UK Music Industry Calls For Truce With Technology

Stoobalou writes "The British music industry has called for a truce with the technology firms with whom it has till now fought a bitter battle over rights, royalties and file sharing. Feargal Sharkey, CEO of lobby group UK Music, told a conference in London this week that it was time for the music and technology industries to set aside their differences and strive instead toward a common goal: nothing less than the total global domination of British music."

Comments

Your capitulation is insufficient

[symbolset]

What is the best in life?

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

Nothing less than to abolish copyright will do. Copyrights and patents prevent progress in the sciences and the useful arts. They were an experiment that utterly failed.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[ehrichweiss]

Ramen!

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[mwvdlee]

So... which works worthy of copyright have you made that you are hereby all moving into the public domain?

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[black3d]

I'm just going to start a blog posting all his journal entries as my own original works, with advertising, and see how long it takes for him .. err, I mean.. "an anoymous person".. to complain to Google about it.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[phantomfive]

Nothing less than to abolish copyright will do. Copyrights and patents prevent progress in the sciences and the useful arts. They were an experiment that utterly failed.

I'd love to hear your evidence of this, because as far as I can tell, there are a lot of benefits of copyright and patents. Certainly the number of inventions and works of art has increased since they were introduced, and certainly they have induced authors and artists to produce more (Winston Churchill, for example), and they have certainly rewarded the creators for the works, and they have made things like the GPL possible. This guy makes a strong argument that the patent system helped drive invention forward: for example, the steam engine was invented over a thousand years ago, but it wasn't until patents made it profitable to invent things that people began applying them to application they could think of. Maybe he's wrong, but it's an argument that needs to be addressed. I would love to hear your arguments.

Certainly there are abuses, like the one-click patent, and artist abuses by record companies, and the term for copyrights is probably too long, but these are things that can be fixed, they don't require an entire revocation of the system.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[LikwidCirkel]

That kind of strikes a nerve with me actually, because, in the world of stealing other people's shit, the only real golden rule is not to pretend you made someone else's shit, and at least give credit where it's due.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[FoboldFKY]

"Hot water, good dentistry and soft lavatory paper."

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[black3d]

Precisely. Which is what GP is advocating - The right of attribution is one of 7 rights which make up "copyrights". My post was tongue-in-cheek. GP opposes copyright, thus, attribution.

Unless he's suggesting he likes all the parts of copyright which don't happen to coincidentally conflict with his morals, but the other aspects can go to hell - in which case that's just all maneuvering fluff.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[MightyMartian]

Certainly there are abuses, like the one-click patent, and artist abuses by record companies, and the term for copyrights is probably too long, but these are things that can be fixed, they don't require an entire revocation of the system.

There seems to be damned little effort to fix the problems. Quite the opposite, legislators and the media industry are going out of their way to make the problems even worse. The system is broken because it no longer serves its purpose, to protect creators, but rather to protect large-scale media conglomerates who would just as happily, and do just as happily fuck over the artist.

The system needs to be replaced. I'll agree that some core principals should be ported over to the new system, but there should permanent and unalterable aspects that sharply limit copyright terms, that set up a regime of severe and economically devestating punishments for chronic abusers. There need to be guarantees that artists have absolute command of their products and sharply limit media companies ability to pretty much write legislation.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[spyder-implee]

Yeah, totally agree. This makes me wonder if the Music industry has finally realised we are the ones holding all of the cards, not vice versa. I also love the other Conan movies, and to a lesser extent the cartoon series. "Woman: A pittance to protect you from evil?" "Subotai: I am evil..." "Conan: You're all whores."

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[TheLink]

There's a difference between copying and plagiarizing.

Passing off someone's work as yours involves lying or misrepresentation. And "thou shalt not bear false witness" has been around for thousands of years.

Copying someone's stuff doesn't necessarily involve lying.

Anticopying laws in contrast haven't been around that long, and their net benefits to society aren't proven.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[davester666]

Hilarious article

[referring to their 3-strikes law] 'This had helped restore the equilibrium between creativity and technology that had, said Sharkey, been out of kilter. It was but a single "stepping stone" toward the music industry's goal of having people "remunerated for their talent time, effort and ability".'

I'm pretty sure 'people' have been remunerated for their talent time, effort and ability before the internet existed, and continued to be up to the present day. I note they make no mention of how the music labels have in the past and continue to systematically rape their 'talent' in every possible way.

'Our future is now totally dependent, totally entwined, totally symbiotic'

Hmm, I'm not sure how exactly ISP's and/or the internet is in any respect dependent on any part of the music industry. If the music industry completely died tomorrow, the internet and ISP's would continue to function just as well if not be slightly faster. Now, the music industry executives coke and whore habits may live or die depending on how many people they can threaten with having their internet connection being disconnected.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[phantomfive]

There seems to be damned little effort to fix the problems.

This is true, but it is because most people don't care about copyright. The people who care about it primarily are content creators, and people who deal with that industry. Many more people are worried about whether Obama is a muslim than the subtleties of copyright.

Even people here on Slashdot, who rage about copyright, often only are aware of a small subset of the copyright law. You may be one of those people. There is a centuries long history of fighting over royalties between song-writers, performers, and publishers. They approach copyright from a point of view that benefits them, just as you approach it from a point of view that benefits yourself. But you aren't willing to put your money on the line in campaign contributions, or by starting a PAC. Those people are, which is why the legislation ends up being slanted towards them.

Meanwhile most people don't care as long as they are able to listen to music or watch movies or whatever. And that's why the system is how it is.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[gmuslera]

Won't be as far as totally abolishing copyrights and patents. Is ok that you have some rights over your creation. But have claims that have a meaning in actual reality, specially the technological one, they can be positive for you and for the rest of the humanity. If digital media of any is freely transfered over the net, then let it be that way and take advantage that it is happening, not just declare that the eath must be flat because you say so.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[mwvdlee]

Anticopying laws in contrast haven't been around that long,

Since the 18th century.

and their net benefits to society aren't proven.

What would you consider proof? How would you go about proving or disproving it?

Personally I think the principle of copyright is a good one, but one that has gotten way out of control. About a decade (depending on the object) of protection should be enough.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, are you really that stupid or just pretending to be?

1) Passing off someone else's work as yours is dishonest. Dishonesty is bad. Didn't your mama tell you that?
2) You can copy someone else's work without making it look like it is yours. When someone P2Ps some music at no point of time is anyone pretending to be the original artist. No dishonesty needs to be involved.

Can you understand that? Read the above slowly a few times if necessary, move your lips if you have to.

If you post all his journal entries, and say they are his work, not yours, and still make money from the ads, that's fine in the absence of copyright laws.

However if you claim to be him, you are doing something wrong, and there are plenty of other laws that would still apply even in the absence of copyright laws.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Runaway1956]

Sharkey says, "In short," he said, "We want to be number one." Well, a single digit salute to you, Mr. Sharkey, you predatory bastard from the deep.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[black3d]

While there's a difference between copying and plagiarizing - breaching copyright, which was the subject being discussed - and plagiarizing, can often be the same thing.

Interestingly (to some, I'm sure), the right of attribution is the only aspect of copyright which can't be breached on its own. It always must be in conjunction with another breach (most commonly, the rights concerning reproduction and less commonly, concerning derivative works).

So indeed, on it's own, the act of copying and the act of plagiarism are two quite different things (the latter, I agree with LikwidCirckel, is far worse), but fall under the same doctrines in the realm of copyright.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

Precisely. Which is what GP is advocating - The right of attribution is one of 7 rights which make up "copyrights". My post was tongue-in-cheek. GP opposes copyright, thus, attribution.

That looks like a straw man argument. It doesn't help if you did it tongue-in-cheek or if "he started it first" by mentioning copyrights.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[cgenman]

It is possible to plagiarize works that are out of copyright.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[vadim_t]

Disagree with you on the steam engine.

First, I don't think patents were the issue with getting the steam engine started, as much as the lack of need for it, and the lack of infrastructure. The first engines pumped water out of mines, you don't need such a thing if you don't have a deep mine. Manufacturing a good steam engine was probably beyond Greece's capabilities at the time as well.

The bigger problem in your argument is that patents ensured for a time that improvements to the steam engine (condender and use of high pressure) would not be combined until the patents expired, thus actually retarding progress.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[phantomfive]

I don't know enough about steam engines and manufacturing to comment on your first point, but the guy who wrote the book I referenced seemed to think patents helped drive innovation. As to your second point,

The bigger problem in your argument is that patents ensured for a time that improvements to the steam engine (condender and use of high pressure) would not be combined until the patents expired, thus actually retarding progress.

assuming you are serious about learning about this issue, and your post wasn't merely written to make yourself feel good, you should check out this paper. It is clear that improvements can be made even though an item is under patent, it happens all the time today. In any case there is a lot of discussion (among those who care about such things) about what happens when an area of invention becomes too encumbered by patents. That paper examines some related historical evidence.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

When someone P2Ps some music at no point of time is anyone pretending to be the original artist. No dishonesty needs to be involved.

-pedant- what if the original artist chooses to distribute via P2P -/pedant-

anyway, when I upload torrents, I make a point of mentioning when I *didn't* source the files in question

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

It is also possible to plagiarize works are copyrighted but where the author allows non-commercial copying.

Timbaland_plagiarism_controversy

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Znork]

there are a lot of benefits of copyright and patents.

Patents and copyrights are essentially taxation systems, and as with all such transfer systems there's some party benefiting and other parties paying the bill. Compared to other taxation systems, the efficiency grade of 5-20% is horrifically low; imagine if that percentage of funding for any other government scheme was all that actually went to the purpose (ie, the payoff/investment in the creators).

Outright having the state pay for the R&D or pay for music/writing/etc on a per-use base or similar would divert 5-20 times as much money towards the purpose at the same cost to the economy today. Or we could have the same level of production as we have today at a fifth to a twentieth of the cost.

That is fairly concisely summarized as an abject failure. And that doesn't even start to go into the really damaging parts of the system that create problems for derivative or combined works, which are the foundation of creativity. Imagine the number of works we wouldn't have today if Shakespeare or HC Andersen had had permanent copyright...

but it wasn't until patents made it profitable to invent things that people began applying them...

It's always profitable to invent improvements to your production. Saving money means more profit. Whether or not it's profitable to spin off a separate business around that improvement and/or publish it may vary.

But it's more likely that the spread of information is the main driver behind the accelerating pace of invention and creation; more inspiration, more access to necessary knowledge, more improvements by example, etc. Patents used to have a mitigating factor there, as they worked to disseminate knowledge in the previous century. Today, the chance that any invention for which there is an actual application would stay unknown and not get invented half a dozen more times for the duration of a patent is unlikely. Far below the chance that your average invention will be torpedoed by a half-dozen other patents that will prevent it from actually being monetized.

Personally I tend to advocate a system which removes the damaging aspects of copyrights and patents, ie, the exclusivity, and moving over the monetary incentives to something akin to a per-use automatic payout system/mandatory licensing scheme. Instead of getting the right to sue someone who uses your invention you'd get a check from the patent office if someone used your invention, and instead of getting screwed by the media corps you'd automatically get a set percentage of the revenue from anyone selling/profiting from the work. Such funds should further be managed within the government budget (so they can be audited and analysed for cost efficiency and tuned to maximize benefit (do people write more after they're getting $500k per year? or would a payout ceiling pushing the incentive further down the chain create more value for the economy?)) like any other tax/benefit scheme and not hidden away like the current ones are.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Elky Elk]

But you can plagerise things that are released under the GPL.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[RAMMS EIN]

``Nothing less than to abolish copyright will do.''

I wish you good luck in your quest, but I won't be marching with you all the way. I am quite fond of my copyleft licenses, myself.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[vadim_t]

I don't know enough about steam engines and manufacturing to comment on your first point, but the guy who wrote the book I referenced seemed to think patents helped drive innovation. As to your second point,

I am not sure if the situation back then, and the situation we have now work in the same way.

For one there were a lot fewer patents, so it was a lot easier to do something without running into one. These days there are enough that it's near impossible to figure out if you're infringing or not on something. That on its own creates a chilling effect, because you need a patent lawyer if you want to get into that business.

And even that is not new, as your paper mentions:

Foreshadowing the Sewing Machine War that was right around the corner, Wilson also
had the unfortunate distinction of being the first sewing machine patentee threatened with
litigation for infringing another sewing machine patent. After Wilson invented a double-pointed
shuttle in 1848, A.P. Kline and Edward Lee, the owners of the Bradshaw patent,82 threatened
Wilson with a lawsuit for infringing their patent. Lacking the funds to defend himself, Wilson
sold his patent rights to this particular invention to Kline and Lee to settle the dispute.

So there you go, even back then moving into an area where there were any patents was dangerous business, and having a patent yourself did you no good if you didn't have money for the lawyers.

assuming you are serious about learning about this issue, and your post wasn't merely written to make yourself feel good, you should check out this paper. It is clear that improvements can be made even though an item is under patent, it happens all the time today. In any case there is a lot of discussion (among those who care about such things) about what happens when an area of invention becomes too encumbered by patents. That paper examines some related historical evidence.

I lack the time right now to read that paper fully, but scanning it a bit I see mentions of: lots and lots of litigation, people being forced to let go their patent due to not having money for lawyers (quoted above), patent trolling, the troll (Howe) making lots of money from the litigation though it wasn't he who solved the final problems (it was Singer), and he wasn't manufacturing anything, a patent pool and a resulting cartel, and I'm probably missing something because I've not read the entire thing.

Overall I don't see absolutely anything good in any of that. It's full of everything that's wrong with the entire patent system, and shows it's been wrong since pretty much from the start. An enormous amount of money goes into litigation, then a patent pool is created resulting in a cartel able to keep competitors out, none of which serves the original goal of encouraging innovation. Instead of being busy competing all those people spent enormous amounts of time and money on arguments, politics and lawyers, and created a system that could effectively stop further competition.

The patent pool isn't a positive outcome of the whole ordeal, it's a perversion and sign that things reached a breaking point. It's more or less a sign of people agreeing "this isn't going anywhere, so let's stop caring about each other's patents", except lots of money had to be spent there, and now they form a large entity that can exclude further competition.

