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European Court of Justice To Outlaw Net Filtering
jrepin writes "Today, the European Court of Justice gave a preliminary opinion that will have far-reaching implications in the fight against overaggressive copyright monopoly abusers. It is not a final verdict, but the advocate general's position; the Court generally follows this. The Advocate Generals says that no ISP can be required to filter the Internet, and particularly not to enforce the copyright monopoly."
Corporations will win. Always.
FTFS:
no ISP can be required to filter the Internet
Well it does say can be required to, that doesn't mean they can't be convinced, paid, or otherwise motivated to filter the Internet.
In a shocking development, the famous tech web site "Slashdot" has been found to post misleading headlines *again*. While the european court is moving to ban internet blocking without a law, it clearly states that it would be legal if a specific law would allow and specify the conditions for it.
Nah, people just have to get it through their heads that they will have to do it themselves instead of expecting someone else to do it for them. A full 24-bit digital recording studio that beats anything that was available to Pink Floyd, The Beatles, or Zeppelin will cost you only a few hundred dollars these days. Less than a good drum set. Stop whining and get to work on it.
I hate the RIAA and their methods as much as anyone, but I don't think it is spurious to look at what's happened to the music industry in the last 15 years or so and say that the internet has not had a negative effect.
I suspect it's had far less of a negative effect than replacing musicians with manufactured bands designed by marketers.
I'm an amateur musician, but among the semi-professionals I know no one has any delusions about breaking into the music industry anymore. It's really changed the landscape because the industry itself has shrunk dramatically.
Got any numbers to back up your claims that the music industry has "shrunk dramatically"?
From what I've seen with people I know it definitely seems that if anything for amateur/semi-pro musicians the possibilities have grown. At least this is true for those who have ambitions beyond "playing covers in local bars".
Fifteen years ago if you produced and pressed your own album in a small run you were considered a nobody (didn't matter if it was 5,000 copies, you still weren't as "pro" as the guy with a minor record deal who's first album fizzled and who's second album release only involved 500 copies so the label would fulfill it's contractual obligations). These days there's no shame in it, if anything "I don't want to be screwed over by the labels" is a perfectly valid reason rather than a lame excuse (as it used to be).
Fifteen years ago if you gave your music away for free (be it online or as actual CDs) that meant nothing, it probably would've gotten people talking about how you were trying to game the charts by claiming the albums as sales. These days it's ok to put up a website to share your music (perhaps with a link to iTunes for those who want to pay for it).
Fifteen years ago the only real chance you had of making a video that ended up getting seen by 100,000 viewers was a record deal and letting the studio bring in their pros to create your video (taking the cost of this out of the money they were going to pay you). These days you can get that many viewers if you have a good band, a friend with a HD cam or a DSLR and another friend who's kind of good with FCP or Premiere (just film a few shows, get a little more material to match the mood of the song, edit and upload to youtube).
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
You're conflating a lot things here. Talent is the first and last key to art, and can overcome inferior tools and distribution. However talent is singular, and cannot be bought or taught. At a certain point the quality of tools reaches a sort of "Monster Cables" level of diminishing returns. Truly good music will sound amazing whether it is recorded and produced in a high budget studio with a stupidly huge team or if it is recorded with a few hundred bucks worth of mid-grade hobbyist equipment and the artists themselves. Really expensive tools and teams can make talentless douchebags sound good, that's the whole pop music industry in a nutshell, but people with talent remain so even with inferior equipment.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Hello, Slashdot. I had intended to update this article tomorrow with a more detailed analysis, but given that it's now Slashdot Top Story, I posted the followup immediately. For your convenience:
What this does is say that:
One, no court may impose an ISP with an order to filter, in particular not because of enforcement of copyright monopolies;
Two, such filtering is a reduction of fundamental rights, so
Three, if laws are written requiring an ISP filter or block the internet, such laws must conform to very strict criteria that are applied to laws limiting fundamental rights. They must be effective, they must be proportionate, and they must be defensible in a democratic society. While this sounds like political wishywashing, it has some very specific meanings. It is useful to compare to what laws have been written to prevent terrorism: these laws are held to that standard, which the copyright industry wants badly to supersede. The Attorney General also goes into detail how such laws must be transparent and predictable.
What this does not say is that:
Four, no censorship must ever take place.
Five, no ISP may choose to limit what they present as "The Internet".
In conclusion:
Six, it has been the modus operandi of the copyright industry to threaten ISPs with "block to our wishes or we'll take you to court". This has been their standard operating procedure for the past couple of years, in order to establish enough precendents to get them written into law. Today's verdict, or potential verdict, gives those ISPs the power to say "go play on the highway, parasites, we have an order from the highest possible court saying no court can force us to do that. We care more about our customers than about obsolete irrelevants".
