should be out of luck.

Not really - they could still try to sell their music; and if enough people wanted it they make a living. If not, then they either do it because they want to or find something else. If the market is too small to sustain them then they have to decide whether producing music simply for the joy of it is karmic enough. Quite frankly, if it isn't easily played live but popular you should see a surge in downloads and increase share of the levy for such artists.

Re:Gee, what a concept

[Phrogman]

Actually, I was more or less just raising the point that the ability to record music and sell the recordings was a recent achievement in history, and that perhaps it wasn't going to survive the advent of easily shared recordings.

I think the recording industry that has spawned as a result of the invention of this technology is doing a lot of musicians more harm than good. A few make lots of money (regardless of whether or not they are talented in many cases it seems), and great musicians with loads of talent go unremarked and remain unknown because the industry bombards the public with the stuff they want them to buy, not necessarily the best stuff. I don't think the music industry as a whole is really doing the average musician much good generally speaking.

Filesharing, easy and effectively free production costs for reproducing music in file format has changed everything. Now once a piece of music has been recorded, producing individual recordings for sale has become effectively cost free. Yet the industry still wants to sell them to us for a substantial profit - and like Hollywood Accounting - ensures that the industry itself garners most of the profits. The musicians see very little of the money that their music generates.

Were I professional musician, I would produce my works as best I can, put em up on the web for free, and then do my best to promote myself and hope I gain an audience. Giving away the music for free to my audience will only help spread and popularize my music. Live performances that let the listeners know they can get the music online for free will also help spread the word the music is available freely. With luck, and if I have any talent, I would expect that might help spiral into popularity without the need for a label. Of course, I would produce CDs for sale because some people would want to buy them to help support me etc, but the market is in using the free music to promote the live performances I think. I don't think the old model of "record-once, sell millions of copies to people, repackage the same tunes in different best-of collections every few years etc" is going to be viable much longer, if it still is. DRM doesn't work as manifestly demonstrated by many attempt to enforce it. It mostly alienates your fans.

Of course, I am not a professional musician and perhaps my comments are completely uninformed and erroneous. As I said, I was merely raising the point to see what others had to say in response.

Re:Gee, what a concept

[Phrogman]

Oh I don't deny something will be lost - I was raising the point to see what others thought, and I think the current model is doomed. It needs replacing. With what I am not sure.

I could point out that the recording industry more or less doomed the sheet-music industry, and now filesharing is more or less dooming the recording industry. I believe when sheet music became popular, musicians were complaining about that too.

Re:Gee, what a concept

[Knuckles]

Good points. Personally, I am mostly interested in the effects the economic and technical development has on the opportunities for musicians (or artists in general) to produce art under bearable living conditions, and on its effects on the variety of music that is able to reach or develop an audience.

I think that it is very obvious that the replacement of the sheet music industry by the recording industry lead to an increase in these opportunities, also and especially for the fringes. And while I do see the opportunities opened up by file sharing and the digitization of production, I believe that the jury is still out on whether it will ultimately enrich or deprive.

Re:Gee, what a concept

[Andorin]

"Things have changed in the last 200 years."

That's right, and they've also changed in the last ten or twenty years or so. You can no longer expect to be paid for every copy of your work that someone makes.

"We don't expect actors to use films just for advertising, and to perform their works live in a theatre."

That's correct, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with a discussion about music. Apples and oranges.

Re:Gee, what a concept

[Fatalis]

Musicians making money from performing music to live audiences. You know, the way they did for thousands of years (figuratively speaking).

Isn't this akin to asking "we existed without programmers for thousands of years, so why do we need them now"?

Re:Gee, what a concept

[jmizrahi]

Its only in the last 200 years or so that we have had the idea that musicians should make money for a recording of their performance.

Yes, it sure is shocking that nobody thought to sell music recordings before 1904. It's almost like the technology to record and play back music didn't even exist.

Honestly, since there is no way they are ever going to stop filesharing, its not a bad idea to legalize it IMHO.

That's a ridiculous argument, seeing as though they are never going to completely stop ANY crime.

File sharing is already legal

[loufoque]

Please don't confuse file sharing with illegal distribution of copyrighted material on peer-to-peer networks.

Re:File sharing is already legal

[Andorin]

The distinction is both important and meaningless. File sharing itself is not illegal, but the term is usually applied to what the protocols are used for: copyright infringement. It's a much less loaded term than "piracy" when used in a formal sense.

Re:File sharing is already legal

[Lanteran]

Beat me to it :)

Re:File sharing is already legal

[DesScorp]

The distinction is both important and meaningless. File sharing itself is not illegal, but the term is usually applied to what the protocols are used for: copyright infringement. It's a much less loaded term than "piracy" when used in a formal sense.

You can make the argument that piracy is too harsh a word for individual copyright infringment, but you could also make the argument that "file sharing" in the context of infringement is basically a way of legitimizing something illegal... a kind of PR. Calling it file sharing is a bit like calling illegal aliens "undocumented workers". It's a kind of spin.

Re:File sharing is already legal

[blai]

Do you *really* go to isohunt for isos?

Re:File sharing is already legal

[Psychotria]

The distinction is both important and meaningless. File sharing itself is not illegal, but the term is usually applied to what the protocols are used for: copyright infringement. It's a much less loaded term than "piracy" when used in a formal sense.

What are you talking about? The OP is 100% correct. The protocols (as you label them) are not used for copyright infringement. They are used to share files! I cannot believe that your message is modded informative. Your post is not informative, it's myopic. Next you'll be telling me that the primary purpose of hammers is to knock people's brains out. Which I am tempted to use my hammer on you for this purpose, but that's another story...

Re:File sharing is already legal

[Andorin]

The protocols (as you label them) are not used for copyright infringement. They are used to share files!

Fine. I left out a "usually" in my post. As in, what the protocols are usually used for. Cut back on the flamebait a bit.

Re: Levy

[beakerMeep]

What about artists though? I'd gladly pay money if it actually went to artists.

Paying companies who may or may not represent the artists I listen to, and may or may not have a oppressive contract with the artists I listen to, seems like a perfect example of rent seeking. IMO, it is extortion. Especially since you are paying it to avoid legal hassle. Maybe we should all incorporate as Music Labels and get a slice of the pie.

Really though, it comes down to ease of use and lack of DRM -- aka providing a superior experience. I have discovered that, I don't feel the need to pirate games or music now that Steam* and Amazon are around.

I'm in no hurry to legalize file sharing though, unless there's a good proposal for making sure artists actually get paid.
Also, who buys CDs anymore?

* Yes Steam has DRM, but it succeeds in the ease of use and superior experience categories at least, offering hosted (I hate the word cloud but it fits here) flexibility in exchange for the DRM.

Nobody?

[Cyberax]

Why not use objective standards, like number of 'registered downloads' or randomized popularity polls?

Re:Nobody?

[tsm_sf]

That's not gonna keep justin beiber's handler in cocaine, now, is it?

Re:Nobody?

[MyLongNickName]

Because it is sooooooo easy to game that system. We'd finally have a good economic incentive for botnets.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[Andorin]

Yeah. Hollywood's going to close down because people can freely share their movies in another country.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The US exports and produces very little, almost everything is manufactured in Asia or some developing country with cheap labour. The only thing they have is lots and lots of money, and IP lots of it. That's why they will intervene, not because of moral or legal reasons.

Cue economy sanction in 3..2..

[Lead Butthead]

You can expect all companies of the "knowledge based economy" to immediately demand their governments to impose economy sanction while their expensive landsharks in Brazil files suits in parallel to halt implementation of the said law. The bought and paid for politicians of respective governments would very faithfully demand Brazil to scrap the whole idea or risk their combined wrath.

In summary - Best of Luck guys, it's never going to fly, as the douche bags in the "knowledge base economy" cartel will make sure you fry.

I predict...