I'll read it in more detail later, but so far I fail to see anything there that convinces me that patents are a good thing.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

this is clearly idealistic, but:
if you do what you do for the sake of society, what do you care if anyone else says they made it?

if a billion people cried out "I came up with the Categorical imperative", would Kant be upset?

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[black3d]

And like the other guy said, you can plagiarise works out of copyright -both of which miss the point. We weren't discussing stuff "not under copyright". We were discussing stuff that IS under copyright. :) The point being, "copying" or "plagiarising" works under copyright are no different in that both are in breach of copyright where those rights aren't expressly permitted (or under fair use, etc - I don't really want to have to justify every exception for what is a simple original analysis that if GP doesn't care for any aspect of copyright - a "failed experiment" - he doesn't care if his works are copied - plagiarised or not). :)

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[TheLink]

> Since the 18th century.

Only for a very short period have creators in general really been making money their copyrighted work. Copyrights have mostly just benefited the distributors and the monopolists, not the actual creators.

Just look at how much most musicians get from their labels after those infamous accounting methods (similar to Hollywood accounting). In the past distribution and marketing was expensive, so perhaps some of it was justified, but nowadays with technology distribution of music is cheap (and marketing just needs someone clever to make it "viral"). The distributors now provide very little value add to the creators and are more parasites than symbiotes.

If the markets have grown and the cost of marketing and distribution has gone down why has copyright protection kept getting longer and longer and more and more extensive?

Same for the movie, book and software industries. Avatar made 1 billion in about a month. Does it need 120 years? Similar for all the other blockbusters. I cannot believe the costs Hollywood and the Music Industry cite for producing stuff. There's plenty of evidence they are lying.

So nowadays the main benefit copyright provides to a creator is you don't have to compete against your old stuff as much. Once you stop supplying your old stuff, your fans/users will have to do with your new slightly crappier stuff. How does that encourage people do to better?

Supposedly copyright is so that people would be creating more works. But you can see for yourself, great musicians, artists, programmers, etc will create stuff whether or not they are paid for it. They will create stuff for fun, or even because they feel internally driven to do it.

> > and their net benefits to society aren't proven.
> What would you consider proof? How would you go about proving or disproving it?

Copyrights won't scale well and would put a greater cost on us when we have artificial memories and virtual telepathy. This is not far off given that neural interfaces are improving. We are already in the prelim stage with smartphones and other tech. Monopolists will try to charge us more than a penny for "their" thoughts, whenever we try to recall or share something. They will try to DRM our brain and body augmenters, but for what benefit and whose benefit? You would be paying more for less functionality and freedom. Compare email vs SMS.

Is it worth taxing or even crippling more and more people for the benefit of a few? I say no.

In theory copyright can benefit society, in practice does it? And in the future I claim it will cost society more than it benefits it. Hosts can certainly survive with parasites sucking their blood. But just because they can doesn't mean the parasite is providing a benefit to the host, and doesn't meant things can't be better.

If you are a creator and want to make money from your stuff:
1) make it easy for people to find out about you - obscurity is your enemy
2) make stuff many people will like
3) make it easy for people to pay you

The Monopolists don't really help with 1) - often their interests are not aligned with yours, and they want too much for their "help". They want you to be their slave.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[TheTurtlesMoves]

With software even a decade is perhaps too long.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[AmonTheMetalhead]

It's even better in song! What is the best in life?

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[sjames]

Maybe he's wrong, but it's an argument that needs to be addressed. I would love to hear your arguments.

He's wrong. The "Steam engine" of 1000 years ago was a curiosity, unable to perform useful work. It wasn't for lack of patents, it was for lack of materials and knowledge.

The 17th century (when patents existed) saw some very limited use of steam power but hardly an industrial revolution. Steam power in the late 17th century was quite dangerous since the boilers weren't up to containing the pressure. It wasn't until the 18th century that steam power was finally usefully harnessed. Note that Newcomen (the inventor of the first really useful steam engine) had to contend with the issue of patent infringement as well, even though the holder of those patents had made only incremental improvements to a decades older unpatented design.

It still took until the late 18th century to advance to engines capable of significant power output and even approaching anything we might call efficiency. It wasn't until then that they did anything but pump water.

It looks like even there patents didn't really help much and also did some harm.

There may be some value to IP, but not without a great deal of reform. That reform in the U.S. would almost certainly have to include complete dissolution of the patent office and creation of a new one.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

Passing off someone's work as yours involves lying or misrepresentation. And "thou shalt not bear false witness" has been around for thousands of years.

Giving false witness is a subset of lying, but is not the same. That commandment has absolutely nothing to do with misrepresentation of work (and references a time when law court evidence was purely hearsay, so giving false testimony would directly convict someone).

Your logic is:

1. A is a subset of B
2. C is a subset of B
3. Therefore C = A

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[TheRaven64]

Since someone will no doubt reply asking for a citation, here is an article which describes in some detail how patents on early steam engines delayed the industrial revolution in Britain until after they had expired. It also describes how the James Watt attempted to get patent terms extended several times. He did get the original patent term extended to over 30 years, and tried to get them extended even longer. Sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile most people don't care as long as they are able to listen to music or watch movies or whatever. And that's why the system is how it is.

In other words, things are not going to get better until/unless they get much worse first. However, when they do get much worse and when people start noticing, it will be a very uphill battle. We are now in resistance phase and that resistance is very feeble, seemingly fueled by support of people who don't care about fundamental, real problems and just wish to get something for nothing. If they were serious about it, they would boycott consuming copyrighted content with its unbearable price (freedoms) and produce their own free independent culture instead. This problem is not going away, not before we can say that we don't need movies and music and even literary works enough to tolerate the baggage that comes attached to them and before we can show how it all can come to being without enslaving everyone.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Bert64]

Sure improvements can be made, but now a lot of effort is wasted trying to find non patented ways to achieve the same result rather than trying to achieve new results.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Joce640k]

I found it completely vacuous. What on earth is he on about?

It was but a single "stepping stone" toward the music industry's goal of having people "remunerated for their talent time, effort and ability".

You could start by paying them the royalties you promised them...

PS: Who chose a barely-remembered 1980s singer to redesign the Internets for us?

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[advocate_one]

always amuses me when in various forums, people post scans of documents or rips of audio or video that are patently not theirs to make a copy of and then complain quite indignantly when someone else lifts that .pdf/.jpg/.avi or whatever and re-ups it in another post/torrent... as if you can claim copyright for something that you made illegally in the first place...

they're really just bitching because their original upload isn't getting as many download points/hits as it could get...

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[elronxenu]

'Our future is now totally dependent, totally entwined, totally symbiotic'

I would have said more parasitic than symbiotic, actually ...

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

This quote from the linked article sounds eerily familiar: "After getting one step ahead of the pack, he remained ahead not by superior innovation, but by superior exploitation of the legal system. The fact that his business partner was a wealthy man with strong connections in Parliament, was not a minor help."

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Copyrights and patents prevent progress in the sciences and the useful arts. They were an experiment that utterly failed.

Let's take stock, shall we? The purpose of copyright was to create and maintain a larger influx of artistic works, and that's exactly what's happened. It takes a pretty big stretch of the imagination to say that copyright failed.

Your capitulation is insufficient... Nothing less than to abolish copyright will do.

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean you have to shoot them through your foot.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[MrHanky]

Mod parent up. If you're not prepared to contribute your own works, or if your works are worthless (which is the case for most Slasdotters), then you're in no position to demand that people who actually contribute something of value should just give it up. You're simply a freeloader and a parasite.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

It's possible to plagiarise without breaching copyright. Buy a copy of a work, then point to it and say "I created this.". This is legal, as far as I can tell - but I'd rather see it illegal, and copying (with attribution) legal.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[delinear]

Yeah, totally agree. This makes me wonder if the Music industry has finally realised we are the ones holding all of the cards, not vice versa.

No, what this is is that the music industry have basically pushed for and got ridiculous laws that unfairly give all the power to them, and now they're playing the "hey let's stop fighting" card in the hopes that people will make the same assumption as you, that we've somehow "won" and stop fighting. They'd be more than happy with the current status quo, massively biased in their favour as it is.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Only for a very short period have creators in general really been making money their copyrighted work. Copyrights have mostly just benefited the distributors and the monopolists, not the actual creators.

Just look at how much most musicians get from their labels after those infamous accounting methods (similar to Hollywood accounting). In the past distribution and marketing was expensive, so perhaps some of it was justified, but nowadays with technology distribution of music is cheap (and marketing just needs someone clever to make it "viral"). The distributors now provide very little value add to the creators and are more parasites than symbiotes.

I think you misunderstand. A copyright belongs to the artist, to be used however they wish. If artists are having trouble with their labels, it is between them and the label, no-one else. They don't need pirates telling them what is best for them, or stripping of their copyrights over some nanny-state paternalistic bullcrap. If they don't want to be signed, they won't sign.

Conversely, if they are signed, it means they wanted to be signed (or perhaps are indifferent either way). Maybe the figures floating around the internet don't tell us the whole story? A lot of people want the labels to fail, so a misinformation campaign wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

So nowadays the main benefit copyright provides to a creator is you don't have to compete against your old stuff as much.

Um, no, the main benefit of copyright is so creators don't have to compete against free versions of all their works, their newer ones included. Seriously, read a book or something.

Supposedly copyright is so that people would be creating more works. But you can see for yourself, great musicians, artists, programmers, etc will create stuff whether or not they are paid for it.

Where? Most of history's greatest works were created on commission, and most of the great modern works were created under copyright. I'm seeing, frankly, no evidence to support that claim.

Perhaps you're referring to the allure of stardom? Well, I hate to break it to you, but stardom comes from a rich culture (with rich people providing such culture), which comes from copyright. If you remove copyright, that too will fade. Quickly.

Copyrights won't scale well and would put a greater cost on us when we have artificial memories and virtual telepathy. This is not far off given that neural interfaces are improving. We are already in the prelim stage with smartphones and other tech. Monopolists will try to charge us more than a penny for "their" thoughts, whenever we try to recall or share something. They will try to DRM our brain and body augmenters, but for what benefit and whose benefit? You would be paying more for less functionality and freedom.

Wait, so your disproof of copyright's benefits is that one group of people might try to use it to control our thoughts? So, I guess we probably should outlaw P2P, since it might bring down our scientific progress and cultural growth? You're as bad as the **AA.

Compare email vs SMS.

That's a particularly bad example. SMS and email have different benefits and short-falls, and as such, are used in different circumstances.

Is it worth taxing or even crippling more and more people for the benefit of a few? I say no.

I say strawman.

In theory copyright can benefit society, in practice does it? And in the future I claim it will cost society more than it benefits it. Hosts can certainly survive with parasites sucking their blood. But just because they can doesn't mean the parasite is providing a benefit to the host, and doesn't meant things can't be better.

... which is precisely why that isn't the justification for

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Webcommando]

Since someone will no doubt reply asking for a citation, here is an article which describes in some detail how patents on early steam engines delayed the industrial revolution in Britain until after they had expired.

Replying to you not from disagreement but as an opportunity to bring up another source with a bit of a different point of view.

Others have suggested that the very existence of patents is what allowed artisans to start making money on ideas instead of property (which was owned by the aristocrats). Patents, in this scenario, actually allowed for the Industrial Revolution to happen. The history of how the concepts of patents and the legal language around them is interesting indeed and even in the early years had characters who also tried to abuse the system.

Personally, I believe they are necessary to reward inventors. Many of the problems are related to how you define an invention, not patents on their own (IMHO). Of course, nothing is without problems, but for constructed "things" patents work quite well and seam a good balanced of time of ownership with publication for the common good.

Sorry no link, but "The Most Powerful Idea in the World" by William Rosen discusses how patents are one of many parts that enabled the Industrial Revolution as he also explores the history of the steam engine.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[coastwalker]

Who knows. All I know is that I'm sick of the so called music business churning out the same recycled rubbish measured in its merit by the amount of TV exposure time the so called talent has been able to achieve (See the X-Factor entertainment business). The whole business model depends on the business being able to pay for marketing and exclude the opposition, the price of music is the price of that marketing and the talents don't get much of it and do get disposed off after a couple of years. This has been going on for nearly twenty years now and hardly anything has changed. Personally I would like to see the music business completely bankrupted overnight so that something new could come along and replace it. I lived through the UK Punk era and think it high time we saw something similar to sweep away the tedious complacent rubbish that passes for popular music these days. (Oh of course there are always amazing musicians struggling to make fantastic music but a good two thirds of what makes it, is recycled rubbish).

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[bug1]

"I'd love to hear your evidence of this, because as far as I can tell, there are a lot of benefits of copyright and patents."

You require evidence for dissenting opinions, and offer no evidence for the opinions you mention.

Try being impartial

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[paeanblack]

I can tell, there are a lot of benefits of copyright and patents. Certainly the number of inventions and works of art has increased since they were introduced, and certainly they have induced authors and artists to produce more (Winston Churchill, for example), and they have certainly rewarded the creators for the works, and they have made things like the GPL possible.

Can you ever justify extending the length of existing copyrights? Those works have already been created. The artists have already been compensated.

Have you ever re-read a classic book like The Hobbit and said, "Wow! Tolkien did a great job on that. I'm going to mail a bonus cheque to his kids for a job well done and hope he writes more books"

Have you ever bought a house and said "Wow! The electrician who wired this 50 years ago was absolutely brilliant. I'm going to send money to every electrician in the country!"

That's what extending an existing copyright means. It is taking monetizable assets from the public and giving them to the grandchildren of artists who were already compensated for their efforts 75 years ago.

Do we have artists that aren't producing because copyrights don't last long enough? 95 years is not sufficient compensation, but 125 years is? That idea is an utter load of bullshit.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Crypto Gnome]

Certainly the number of inventions and works of art has increased since they were introduced

Yes, but not necessarily as a RESULT of copyrights.

Corelation does not prove causation.

