Slashdot Mirror
Copyright Industry Calls For Broad Search Engine Controls
The copyright battles going on right now are not all about SOPA, PIPA, or even the wider-reaching ACTA: suraj.sun snips thus from TorrentFreak: "At a behind-closed-doors meeting facilitated by the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport, copyright holders have handed out a list of demands to Google, Bing and Yahoo. To curb the growing piracy problem, Hollywood and the major music labels want the search engines to de-list popular filesharing sites such as The Pirate Bay, and give higher ranking to authorized sites. ... If the copyright industry had their way, Google and other search engines would no longer link to sites such as The Pirate Bay and isoHunt. In a detailed proposal handed out during a meeting with Google, Yahoo and Bing, various copyright holders made their demands clear. The document, which describes a government-overlooked 'Voluntary Code of Practice' for search engines, was not intended for public consumption but the Open Rights Group obtained it through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request."
We should also all install mandatory software that makes sure we don't infringe copyrights.
For the children, of course.
Why the hell do these morons keep tabling impossible and/or extremely EXPENSIVE (compute-wise) proposals without talking to someone who knows ANYTHING about IT and technology FIRST?
The last thing the world needs is ignorant luddites making the technology decisions for the global internet infrastructure.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The movie and music industry make material available globally and easily themselves or the governments of the world regulate their distribution chain.
Also the governments audit and oversee all their artist contracts and revenue streams.
See how much they like government regulation and scream about the idea.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Not at all. I "pirate" media to preview/prelisten before making a purchase decision. Were I not able to preview/prelisten, I'd buy NOTHING.
So "piracy" INCREASES their market share and sales in my case.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
So you're proposing tossing out the GPL and every software license in the world because some media lobbyists are assholes? THINK, man, THINK!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
MegaUpload seemed to do quite well and they paid for the content to be uploaded.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
These whores are basically wanting to censor for their own interest. No shame. No worries. No hesitation.
Modern carriage industry refusing to die and taking everyone hostage.
These need to be killed. Asap. first should be hollywood. else, we are never going to get 'cars' at this rate.
And, NO - as you can see, this has gotten out of hand - there is no way to make it work. Now, its either us - the cyber age, internet, 'the people', or them.
Read radical news here
So you propose signing individual contracts to everyone who wants to use OSS software?
Keep thinking. You'll get there.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The problem with individual contracts, aside from the enforcement hassle and the sheer VOLUME of contracts any serious OSS project would have to sign is that you're throwing out a system that has good INTENTIONS because it's being abused by special interest lobbyists.
The solution is not anarchy; the solution is to FIX THE SYSTEM. And the best way to do that is to keep highlighting the damage the abusers are doing and to hound government to patch the holes in the legislation.
There's nothing wrong with the INTENT of the patent system, for example. The problem is that it's too expensive for individuals to file for patents, and companies are abusing the concept by patenting CONCEPTS and IDEAS like user interface gestures and the fact that a device is rectangular. There is nothing wrong with protecting actual INVENTIONS and PRODUCTS from theft, but the SCOPE of patents has become too broad and needs to be pulled back.
My pet peeve with patents right now is not software patents, but the idea that you can patent a genetic DISCOVERY of something that exists in nature just because you MIGHT have figured out how that fragment of the genome works. IT'S NOT AN INVENTION AND SHOULD NOT BE PATENTABLE!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I don't give a fuck what anyone else does. I'm LEGALLY ENTITLED to preview media in Canada and to format-shift content I already own. The US is it's own nightmare, and as long as they never succeed in shoving their fucked-up system down Canada's throat, I could give a tinker's damn about what the US does to itself.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The US system of "copyright" is NOT global, no matter what the US lobbyists would like to believe.
Keep your fucked up laws to yourself.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
It is not a "myopic" opinion -- it is a recognition of the FACT that different nations have different copyright legislation. US law != Global Law, no matter WHAT the American people think about their role in the world.
It is AMERICA that is "myopic" in their presumption that they get to shove their dictatorship and police state down the throats of the international community.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
4. Democracy on the web works.
Google search works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting links on websites to help determine which other sites offer content of value. We assess the importance of every web page using more than 200 signals and a variety of techniques, including our patented PageRank algorithm, which analyzes which sites have been “voted” to be the best sources of information by other pages across the web. As the web gets bigger, this approach actually improves, as each new site is another point of information and another vote to be counted. In the same vein, we are active in open source software development, where innovation takes place through the collective effort of many programmers.
6. You can make money without doing evil
Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a "Sponsored Link," so it does not compromise the integrity of our search results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results and no one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust our objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust.
Doesn't this proposal breach both these policies of Google?
http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/tenthings.html
The US and Canadian media lobby groups are doing their DAMNDEST to force Canada to take on legislation "imposed" by the US system, in direct violation of nearly a half century of precedent cases in Canada.
I, for one, will NOT stand by quietly and allow that to go unchallenged. I LIKE my copyright priveleges as a Canadian, and our media companies are NOT running in the red, so it seems to work for EVERYONE, no matter how much the luddites and dogs-in-a-manger bitch about how the "current system is broken."
The chicken little media companies have been claiming piracy was going to kill the music and movie industries since the 1970s with cassettes made of LPs. They have ZERO credibility in Canada left to their name.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
We are past peak copyright, and they know it, and are desperate.
Not all pirates pirate simply because its free.