[bragr]

that as soon as they start moving towards that, lobby groups start leaning on their governments, who will start leaning on the Brazilian government, which will quickly do an about face. Gotta love those international trade agreements.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The US exports and produces very little, almost everything is manufactured in Asia or some developing country with cheap labour.

Uh-huh. That's why the US has exports over 1 trillion dollars? And believe it or not, the US does make a lot of things, just not so much in the way of junk volume good. Instead the US basically makes the parts that make up the factories that make those Asian goods.

Funny how that works.

Mmm,

[Iburnaga]

I suddenly feel very Brazilian right now. I wonder if they need Chemists in Brazil...

Re:Mmm,

[Idiomatick]

Troll? Mods have lost it. :/

Re:Mmm,

[Iburnaga]

Oh well I'm on the darkside now. Feels kind of...sinister in a good way.

Re:Mmm,

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, don't let it worry you, it just confirms what we know about moderators here. :-)

Re:Mmm,

[mangu]

They need chemists, and they're willing to pay a million Brazilian dollars.

Nice salary for a chemist.

Well the problem

[Sycraft-fu]

Is that not everything works like music. Video games would be a good example. Once you have the game, well that's what you wanted. There isn't a "live show" to go see or anything. The whole point is having a game to play. If you declare it legal to just copy games, that'll really hurt sales. Any way I can think of to deal with that just leads to decreased game quality:

1) Make it legal to share single player but require payment for multi-player. Ok well that'll just kill off single player games, which is what many people want. To the extent a game has a single player mode it'd be minimal.

2) Make it legal to copy the game, but require downloadable addons to be paid for. That would just encourage the game to be as short as possible and everything in addons. No more 40+ hours RPGs that than ALSO have a bunch of addons, it'd be more like a 2-3 hour game introduction with "addons" having to be purchased to get any real content.

3) Make it legal to copy the game, but allow patching/maintenance to cost money. In that case you'd get broken beta quality code as the "release" and then have it patched some time later for a fee.

For video games that are not of the subscription type like MMOs, a "Pay to get the content," model works the best. You give them money, they give you game. However for that to work, it needs to be required that you pay for the game up front. If you make it legal to not pay. Many people will elect not to (more than currently do).

Re:Well the problem

[airfoobar]

Create the first few missions and release them. Tell people that if they like what they see, they should pay/donate to you to create more.

Isn't that much better? We pay artists to create, not to make copies

Re:Well the problem

[Idiomatick]

A donation bar for every studio with the option to put it towards a specific game (i want a starcon sequel!). Then they build a game around the budget that they are given (by extrapolating from the first few weeks' donations).

There are some problems that definitely need to be worked out but it might be a viable option for some groups. Though I must say that it might make starting up even more difficult.

Re:Well the problem

[notknown86]

You make it sound like quality is directly proportional to cost.

It is not, which is why 90% of commercial movies, bands, software, etc in the mainstream suck so bad.

To your video game example. How about interlaced advertising as a model? Works for TV.

My argument against copyright laws is this: if they disappeared overnight, movies would still be shot; musicians would still make music; software would still be written by programmers; and yes, video games would still be created. Because all of these things are fun to someone, somewhere. Those people tend to be the true artists, and will make these things, even if the cash incentive was removed completely. Which it does not need to be, but it could easily be *reduced*.

The only question then - are we willing to slash the amount of money? For me, the answer is yes - because I'm damn sick of this blockbuster mentality that pervades most of my entertainment. Give me the work product of an artist vs the work product of a corporation any day.

Re:Well the problem

[h4rr4r]

#3 is already what we have. Buy any game for PS3 or 360, toss in it and see how many patches they need. This is for consoles that normally have less patches than the PC versions.

Re:Well the problem

[Sycraft-fu]

You know I hear that, but I don't see it. Seems like there aren't a whole lot of game companies willing to work for free. The free games out there are few and far between, and by and large quite pathetic. Everyone seems to assume that people will just create for free forgetting that people also have to eat, pay rent, those kind of things. Plus it is not feasible except extremely rarely to complete a large work by themselves. Takes too much time, too many skill sets. Well when there's no money, no company, then it is much harder to pull that all together.

Heck you even see that in open source. When people name the big projects that work well, like Firefox, you discover a great many have financial backing. A company is interested in paying for it which is why it is so organized.

If you think games should cost less, well then buy only cheap ones. There are indy titles that cost a lot less. However you can't then bitch that they should be more polished, more in depth, have better writing, better graphics, etc. If you want the game that three guys knock out at home, well you get that quality. If you want the more major title, have to pay for it.

Personally I think games are great. I buy something like Dragon Age for $50. A single play through takes like 40 highly entertaining hours. Even if I only played it once that is a bit more than a buck an hour to be amused. As it turns out it is quite replayable, I've probably played it 120 hours or so. That is just 40 cents an hour or so. Rather good rate in my opinion.

We all have to make money somehow, and if you want people to spend more time on their talents, you have to pay them. I may do computer or network support in my off hours, but only if you are a friend and only if I feel like it and only if I decide the problem doesn't take too much time. However when I get paid for it, I'll do what it takes to fix the issue. I only work at it 40 hours a week because someone is paying me. I wouldn't go and do that just for fun.

Re:Well the problem

[cheekyjohnson]

"that'll really hurt sales"

For one thing, you appear to be assuming that no pirate will ever buy the game or give money to the author(s) if they like it, which is likely wrong. Second of all, what exactly are pirates taking? Potential profit? That's the only thing I can think of, as they're obviously not taking the product itself. Ah, how our capitalistic ways are becoming more and more dated.

Re:Well the problem

[cgomezr]

In Spain it's legal to share music and movies since we pay a levy for it that goes to a society of authors (which in theory should distribute it among authors, although in practice it is a corrupt and monopolistic entity, but that's another story). But sharing software is illegal. They could do something similar in Brazil.

Re:Well the problem

[wvmarle]

I have a preference to pay for what has been created, not for what they are going to create (or not). Movie ticket, concert ticket (basically reproduction as they play pre-written music), etc. Donation also as in "I like what you have created now" not as in "please go and create more".

Re:Well the problem

[airfoobar]

If you want to pay the artists for the missions they HAVE already created, there's no-one stopping you. What I'm proposing gives you that freedom -- the system right now is, either you pay to get a copy or gtfo.

After all, open is always better.

Re:Well the problem

[wvmarle]

If you want to pay the artists for the missions they HAVE already created, there's no-one stopping you.

Well... as a matter of fact, many publishers do stop me from paying them. By either simply refusing to sell to me (for not being in the correct locality), or releasing it in what are to me useless and obsolete formats (e.g. CD, DVD).

E.g. I like Japanese anime - but the only way to pay is to buy overpriced DVDs, and then only if they are released in your locality. Usually not, or only after long waits. And when buying a DVD you know that Music I'm out at the moment, I used to listen to a lot of music. Lost it a bit. There again to pay the artist the only option was/is to buy CDs. I'm done with CDs. I bought a fair share, often at concerts (then the artist actually gets money for them - mainly unknown acts).

And if you really want to buyer CDs then you're limited to what your local store happens to stock. And that's often limited to the current charts, and golden oldies.

Re:Well the problem

[airfoobar]

I was talking about my proposal. I completely agree with you that as things are right now, publishers control who buys what and where, and they are being dicks about it too.

If however the developers/artists release a portion of their work for everyone to download and copy and ask their fans for donations in order to produce the remainder, you can give them money on whatever terms you like: if you prefer to pay them for the work they've already done, you are free to do so; if you want to give them money because you want them to produce more, that's also a possibility.

I'm not sure if I'm expressing this very well, but I think it's quite a feasible business model. I'll attempt a more intuitive example:
You want to produce a TV series. You put down some money yourself to create a pilot episode, and also spend money advertising your product (no difference from how it's usually done, so far). Then, you release this pilot episode on the internet for free, and ask the people who watch it for donations to create the next episode. If enough people like it and want to watch the rest, they'll give you money; if they hate it, they won't.