Seriously folks - WORLD POPULATION HAS MORE THAN DOUBLED SINCE THE INTRODUCTION OF CHEAP AND EASILY AVAILABLE CONTRACEPTIVES. .... but that DOES NOT imply that (A) was caused by (b).

IN Fact *many* (many many many) people would argue that BITCH-FIGHTING OVER COPYRIGHTS has caused more harm than good, has ruined many a good creative opportunity, and destroyed what little goodwill a once thriving industry had.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Crypto Gnome]

There seems to be damned little effort to fix the problems.

Well, yes - it's STILL against the law to savagely murder every lawyer on the planet, so what else can we do?

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Ash Vince]

There seems to be damned little effort to fix the problems. Quite the opposite, legislators and the media industry are going out of their way to make the problems even worse. The system is broken because it no longer serves its purpose, to protect creators, but rather to protect large-scale media conglomerates who would just as happily, and do just as happily fuck over the artist.

Maybe its worth remembering that copyright law would protect the creator of original works, if the creator did not sell the copyright on their work to the large media conglomerate in return for some cash upfront. I know the music companies have various tricks, but usually the artists in question who make it big are so desperate for fame the sign the contracts put in front of them without even reading them. They usually have no choice anyway as without the vast media PR machine behind them the artist will never make it to the bigtime they desperately seek.

There are always going to be artist who go their own way and ebb out a career through hardwork and producing good music. These artists are not the people featured in these drivel copyright cases though. Most of the suits filed are for top ten populist teen music that has been over engineered by the record companies in question to make it appeal to the mass market. In many cases the band is entirely manufactured by the record company in order to fit a niche in the market (eg - spice girls).

If an artist is not willing to sign over the copyright on a track to the record company the record company are not able to enforce it.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding... This is just their way of saying "Hey, we won, we got all our laws passed through some last minute shenanigans so now we can rip off artists, ISPs and internet consumers. For a follow up why don't we convince everyone they need us to rip them off so badly that they should beg us for the privilege? Wouldn't that rock?"

Funny thing about copyright is some of the companies that have hollered about it the most and are most directly responsible for legislation extending the length of it so ridiculously in the US got their start using what we'd now term other people's intellectual property. They seem to have extended it now to the point where their entire business would have been impossible if copyright were available at it's current length back when they'd started.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[AnnoyaMooseCowherd]

I think you misunderstand. A copyright belongs to the artist, to be used however they wish. If artists are having trouble with their labels, it is between them and the label, no-one else. They don't need pirates telling them what is best for them, or stripping of their copyrights over some nanny-state paternalistic bullcrap. If they don't want to be signed, they won't sign. Conversely, if they are signed, it means they wanted to be signed (or perhaps are indifferent either way). Maybe the figures floating around the internet don't tell us the whole story? A lot of people want the labels to fail, so a misinformation campaign wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

I think the misunderstanding might be yours.

Often once the artist (who is neither an experienced contract lawyer nor someone who has access to, or the money to pay for such expertise), has signed an extremely one-sided contract with the record company (that has both the access and the money) a copyright no longer belongs to the artist. In a lot of cases, neither does control over their artistic careers.

The record company's spin when it comes to online "piracy" is that it is threatening the livelihoods of the artists, whereas it is in fact far more likely that the artists themselves could survive perfectly well in the Internet age, but that the future for the companies is far less certain.

Couple this spin with the fact that the artists' livelihoods are far more under threat from the record companies themselves http://www.gerryhemingway.com/piracy.html, and you will begin to see why people get quite so angry when the record companies insult our intelligence with this sort of BS.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[devent]

The steam engine is the worst example for patents.

Do Patents Encourage or Hinder Innovation? The Case of the Steam Engine

By patenting the separate condenser Boulton and Watt, from 1769 to 1800, had almost absolute control on the development of the steam engine. They were able to use the power of their patent and the legal system to frustrate the efforts of engineers such as Jonathan Hornblower to further improve the fuel efficiency of the steam engine. By way of contrast, and fortunately, Trevithick did not patent his equally innovative high-pressure design.

Just go to the pharmacy industry, the bio-genetic industry (like Monsato), the software industry and tell me how the patents are promoting anything there.

As for copyright, how is a copyright for 100 years (or something) is going to promote art in a industry where the artists are signing every right they have on their work away to the big publishers? Art is not born in the vacuum, art is always build upon art, if you take away the public domain (like we have it now, works from 1920 are still under copyright and nobody can use them) you take away the pool of ideas the artists of today can draw. Like if Einstein's equation E=MC2 would be under 100 years copyright and 20 years patent protection. Last, if copyright is so important for art and ideas, how is the fashion industry exists that don't have any copyright at all?

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[icebraining]

We're all paying for the copyright protection - or do you think all the investigative work and court time is free? So yes, we're contributing and have a right to decide.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[blackraven14250]

I'm pretty sure 'people' have been remunerated for their talent time, effort and ability before the internet existed, and continued to be up to the present day.

What a great life, that of a bard.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[blackraven14250]

I would have said more parasitic than symbiotic, actually ...

Parasitism is a form of symbiosis. So are commensalism, and mutualism.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[icebraining]

Copyleft *doesn't* need copyright. Copyleft uses copyright has a mechanism to ensure software freedom, but you could eliminate copyright as long as you create other mechanism for copyleft to work. For example, consumer protection laws giving them the right to access, modify and distribute the code of any application - just like we have mandatory warranty of two years in the EU, for example.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I think the misunderstanding might be yours.

I doubt it, since your very next statement completely glosses over the issue.

Often once the artist (who is neither an experienced contract lawyer nor someone who has access to, or the money to pay for such expertise), has signed an extremely one-sided contract with the record company (that has both the access and the money) a copyright no longer belongs to the artist.

Once $BAD_THING happens, $BAD_THING will happen. If we take for granted that $BAD_THING will happen, then I agree that $BAD_THING will happen. You just need to show me why $BAD_THING must necessarily happen, and you're all set!

Why must artists sign with a record label? If it makes them no money (or more precisely, gives them no benefits), then they will not sign. Period. Those that do only have themselves to blame for their stupid decision.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[AnnoyaMooseCowherd]

Yes, I have been a freeloader and a parasite for years, long before the Internet turned up in fact. Many a time I would sit listening to the radio and not pay a penny for the privilege. Since a lot of my listening was on the BBC, I wouldn't even have to listen to some boring adverts to somehow atone for my sins.

Of course I would occasionally hear something I liked enough to go out and buy a CD.

I was aware that in doing so I was most likely supporting the operations of a record company that, due to some one-sided contract they had convinced them to sign, was in the process of extorting work from the artist involved, but it was the only way I could get access to the music, to play where and when I wanted to listen to it.

Sometimes I would find that I had effectively paid well over the odds for a single, as the rest of the stuff on the CD was just filler. Occasionally however, I would find that I actually liked everything on the CD and would look out for other stuff by the same artist. I might then check if they were playing live somewhere nearby and get tickets to their concerts.

Now I can no longer listen to the radio at work without paying the PRS a licence fee to do so http://www.prsformusic.com/users/businessesandliveevents/musicforbusinesses/officesandfactories/Pages/officesfactories.aspx. I can listen to my MP3 player though, but the question is where to get the content?

I could go on iTunes and randomly buy loads of tracks in the hope that some of them might be something I actually like and that the DRM will allow me to play it where and when I choose, or I could go over to the dark side and download stuff for free.

Of course the end result would be the same as 20 years or so ago; I would be sitting, listening to free music and occasionally finding something that makes me want to go and see the artist live, but somehow with all the advances we have made in the meantime, what I am doing no longer supports the record companies and may well be illegal.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[icebraining]

The purpose of copyright was to create and maintain a larger influx of artistic works, and that's exactly what's happened.

Correlation does not imply causation. Yes, there is copyright and a large influx of artistic works, but is the latter a consequence of the former? Wouldn't a larger influx of artistic works happens anyway because of other reasons (e.g. increased surplus income for consumers, better and cheaper technology for playing, recording & distribution, etc.)? Moreover, couldn't the influx be larger still if we didn't have copyright by reducing restrictions?

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[MrHanky]

While true, the same could be said for any kind of property. You're saying that I, as a tax payer, have the right to decide over your property, since the legal system that protects it is funded by me.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[silentcoder]

Does more than 40 GPL'd software projects and Help|About listed contributions to another 200-odd work for you over a period of more than 12 years work for you ?

The only reason they are GPL'd and not public domain is to make sure they STAY available. I would rather prefer NOT to put them in the public domain just so $CORPORATION can change them a bit, copyright it and take away the rights I wanted you to have.

So actually - most of us arguing for a change in copyright law is DEPENDENT for our incomes right now on works that are traditionally covered by copyright. We also believe that we can make a living WITHOUT exploiting our customers rights. The fact that the music-mafia doesn't want to lose their position of privilege isn't much of a counterargument to us.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[silentcoder]

You're welcome to that with mine - hell use my blog: http://silentcoder.co.za/

Only thing is - credit me with a link. I give you permission to copy. I don't give you permission to plagiarize.

In fact - the content is already under a CC license so I've already given that permission to EVERYBODY who goes there.

You seem to confuse copyright law with plagiarism law. Their not the same thing.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[AnnoyaMooseCowherd]

I think the misunderstanding might be yours.

I doubt it, since your very next statement completely glosses over the issue.

My very next statement was actually part of the background for the point I was actually making, which was at the end of my post (did you actually read that far?).

why people get quite so angry when the record companies insult our intelligence with this sort of BS.

If it makes them no money (or more precisely, gives them no benefits), then they will not sign. Period.

This statement seems to be as naive as a lot of the artists are that sign these contracts.

You appear to come from a world where, before joining a band, artists will have already obtained years of experience in contract law, or have amassed the funds to pay for a lawyer with such experience.

In the world I live in, on one side there are artists who are often quite young but have a talent for creating music and on the other side, are experienced professionals who are very talented at dealing with such artists and getting the best deal possible. In my world, the professionals are paid by record companies and so, irrespective of what they may tell the artists, that is where their loyalties lie.

Of course they tell the artists that the contract will bring money and other benefits, as otherwise, as you point out, the artist is less likely to sign. What they keep hidden, is that the money and benefits will be mainly going to the record company.

Now if the record companies were completely honest about this and explained to everyone, including the media and politicians that they lobby for ever more lucrative laws to be passed, then I for one would have far less of a problem. But while they continue to churn out the same old BS year in and year out and expect that I am stupid enough to fall for it, then I will continue to be pissed off by them and those that seem to fall for their spin.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[silentcoder]

>>Anticopying laws in contrast haven't been around that long,

>Since the 18th century.

In legal terms - that's yesterday. Most of the fundamental laws of our society date back to Roman times or earlier. That's why until very recently lawyers were still required to learn latin.,

>>and their net benefits to society aren't proven.

>What would you consider proof? How would you go about proving or disproving it?

Well their stated ultimate goal is to enlarge the public domain. Thus proof would be if the public domain today is bigger than it would likely be without them.
Now interestingly due to things like regressive copyright extensions - the public domain today is significantly SMALLER than it would be without them.
That would seem to be proof against their benefits to society. The catch is that I suspect the public domain in 1920 was bigger than it would be without them - which suggests proof in favor of them.

>Personally I think the principle of copyright is a good one, but one that has gotten way out of control. About a decade (depending on the object) of protection should be enough.

Which brings us to the conclusion - the benefits of copyright is contextual. It is dependent on how long it lasts, and on the context of creation as a whole (technology has a major influence on that context). In the years since 1920 copyright extensions has gotten increasingly longer and has long since passed the tipping point where they are increasing the public domain and are now effectively robbing it. Regressive extensions are the worst robbery of all -after all how on earth can any law made today increase the number of books written in 1950 ?

The other major contextual change is the internet in the last 20 years. It has radically changed the landscape of creativity and copyright law hasn't adapted to suit this - if anything it has gone directly counterpoint to what in this context would maximise the future size of the public domain.
The article says "you can't democratize genius" - in fact crowd-sourcing proves that you can. The rip-remix-share culture has come up with some truly epic creations - all illegal, we're depriving our children their public domain not only by keeping everything created locked up but by actively banning new forms of creation that builds on this.
More-over - the record companies may have been the best shot we had at getting some of the rare actual individual geniusses out there in the past - he is trying to toss out a red herring, because if there is something you really CAN democratize it's FINDING genius- that's the power of the internet.
Among all those garage bands uploading their little songs hoping to get notice ARE some real geniusses - and they actually have a chance at discovery now that they never had before. If the old industry dies - their odds will go UP - not down.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

But you aren't willing to put your money on the line in campaign contributions, or by starting a PAC.

I like how bribery and corruption are now an accepted, normal thing in your country.

Politicians who succumb to that are traitors. They should do a stint in prison and be barred from office for the rest of their lives.

That it's normal to you is nothing short of disgusting.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

Quote: "Wait, so your disproof of copyright's benefits is that one group of people might try to use it to control our thoughts?"

Read the other bits. The creators aren't benefiting. The labels are taking all the money and providing little or nothing in return. The creators nowadays can do without the labels. They sure didn't get much protection from copyright. And...

Quote: "Most of history's greatest works were created on commission"

Clearly copyright wasn't needed for those great works.

And assuming you are correct, most is not all, thus it shows that creators will create stuff whether or not they are paid for it.

Thing is, if creators are busy doing work for others, naturally most of the works would be created on commission, because they have less spare time to do personal projects.

BUT even if nobody is buying, during that spare time, a great painter will still paint, a great composer will still compose, a great poet will still write. Because it is part of them, part of their lives almost like eating and sleeping. As long as they are fit enough to do so, and there isn't anything getting in the way. So if they and their family's needs are taken care of, they'll have more time to create.

Copyright is supposed to take care of this, but it appears to be failing in many areas.

Quote: "most of the great modern works were created under copyright. "

Nowadays practically everything is under copyright once you create it, so that statement proves nothing.

There's plenty of great stuff that people create for fun, without expecting a reward or payment. Or someone paid them to do it. They didn't have to create something and then try to sell copies of it.