Seven, this is the highest court in Europe, referring to the (equivalent of) Constitution of Europe. Thus, there are no courts and no laws that can supersede this. No EU Directive can change this (potential) verdict. The way forward for the copyright industry appears permanently blocked; I hold it as absolutely improbable that they'll get paragraphs in the referred European Charter of Human Rights that put the copyright monopoly before the sanctity of correspondence, of personal data, and freedom of information.
There. Do I get karma for posting from my own blog when it is TFA?
Oh, and yay - my server is holding. *celebrate*
I rarely pull out the corporate shill card, but I'm pretty sure you neatly fit the category: someone who supports a corporate benefit that directly conflicts with the benefit of society in general - bonus if the UID is near 2M. Let me explain to you why I think that, and it is primarily because you ask a lot of leading questions where your hoped for answer is in conflict with reality.
The engines that brought us basically all music from the 1950s until today are going away, and there isn't really any replacement.
Wrong. Those engines were radio and pressed media. They didn't go away, they were replaced by a better distribution medium: the Internet.
Your comments about publicly supported music ring true in the jazz and classical genres. I doubt if we're going to see subsidies to support music in other areas because there are no education bodies with an interest in that.
Wrong. The most common education bodies teach guitar (local music shops), and the big music departments cover everything from medieval string music to jazz to grunge rock to avant-guarde atonal music. The educational support is broad and deep, as is the demand for music. The only place where demand is narrow and shallow is in the big record labels. If it doesn't fit the Justin Bieber/Britney Spears template, it gets buried.
Another thing is, even if (according to another poster) I own a computer so I should be able to produce music at just as high quality as anyone has ever produced, if I'm burning CD-Rs and handing them out at shows for $5, what does that really do for music in our cultural consciousness?
And this is why they teach you to always answer your rhetorical questions, just in case someone doesn't follow your lead. I'll tell you what it does for our cultural consciousness: it enriches it. If the record is good, I'll pass it to my friends. Hey, listen to this! This guy/girl rocks. They'll pass it around. They'll buy the next record, evangelize it as well, go to shows - the whole nine yards. If they don't like it, it quietly dies. Will that person make billions from that one record? Probably not - and there is no reason that anyone should make billions from a one time activity.
Is an album great if no one ever hears it?
Let me turn the question around: in the age of instant world-wide distribution, is an album bad if no one wants to hear it or distribute it? I'm pretty sure the answer is yes. Otherwise, it would get distributed.
Perhaps, but what has it done for us? What has it done for us versus what could have been done?
This means that your next questions have been answered already as well: it's completely irrelevant what could have happened, because a lot of people decided not to move the record into our general cultural consciousness. That's the definition of an item not being culturally relevant.
Music doesn't change the world by osmosis, it has to enter many millions of ears.
Correct. And the Internet makes sure that everyone can put music into many millions of ears. What has changed from the past 50 years - and where the past 50 years were a complete historical aberration - is that there aren't any more a few dozen people who control what music reaches the ears of millions of people. And it scares the living daylights out of these people, because their jobs have permanently disappeared. Instead, music is back where it should be: in the public consciousness, where it floats to the top based on how many people distribute it.
In short: your entire premise actually goes against the text that you're promoting. The last 50 years were a complete destruction of music as a cultural phenomenon, and were instead the age of music as an industry. The Internet is changing that, and I hope to God that you find a job that doesn't have "destroy culture to monetize it" in its job description.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
It basically is - just listen to Friday by Rebecca Black:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0
The cost of making music that the masses listen too are not very expensiv.
With 101 miljon viewers on youtube its a huge viral success that many 'commercial' artist can only dream about.
Just saying it like it are.
100% of $5-$10 is better than 3-20% of $20-$30*
As a lot of people selling games, e-books, music, and movies have found out,
100% of $1-$2 is better than 100% of $5-$10.
It turns out you really can make it up on volume.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
You know what's making the real music suffer? Not the internet, but large retail chains that only stock the popular shit and out compete the smaller record stores that actually have lesser known works. The whole industry was set to fail sooner or later, the internet did nothing to change that. If you are a budding artist, embrace things like last.fm, those are the future.
As for labels, if the big ancient ones fall and die, they will be replaced by newer companies that are actually aware of the times we're living in. It would actually be a boon for the artists, the best bands these days are independent or with smaller companies whom specialize in a genre or style, and who will actively seek out new talent.