I'm not describing "pay what you want". It's "if you liked this and/or want to see more, then make a donation for $xx".

Re:Well the problem

[gagol]

You mean like http://vodo.net/ is doing? They do not do so well, but proved it's possible to create without millions.

Re:Well the problem

[wvmarle]

Mind share may be a problem there. You need lots of people that know about the site, that go and look at stuff, and tell their friends about it.

I'm afraid not many people know about the existence of the web site, or know about the mere idea, the possibility of indie TV/movie releases, the idea of legally downloading stuff and being able to actually make some payment for it.

I do think that this will be one of the main ways to distribute/promote stuff in the future. But that future is not near at all. Too much has to change for it to take off. But as soon as critical mass has been built up, it may just work and work very well.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[ascari]

Brazil has a stellar record of not caring much what the US thinks or does. They are true pioneers of "un-American" practices in many areas, like reducing dependency on oil through ethanol fuels, requiring as tough visa/immigration requirements of Americans as the US does of other countries and so on. If anybody can pull it off it's the Brazilians.

Re:Facts they forgot to mention

[shutdown -p now]

There's one other point worth mentioning with respect to "tecno brega". From WP article on it:

Music of the genre is created primarily through remixing and reworking songs from popular music and music from the eighties ... Often producing their music with little concern for copyright, the music is "born free."

So, yeah. If you do little but remix existing works, and without paying for the use of that source material, I can see how you can make a living even with the meager profits you'd get. But I don't see how it can possibly be a sustainable business model if everyone starts doing that. You'll run out of stuff to remix!

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[russ1337]

The US exports and produces very little, almost everything is manufactured in Asia or some developing country with cheap labour. The only thing they have is lots and lots of money, and IP lots of it. That's why they will intervene, not because of moral or legal reasons.

really? The data does not support that conclusion:

The top ten categories of exports from USA to other countries in dollar value were:
1. Civilian aircraft $74 billion, up 1.3% from 2007 (5.7% of total US exports)
2. Semiconductors $50.6 billion, up 0.3% (3.9%)
3. Passenger cars $49.6 billion, up 13.3% (3.9%)
4. Medicinal, dental and pharmaceutical preparations $40.4 billion, up 15% (3.1%)
5. Other vehicle parts and accessories $39.9 billion, down 10.1% (3.1%)
6. Other industrial machinery $38.1 billion, down 0.6% (3%)
7. Fuel oil $34.9 billion, up 124.1% (2.7%)
8. Organic chemicals $33.4 billion, up 5.5% (2.6%)
9. Telecommunications equipment $32.9 billion, up 4.6% (2.6%)
10. Plastic materials $31.6 billion, up 8.7% (2.5%).

http://www.importexportbook.com/what-does-the-usa-import-and-export/

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[russ1337]

Interesting numbers but aren't they a bit useless if you don't either compare them to imports or to the exports of another country?

I mean, 7 cubic foot per litre is all nice and well but without context it's pretty damn unhelpful/useless.

I wouldn't call the 3rd largest exporter 'very little'. Plus it's only 200M behind the leader.

1 People's Republic of China $1,204,000,000,000 2009 est.
2 Germany $1,159,000,000,000 2009 est.
3 United States $1,046,000,000,000 2009 est.
4 Japan $542,300,000,000 2009 est.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_exports

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[russ1337]

woops. decimal place fail

Re:Facts they forgot to mention

[Idiomatick]

Stronger - Kanye West
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - Daft Punk
Cola Bottle Baby - Edwin Birdsong

I'm sure someone can think of a longer chain but that is the most famous one I think.

Spanish

[dandart]

I hear the Spanish have this already. Their policy is to add a premium to MP3 players, phones, computers etc of a few euros, so that they can download any copyrighted music to it and play it for free whilst paying for it using the premium! Clever, huh?

Won't work

[Sycraft-fu]

A large part of the problem is that for a lot of cool games, it takes a large team working on it. It isn't a guy, it is 20 or 50 or 100 people working together. This means it costs a good deal to do. Also the costs of getting everything together and making part of a game can be a very large part of the cost. So unless you want all games to go down to mid to low end indy quality, that isn't happening. Not saying there's anything wrong with those too, but I like bigger, more polished games as well.

Then there's the problem that who is going to be willing to donate for potential future content? If the developers say "Ok we'll make more but it is going to cost us $1,000,000. So as soon as we have that many donations, we'll start work." Like hell I'm paying in to that. What happens if they don't get enough? What happens if they release something that sucks? I'm not putting down money before I see what I'm going to get.

Of course if you flip it around, release somethign and ask for donations, then you have the problem that people are cheapskates. Games have done that, a "pay what you want," sort of thing and the results are pathetic. It averages $2-3 per copy if you are lucky. So using that system they'd hardly get any money. They might get even less if it were commonplace since the people who make large donations to show support for these rare events might not do so.

What it comes down to, is when you pay for a game you ARE playing for your share in their creating it. They spend $5 million, $20 million, $50 million, whatever to bring together all the designers, programmers, artists, animators, musicians, voice actors, testers, and so on needed to make that game. They put up the money and make a (hopefully) good game, if you think it looks good you kick in some cash and get to play it.

I don't want a society where only the rich can have really nice things because only they can hire people to make them. I like it where people can get together to create on a large project, and a bunch of normal people can kick in a little bit if they like it to buy their copy of it.

Re:Won't work

[airfoobar]

Well, my suggestion was:
1) They create a few missions, release them.
2) You play them, like them. Donate to create more.
3) They create a few more missions.
4) Goto 2

So, you do get to play before you buy. Also, I don't see why more polished games shouldn't be possible with this system -- the best products will draw more attention and will get more donations.

Note that what I am suggesting is not "pay what you want". That's an entirely different business model, which is a crap shoot imho. When I say "donate" I basically mean something like "preorder".

And I really believe what I'm saying definitely does not imply "a society where only the rich can have really nice things because only they can hire people to make them". Quite the opposite, in fact! Those who can afford to will pay for stuff to be created, but after it's done no copyright is needed to protect the work, because the artists have already been compensated. In other words, art can be released directly in the public domain for everyone--rich or poor--to enjoy, which is surely not the case right now.

I think this sort of system is quite beautiful, tbh, and may be the only way forward as far as I can see.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[PopeRatzo]

No more HollyWood films in ...3...2...1

Don't tease me and promise something you can't deliver. I just don't know what I'd do if there were no more Eat, Pray, Loves.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[PopeRatzo]

I've spent a fair amount of time in Brazil in the past decade. If you wanted to position yourself to live in a country that's going to be in really good shape over the next few decades, with good quality of life and vibrant economies, you could do a lot worse than learning Portuguese and moving to Sao Paolo or Campinas or any of several smaller cities in Brazil.

There really seems to be a progressive spirit and socially responsible direction to the way Brazil is heading. There are still plenty of problems, as you would expect in a country so large and so relatively young. But they seem to be proving that you can be a developing country that will compete in the world economy without selling out entirely to corporate interests. It's not entirely paradise, but there are places in Brazil where you'd think you died and gone to heaven. There are opportunities there. And even in Rio de Janeiro, where there are horribly poor slums and rampant corruption, there are indications that things might turn around. They're smart enough to be taking the bits of European Socialism that work best, and the bits of capitalism that seem to work, and not worrying about what America and Morgan Chase think.

Brazil is destined to be a success story, I think. And a good example for other South American countries. At least it'll be a success as long as the US can keep from sending assassins to take out any political leader who dares speak to Hugo Chavez, and putting in some military dictator so the corporations can rape Brazil too.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[h4rr4r]

Yet, Germany has a population only of only 81 million, compared to the USA at 330million, the Chinese at over a Billion and the Japanese at 127 million. What ever it is they are doing, we need to start copying them. Perhaps it is all those worker friendly laws.