In fact for works of art in particular, the artists often still get the bulk of the $$$ for the original, and little for the copies. Hardly anyone will pay them lots of money for subsequent copies of the same work. So even if their originals are copied (but attribution kept) they hardly lose out - in fact they may become more famous and so can charge more.

Quote: "Copyright does work. All you have to do is look around you. Copyright delivers exactly what it promised: a richer culture. "

In some ways yes and in some ways no. Example: society is richer because copyright wasn't enforced in this case: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

Maybe "big" movies wouldn't be produced if too many cinemas just ripped off the movies. Or perhaps the cinema owners might realize they'd go out of business without "big movies". People are still watching big movies in the cinemas, and I don't think that's going to change so soon. Fewer will watch the "cheap crap" in the cinema.

You still may be right, things might be better if copyright is kept but terms are shorter. If 14 years was enough more than 200 years ago, in this fast paced modern age, a correspondingly shorter term should be good enough.

But it's still not very convincing. Doesn't matter in practice I guess, as neither abolishing nor shortening seems likely to happen anytime soon.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[bzipitidoo]

And what would you consider proof? Whenever that question is asked, it's usually the prelude to the old double standard.

Copyrights are monopolies. Monopolies are bad. We've seen this, over and over. Monopolies stifle innovation and progress. They charge excessive prices. They engage in all sorts of market destruction to maintain themselves. We've been seeing this for years in the entertainment cartel's attempts to kill P2P sharing and the Internet, file formats such as mp3, and mediums such as DAT. And in their attempts to terrorize and brainwash the public. Copyrights have been the reason these entertainment cartels could even exist, could acquire "rights" to every song ever recorded, so that an organization like ASCAP can just assume that if it's recorded, they must have jurisdiction over it.

Monopolies use a number of stock arguments to justify themselves. They like to claim that they bring stability to the market, as if they really do and that's a good thing. They typically point out that they can reap the full benefits of economies of scale. Somehow, they encounter all sorts of difficulties when it comes to passing those benefits on to consumers. And they can standardize. That last is great, but standards can exist just fine without monopolies. None of these arguments hold up. In the end, monopolies are unequivocally bad.

If you want to get the government out of the way, you could hardly pick a better area than to get government out of the business of granting and enforcing these entirely artificial monopolies. Speaking as a taxpayer, I do not like seeing my tax dollars wasted on pointless court cases, and even worse on having our police forces and facilities engaged in highly dubious enforcement actions on behalf of these monopolists, not us. I'm talking things like seizing prescription drugs at the border, raiding the homes and businesses of alleged pirates, and even seizing their equipment and jailing them as if they might be a danger to the public. And demanding that schools and libraries, many of which are public, track our every online move and keep extensive records, and pushing for excessive punishments like being kicked off the Internet. Think about how much such actions cost everyone, and not only money. Should we turn the clock back to the 1980s, when it was impossible to copy audio CDs as no burners existed and what little networking there was (FidoNet for instance) was too slow to be practical for such massive quantities of data, when it was available to the public at all that is, and there was no World Wide Web, no online shopping or payment of bills, no Wikipedia, no search engines, and nothing even remotely close to mp3?

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

-pedant- what if the original artist chooses to distribute via P2P -/pedant-

Then the original artists aren't pretending to be the original artists. They ARE the original artists. Still no dishonesty involved.

Now if the original artists pretended to be someone else e.g. a fake fan in some astroturf campaign, then there's dishonesty involved.

Fraud = intentional deception for personal gain or damage to another.

Check this out for dishonesty and hypocrisy: http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/03/broadcast-yourself.html

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[vadim_t]

Ok, now I've read the paper entirely.

Now I'm even more convinced that patents are harmful and unnecessary. Even more, I think the paper proves so.

Let's see the timeline:

In 1846, Howe patents his sewing machine. However it doesn't work very well, so nobody wants it. Later that year he sets off to England to try to sell it, and fails miserably. Meanwhile, other inventors keep banging on the problem and gradually fix the problems.

In 1850, Wilson, who had invented and patented some useful stuff has to sell his patents, because he can't afford the litigation, proving that just owning a patent does little good unless you have money for the lawyers. In that year, Singer perfects his machine. Around that time, Howe returns and starts suing everybody in the business. There's much fighting in the courts, and by 1854 Howe wins big against Singer.

After that, for some reason everybody starts suing everybody else, and the mess escalates with huge amounts of resources being devoted to litigation, to the point it has a very negative effect on the whole industry. Howe is the only one who is happy, because everybody owes him royalties, but he's the one not making anything.

In 1856, a lawyer comes up with the solution: let's do a patent pool (the Combination). Howe's cooperation is mandatory, so he's given a guaranteed cash supply for just sitting on his butt. The patent pool includes everything that goes into an useful sewing machine, so anybody wanting to make their own must reach an agreement with the patent pool.

Now, that's wrong with this? Several things:

First, the solution to a patent war was effectively to let go the patents. Everybody in the Combination licenses from everybody else, so the overall situation for them is as if there were no patents. They only need to contend with other people, which gives them a privileged position. My conclusion: patents == bad, since the solution to all the trouble was to agree to ignore the patents.

Second, the members of the pool still can compete with each other, and Singer has the most market share. How does he manage to do that? Not with patents! He pretty much invents marketing, then goes further with selling on an installment plan to compensate for the expense of his product, and giving discounts for competitors' old machines which prevents a second hand market of competitors' hardware. My conclusion: patents == unnecessary, since Singer gets an advantage just fine without them.

Third, Howe sits on his butt and collects royalties from people actually making a product, without manufacturing anything himself. My conclusion: patents == bad, since they're rewarding the wrong person.

Now, where in this do you see that the patents did any good? In this story, the mess with the patents escalates until it reaches the point where nobody but Howe can get anything done. They solve the problem by basically doing as if there weren't patents in the first place. And then Singer gets the most market share, not through proprietary technology, but through his superior business sense. During all of this the happiest one is Howe, who after his initial failed attempt just manages to collect money from everybody else, without doing anything himself.

Overall, without patents this probably would have worked out a lot smoother. People wouldn't have had to waste tons of money and time on lawsuits, the end result would have been about the same, Singer would still win through his good business sense. One difference is that Howe would still be poor, but IMO that's entirely how it should be.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[vadim_t]

Please provide some more specific arguments.

So far two pieces of evidence have been presented in this thread, the article on steam engines from the grandparent, and the one on sewing machines, on which I just finished giving my opinion.

Please summarize, what is wrong with those two articles? In my view, both of them contain evidence on how patents delayed the industrial revolution, and how things actually worked much better once the patents could be ignored.

On the subject of rewarding inventors, I believe the profit from a successful invention is reward enough.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[icebraining]

Except the US has something called the Constitution, which limits the range on which people can choose, and the defense of real property is an end on itself, and therefore can't be repelled, while IP is merely a mechanism to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", and not a right on itself.
Therefore, if we can democratically agree that IP laws aren't "promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts" (the real purpose), we can ban them.

And I'm glad you talk about the right to real property, because that right is violated by intellectual property laws.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[phantomfive]

You picked a really bad example with the pharmacy industry. Drugs are expensive to produce, and without patent protection, and the implicit profits, a lot of them wouldn't get produced. The software industry obviously is harmed at times by patents, but even there sometimes they drive innovation: as an example Qualcomm wouldn't have pushed themselves to invent CDMA if it weren't for patents, and now that technology is used in nearly every cell phone on the planet. Arguably it would have been invented anyway, but it wouldn't have been invented soon.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[phantomfive]

IN Fact *many* (many many many) people would argue that BITCH-FIGHTING OVER COPYRIGHTS has caused more harm than good, has ruined many a good creative opportunity, and destroyed what little goodwill a once thriving industry had.

Duh, so present some of those arguments instead of ranting randomly. What you said there makes you look like a frothing-at-the-mouth idiot who can't do anything but yell "correlation is not causation!" Present your evidence or shut up.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[phantomfive]

Wow, way to exercise your reading comprehension. Like an idiot you focused on a few words, ranting against them instead of reading the whole thing and trying to understand what I was saying. Specifically this part, where I said the term for copyrights is too long:

Certainly there are abuses, like the one-click patent, and artist abuses by record companies, and the term for copyrights is probably too long, but these are things that can be fixed, they don't require an entire revocation of the system.

I don't believe you're actually that dumb, please improve next time.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[phantomfive]

Learn to read, dude, I included three different pieces of evidence, and a link to a guy who wrote a book with a lot more evidence. Maybe you ignored the stuff you didn't like, I don't know. Try to not ignore stuff you don't like, and be more impartial.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

The huge irony of UK punk is that it was the exclusive domain of a few London trendies until the music industry and media picked it up and popularised it across the country.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Webcommando]

Please provide some more specific arguments.

So far two pieces of evidence have been presented in this thread, the article on steam engines from the grandparent, and the one on sewing machines, on which I just finished giving my opinion.

The history of the sewing machine as very disappointing. You mention that Wilson had to sell his patents. Without patents, would he have received any compensation at all? Without patents, those that posses the capital would benefit and not necessarily the inventor (assuming he isn't in the employ of those with capital). In the case of Savary pumping machine, would he have made a dime if the property owners (those with the mines) could just use his invention?

It is indeed unfortunate that litigation is expensive and makes it difficult for some to protect their patents. It is indeed unfortunate that today we have patent "trolls" (you might argue Savary's heirs were as well, I suppose). I don't think this means the entire concept is wrong.

I'd also look at Papin, who had key ideas in the area of steam power, but without patronage spent his life trying to scrape by instead of enjoy the fruits of his mental labor:

Papin's career, even more than Hookes, illustrates the challenges faced by the most talented scientists if they lacked an independent source of income. The archtype--innovative talen supported either by patronage (...) or by inheritance. -- "The Most Powerful Idea in the World pg 22

As for the last part of your post, I don't think I'm disagreeing that things may proceed faster.

Please summarize, what is wrong with those two articles? In my view, both of them contain evidence on how patents delayed the industrial revolution, and how things actually worked much better once the patents could be ignored.

This, of course, assumes that the information from the inventors would still be readily available (that is a key aspect of patents) instead of locked up in their file cabinets hoping for someday having the capital to build whatever it is. In some cases, the invention is inevitable and might ultimately be found by multiple people. However I look at Newcomen as a contrary example; he spent ten years of his life experimenting to find ways to stable motion of a machine.

On the subject of rewarding inventors, I believe the profit from a successful invention is reward enough.

This necessitates the inventor having the capital to profit from the invention. Without the patent exclusivity as a collateral, how would this happen? Why would the owner of the means of production cut the inventor in when he could simply take the idea and build it? The bottom line, and this is opinion, we might move faster but the minds that came up with ideas may not have been the same people who profited

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[MrHanky]

Of course the U.S. constitution can and will be repealed, and defence of property is of course a fairly new invention which came even later to America. Funny that, how the staunchest defenders of property as a "natural right" simply stole an entire country. That's how far the defence of property goes as "an end on itself" (sic): it's all about power.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

The X-Factor show is a direct result of piracy.
Because record sales make so little, the obvious answer is to..
Not invest in artist development, just use a lower quality of artist.
Not invest in new songs, just recycle the old ones with different singers.
Not use new or interesting artists, just create suitable ones from easily manipulatable amateurs.
Not sell the music or recordings, sell the television show and the advertising space and the artificial celebrities.

The X-Factor is the logical conclusion of recorded music having no value, and the industry collaborating with the media to find new ways of making cash.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what happens when you abuse people politically for 20 or 30 years?

They begin demanding anarchy.

The exact degree to which you are unreasonable, overbearing, unjustifiably greedy they will be, too. There is no "reasonable" here any more; that was cast aside 10 years ago with the last bullshit bill they passed. We've been trying to repeal it for the last 10 years without success, and we all know the next unreasonable bill and the one after that is going to stay because the system is corrupt. The only way is to throw the whole damn system out; advertise copyright not as a concept, but as the system we have now and academically, it has been for the majority of the time the concept has been around. Copyright IS the system we have now, it IS bullshit, and it must be abolished.

You can try to be reasonable, you can try to be logical but in the end you have to ask yourself what do you want more; an unending slew of bullshit laws that end in you paying, no matter what, to utter specific words in specific tones and the halt of technological progress for the benefit of the few, or an anarchy where everyone's free, the big businesses are bankrupt and the government isn't there anymore; the potential for real progress again.

We move forward neither in anarchy nor oligarchy, but in one there's a chance to evolve, in the other we constantly devolve until the world falls apart and we end up in anarchy anyway; why halt the inevitable? Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[gilgongo]

Nothing less than to abolish copyright will do. Copyrights and patents prevent progress in the sciences and the useful arts. They were an experiment that utterly failed.

I'd love to hear your evidence of this, because as far as I can tell, there are a lot of benefits of copyright and patents.

There's quite a lot of evidence against the efficacy of copyright (in its current form) in stimulating the creative industries, and more being researched all the time. Some of it indicates that in fact copyright does quite the opposite of its original intent. I know less about patents, since that's a completely separate thing, but a quick google will turn up a great deal.

Here, for example, is some recent research from the UK:

http://bit.ly/9NRmLa

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[vadim_t]

You mention that Wilson had to sell his patents. Without patents, would he have received any compensation at all?

The litigation he was involved in was infringement of somebody else's sewing patents, and since he had no money, he sold the patents to those same people that were suing him. In such a situation I doubt he got a whole lot of money on that deal, in fact with a leverage like that they probably got him to sell for pennies on the dollar.

Without patents, no, he wouldn't get royalties or sell the patents, but he wouldn't have got sued either, which would have allowed him to manufacture his design.

He did have somewhat better luck later:

In 1851, Wilson partnered with Nathaniel Wheeler, and the two formed the firm, Wheeler, Wilson & Company, which began manufacturing sewing machines on the basis of Wilsons three subsequent patents. It also soon entered the fray in the Sewing Machine War, and would become one of the members of the Combination in 1856.

So here we see that: patents don't really do much if you don't have the money to back them up, so forget about the whole "independent inventor" deal. And when he formed his partnership, it got into the whole patent mess, and ended up joining the Combination, which nullified the effects of the patents. So I doubt he'd have ended up much worse if there weren't any in the first place.

Without patents, those that posses the capital would benefit and not necessarily the inventor (assuming he isn't in the employ of those with capital)

No, as you can see, without the capital, Wilson's patent didn't do him a whole lot of good. It's only when he partnered that he got somewhere, and then still reached the effectively patent-less situation.

In the case of Savary pumping machine, would he have made a dime if the property owners (those with the mines) could just use his invention?

I don't see why not. He invented it after all, he was the person best qualified to know how to make one of those, what the pitfalls are, and how to fix it when it breaks. If somebody copied it, he would still have a headstart in coming up with an improvement.

Also, Wikipedia says: "Savery's patent covered all engines that raised water by fire and Newcomen was forced to go into partnership with Savery". Really I don't have much sympathy for such things, and IMO that outright says that his patent delayed improvements, as it had a ridiculously large scope.

I'd also look at Papin, who had key ideas in the area of steam power, but without patronage spent his life trying to scrape by instead of enjoy the fruits of his mental labor:

Papin did his research at about the same time the people you mentioned, so why didn't he patent his inventions and get some money from them? IMO because of the above: simply having a patent isn't enough, you still need money. Even if nobody sues you, building prototypes has to be expensive.

This, of course, assumes that the information from the inventors would still be readily available (that is a key aspect of patents) instead of locked up in their file cabinets hoping for someday having the capital to build whatever it is. In some cases, the invention is inevitable and might ultimately be found by multiple people. However I look at Newcomen as a contrary example; he spent ten years of his life experimenting to find ways to stable motion of a machine.

You need the capital anyway. If you have a patent but not the means to get some business done, then any potential partner can offer you a bad deal. After that a bad deal is still better than no deal at all, and without capital you'll have to get by with what you're offered.

Also, IMO, there's no 100% perfect situation, but I think that the ocassional loss due to plans in the file cabinets is much less damaging than having an ent

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[phantomfive]

Your paper makes a good point, but it is a different one than the original poster. The paper you linked to takes the position that copyright is acceptable, although it needs to be updated to match the needs of the modern age. The original poster took the extreme view that any copyright system is unacceptable. I suspect you don't have that opinion either.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[russotto]

I lack the time right now to read that paper fully, but scanning it a bit I see mentions of: lots and lots of litigation, people being forced to let go their patent due to not having money for lawyers (quoted above), patent trolling, the troll (Howe) making lots of money from the litigation though it wasn't he who solved the final problems (it was Singer), and he wasn't manufacturing anything, a patent pool and a resulting cartel, and I'm probably missing something because I've not read the entire thing.

You missed one of the good ones -- prior art clearly covering Howe's patents, but dismissed on a technicality.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[devent]

Then read what the Swedish Pirate party have to say. http://www2.piratpartiet.se/an_alternative_to_pharmaceutical_patents

Today it is already the public sector (henceforth called "the government") that pays for the bulk of all drugs that are used in Europe, thanks to various systems for universal medical coverage. (See for example page 37 in this report from EFPIA, The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations.) It is the government that pays for the pharmaceutical research today, by paying high prices to the pharmaceutical companies for patented drugs

According to a report from the Swedish Food and Drugs Administration (pdf in Swedish), the price for drugs dropped on average 70% when they became free of patents (page 13 in the pdf).

The price for a substance will then drop to 30% if we get rid of the patents. Add 20% to fund future research according to the proposal presented here, and we have reduced the government's bill for drugs to 50% of what it is today. We would cut the cost in half, while still giving more money to pharmaceutical research.

Support your Pirate Party.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[russotto]

"Hot water, good dentistry and soft lavatory paper."

And the envelope says: "What three things are most lacking in England?"

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[russotto]

Funny that, how the staunchest defenders of property as a "natural right" simply stole an entire country.

There was no stealing. There was merely acquisition of territory by right of conquest.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, innovation always increases, even when there are roadblocks slowing it down. It's just the nature of the Universe. The more innovation there is, the more you can build upon. Innovation naturally increases at an exponential rate. The first several tens of thousands of years that humans were around, there were only a few innovations. After that, that rate slowly increased. By the end of the prehistoric era, it was much faster, and that rate kept increasing up to the industrial revolution. Patents had absolutely nothing to do with it.

As for the steam engine, its inventor was not even thinking about patents at the time. It was only once he was trying to market it that a business partner suggested he patent it and sue everyone who sells a steam engine. For the next several decades, company after company was shut down via infringement law suits. Many of these companies had real innovations that improved the steam engine, but none of these innovations were allowed to be brought to market. The rate of innovation slowed significantly until the patent expired. After that, it suddenly skyrocketed, and people once again built upon the innovations of others.

The first chapters of Against Intellectual Monopoly discuss this in detail, with details and statistics and studies. In fact, once you start reading literature from actual economists on these issues, you will find that there has never been even one study supporting the idea that patents and copyrights support innovation. What you will find is study after study that indicate that all they do is hinder it.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been debunked quite thoroughly. The opposite is true even more so in this industry. Companies made trivial changes to drugs to be able to repatent them without actually making new ones. They also waste huge sums of money on marketing and appeasing the FDA's demands. This is dealt with quite thoroughly in Against Intellectual Monopoly . I strongly recommend you read the entire book.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[phantomfive]

That's a simplistic analysis of a complex topic worthy of an economics thesis. This kind of weak analysis is responsible for making poor policy. To begin with, you are aware, right, that communism has been shown to be vastly inefficient to the free market? Any analysis of the situation that fails to take this into account is weak and probably wrong.

Another immediately obvious problem with their analysis is that they fail to take into consideration all the drug/medical device companies that fail. They attempt to innovate, but only a small percentage ever succeed. The government isn't paying to support these guys. So right from the start, the pirate party's numbers are wrong.

I'm aware of all the simplistic arguments against copyright and patents, I was hoping someone had a more well-reasoned approach. Apparently you don't.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[mwvdlee]

Copyrights aren't monopolies. Anybody is free to create competing products and sell or even give them away for free. The key word here is "create"; competitors must do the work themselves.

Copyrights works by providing short term protecting the investment (in time or money) of the creators. The reason is that a significant part of the cost of creative work is intangible thus far less expensive to copy than to create.

I would argue that this "short term" has been extended well outside it's original intentions, but the basic principle is good.

Obviously, if you aren't creating anything worthwhile, there is no benefit in other people getting copyright protection. It'd be much more benefitial to you to just take the creative products of others and undercut their prices.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[bug1]

You included three of your opinions and a link to someone elses opinion.

Evidence (what you required from the other dude) can be independently verified as fact.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

Others have suggested that the very existence of patents is what allowed artisans to start making money on ideas instead of property (which was owned by the aristocrats).

Wrong. Wrong by definitition, even! Patents were created explicitly to NOT apply to ideas. Patents applied to physical devices only. It was only very recently with the retarded 'business machine' fudge that lawyers have started applying patents to algorithms - which are near to ideas as you can get, IMO.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[kaffiene]

No it isn't. Both parties in a symbiotic relationship benefit by it. Not so in a parasitic relationship wherein only the parasite benefits (and usually at the host's expense)

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[devent]

Yes, communism was a failed experiment back in Russia and the DDR. Communism is doing very well in China right now, but only because the party is allowing some form of free market.

But what have patents and copyrights to do with a free market? Patents and copyrights are a state based monopoly on a normally unlimited resource with the intention to promote science and art. Every liberals and supporter of free markets should be in favor of abandoning copyrights and patents.

But anyway, I believe more the Pirate Party then any of the slashdotters.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[phantomfive]

Patents and copyrights are a state based monopoly on a normally unlimited resource with the intention to promote science and art.

By this measurement, private property is a state based monopoly. So what? Unless you are going to do a careful analysis to show why it's better one way or another, you're just playing with definitions. Evidence is what matters.

But anyway, I believe more the Pirate Party then any of the slashdotters.

That's because you're a young fool. Smart people don't believe the pirate party, or slashdotters, or anyone else. They believe evidence. Anything else is faith.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[black3d]

I'm sorry, but you've missed the point as well. The discussion is not about works "not" under copyright. Its about works which are. You've already got a CC license which insists on attribution, so this is a different matter altogether.

Plagiarising works under copyright, and copying works under copyright, are both breaches of copyright. The moral implications of the two are quite different however, as per the other thread of this conversation. As GP doesn't have a disclaimer permitting reproduction, his journal entries automatically fall under the Berne convention.

You seem to confuse CC licensed material with non-CC licensed material. They're not the same thing.

As soon as you say other people are allowed to copy your work, you've already given up some of the protections offered by copyright - namely, the exclusive right to reproduction. (Fair use, et al, aside). So you're comparing apples to .. pears.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[silentcoder]

The point is that I chose to give up those rights - and since many people do - it proves that automatic, universal copyright is stupid. If it was a sensible law NOBODY would use the GPL or CC licenses.

More-over since plagiarism applies to ALL creative works regardless of whether it's copyrighted or even copyrightable (fashion design cannot be copyrighted but it's still a crime to plagiarize them) is the crucial point.

I don't NEED copyright to prevent what the GP was proposing - it breaks OTHER laws anyway. In fact this is why there is no CC license that doesn't require attribution - under international law it's not POSSIBLE for a copyright license to grant that right. You can't give the right to plagiarize under copyright law because plagiarism ISN'T a matter of copyright.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[icebraining]

defence of property is of course a fairly new invention which came even later to America

If you consider 4000 years to be recent... the king Urukagina, who reigned over a city in Mesopotamia in 2380 BC to 2360 BC wrote a legal code which included the protection against theft and seizure of people's property.
http://history-world.org/reforms_of_urukagina.htm

And if about the defense of property being an end on itself, I was talking about the Constitution, not my own opinion, although I do value private property over intellectual, and the paper I linked to talks about some of the reasons why one should be protected and the other shouldn't; the non-scarcity of IP, the way I can give it away without losing it myself, etc.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

Look up 'monopoly'. You are using the term incorrectly, and missing the point. In fact, way before people started using the propaganda term "intellectual property", the normal term was 'Monopoly'. That's how the founding fathers referred to copyrights and patents throughout their writings. That is vastly different from real property.

Why does property exist? Think back to the very beginnings of property. You see some unused land or some rocks or something else. You take it. Now, no one else can take. Why? Not because of some government grant on a "monopoly", but because you physically have it. No one else can take it physically unless they use force to deprive you of this property. You cannot both have this property at the same time--that is, it is a rivalrous, scarce, good. And that's why it's the concept of property has led to so much wealth and prosperity: it produces the most efficient allocation of property. And that's why there's so little prosperity in countries with corrupt governments: there's no security in your own property, since armed gangs are free to take it from you.

Now, think about what monopolies are. If you have a government-granted monopoly on soap, that means that you are the only one legally allowed to sell soap. You don't just own the physical soap that you have, but you have partial ownership in every bar of soap in the country, since no one can take their soap and re-sell it. You don't just own soap, but the concept of soap. That is a world of difference. It undermines real property rights, since people may no longer use their own property as they wish, such as to resell their soap or to make soap from scratch from ingredients they already own.

And that's exactly what "intellectual property" is. It's a monopoly. Like all monopolies (especially government-granted), it is bad for society, wrong, and bad for private property.

And that is why you sound like a fool to anyone who's studied economics when you claim that private property is a 'state based monopoly'. And I have to wonder if you make that claim just in order to fool the uninformed into thinking that you're being objective, or if you're genuinely that ignorant. Either way, I don't expect anyone in this thread to convince you otherwise. The best I can do is to repeat the recommendation to read Against Intellectual Monopoly .

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[spyder-implee]

Hmmm, maybe in your country mate. Certainly not mine. And if by stop fighting you mean stop pirating music, I wouldn't worry ;)

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[black3d]

As USB cables with directional markings for the electrons and electro-magnetically sealed power cables are doing a booming business in the music industry, I wouldn't pur much weight on many musicians making particularly wise business decisions. They might be very clever at making music, but that may be about it.

Exceptions, as always, apply.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

My very next statement was actually part of the background for the point I was actually making, which was at the end of my post (did you actually read that far?).

why people get quite so angry when the record companies insult our intelligence with this sort of BS.

I did read that far, but I saw no relevance to the point I was making. It doesn't matter how angry you are at record labels, it's still the artist's choice whether or not sign with them.

This statement seems to be as naive as a lot of the artists are that sign these contracts.

I know you go on further to justify why you think this statement is naive, but this statement, in itself, is kinda funny. I'm trying to prove that contracts must have some kind of benefits to artists, and I come up with a valid modus tollens argument to prove it. Accordingly, you attack my premises, on the basis that my conclusion is false. I find that funny, since my conclusion being false is exactly what you're trying to prove, so the argument is circular. But, I'll shut up now and let you properly justify your statement.

You appear to come from a world where, before joining a band, artists will have already obtained years of experience in contract law, or have amassed the funds to pay for a lawyer with such experience.

Unlike in the movies, contracts are not readable only by lawyers, and loopholes are not so common. I have read plenty of contracts, and found them understandable. Also, if you ask the person who has given you the contract, they must provide you with a complete understanding of what the contract entails, otherwise the contract will not be valid (I talked to a law student on this point). Both parties must be completely aware of both their responsibilities under a contract.

In the world I live in, on one side there are artists who are often quite young but have a talent for creating music and on the other side, are experienced professionals who are very talented at dealing with such artists and getting the best deal possible. In my world, the professionals are paid by record companies and so, irrespective of what they may tell the artists, that is where their loyalties lie.

Of course they tell the artists that the contract will bring money and other benefits, as otherwise, as you point out, the artist is less likely to sign. What they keep hidden, is that the money and benefits will be mainly going to the record company.

Now if the record companies were completely honest about this and explained to everyone, including the media and politicians that they lobby for ever more lucrative laws to be passed, then I for one would have far less of a problem. But while they continue to churn out the same old BS year in and year out and expect that I am stupid enough to fall for it, then I will continue to be pissed off by them and those that seem to fall for their spin.