Taxes

[hagnat]

yay, more taxes for me to pay as an excuse for the government to justify the media corporations why it fail so bad to fight music piracy... i hope they stop the annoying anti-piracy commercials after that

mod me troll if you want, but as a brazilian i am not that happy about this piece of law which adds more taxes than we already have to pay

Re:Taxes

[h4rr4r]

How exactly can the government be expected to "fight music piracy" any better?

I would expect that in any reasonable society protecting a government granted monopoly from noncommercial infringement would rank pretty low on the scale of stuff to worry about. I would expect in a society with as bad a wealth distribution, and all that entails, as Brazil would make that even lower on the scale of stuff to worry about.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[h4rr4r]

Unless they fix their wealth distribution don't expect too much. I would love to see them do well, but when a couple people ride around in helicoptors and children starve in favelas, it leads to crime, corruption and many of the other problems that plague latin America.

The USA will do anything it can to make sure Brazil is safe for US corporations, knocking off a legally elected politician is only the tip of that iceberg.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[h4rr4r]

We did the same thing to the British. That nice picture of Sam Addams everyone knows is only famous because his shirt was made on a "pirated" loom.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[demonlapin]

Perhaps it's that the US is such a physically large country that it consumes quite a lot of its own produce. I'd be more interested to see the numbers if you took out within-EU exports from Germany and US exports to Canada and Mexico.

levy

[bigdavex]

Also, there is a big push underway, with widespread support -- even from some artists groups -- to legalize file sharing in exchange for a small levy (~$1.74/month) on your broadband connection.

Fuck that. I don't infringe copyright. Don't steal my money. No new, undiscovered band is going to see this money. It's no different than taking money from the subscribers and giving it to Microsoft, because someone might download MS Office.

Re: Levy

[harlows_monkeys]

What is a little weird about this model is that it ultimately creates a quasi-governmental funding basis for the arts: everyone pays a flat fee that gives them unfettered access to all the world's music (film, etc.) - then, who decides how that money is allocated?

Yes, that's the problem with that solution. It can be shown by the mathematical economists that for goods with certain attributes, a free market is an optimal way to determine how those goods should be produced and distributed. Unfortunately, goods like music lack the necessary attributes, leading to what economists call a "market failure" when you try to use a free market to handle music.

There are two known viable solutions to this kind of market failure. One is to artificially, by force of law, imbue things like music copies with the properties that physical goods have that make them work with a free market. The free market then can determine which music to produce, based on consumer preferences, and funnel the money for that to artists, and all are sort of happy. However, with this solution consumers are paying more than the marginal cost of production for their copies, which is more than they "should" be paying, and that leads to underconsumption. So the tradeoff here is that we get underconsumption, but the good side is that we let the free market deal with resource allocation--no need for government interference other than to provide the legal framework that gives copies the necessary attributes. This is the approach the current copyright system takes in most places.

The other known viable solution is to make copying legal, so that consumers do get their copies for essentially zero, and can consume all the music they wish to consume. Artists are paid by the government, possibly via a special tax on something hopefully at least somewhat correlated with music consumption (an internet tax is a decent approximation for this), or perhaps just out of some general "cultural improvement" budget. The problem with this solution is that someone has to decide which artists get funded. If it is not done right, you could end up with a Bureau of Music that decides what stuffy old safe music gets funded. Better would be to find some way to measure what people are actually choosing to copy and allocate the money accordingly.

Personally, I think it is time to give the second approach a serious test. The first approach worked well when copying was hard enough that most people obeyed the law. Copying is easy now, and far too many people are willing to cheat and get their music for zero relying on the honest people to keep the artists going for the leeches. Time to recognize that use of music is nearly universal and treat it as a public good to be supported by the public.

Re: Levy

[MyLongNickName]

Fair compromise? Why in the hell should I be taxed $21/year because you are too cheap to buy music? What if I don't buy/share music on the internet? Why do I have to subsidize you?

Re: Levy

[daveime]

Why should I be taxed $N a year for roads, when I don't even have a car.
Why should I be taxed $N a year for social security, when I'm not even sick.
Why should I be taxed $N a year for overseas conflict, when I'm a pacifist.

Because life isn't fair.

But it's a hell of a lot fairer if everyone shares the load, rather than playing haves and have-nots like a bunch of selfish wankers.

Plus, if it removes N lawyers from business, that's always a bonus.

Re: Levy

[MyLongNickName]

Hi... you notice a theme here... the items you listed are provided by the government for the common good. Royalties to an artist don't meet those criteria.

Thanks for playing.

Re: Levy

[Jane Q. Public]

You have already pointed out why the second option won't work. I know you presented it as a "problem", but it's more than just a problem. It's a prohibitive inevitability. I don't necessarily mean a "government" bureau. But if ANYBODY other than the market chooses the music, there will be none worth listening to.

Re: Levy

[Omestes]

Copyright is an item proved by the government for a common good.

Thanks for playing!

Re: Levy

[MyLongNickName]

Wow is that quite a swerve. You go from copyright as a protection for content creators to "each citizen is required to pay a tax to guarantee the livelihood of those creators". Sorry, that is a logical leap. Thanks for playing!

Re:levy

[RAMMS EIN]

``

Also, there is a big push underway, with widespread support -- even from some artists groups -- to legalize file sharing in exchange for a small levy (~$1.74/month) on your broadband connection.

Fuck that. I don't infringe copyright. Don't steal my money.''

While I agree that it isn't fair to make you pay for something you don't use, I still think there is something to this proposal. Consider the alternatives. One alternative I am aware of is the system as implemented in the USA: distributing copyrighted works without permission is illegal, but still widespread. In response, increasingly draconian measures are being instated by the government, and being accused of distributing or obtaining copyrighted works without permission leads to either high court fees, or high settlement payments. Moreover, government resources are used in at least some copyright cases. Is that the society you want to live in? Remember, all those things affect you, too, even if you (like me) don't participate in unauthorized copying of copyrighted works.

I realize that proposed-brazillian-system vs. actual-US-system is a false dichotomy, so if you can find an alternative that is better than either, especially if there is a chance that it will actually be implemented, I would like to hear about that, too.

Re: Levy

[Lemmy Caution]

The careers of composers for almost 800 years of Western history contradicts this claim.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[rmezzari]

Ok Mr PopeRatzo.I'm a brazilian, and I live in Brazil. This contry is a complete mess and a huge pile of crap. I've spent a fair amount of time in the US in the past decade. So, I was wondering: Since you think that this stupid hellhole of a country is so great and filled with so many opportunities, let's make a deal. I will trade my brazilian citizenship for your american citizenship. You move here, I move there. You can even have my job, wich is a very good one for brazilian standards. Deal?

Put your money where your mouth is, or else stop spreading nonsense as saying that this CRAP of a country is any good. I hate this hellhole, and have been trying to go to the US legally for about 4 years. You guys have NO idea how good and plantyful your lives are.

Actually, is not true to say that Brazil is 100% useless because is great for sexual tourism (the hookers are plenty and beautiful) but that's it.

waitaminute

[uniquegeek]

This is the country my brother just moved to... and he had to ditch all his LEGAL DVDs because they were the wrong country code, and would be illegal there.

Re:waitaminute

[cpghost]

Why would they be illegal? Just because they have the wrong region code? Even in Europe (region 2), you can order region 1 DVDs from the US, legally; import them, legally (Customs have no problems with that), and watch them, legally, on your multiregion-enabled DVD player. Maybe that player is not really legal because it MAY infringe on some agreements required by the DVD consortium to enforce region codes, but alternatively to a multiregion player, it would be totally legal to import a region 1 player from the US... So, is Brazil acting a lot more restrictively than the EU?

This is old news for Canada...

[gagol]

We have a levy tax from like over ten years. Every blank media, Ipod, hard drive have a small levy tax. I known artists and they receive checks every three months based on their share of album sales. What that means, artists receive their fair share of money AND you cannot get sued if you, or your children, happen to download music. Learn more from Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy . Winter have it's advantages!