In my world, if most music contract provided benefits to anyone, then most signed artists would be speaking out against these contracts. They are, for the most part, a very passionate and vocal bunch. But this isn't happening, barring a few stragglers with (seemingly) bad contracts, so, again by modus tollens, there must be a fair few contracts which are doing the artists a service.

Anyway, we are blowing out of proportion a single point I was making towards a greater point, that is, there is no evidence that copyright is superfluous, while there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Clearly, you are angry at the record labels. That is your business, and I won't lie, they've given us plenty to hate them for. However, I reject the notion that this implies we should destroy copyright (that makes it my business), especially when the problem could be solved by artists doing themselves a favour by reading what they're signing. There are also plenty of other ways of reforming them, other than destroying 90% (a generous figure) of our artistic production. That's really the point I was trying to make.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Correlation does not imply causation.

Wow! I did not know that!

What does help the causation part is that the people who created copyright law also predicted exactly how it would help, and the justification made perfect sense. In most (all?) cases in our history, extra money into a market stimulates extra growth. There is evidence from analogous situations throughout history that this approach works, and copyright does it beautifully.

That's too weak? You want more evidence? Would you prefer an experiment, happening right now, demonstrating the effectiveness of copyright? Anyone can release their works without copyright. All they have to do is mention, somewhere, that the work is not to be copyrighted. All artists have the option to release in this way, or to release under copyright. Most artists choose the latter. Of those that choose the former, they often remain nobodies relative to their commercial counterparts. They may be good, but being good is irrelevant if nobody gets to experience their work.

Also, given the choice between copyrighted and non-copyrighted (or copylefted) works, you would expect, if the quality was comparable between the two groups, people to download the free and legal alternative. But they don't. Clearly there is something that many, many people want in copyrighted works.

Wouldn't a larger influx of artistic works happens anyway because of other reasons (e.g. increased surplus income for consumers, better and cheaper technology for playing, recording & distribution, etc.)?

Well, when the printing press came out, before copyright, publishers complained about how easy it was for people to publish their books that they paid to create and distribute, without any legal repercussions. They complained, because it was a documented problem. People were copying books and selling them for much cheaper prices than the publisher who paid for it could afford. The technology back then was making it easier and cheaper to create books, but rather than encouraging new people into the game, all it did was drive prices to an unreasonable low.

I have no longer have any doubt whatsoever that the vast, vast majority of the boon to artistry came from the fact that people could make a living from artistry, and that this was due to copyright.

Moreover, couldn't the influx be larger still if we didn't have copyright by reducing restrictions?

Copyright is only restrictive if you're wanting to make a work out of other people's works, and even then, you can do that with permission. Now, I admit that we may lose some artistic sampling here and there, but given how well copyright is working in boosting every single other facet of art, I don't think we're getting the raw deal. Sometimes, you just can't have everything you want at once.

You can always sample non-copyrighted works though! If you want to build a more sample-friendly culture, why don't you start producing your own non-copyrighted works to sample from? I'm sure you'll have no trouble succeeding!

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Quote: "Wait, so your disproof of copyright's benefits is that one group of people might try to use it to control our thoughts?"

Read the other bits.

Done. His paranoid ramblings will be struck from the record.

Quote: "Most of history's greatest works were created on commission"

Clearly copyright wasn't needed for those great works.

Clearly. If you think about it, the commission business model of yesteryear is analogous to the sign-with-a-record-label business model of today. In both, a rich party buys the work in advance, encouraging the artist to work. The difference is, of course, that the commissioner of yesteryear kept his works to himself for their prestige, and his own benefit. The record labels actually distribute our culture back to the masses.

But, I digress. My point was that the OP claim that there is plenty of evidence that artists work without money is a load of bullshit, and that point still stands.

And assuming you are correct, most is not all, thus it shows that creators will create stuff whether or not they are paid for it.

No, it doesn't. I have absolutely no idea where you pulled that from. It shows that the greatest works of history happened for pay. That is everything that it shows.

Thing is, if creators are busy doing work for others, naturally most of the works would be created on commission, because they have less spare time to do personal projects.

BUT even if nobody is buying, during that spare time, a great painter will still paint, a great composer will still compose, a great poet will still write. Because it is part of them, part of their lives almost like eating and sleeping. As long as they are fit enough to do so, and there isn't anything getting in the way. So if they and their family's needs are taken care of, they'll have more time to create.

This is unmitigated, unsubstantiated crap. All the great works would have happened anyway? What utter nonsense! Artists do have a tendency to create, but their greatest works were almost always through commission! That's a pretty unsubtle indication that pay is needed to create the great works. There's also a perfectly rational explanation for the phenomenon: artists need support and incentive to focus on perfecting their greatest works. To say this would have happened without money is just pure crap.

Nowadays practically everything is under copyright once you create it, so that statement proves nothing.

To the contrary; it proves much. It would prove nothing if it were impossible to create without copyright. The fact that practically everything is created under copyright is, in fact, my point. If the great works could be created without copyright, then why haven't more great works been created without copyright?

In fact for works of art in particular, the artists often still get the bulk of the $$$ for the original, and little for the copies. Hardly anyone will pay them lots of money for subsequent copies of the same work. So even if their originals are copied (but attribution kept) they hardly lose out - in fact they may become more famous and so can charge more.

So, what you're saying is that we should revert back to the commission system? Well then, do it! Nobody is stopping you! Talk to an artist you enjoy who isn't signed with a label, and talk to them about a commissioned work. Set up a contract, saying you'll pay a certain amount until the project is done, and in exchange, he will give you the copyright (for you to invalidate at your leisure). You may have to haggle with him for a good price, but since he lives and breathes art, you should be able to get it at a steal.

So, enjoy your little commissioned utopia. Just don't mandate it for everyone, OK? If we wanted to commission artworks, and if we could afford it, we

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[bzipitidoo]

You misunderstand. Copying is what is monopolized. Of course anyone can write their own book or music. That's not the point. Copying itself is the point, not any particular work. You might think restrictions on copying are no big deal, or even a good thing. If so, you are wrong. It is copying that must be and will be free. We will not be stopped from copying, and the law must ultimately change to accept this.

In just the past 20 years, we've created technologies that enable us to copy huge quantities of data extremely quickly, over vast distances, at extremely low cost. And we cannot legally use this wondrous capability at even a fraction of its potential thanks to antiquated laws and reactionary forces doing all they can to hold back change. Eventually, they will lose this fight, and the paperless office and Age of Information will at last come into its own. The law cannot stop copying. But in the meantime, we are wasting a great deal of resources shuffling paper, plastic disks, and other bulky media around. And we are causing cruelly excessive damage. That the courts even consider such extreme remedies as shutting down something depended upon by millions of innocent customers just because the provider was accused of some sort of infringement, shows how very wrong our thinking has been. We would never tell all owners of GM vehicles that they are forbidden from driving them because GM violated some intellectual property, but the courts have done that to technology companies.

Critical information needlessly fails to reach those who need it most. This is caused by a combination of neglectful failures to modernize the handling of information, particularly in the legal realm, and malicious censorship, burial, and denial aided and abetted by the neglect. Digitization will revolutionize libraries, changing them from expensive bricks and mortar affairs that are not a significant part of most peoples' lives into vastly more important virtual repositories of knowledge that never run out of copies, never need books returned, are open 24/7, can be quickly and easily searched and mined at will, and which contain far, far more information. Bookstores are toast, or should be. Dictatorships will not be able to maintain themselves by controlling information, and it may be that they won't be able to exist at all in such a climate.

But because of this legal concept of there somehow being a right to copy that can be taken away purely by government fiat from everyone but one entity, the monopolist, we can't legally do any of this. There's no way a library could ever get the millions of permissions required to offer a reasonably large collection of works online. That's hardly all. There's a great deal of confusion over what copyright actually forbids, with rights holders constantly trying to expand the interpretation. I have never heard of a EULA that doesn't massively overreach, trying to tell the users things like that they haven't bought a copy, they've only bought a license and so cannot resell it, they aren't allowed to reverse engineer, can't let their friends use it, etc. We even have local governments trying to claim copyright on the laws, and charge for access! And it is supposedly copyright that lets them dictate such ridiculous restrictions. They've been entirely too successful at persuading the public to accept the chains, and even believe in the rightness of it. Copyright and its poisonous atmosphere must be swept away if we are ever to realize a Golden Age of Information.

If you aren't downloading, you're empowering fascism!

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[RAMMS EIN]

``Copyleft *doesn't* need copyright. Copyleft uses copyright has a mechanism to ensure software freedom, but you could eliminate copyright as long as you create other mechanism for copyleft to work. For example, consumer protection laws giving them the right to access, modify and distribute the code of any application''

You are right, of course. However, I just don't see that happening. The GPL mandates that you make source code available to every party you make distribute binaries to. Do you see a law being passed that mandates source code be made available for all software that is ever distributed? Personally, I wouldn't even find that desirable. The way things currently are, the software author gets to choose under what conditions, if at all, the software can be distributed. The whole spectrum from no distribution to free distribution without any strings attached is available, including access or no access to the source code, requirement or no requirement to contribute back changes, and so on, and so forth.

I think one size does not fit all, and thus, the ability to freely set terms and conditions is a Good Thing. Copyright enables this, by providing a default case that says you are not allowed to copy, distribute, perform, etc. the work without permission from the right holder. If you were to abolish copyright, this default case would disappear, and although authors could still grant licenses, would-be licensees could just skip the license and use, modify, distribute, etc. the work anyway. I am not sure this is preferable over the current situation.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[DedTV]

Copyrights and patents are necessary. They make progress in the sciences and arts a worthwhile endeavor for the common man.

Who would write great songs if some record label could stick an A&R man in some club to record it and then have Miley Cyrus sing it on an album that would be pounded down peoples' throats so aggressively that within a week even the person who wrote it would believe it was originally her song? Without copyrights, that's exactly what would happen. Copyright is needed.
Sure, it's abused by the media industries. But that's because people allow themselves to be abused by those industries. When people refuse to be abused anymore, things change. Piracy is the consumers' rebellion against that abuse.

The same would hold true for patents if only tangible things like songs could be patented. But allowing people to patent methods and ideas does just what you say it does. Ideas are much easier than implementation. But ideas produce no benefit to society unless they are implemented.
Our current legal system actively discourages anyone from trying to implement someone else's ideas for the betterment of society because if they dare to do so, it will likely mean they'll be sued into abject poverty for their troubles. That system is broken and needs to be fixed to protect and encourage the implementation and improvement of ideas. Abolishing the system wouldn't do that.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[Jason Levine]

Same for the movie, book and software industries. Avatar made 1 billion in about a month. Does it need 120 years?

I agree. I'd love to see a study done (a real study, not backed by the RIAA/MPAA) that examines a random grouping of copyrighted works (e.g. books, movies, music) and tracks how much money they make each year. I'm guessing that most works make over 50% of their money in the first 5 years and 90-95% of their money after the first decade. After that, for the vast majority of works, it's likely a slow trickle of money coming in here and there. Some works, I'm sure, have resurgences, get rediscovered or have sequels which cause sales of the original to swell, but for the most part, the original copyright span of 14 years would give the public back their public domain while not costing companies much money at all. (If anything, they'd make more money as they would be able to publish derivative works and mash-ups a lot sooner.)

I wonder...

[tacarat]

Will the British porn industry be so daring?

Re:I wonder...

[MichaelSmith]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest the British porn industry is the most daring in the industry.

Re:I wonder...

[gmhowell]

Well, anyone who expects people to pay to see Brits fuck IS pretty daring...

Re:I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was the British toothbrush industry.

Re:I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

...British porn...

I'm going to go out on a limb...

I'll get the video camera.

Could work

[Anonymous Coward]

By encouraging piracy, I am sure they can get that global domination.

With any luck they'll get more sales too.

It seems...

[Space cowboy]

... that a good heart, these days, is hard to find... Simon.

Re:It seems...

[jrumney]

Who needs a good heart when you can pick up another girl in the neighbourhood and get your teenage kicks right through the night?

Re:It seems...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as they tried to sue someone for singing at a supermarket checkout in the UK, you'll likely get sued for that :p

Re:It seems...

[digitig]

Ooh, you little thief!

Re:It seems...

[Briareos]

See you Space cowboy - in court!

Re:It seems...

[Space cowboy]

My expectations may be high, I blame it on my youth,
but soon enough, I learn the painful truth :)

It's as if he *wrote* the song to parody himself...

Simon

Failure is the right of every musician :)

[Anonymous Coward]

British music industry can in 10 years time become not only number one, but in doing so take British technology companies with us

Damn but I hope that the music industry doesn't take the technology companies with it.

Re:Failure is the right of every musician :)

[mr_mischief]

A Brit pop starlet on every tabloid cover and a Psion Series 5 on every palm!

Damn, the British probably need a technology company that sells their own tech if they plan to do something about making it number one. I don't think it'll help in quite the way they plan if their "tech companies" are just reselling stuff from the US, Canada, Norway, Finland, Germany, Japan, China, and Taiwan.

Re:Failure is the right of every musician :)

[Anonymous Coward]

ARM. 'nuff said.

Re:Failure is the right of every musician :)

[Anonymous Coward]

the British probably need a technology company that sells their own tech

What, you mean like that company from Cambridge, uh, what are they called, um...oh yeah, ARM?

Re:Failure is the right of every musician :)

[mr_mischief]

That's one good example.

Of course you do realize most of what ARM sells is licenses for other people to build chips around their IP. If ARM took over the whole mobile and embedded space tomorrow from Freescale, Intel, AMD, Via, Infine... I mean Intel, Siemens, and Texas Instruments, someone else would still be building most of the chips and selling most of the devices.

Also, if ARM took over the world tomorrow, it wouldn't be because British music dragged it there. It would be because it's a physically small core with performance for the money and per watt.

Re:Failure is the right of every musician :)

[mr_mischief]

ARM is one good example of a British tech company, but that's not a global market domination trend.

ARM doesn't really sell their tech. They license it to other parties who sell chips based on it in devices from the US, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China.

If ARM was suddenly to displace Texas Instruments, Freescale, Intel, AMD, Hitachi, Siemens, and the other competition in the embedded and mobile spaces, it certainly wouldn't be because of British music, either. It'd be because chips based on ARM's core designs fit a lot of processing power into a smallish footprint for a small power and money budget.

I can play music, British or not, on an OMAP, an Atom, a Neo, or an MPC-series. For that matter, I can do it on a Core, a Phenom, a POWER, or a Sparc.

ARM is an impressive company, but if I want to be really impressed by a British industry, I'll look at insurance, banking, securities trading, shipbuilding, textiles, or tabloid press.

Maybe it's time

[JoeCommodore]

for Clive Sinclair to come out of retirement and make a new iPod thing or something?

About a decade late

[Anonymous Coward]

You should be thanking Apple for having the vision* of bringing download sales to the general public.

* face it, all the other services before the iTunes Store were only really usable by nerds. Doing drag'n drop and moving files around may be simple for nerdsbut it is the most complex thing to regular people who can barely use a computer in the first place. A lot of people still can't grasp the difference between RAM and hard drives, not to mention how to navigate drives and folders.

Re:About a decade late

[Anonymous Coward]

i'd disagree with this, everyone i know who uses iTunes knows at least enough to drag and drop files around. iTunes really isn't that simple, i'm a programmer and i've been absolutely confounded by it's interface in my brief trysts with it.

whew!

[colinrichardday]

Oh, I thought they meant the total global domination by the British food industry!

Re:whew!

[Anonymous Coward]

That'd be curries and kebabs, not the worst thing imaginable.

Re:whew!

[Anonymous Coward]

Slather the cuisine du monde in marmite, yummy!

Provide better samples

[Sirusjr]

I really wish the music industry would realize how important it is to users to have an idea what they are getting before they buy it. I buy tons of music from small film music labels who put out limited edition soundtracks and they are by far the best when it comes to providing samples of their new releases. Film Score Monthly posts 1 minute clips for each track on their new release, in low bitrate but at least it usually gives me a good idea what I am getting into. Labels should provide moderate bitrate (192kbps) streams of the music online (or at least half of a new album) and offer lossless downloads for a reasonable price and users wouldn't need to download as much. As it is, most of the time I find the only way to discover a new group is to download an unknown album and give it a listen. I've purchased a number of debut albums and albums from independent artists after downloading their music if I find that it is impressive. There is way too much music out there to do otherwise and still have the finances to support quality music. If labels provided better samples, I would be able to discover the same groups without resorting to downloads.

Re:Provide better samples

[Mathinker]

> There is way too much music out there

In fact, I'd say there's enough non-**AA-non-British music "out there" that attempting "domination" is either doomed to fail, or dooms our personal freedoms ("you will listen only to our music").

And another thing --- I'd guess that the majority of the Ordinary Joes would be perfectly happy with the free 192kbps track(s). Given the way I appreciate most music, I'd say that probably goes for me, also. So, no, minimally, they'd have to make it mono, I'd guess.

I do agree, though, that 30 seconds isn't enough, and 1 minute is a more reasonable length for a preview.

Re:Provide better samples

[phantomfive]

I'm just curious, but what kind of music do you listen to that doesn't get uploaded to youtube? I am not so much on the cutting edge like you are, but everything I want is available there to listen to before buying. So I ask, what kind of stuff are you listening to (and where do you find it)?

Re: Provide better samples

[Black Parrot]

I really wish the music industry would realize how important it is to users to have an idea what they are getting before they buy it.

Lots of on-line music sales sites have a button that will let you hear a snippet of a track.

Re:Provide better samples

[pandrijeczko]

Just to say that I do actually buy all my music on CD, simply because I don't think £10 for a piece of music that I might enjoy for 30+ years is not an unfair price for it.

But how many film trailers have you seen where the film looked really good - and then rented or bought the actual film whereupon it was crap.

If an album appeals to me that much, I will go out and buy it - but I want to hear most of it first. Likewise, if only half the tracks on it are good, then I want the option of making a note of it and possibly waiting until I can get is used or in a bargain sale for £5.

Re:Provide better samples

[RAMMS EIN]

``I really wish the music industry would realize how important it is to users to have an idea what they are getting before they buy it.''

In every music store I've been to, I could listen to a CD before deciding whether or not to buy it.

Almost all music I've bought, I've bought after listening to it, and the rest because it came on the same album as music I bought after listening to it. I listen to music in many places: in pubs, at friends' places, on the radio in my car, on the Net, and in movies. Other people watch music videos on the likes of MTV.

And what about Youtube? It has music videos and advertisements much like the TV channels. The difference is that, on Youtube, the users decide what gets watched, rather than the TV station.

Many sites that sell music, including, last I checked, amazon.com, let you get 30 second samples of songs without requiring you to buy.

I think the music industry does realize how important it is to let people know what the music is before people buy it.

Re:Provide better samples

[zarzu]

You have a very good point. From my experience as a predominantly indie folk (music genres are odd and everybody interprets them differently, but i don't want to be vague here) listener, you will find the music of new artists first on their own page (normally MySpace) then on YouTube and once they become more popular as a torrent. Let me give an example: Haruko is an indie folk artist from Germany (no association) who released her first record about a year ago. You can find 3 songs on her MySpace page and multiple videos on YouTube where you have to search for 'haruko folk' because of the ubiquity of the name. You will however have a hard time finding her album (wild geese) as a torrent or .rar (there might be places, but searching MySpace and YouTube will be far faster).

So for me the sequence for new artists normally is: (1.) Hear it on the radio (example - no association). (2.) Google it and find a MySpace page. (3.) If they haven't released a record yet, capture the songs and check back regularly for a release. (4.) Order the record, i prefer physical ones but i take digital as well.

Re:Provide better samples

[Sirusjr]

Music stores? I don't think those exist much around here anymore. Even if they did, I doubt they would carry much of the metal and rock I would want to sample. From my experience when I tried to go to the few stores that still sell CDs they don't stock the music in the store but tell me to order it off their web site.

Re:Provide better samples

[Sirusjr]

Well I listen to a variety of genres of music and I buy movie soundtracks, anime and video game soundtracks, heavy metal, hard rock, and japanese pop/rock etc. As I mentioned in the first post, some of the labels, especially those releasing older movie soundtracks usually limited edition stuff tend to give plenty of samples that I could easily determine if it was for me by sampling what is provided. However, the labels that put out soundtracks from new movies and TV rarely have many samples posted. Varese Sarabande used to post four or five decent length samples on their web site from a new release but has stopped posting samples altogether. Anything I buy of Japanese origin I will download first just because of the cost of importing. Most Japanese bands frequently release singles in anticipation of a new album but they aren't always represented on the album. Then finally there is heavy metal [I use loosely to include all types of metal I enjoy] in which most labels will provide one track to sample if you are lucky and a few bands who are more independent might post three tracks on their myspace page. I have been lucky that a few of the recent albums I bought based upon the one track available turned out to be good. In my experience bands who are independent enough that they post a ton of music on myspace and youtube I probably wouldn't know were releasing music unless I stumbled upon them somewhere. Those types of artists would benefit from illegal downloading because the user who sees a familiar poster putting up a debut album has the benefit of their past with the uploader and might check it out when they might otherwise ignore it.

Re:Provide better samples

[zarzu]

Interesting. I have never looked for movie soundtracks but can see how there is a problem with previews there. My experience with Japanese music has also only been one of a few months which was indeed mostly based on downloads. I guess the availability of good previews does really depend heavily on what exactly you're looking for.

Re:Provide better samples

[JohhnyTHM]

If labels provided better samples, I would be able to discover the same groups without resorting to downloads.

You would also be able to discover that the new bands that the labels are hyping are total garbage, and they don't want that do they? You are supposed to hand over your cash for what you are told is the 'latest thing' and not ask any questions.

In other news...

[gearloos]

RIAA sues everyone...

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

RIAA sues everyone...

It's news?..

Re:In other news...

[gearloos]

exactly

Wow. How arrogant.

[Anonymous Coward]

They should try to find a truce with their customers, right?

No. They prefer to collude with governments, hardware manufacturers, media (when do churches come into play?). We, the customers?

Bah. Just gullets.

It's our fucking responsibility to fight that.

Isn't that an old country music song?

[Mathinker]

"An Industry Named Sue"?

(Sorry, Shel --- RIP).

Be afraid.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Call-Me-Dave's brand new Britain there is no longer any such thing as quality, integrity, creativity or honesty - just the naked and unashamed lust for cash coupled with a sneering contempt for pretty much everyone.
So, when the Tech Industry and the Music Industry say "why are we fighting thus?", it is not a sign of some fantastic new breakthrough in enlightened thinking, it's the realisation that they can fuck even more people over if they join together.

Re:Be afraid.

[Nursie]

"In Call-Me-Dave's brand new Britain there is no longer any such thing as quality, integrity, creativity or honesty - just the naked and unashamed lust for cash coupled with a sneering contempt for pretty much everyone."

Really? Cool, I might consider moving back some day then.

Re:Be afraid.

[Anonymous Coward]

The naked, unashamed lust for cash was here well before the current government.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Little-Red-Book-Labour-Sleaze/dp/1904734162 for starters. A scandal a month, every month, for nine years.

As a rule of thumb, Tories get caught with their mistresses, lib dms get caught with rent boys, and labour get caught with their hands in the till.

Re:Be afraid.

[Nursie]

Tories get caught with much worse than that don't they?

I recall a story from the early 90s of a Tory, may have been a peer, being found dead wearing stockings and suspenders, with an orange in his mouth, a plastic bag ove rhis head and a kettle lead wrapped around his neck...

I may be exaggerating, but I think that was on "Have I Got News For You" a long long time ago...

Re: Be afraid.

[Black Parrot]

In Call-Me-Dave's brand new Britain there is no longer any such thing as quality, integrity, creativity or honesty - just the naked and unashamed lust for cash coupled with a sneering contempt for pretty much everyone.

Sound's like they've finally caught up to the Reagan era.

Re:Be afraid.

[Elky Elk]

Were you drunk the last 13 years?

Re:Be afraid.

[funkatron]

FFS, he just a fucking politician. He has no influence on anything.

Re:Be afraid.

[Anonymous Coward]

I recall a story from the early 90s of a Tory, may have been a peer, being found dead wearing stockings and suspenders, with an orange in his mouth, a plastic bag ove rhis head and a kettle lead wrapped around his neck...

You say that like it's a bad thing?

Re:Be afraid.

[Anonymous Coward]

> In Call-Me-Dave's brand new Britain there is no longer any such thing as quality, integrity, creativity or honesty - just the naked and unashamed lust for cash coupled with a sneering contempt for pretty much everyone.

Where have you been for the last... thirteen years? This isn't something new.

Re: Be afraid.

[Jedi Alec]

So they've taken a few steps back since then? Since the Iron Lady used to tell Reagan to eat his veggies and go to bed on time.

Sharkey

[airfoobar]

I can never make up my mind about Sharkey. There are a few times when he comes off as someone genuinely interested in the wellbeing of British musicians, and there are other times when he comes off as an arrogant prick interested only in the global domination of the BPI. I know one thing for sure: he's not the type who can handle being wrong, and as long as he still stands he will fight for copyright, even if reason and evidence suggest that copyright is a bad thing for musicians and a bad thing for the British people.

In my opinion, his actions have been impulsive, shallow and unpredictable, and I hope he stays out of this debate -- even if he means well at heart. You know what they say about that road paved with good intentions...

Re:Sharkey

[c0lo]

In my opinion, his actions have been impulsive, shallow and unpredictable, and I hope he stays out of this debate -- even if he means well at heart. You know what they say about that road paved with good intentions...

Hmmm.... Good intentions, you say... Let's see TFA:

He appealed for "the ultimate solution", which was a music market place.

Market place... to me, it means: we sell it, you pay for it. Believe me, I don;t mind paying for it, I do mind however who are the sellers.

Market-place: is this the only reason music should be created? Is it the only way music should be distributed?

What about artists earning more from "live music" (touring - like it used to be before the copyright) and a bit less from selling "dead music"?

If the main source of profit comes from distributing the music instead of "living" it, concerts become (already became) only "a channel of promotion for records" (along many others)... perhaps this is why I still enjoy better going to "jam sessions" - at least music just happens then-and-there - I'd hate to see them disappearing because a corporate dick thinks them as "a less efficient way of promoting a record".

Re:Sharkey

[Patch86]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this "truce" he has in mind might involve technology companies cracking down on pirates (again), and respecting their copyrights.

Further out on a limb, I'd say that nothing will be achieved off the back of this.

Re:Sharkey

[mr_mischief]

Oh, make no mistake. Most of the actual artists still do make more money touring than selling albums. Their labels make the money on the albums, almost all of it, until the artists are very big names with clout to bargain.

76th Rule of Acquisition

[Anonymous Coward]

Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.

Ah.

[Black Parrot]

told a conference in London this week that it was time for the music and technology industries to set aside their differences and strive instead toward a common goal: nothing less than the total global domination of British music.

The old "if you can't beat them, ask them to join you" strategy.

OT

[Black Parrot]

for Clive Sinclair to come out of retirement and make a new iPod thing or something?

Just saw the Futurama episode where they viewed something on an "iFad". LMAO.

Re:OT

[JoeCommodore]

I got it, completely British:

the iFAB!

Yeah, baby, yeah!

Ferengi Rules of Acquisition

[Anonymous Coward]

76. Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.

Re:Ferengi Rules of Acquisition

[Anonymous Coward]

offtopic - really, mods? nice nerdy way to speculate that it may be a feint.

Modded informative because he accurately quote the Rules according to the Memory Alpha listing.

Global domination?

[gmuslera]

- Pinky, you are pondering what i'm pondering?
- I think so UK Music... but do i really need to buy?

If you can't beat 'em, join them?

[cheros]

I see that the call is not to end the war on consumers, then? I note with interest the semantic twist when they talk about "sustainable business models" - it's the music industry that got it wrong (yet again, and again) when it comes to new technology, so there is a mild lack of credibility if they want to tell ISPs and service providers how to make money.