"US Diplomatic Pressure"

[mykos]

It's sad that the word "diplomacy" was once associated with peace and understanding. In this country, it's synonymous with bullying and threats.

The truth about copyright

[devent]

Was copyright invented by writers and artists, to protect themselves?
No. Actually, it was invented by publishers, to preserve an information ownership monopoly based on a government censorship policy.
Do musicians, writers, and artists depend on copyright to earn a living?
The vast majority of musicians, writers, and artists will never see a dime of copyright royalties in their lives.
Is copying a copyrighted work the same as stealing it?
If I steal your bicycle, now you have no bicycle. If I copy your song, now we both have it.
Would creativity dry up without copyright?
If there had been no worthwhile or enduring artistic work produced before copyright, this would be a more plausible argument. But the world before modern copyright was hardly a barren cultural desert: Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, J.S. Bach, Li Bo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo...

Inform yourself on http://questioncopyright.org/faq, as a bonus you can download a free movie Sita Sings the Blues

Re:The truth about copyright

[Andorin]

If it weren't for copyright, record labels wouldn't bother investing in a very few marketable musicians while shoving anyone else out of the market. Those very few marketable [m]usicians wouldn't be famous due to heavy advertising, and no one would come to their concerts. In this case, copyright benefits the people who allow artists to perform, organises stage hire, ticket sales, promotion, legal issues etc (basically, the record labels).
If it weren't for copyright, book publishers would have no way to recouperate their losses from the writer's payment without having to actually adjust to modern times and change their business models, as opposed to forcing everyone else to adapt to their wants.

Fixed that for you.

If I steal your bicycle, I've taken something that isn't mine without permission, and it's disadvantaged you in some way. If I copy your song, I've taken something that isn't mine without permission, and it's disadvantaged the general public in some way. If I copy your money, I've taken something that isn't mine without permission, and it's disadvantaged the general public in some way...

Surely you're capable of understanding that the harm from actual theft is degrees of magnitude higher than the harm from copyright infringement. Additionally, nothing has been taken, only copied. Lrn2distinguish.

Yeah, cheap/free technology to record artistic works, reproduce them, and distribute them to millions of people via the internet didn't kill artists in the 16th century, therefore it must have no affect on artists today!

Do you mean to assert that Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, J.S. Bach, Li Bo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and other famous artists wouldn't have created their works if they had the Internet during their times? If you don't, the quoted section of your post is pointless and borders on trolling.

Re:The truth about copyright

[devent]

If I steal your bicycle, I've taken something that isn't mine without permission, and it's disadvantaged you in some way. If I copy your song, I've taken something that isn't mine without permission, and it's disadvantaged the general public in some way. If I copy your money, I've taken something that isn't mine without permission, and it's disadvantaged the general public in some way...

Interesting you mention that. So by your logic, if I copy a work and release it the artist is hurt like the "general public" in your example. That would be true if not for the world we live in. The worst thing an artist (or author) is suffering is the unknown. He needs the big publisher to make him visible in the market, they promote him. For this promotion they sign every right away that they have on their work.

With the internet this promotion can every artist take in his/her hand. Just release your work for free to everyone and in a few weeks you have the same promotion effect like with the big publisher (actually the promotion effect is at magnitude more). What you have to loose? Either you sign every right that you have on your work to the big publisher or you release your work for free.

That is a no brainer. Let me repeat that: Either you sign every right you have on your work for about 100 years to the big publisher or you release it for free to everyone.

20 years ego you had no choice, only the big publisher had the record studios and the commercial power to promote you. Now everyone have broadband and a computer. Every kid in his basement have the same publishing power as the big publisher. Just give the kids your work and watch as your name is going to be known around the world.

Re:The truth about copyright

[kfogel]

Not a conspiracy theory, just history taken from primary and secondary sources. See http://questioncopyright.org/promise#history .

Counterfeiting money is unrelated to copyright: see http://questioncopyright.org/faq#counterfeiting .

i would like you to stop watching tv

[circletimessquare]

because as soon as tv came along, all of my favorite radio dramas went off the air

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_drama

so television obviously means the death of creativity. plus, i want to hold all of technological change hostage because my favorite media is not working the way it worked before new media came along

you are forcing my favorite form of artistic expression to die, just because you want to watch tv. that is so unfair of you, why should i be out of luck just because your new media came along and killed by beloved radio dramas? why does television mean that radio drama actors can't make a living anymore?

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[jewishbaconzombies]

And hey - their open IP laws will make those nasty death squads go away in the public mindset.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_squad#Brazil

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[teumesmo]

If the US loses the Brazilian presidential elections this year, we(Brazilians) will be in world of shit. I have already seen a few minor US news articles in which Brazil is is honored with the hip tag "enemy state", and grouped with Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Iran and Libya. It should be interesting observing a "crisis of democracy" first hand, notice how government had to contest to audit the Brazilian voting machines a while ago.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[teumesmo]

Have you tried either either Australia or Canada? Sure, it's not as flashy as say, San Francisco, but due to their minuscule demographic density, they're much more receptive to taking in strays. To my knowledge, US identities are a breeze to forge, and accents are just a fact of life in the US, don't let strict VISA rules keep you oppressed in unholy backwaters.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

FWIW - Here's an article on recent improvements in brasilian agriculture from The Economist. I thought it was a pretty good article, as far as it went, fortunately some of the comments flesh out some of the parts that the article glossed over. Not that many people here are likely to become corporate farmers in Brazil, but it gives you a sense of things.

US diplomatic pressure

[stimpleton]

"assuming US diplomatic pressure doesn't interfere"

US Diplomatic Pressure - otherwise known as an M1 Abrams Tank.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[modecx]

Actually, is not true to say that Brazil is 100% useless because is great for sexual tourism (the hookers are plenty and beautiful) but that's it.

And most of them have even had their penises removed. Bonus.

ACTA y USA vs the Mundial...

[purpleraison]

Seriously, I live in the USA and am ashamed at the 'anti-piracy' efforts the government provides to the entertainment industry (...oh yeah, and lawyers). If only the government did this for truly productive professions like medicine, dental, education????? Seriously, the US says "fuck you!!" to teachers, but is willing to throw people in jail because they download a shitty Metallica song?? WTF is wrong with the USA these days?? How many black Americans are in jail at this moment because of this policy?

ANSWER: to fucking many!

USA is ferd!!!!! (ferd = fucked for those who don't know) .... We need a third party to ass-fuck both the republicans (mouth-fuck palin), and the democrats. Even tho palin is like 100 and shit... i'd tap that just to say I ferd hitlers wife, and came on her glasses :)

That's too much to ask

[symbolset]

Give some of this money to artists? That's crazy talk. The media companies have expenses and the artists have signed contracts for net after expenses. The levy could be over $100 per Brazilian (which would of course be hundreds of $Brazilians) and there would still be no net profit. The media giants are going to need vast buckets of money to pay their lawers to sue each other over the fractions, and probably have so little left they'll be buying their cocaine by the ounce rather than the kilo. They'll be so improverished they'll probably have to procure second-tier hookers to snort their blow off of (artist management entertainment expense). To expect them to have money left to pay artists is unfair.

And artists with no contract? Why would they get money even if their content is an appreciable proportion of the shared content? They don't have representation.

The question I have is, is $1.74 a month fair? No doubt once the media conglomerates have gained a levy tap on connectivity they'll need to open it a bit to improve their profits and "right size" the payment - which is only fair since they contribute so much to the culture and bandwidth is improving over time. Under two bucks a month per connected citizen seems far too little to preserve our culture and enterprise-class multisite archival of these priceless works doesn't come cheap. They're probably agreeing to this agregiously unfair compensation scheme as a foundation for their right to levy fees as tax. Once it's in place it's natural they'll push for fair compensation rather than this modest placeholder.

DRM is essential to preserving the motivation of these artists to create. If there was no DRM, common folk might be stealing their output rather than studio executives. That's hardly fair. Artists are motivated to preserve the studio executives' right to consume vast quantities of cocaine off the asses of the best hookers their art can motivate their fans to pay for. That's why they create these timeless works of art to preserved by copyright in perpetuity protected by the conglomerates they assigned their rights to in return for a modest advance payment. It's a selfless dedication to the indulgence of the media moguls' decadent tastes that motivates the modern artist to create the works we know and love. What every garage band craves is that their agent and his media contact fly to their venues in a decent jet rather than trudge it out on the aging decrepit rented tour bus with them, stinking of stale beer and groupie sweat.

Obviously the fair thing to do is to grant the media cooperative direct access to the national bank so they can levy their compensation against the GDP as they feel is appropriate. Also, remote management of every device capable of playing or recording audio or video should be required so that they can measure and account for usage. To be completely fair, remote access to every camera on every device so they can monitor the environment of net-enabled people is best. That way they can judge whether environmental music fees are due in domestic venues. One can never tell if people are publishing car audio for example, unless they can survey whether the windows are down in the car by looking throught the iPhone webcam.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[phantomfive]

lol that's the most hilarious description of latin (and Brazilian) America I've ever seen. Don't forget to add that they have flying cockroaches! Scary.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[alexandre_ganso]

What astonishes me is how this country can export such crap as their cars....

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[oldmac31310]

OK, so I'm not PopeRatzo, but frankly I'm tempted by your offer. You think the US is so great? It has many great things going for it certainly, but seriously it has many really grave problems that remain unaddressed. Same goes for Brazil. Or every other country. I'm in a situation at present that sees my future for the next couple of years, of being a few dollars away from living on the street. It is only thanks to friends, family and a great employer that I'm getting by. I am immigrant living in the US. Legal status is not a passport to middleclass wealth and comfort. If you have a bit of bad luck or a negative change of circumstances in this country it can be really harsh and unmerciful. I think if you changed your tone you might actually do better in your own country.

Google owns blogger

[oldmac31310]

This is an interesting notion to me. Google owns blogger and there are countless Brazilian blogspot.com blogs linking music files on Rapid Share MegaUpload etc. (there is a lot of really great stuff, particularly Reggae). People in Brazil are behaving as if it were already legal to share files so it seems the Brazilian gubment is simply adapting to something they can't change. This filesharing thing causes no social unrest, perhaps soothes the impoverished by providing free entertainment. A massive win for the beleaguered government of a difficult country. It can hardly be a philosophical question for the politicians, merely a matter of pragmatism. The question I have is how does Google (or Yougle if you prefer!) fit in? I'm often surprised that so many of these blogs survive. I suppose if someone linked fucking Lady Ga Ga tracks there would be a take down notice immediately and the blog would disappear. Legalize it!

Re:It's FUCKING Brazi!! Hole in the ground piss po

[kdemetter]

filesharing is not stealing.

As one of my favorite indies put it...

[KingAlanI]

"I can’t buy a mansion in Hollywood, but that was never the goal. I get by comfortably and will keep making music until I die. High five! What more could I ask for?"

from the http://mclars.com/site/blog/guest-blog-on-dave-kuseks-site/ blog post of his, which expands upon these concepts

Re: Katrina

[KingAlanI]

+1 funny
another funny thing is, the original version of When The Levee Breaks (Kansas Joe McCoy) is the only Free song I have in my music collection (maybe the 1971 Zeppelin rework should be public domain by now, but a 1929 blues song definitely should be.)

* I have some songs from artists that speak favorably of torrents (as well as those who speak unfavorably; the music is alright still), but this is the only track that's PD or CC.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[yyxx]

Actually, that makes them quite American; that's the same way the US used to behave towards the UK.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[yyxx]

What ever it is they are doing, we need to start copying them.

That's pretty simple: they keep the value of their currency low. Drop the value of the US dollar to half what it's now and US products will sell around the world like hotcakes. And at the same time, we'll import much less from China and the EU.

Re:It's FUCKING Brazi!! Hole in the ground piss po

[Anonymous Coward]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20015493-261.html

has more weight than you. Will they go to jail, or prison? Thay may wish they had just
stolen" stuff. As it is, they are in for a world of hurt. They can't hude anymore. Maybe you're on list. Or maybe this time you got lucky. Do you really want to argue it's not stealing then? You'll be crying to mama before it's over, and yes, your life being a living hell is the point.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[maxwell demon]

Perhaps it's that the US is such a physically large country that it consumes quite a lot of its own produce. I'd be more interested to see the numbers if you took out within-EU exports from Germany and US exports to Canada and Mexico.

While it's not exactly what you've asked, according to CIA factbook, the EU as a whole has exports of $1.952 trillion and about 492 million people. That means about $4000 per person. On contrast, the U.S. has exports of about $3200 per person (calculated from the numbers earlier in the thread).

Re:Who gets a cut?

[Bert64]

If filesharing is legal, there will be no reason to hide the act of filesharing...
Thus it becomes easier to generate statistics about what's being shared, so who gets the cut should be based on how widespread their media gets shared. If noone wants your crap, you get nothing.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[superflit]

Well I lived in Brazil all my life and Now (been 8 months) I am in USA.
Since my gran..gran father came from Italy in 1818 Brazil is the country of Future.
It is and forever will be the country of future...
But the future will never come.
Brazil is very corrupt and has the major interest rate in the world (10% )
Do USA has its problems: yes
But they are very minimal compared to Brazil.

The tax is something like 35% of the GDP.
And yet we have to pay for everything (health insurance,schools,security).
Yes we have these services "free" but they are worth nothing..

I know it is easy to Bash USA and be "modern" but USA still is one of the best place to live and to have opportunity (if you are willing to work and study).

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[PopeRatzo]

This contry is a complete mess and a huge pile of crap.

Whiners aren't good for any society. Maybe it'll improve once you leave.

My point is that Brazil has come an amazingly long way in a very short time. It's not perfect, but they're moving in the right direction.

The US, on the other hand, is a second-rate nation.

See? The grass is always greener...

By the way, you didn't give us one reason why you don't like Brazil. You just say "it's a pile of crap". Are you sure you're not lying about being from Brazil?

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[johnnyrio]

Spoken like someone who seriously has no clue whatsoever about anything related to life outside of the states. Bravo.

I'm an American citizen who has been living in Brazil for nearly 14 years now. I've been lucky enough to witness the country rise economically from the ashes of a dictatorship and prosper during a time of world recession. Brazil isn't without its share of problems just like any other country on the planet, but over the last decade has proved itself a world power and economically stable environment ripe for investment opportunities and growth. The social divisions are still quite stark but there's finally an emerging middle-class to slowly balance things out. Inflation is under control and the economy is very strong. Brazil is a self-sufficient giant poised to make great strides in the coming years.

This attitude of "The USA will do anything it can to make sure BLAH BLAH BLAH" is exactly what got you owned in 2001, and then again in 2008 when your economy collapsed due in large part to greed and gross financial misconduct. This idea that you can walk into any country on the planet and enforce your will and ideals on a population is laughable at this point. Nobody wants a United States of America World Police Order. Your policies back home do not apply abroad son. The one which you stated about knocking off politicians is clearly a sick joke because we all know how well that worked with Hugo Chavez. Any other bright ideas? How about instead of posting your baseless tripe on forums you instead get a clue and focus your attention more on your own homeland instead of spreading this obviously poorly educated crap around the internet. You are making yourself look like a childish fool, meanwhile your unemployment rate is skyrocketing, your housing industry is in a state of free-fall, and your government is so obsessed with in-fighting that over the next couple of years nothing other than bickering will get done while the population suffers. My suggestion to Americans in general is to focus on your own problems first before you attempt to enforce your will on another unwilling population. The harder you push the more they'll resist. In a country where drug offenders end up doing more time than murderers, child molesters and rapists, there's clearly something very wrong. How is the American system of social class any different than that of Brazil? Your billionaire CEO class has absolutely no clue nor care in the world about the lower middle-class blue collar worker. It's the poor who grease the wheels of the machine as the rich get richer.