If they would have spent the money that have waisted on unwarranted prosecution, no, pERsecution of their potential customers on researching collaboration from the start we would not have a whole generation of their customers who have seen their friend's lives wrecked by taking the money they needed for school away on frankly spurious arguments, methods evidence and calculations that have now been shown to be so far off the mark it ought to trigger automatic retrial. It sure is a novel way to engender people to your products, but there too I would forego their advice.

Ditto for the film industry. As a legitimate buyer I am getting exceptionally fed up by DVDs taking control of my player so I cannot skip the "you should not steal" bit every time I play a DVD (anything from Disney is worse as it goes straight into marketing afterwards). I bought the real thing with real money, so f*ck off. If I ever have to present to such organisations I swear I will lock the doors and spend 10 minutes droning in the worst possible way about why they should not copy and distribute my material. Every time. Oh, and that they won't be authorised to read it in any other country..

I do not copy music, but I am fed up with being treated and lectured to as a potential criminal regardless.

Oh, and Sharkey? I don't think he really needs to worry about anyone copying *his* music, I can see why he changed jobs..

Re:If you can't beat 'em, join them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and Sharkey? I don't think he really needs to worry about anyone copying *his* music, I can see why he changed jobs..

Yup.
13 charting singles with The Undertones (including TEENAGE KICKS!!!), 7 solo.
4 charting albums with The Undertones, 2 solo.
Disastrous music career.

Re:If you can't beat 'em, join them?

[cheros]

That's what I mean - a has been, he kind of disappeared into a hole.

OMD is still around, and Roxy Music were actually playing live on TV, with even a tour planned for 2011..

(note: not impressed with that YouTube song, though)

All the world

[masini]

What dominations. It is no true. The artists are the same all of this world. I hope they will be always the same.piese auto import

All kinds of depraved people out there...

[Anonymous Coward]

Though I could probably masturbate to someone speaking Oxford English. No video necessary, just the audio track. :/

The "ultimate solution" lol wut?

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA: "He appealed for 'the ultimate solution', which was a music market place."

Godwin's Law prevents me from describing what I think he wants that market place to be like.

Re:The "ultimate solution" lol wut?

[Crypto Gnome]

From TFA: "He appealed for 'the ultimate solution', which was a music market place." Godwin's Law prevents me from describing what I think he wants that market place to be like.

I've read The Ultimate Solution, and that's not a world I want to live in.

global domination of British music

[Errol backfiring]

Britannia Rules the .WAV!

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS4ALgm6Rsc

OT: your sig

[KingAlanI]

cool comment; where's it from?

Translated

[SmallFurryCreature]

We want a truce, if you do absolutely everything we want and obey us without thinking, then we won't be trying to make you do absolutely everything we want and make you obey without thinking. Ain't we nice.

The music industry suffers from the broken window fallacy. Roughly, the kid who broke a window benefited society since money flowed because the window had to be replaced. The fallacy is that the money would have flowed anyway, but NOT in the replacement of something but in investment or the improving of ones life.

If the music industry goes bankrupt, the economy doesn't suffer because it will simply have meant a shift of money.

The record shop has become the mobile phone shop. I don't have a newspaper subscription, I have an Internet subscription. My money flows into the economy. The smart parts of the economy have moved on, the rest is trying to legislate against the car, the electric light, chance itself. Good luck. They might put a man with a red flag on the internet for a few years, but progress moves on. I will simply pirate over a prepaid 3G connection. I will NOT buy CD's. Time has moved on. Move with it or die.

Re:Translated

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

The music industry suffers from the broken window fallacy. Roughly, the kid who broke a window benefited society since money flowed because the window had to be replaced. The fallacy is that the money would have flowed anyway, but NOT in the replacement of something but in investment or the improving of ones life.

WTF? How is investing in and releasing a piece of music akin to "breaking a window"? I suppose that investing in culture is not an investment, and that providing entertainment doesn't improve enough on people's lives.

How on earth did you get an insightful mod?

Re:Translated

[Anonymous Coward]

"The record shop has become the mobile phone shop."

Where I live in the UK, the record shops have become computer game shops, selling almost exclusively console games.

The reason for this is that console games are not widely pirated yet, so it's still profitable to own a shop.

Truce?

[funkatron]

There's only one side been attacking here and it isn't technology. This isn't a truce, at best it's a cease-fire.

It was Stephen Milligan MP...

[Anonymous Coward]

...who died from autoerotic asphyxiation. There was much speculation about the exact details.

the real fight

[Anonymous Coward]

So far, the real fight has been the music industry fighting to hold on to its ancient and long outdated business model instead of updating to take advantage of advanced technology. Consumers cannot allow any compromises with the music industry...consumers and technology must win, and the music industry must totally lose its current business model. No other outcome can be allowed.

Re:the real fight

[pandrijeczko]

I don't actually have a problem with the current business model, except that I'd like a legal way of previewing a piece of music before I decide to buy it.

I buy lots of CDs, I don't think £10 is an unfair price to pay for an album I may have enjoyed over decades. I'm also quite happy for the music industry to use its huge marketing budgets to advertise at me (within reason) because appropriate adverts in the music magazines I read have lead to find even more great music.

Musicians selling their own music on their own web site will not have those marketing budgets, therefore there's nothing to lead me to them in preference to the thousands of other artists who are doing the same thing.

People who concerns themselves with the operation of the music industry are deluded. All that matters is whether or not the end product is value-for-money or not.

If it's not worth the money, then don't buy it & don't copy it. If enough people do that, the industry cannot blame music pirates for their lack of sales, therefore they have to themselves change their business model.

Simple.

I hate to break it to you, but...

[hoggy]

...UK Music are not the UK music industry. Sharkey is a lobbyist with a bunch of artists on his side, but he doesn't speak for any of the publishers/labels.

I mean it's a refreshing opinion, but it doesn't represent any grand outbreak of common sense.

Re:I hate to break it to you, but...

[mr_mischief]

Of course there's not much common sense involved. HE's talking about British tech companies ruling the world, and on the backs of British music at that.

Pray tell, what is the biggest British-designed selling computer at the moment? The PsiXpda?

How about CE equipment? Sure, there's Chord and Cello. There are parts companies like Electronic Micro Systems. Companies from other countries make some of their stuff there for the UK market.

Is it really going to take off and take over Siemens, JVC-Kenwood, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Sony, Garmin, Sharp, Samsung, LG, Alpine, Kicker, Polk Audio, Bose, Denon, Bang & Olufsen, Apple, Nintendo, Gateway, Dell, HP, RIM, AMD, Intel, NVidia, Hitachi, Microsoft, Nokia, Daewoo, and all the other companies in the US, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China for consumer electronics tech? Based on selling British music with British devices (which I'm guessing would need to be a proprietary format to enforce using only certain products from certain companies)?

Re:I hate to break it to you, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that you post your anti-British technology comment using a forum on the World Wide Web...

Re:I hate to break it to you, but...

[Crypto Gnome]

I have to break it to you, there IS no such thing as "the british (or otherwise) music industry".

Music "artists" today are DUMB WHORES, most of them FAR TOO STUPID to understand how badly THEY ARE BEING FUCKED BY THEIR INDUSTRY.

This world would be FAR better off if THE ROCK THAT KILLED THE DINOSAURS paid a visit to these corporate douchebags.

Re:I hate to break it to you, but...

[mr_mischief]

Yeah I've heard of Tim Berners-Lee. That's the British guy who went to Switzerland where he rehashed hypertext, threw together a language for it from a degenerate subset of SGML, and started pushing it out over a stateless single-transaction protocol.

All of this he did on a computer and operating system developed by NeXT, which was a US company. NeXT's computer and OS were based around a Motorola (US company) chip and the American Telephone and Telegraph Unix OS. He did the development in Objective C, which was developed by the US company StepStone and then bought by NeXT. Objective C is based on C, which was developed at Bell Labs (a branch at the time of AT&T) along with Unix.

The UK has plenty of history (some recent) of great technical geniuses and achievements. Decent radar, the Bombe computer system, Alan Turing, Ada Byron Lovelace, Charles Babbage, ARM, the BBC Micro, Acorn, Psion, the guys making the PsiXpda in the spirit of the old Psion systems, and of course more.

Berners-Lee based his WorldWideWeb on the US's Internet technology. Telnet, NNTP, SMTP, Archie, Gopher, WAIS, and lots of software for using them already existed. Most of that was developed in the US. Many forum programs and BBSes ran all around the world before WorldWideWeb was developed. Some were on the Internet and some on other networks (including multi-node dial-in BBSes, also invented in the US).

The original WorldWideWeb was designed as a static publication and document retrieval system with no dynamically generated content.

The Common Gateway Interface was developed in the US at the NCSA at the University of Illinois. The first graphical browser was developed at the NCSA. The Perl programming language, which Slashdot's code is written in, was developed originally by an American. Slashdot was founded by an American, and is owned by an American company.

I think your statement is interesting, but what part of Slashdot is bringing the UK fortune and power in the world because Berners-Lee happened to grow up in the UK and went to Oxford?

Oh well ...

[giorgist]

They are at teh point of bargaining.
You see ... they wanted all the pie to them selves, but no luck.
Now they hope they can share with a few ... but no chance.

They have to negotiate with the kid at school that carries 1GB usb drive ...

They are the ones with the technology ...

Too little too late

[mrogers]

On behalf of the British technology industry, it's my privilege to issue this response: Mr Sharkey, fuck yourself in the eye. After thirty years of smear campaigns and righteous hysteria you've finally realised that you can't make money without us, and now you want to be friends? Sorry old man, but it's too little, too late. Everybody knows your house is on fire and we're not going to help you put it out. All we wanted was a share of the groupies and the coke, Feargal. Was that too much to ask? But supplies are drying up, standards are dropping and in the meantime we've invented Craigslist. What do you have left to offer us? Box sets? Get the fuck off my doorstep, Sharkey.

sudo mod him up

[vadim_t]

That's a very interesting article, thanks. I tried to find a citation for my statement, but was in a bit of a hurry.

Screwed...

[Bert64]

If you look at what the content industry is doing in places like china and russia, they get legitimate music (like the service nokia recently launched) much cheaper than its available in the west, plus its drm free...
Similarly, cinemas are much more pleasant places to be in asia, not the dirty smelly overpriced places you get in europe... And they get DVDs released a lot earlier than other places.

Why is this? because piracy is rampant in these places and its forcing the industry to try and compete, in the west the level of competition is kept artificially low because the content industry has the government in their pocket, and so we get an inferior service at a much higher price.

So sad...

[adamofgreyskull]

Teenage Kicks, by The Undertones, of which Sharkey was a founding member was such an incredibly ground-breaking record. It is perfection. I stop whatever I'm doing just to listen to it whenever I hear it. However, Feargal Sharkey has tainted that experience for me, as I'm always reminded of his protectionist bullshit. Campaigning against the future to try and protect the status quo. So sad. Thom Yorke needs to smack him upside the head with some facts.

Re:So sad...

[Crypto Gnome]

Thom Yorke needs to smack him upside the head with some facts.

Inna sock padded with a large brick?

Time to set aside the diffs and strive to common G

[Anonymous Coward]

At least they Don't have to reinvent the wheel...

the steam engine

[oliverthered]

brilliant choice,

You do realise that due to a patent on highly inefficiency low pressure condensing steam engine, a guy who had a much better more efficient one (possibly high pressure I can't remember) the world was stuck with crappy steam engines.

Also Stevenson's rocket benefited from quite a number of inventions that weren't copyrighted (for instance tubes running through the firebox as part of the boiler)

Mathematics has done really well, despite not having patent and computer software would benefit from no parents, so why should other more abstract things be much different?

Ah, the subtleties of copyrights

[symbolset]

The subtle nuances of the various rights, whether to whistle four notes from a song is infringing based on where and when it's done. With hundreds of years of case law precedents to follow, thousands of pages of legal jargon, each a solid rule for "this is mine, all mine!" This leads to a need for an experienced intellectual property law guide, one who can navigate through the shoals of rights - or better yet one who knows that if you want to call someone a thief there's a law for it somewhere.

We'd be better off if we just led such people into the desert and left them there.

Feargal Sharkey and the Music Industry

[Grumbleduke]

I know this is /., but that headline is still rather misleading (RTFA more carefully, perhaps).

Feargal Sharkey is not the UK Music Industry. He was a singer in the 80s and early 90s, who had a top-ten hit in the UK singles chart. He then became a middle-management guy for a record label or two and then in 2008 founded the (cleverly-named) organisation UK Music of which he is the CEO.

UK Music is another lobby group for the UK music companies. Basically, it is 7ish people who managed to get the big initials in the UK music business (BPI, PRS, PPL, BAC&S etc.) to agree to found (and presumably fund) it. From what I've heard/seen, it sends Feargal around the country to give talks and public appearances, but only when there is little risk of him getting any serious opposition (he pulled out of a Cambridge Union debate with Rick Falkvinge etc. at the last minute). Looking at their website, they don't seem to do much else. Also, it is my impression that nobody within the major lobbying groups takes him that seriously either (i.e. within the BPI/MPA). His offer of "a truce" is particularly amusing as he has neither the power, authority or influence to "call off" any of the lobbyists attacks on technology; the DEAct, ACTA (I wonder if he has even heard of it, even the relevant UK minister hadn't heard of it) or any of the restrictive licensing policies in place.

Anyways, on the subject of what he said... the idea of the "music industry being at war with technology" strikes me as rather amusing - something like a child standing on a beach throwing stones into the sea; they take every splash as a victory, but perhaps now the water is flooding into their wellington boots they call for a truce... the water doesn't care. Similarly, technology isn't really fighting music; and certainly the technology industry isn't - if it did, I think the music industry would lose rather quickly (total music industry is worth about $60bn - very rough estimate - compared with Google's $40bn, MS's $90bn, Apple's $50bn etc.). In the UK, the recorded music industry is under £1bn a year out of the £1tr GDP... it really is quite tiny.

Goo!

[NSN A392-99-964-5927]

I will make an annoucement soon on Flux Radio http://www.fluxradio.org/ Possibly the inner workings of Peter Mandleson and his "FangTastic" dinners with record label bosses. The extranet is about extra portions of artists cash.