My wife has been studying law for the last 13 years since we've been living here. She's told me repeatedly any time this subject of "internet law" comes up that there are actually laws on the books, but there's no implementation because there's no way to enforce them. Things like bandwidth caps and isp monitoring are considered unconstitutional and rarely used outside of investigating a corrupt politician. Passing a law does not mean it will be enforced and rarely is.

One of my favorite things about living in this country is that there are certain freedoms that Americans could only dream of. Ever been pulled over for a traffic violation? 5 mph over the speed limit? Maybe a rolling stop at an intersection where nobody is around? That crap doesn't exist here. There aren't any traffic cops. They do use a system of radars in some areas to control the speed, other than that they are non-existent. Once in a while they'll run what's called a "blitz" where they'll close off 3 of the 4 lanes of traffic to check paperwork related to valid licenses, insurance, and paid taxes on the car, but it's rare. Mostly they are interested in fighting the drug dealers and surviving on the streets from day to day. They don't get paid enough to give a crap about whether or not you are obeying the traffic laws. The best part is that they aren't needed. It isn't a lawless wasteland where everyone is driving around like Carmageddon. It's an honor

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[mangu]

I'm Brazilian and have lived most of my life here, although I've also been in rather long business trips, months at a time, to the USA, France, and Sweden.

Comparing Brazil to the USA and Europe depends on where you are economically. Upper-middle class people are better off in Brazil, lower-middle class are worse off. Rich people are well off everywhere and it sucks being poor anywhere.

As for the future, I'm not so optimistic about Brazil. The reason is that the Brazilian Constitution is a piece of shit. It's 300+ articles long, crammed with conflicting rules, grants plenty of benefits to everyone without establishing corresponding obligations.

With no distinction between basic rights and benefits, the Brazilian judiciary is bogged down in countless demands from everyone. One example of a very stupid "right" is that students are allowed to pay half price at any entertainment event. This means that, either you get some fake ID which says you're a student, or you pay double price to watch a movie, sports event, etc.

Making it worse, Brazilian courts are based on Roman law, vs, the Anglo-Saxon system used in the US. This means most trials are decided by the judge alone, without a jury, which causes rampant corruption. The "solution" to this problem in the last years has been to raise judges salaries to absurd levels, typically a judge gets ten times as much as a lawyer will get working for a private firm.

The reasoning behind this is that, in theory, if a judge gets a high enough salary he will have no motivation to be corrupt. In practice, instead of attracting lawyers who are actually interested in becoming a judge, this assures that it's the most greedy who will become judges.

A court system where idealist lawyers argue the case while a judge whose only interest in sitting in the bench is money makes all decisions cannot end well.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[teumesmo]

Bambi eyed indoctrinates need no reason, discussion is outside programming parameters, which, by the way, is beside the point, if you "need"(psychologically) to leave, you should leave, an epic struggle with yourself should never be taken lightly.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[teumesmo]

Well, certainly you didn't think all that coke that flows through Brazil to USA and Europe was "duty free", did you? Political assassinations in Brazil are a thing from the past, from when Brazil was a "close" ally with the USA.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[lsatenstein]

Most of Latin America are moving away from the hollywood glitz of the USA. We foreigners don't like the "Corporate American Greed", and how it is exemplified on USA TV. Did you know that in the past 10 years, 50,000 Canadians became American Citizens, but 500,000 Americans became Canadian Citizens. USA is a country that does not care for it's citizens. It cares for big business and big profits, on the backs of it's citizens. Obama is the first bit of intelligence I have seen in the white house since I was a teenager. Clinton was second. I am today 70. My son who lived in NY state for 10 years, and in Florida for 3 other, is happy to no longer live in the USA. When I asked why, his reasons were simple. USA does not care for its citizens, and really does not care the the sick who can be cured, die, and therefore they care even less for others. Irac was a war to guarantee Oil to the USA. Afganistan is to sell Armaments, and who cares how many soldiers die off shore. Profits and jobs are worth it. I guess I am too cynical.

Where does the money go?

[imakemusic]

Who gets the money from that levy?

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[jewishbaconzombies]

Not really, it's just the police reducing the people they're supposed to protect. But if you read that neat-o link you'd know that.

Re:Pre-donation

[Phrogman]

Yeah, I like the concept. Not sure it would work but I like the concept a lot.

Make a good demo to get people excited by the game and as you said, if they want more, they have to commit to a donation. Its really more like a pre-order to my mind.

"Like what you just played? If you want more, send us $20 towards future development costs. We estimate we need another 34,500 people to donate and we will begin production. If we don't receive the money we require, your money will be automatically returned to you by Sept 14th 2012, less the cost of producing the check we will send you and the cost of mailing it. Join our mailing list to receive automatic updates on the fundraising and our message board to have your say on how the game is shaping up or to provide feedback on the demo itself."

It only takes 50,000 players each donating $20 to raise $1 million for production of the next expansion.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[dave420]

That doesn't make sense. If a country is large, then it has more space to produce more products for itself. Larger countries shouldn't have difficulty exporting more because of local consumption.

What is this, really?

[EmagGeek]

What is it called when, instead of every individual consumer of a product paying for what they use, everyone is forced to pay for it whether they use it or not? What is it called when the citizenry is asked to collectively pay for something that they may or may not use, or that a small percentage of users use the majority portion of that resource?

I believe that would be "socialized music."

Re:What is this, really?

[brit74]

What is it called when, instead of every individual consumer of a product paying for what they use, everyone is forced to pay for it whether they use it or not?... I believe that would be "socialized music."

Blame the pirates. It's obvious that the people enjoying the entertainment should be the ones paying for it. But, pirates have found too many ways to get their entertainment for free.

Re:What is this, really?

[Andorin]

Yet another poster asserting that everything that has happened in the War on Piracy is the fault of p2p users, and by implication, that the big media corporations and various governments are blameless. They don't exactly have a gun held to their heads in the matter- all the crap they pull is their choice, and therefore their fault.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[teumesmo]

Frankly, if you consider people's hysteria in regard to criminals "taking over" or their plans to take over Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo, the Police death squads have been quite tame in recent years. I'm just pointing out a upwards of 1 trillion USD(Based on world consumption of 600,000+ kilos) coke trade flows through Brazil to the rest of the world, although statistically none of it is grown in Brazil. Sure, police doing what they learned during the military dictatorship in order to make their jobs relatively tenable is atrocious, Brazilian government should just legalize coke, but of course you may choose to stand on your soap box and enumerate the benefits of stopping the drug trade, how it should be done, and berate the police for not being composed of stoical suicidal saints, but surely you won't mind me pointing out the insanity of your logic.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[iamacat]

... not returning kidnapped american children ...

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[teumesmo]

Sorry, memory playing tricks, world trade is worth some 200 billion USD, of which at least 60% flows through Brazil, although Brazilians get a very small share, the potential for transportation price adjustments are off the scale.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[iamacat]

One example of a very stupid "right" is that students are allowed to pay half price at any entertainment event. This means that, either you get some fake ID which says you're a student, or you pay double price to watch a movie, sports event, etc.

Yeah, blame the constitution instead of petty crooks. I understand cheating when you need survival essentials, but nobody HAS TO go to entertainment events, especially past student age. Save money till you can afford the ticket - or a bit longer to assure those essentials.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[demonlapin]

Lots of production and consumption is relatively local. If you're building in Strasbourg, and you buy your concrete from across the Rhine, that counts as a German export. Conversely, if you're in Memphis, and you buy from across the Mississippi, it's not. The numbers would be a lot more interesting if you looked only at stuff that went a long way - i.e., the stuff that's so good that people buy it from abroad rather than produce it locally.

This is bad.

[acid06]

I'm a Brazilian and I can say this is really bad and will actually hinder the future progress of the country in several areas.

You see, the piracy issue here isn't with file-sharers. Very very few people are file-sharers around here. The main problem here is actual physical piracy - in every neighborhood you can find a dozen of people selling pirated DVDs and CDs on the streets. This merchandise is controlled by mafia-like illegal cartels and they're a real criminal issue. This R$3 fee is a crappy band-aid which does not solve the social issue, but rather, just gives some money to the media companies.

Furthermore, this fee will badly impact smaller / indie artists who actually charge reasonable prices for their CDs because people would now be entitled to download stuff for free off the internet, without any sort of remorse whatsoever.

Re:This is bad.

[Andorin]

I do not believe the Brazilian proposal seeks to legalize commercial copyright infringement, so the for-profit piracy is still illegal. On the other hand, if it's legal to distribute works for free, then the market for the illegitimate, commercial copies should immediately dry up. Why are there so few file-sharers in Brazil?

Additionally, having your work downloaded for free is not necessarily a bad thing. It could spread word-of-mouth of your work and draw more attention to you, something that smaller/indie artists need the most. In fact, in today's political climate, artists who actively support p2p are often rewarded for it, whereas artists who publicly condone file sharing are criticized.

Re:This is bad.

[acid06]

Because it's so cheap to buy a pirated copy off the streets that downloading is almost pointless for someone who just doesn't care about the source of what they're buying.
You can buy pirated CDs or DVDs here for the equivalent of US$1-3.

Hell, it probably makes economical sense to buy a pirated copy if you consider the high costs of energy here (US$0.433/kWh on my state) and prices similar to the US for broadband (I pay US$75 for the land line + 10mbps ADSL). Let's say I'm able to torrent a 4.3GB DVD movie in 6 hours (if it's a healthy torrent). My PC draws about 200Wh. So:

Energy cost = 6 x 0.2kWh = 1.2kWh * US$0.433 =~ US$0.52
Broadband = 6 x ( US$75 / 30 days / 24h ) =~ US$0.63
Blank media = US$0.50

Total cost = US$1.65

And you don't have the hassle of finding a good torrent, downloading, waiting 6h then burning it yourself.

Anyway, file sharing is actually very common here. However, for each file sharer, I would say there are at least 20 other people buying pirated stuff off the streets. When I tell people I don't buy these pirated goods, *I* end up looking silly and need to explain them why I don't do it. Some people go as far as to say that they prefer buying pirated copies because then they support the local market and its "honest workers" instead of giving money to the corrupt American studios.

Almost no one sees buying this stuff as bad and I've seen police officers buying them several times on the DVD stand in front of my job. I work in the IT staff of a *Federal Court* and there's an illegal DVD stand in front of it. That's how pervasive it is here.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[PopeRatzo]

USA is a country that does not care for it's citizens. It cares for big business and big profits, on the backs of it's citizens.

We have a major political movement in the US right now that has been brainwashed (and manipulated through their racism and bigotry) to believe that this is a good thing.

They become outraged when a destructive corporation is forced to take responsibility for their misdeeds and think the unemployed are just a bunch of "whiners" when the company that fired them decides to move their manufacturing plant to China while making huge profits off its US customers. Most polls show this group leading in the upcoming election. Here, we refer to them as "low-information voters", but it's unlikely that information (which is readily available) could get through to them.

Did you know that in the past 10 years, 50,000 Canadians became American Citizens, but 500,000 Americans became Canadian Citizens.

This is a dirty little secret nobody wants to talk about here in the US. You seldom hear about someone trying to immigrate here from Finland, or Sweden, or Denmark, or Germany, or Ireland but a lot of Americans would love to move there. Unfortunately for them (or "us") those countries are smart enough to make it very hard for an American to immigrate to their countries. Especially Canada would just as soon Americans stay South of the border. I was surprised to learn how many more Americans travel to these countries for medical care than the other way around.

I guess I am too cynical.

Today, in the US, I don't think it's possible to be "too cynical".

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[jewishbaconzombies]

Last I checked, most cocaine for the US has been going through Mexico after 30 years of interdiction from the Islands and Cuba going through the Gulf Coast states.

I'm sure there's lots of southbound traffic for other markets, but getting to the US markets by going over 4500 miles south doesn't make much sense - even to a drug dealer.

Brazil and the Games Industry

[brit74]

This article says it all:

Brazil wasn't always a haven for piracy. After all, up until the mid-'90s, the games market in Brazil was overwhelmingly legal; companies would officially launch and provide support for consoles, such as Tectoy (Sega) and Gradiente (Nintendo). The piracy epidemic only came about with the combination of exceptionally high taxes (EGM Brazil estimated in their March 2005 edition that at least 45 percent of the price of a PC game consisted of taxes), the low income of most Brazilians, the lack of an effective government anti-piracy program and, ironically, the very factor that helped make games more mass-market: the change of media from cartridges to CDs, making it much easier to copy games.

For many years now, Brazilian society has seen piracy not just as commonplace, but as the default way of buying a game. This has had a profound impact on society in general and those who play games in particular.
...
What can we say will happen in other countries where piracy is becoming more prevalent? If big markets, such as the U.S. and Japan, become more afflicted by piracy, you can reasonably expect the industry will shrink and that hardcore gamers will probably be the most affected. After all, the people who are more inclined to pirate games are younger, more tech oriented and, above all, spend more of their time and income on games. Losing these players wouldn't be a death blow to the industry, but you could expect publishers and developers to compensate by trending toward casual games and MMOGs (one of the few types of PC games that is still hard to pirate).

If Brazil's example teaches us anything, it's that the games industry is more vulnerable to piracy than it may be willing to admit. After all, games in Brazil went from a legitimate marketplace to an underground economy in less than half a decade. It demonstrates that if the conditions are just right, it's not all that hard for piracy to become the norm.

Is this the inevitable future? I hope not. But the current economic crisis will make the lure of piracy stronger than ever. You can be certain that both gamers and the unscrupulous will act upon this temptation, creating a more extensive pirate infrastructure in the process and laying the seeds for a difficult future for the games industry.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_201/6059-A-Nation-of-Pirates.2

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[h4rr4r]

The Euro is worth more than than the Dollar.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[SudoGhost]

The grass is always greener on the other side.

People always think where they live is shit and that other places are better. I moved every two years as a kid, and no matter where I went, there was this majority agreement that "this place sucks", even places that I loved.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[yyxx]

Are you trying to be funny?

Let me spell it out: right now, $1.30 = 1EU. Devaluing the dollar means going to, oh, $3 = 1EU. So, that $500 iPhone now costs 160 EU, that $20000 Ford pickup truck now costs 6600 EU. How well do you think European manufacturers could compete with that? On the other hand, that 20000 EU BMW now costs $60000, and that 2000 EU European vacation now costs $6000. How fast do you think US demand for European exports will fall?

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[Omestes]

I think you can blame the law. When a law works against human nature, the law is flawed. After all, it is much easier to change a law than to rewrite human nature.

don't give up !

[Joebert]

I'll just leave this here for Brazil, http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[quanticle]

Sure, those numbers are impressive, but they're tiny compared to the thirteen trillion dollar American economy. As a percentage of its overall GDP, America exports less than almost any other industrialized nation. Certainly we export a lot less (proportionally) than either Germany or Japan. And they export less than China.

Copyright in the European Union

[RAMMS EIN]

Some European Union member states (at least the Netherlands) have copyright laws that permit making a copy of a copyrighted work for personal use. Including works that you borrow from friends. And allow your friend to make the copy on your behalf. Including over the Internet. Including over the peer 2 peer network du jour. In the Netherlands, this is (IIRC) allowed for all works, with the exception of computer software.

Re:No more HollyWood films in ...

[LuNa7ic]

Don't discount the latter half of the GPs post, just because the first is tripe. Assassinating/collapsing foreign governments/officials is dumb, but that's never stopped the CIA from trying/succeeding in the past in the past. (Iran, Cuba, Iraq, Nicaragua, etc)