Plenty of pirates only pirate because they have no legal option to acquire the content. Sometimes its not available on DVD/Blu-Ray (or digital stream/download) in their country. Sometimes its a TV show that has yet to be picked up by any local TV network (or where the local network is 3 seasons
behind or something).
Sometimes its available on a streaming service but the streaming service has DRM (or restrictions) that means they cant watch it on a mobile device or on a TV. Or maybe its a sporting event they want to watch but cant because its blacked out on their local station.
Sometimes the only way to get the content is to spend huge sums of money on other content they dont want and have no interest in (this is common with various cable providers and premium channel packages)
I for one have been watching some History Channel documentaries on YouTube. Why? Because these documentaries are unavailable on DVD in any store in Australia and the only way to get the content legally is to pay over $60 per month to get Foxtel and the History Channel. And there is no gaurantee that any of the shows you want will be aired (and even if they are, you have to pay extra for a PVR or watch then when Foxtel decides to show them, not when you want)
If I could buy some of these documentaries on DVD at a reasonable price (or better yet, pay something even less to rent the DVD or streaming copy) I would do so. But the option is unavailable to me.
to prevent piracy Google & bing should drop all references to any all MPAA & RIAA "properties". No Elvis Presley, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Justin Beiber or OneDirection. For a week. Then watch the xxAA's whine and complain - probably try and get an anti-trust action about it.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
What I want to know is when the politician are going to start legislating the con-committal responsibilities that go with these so called "rights." I was taught that being granted rights meant there were a whole range of responsibilities that went with them. Let us come up with a few for Copyright. 1. If a protected work is out of active circulation (new copies promoted for sale in a currently readable format) for 10 years by any distributer who has purchased the right then the copyright returns to the author. If the author (or his heirs or assigns) is unable to offer the work for sale for an additional 10 years the work falls into the public domain. 2. Should a corporation owning copyrights outright through works for hire be guilty of any serious infraction - environmental, securities, labor, etc. - such work are forfeit to the public domain. Settlement of such charges without any admission of guilt shall not be deemed sufficient to avoid the penalty. 3. Format changes must be updated for similar platforms. If the content is electronic then the producer cannot create a new format for the sole purpose of reselling the content. Product support for older formats must be maintained. Other idea or refinements?
Easy. Give people what they want and they will buy.
I cite my favorite example for this: Movie DVDs. There are a few shows, very select few, that I follow and like. Sadly, I cannot buy them. They are even commercially available, but I cannot get them. Why? Because they don't want to sell them to me because I happen to live in the wrong corner of the planet.
I have to wait until they are done with their atrocious dubbing and then I am probably, maybe, finally allowed to buy. The dubbed version, not the original one. Sure, in Spanish, German, French, Italian and a few other languages nobody knew or heard of, but rest assured the original English track will not be part of the fold. And even if I accepted a dubbing that butchers the jokes and twists the meaning around, I'd still have to accept being at the very least one season behind. Why? Why can't I simply buy the same DVDs that are sold to the US customers.
And if you're in the US and pretend this doesn't apply to you, you're obviously not into Anime.
Next, I prefer my movies on my movie server hard drive. Why? Because I want to access it with the flick of my remote instead of having to search the correct DVD and because I do not want to watch it on my tiny computer screen but instead on the big TV. Plus, I do not own a standalone DVD-player and I somehow fail to see the reason to get one when I have enough hardware able to read DVDs. This, though, is not acceptable it seems in the eyes of the content makers. I accept their concern with piracy and hence I ... well, it seems I have the choice of abstaining or copying. Draw your conclusions.
The point is, it ain't the price tag that keeps me from buying. 20 bucks for a movie I actually want to see isn't breaking my back. But I don't accept the inconvenience tied to it. I'd rather do without.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Our media companies aren't running in the red, either. In fact, they are making record profits. And I think that is part of the problem. It gives them far too much money to spend on lobbyists like this. They need a fall guy when they finally stop having record profits to point to why, and to be able to say it isn't their fault. In short, they need a scapegoat. Piracy is a good one since it is impossible to reliably prove any effect from it at all.
"It is our policy , not to negotiate with terrorists".
Slipping shoelaces ?
I think Google's anti-SOPA stance may be the beginning of a shift in that "soft" stance of the IT industry. It's becoming quite clear that without spending money on lobbyists to tell the IT side of the story, government will CONTINUE to be ruled by ignorant luddites.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
How about the fact, that in some countries 500 euros is a good monthly pay, while in others 2000 euros per months means one step above poor. Yet all the goods are priced the same. No, there is more, you see in a country like UK, if you don't like something you have the option of returning it, if it's scratched or damaged, you can get your money back or a replacement. You also have all those neat promotions. You might find it fantastic, but a lot of firms do bussiness that way, they don't bother buying in bulk from the producer, but buy a small quantity from the distributor, simply put because they can't afford to keep that much stock without selling it.
There are a lot of little things that prevent all goods from reaching all markets.
Take manga and anime for instance, until a few years ago, it was impossible to get them in the western countries, let alone translated. So, the option was piracy. Then there was the price, in Japan, Korea, they're dirt cheap, in the rest of the world they're bloody expensive, even with the translation and reprinting the cost isn't justified.
In the end, they're going to lose. You know why? Because anyone and everyone can hold in the palm of their hand, every book ever written in the world.
It's about gaining absolute control over the distribution channel. Copyright violation is just the pretext. They want to be able to control all content distributon via the internet, the same way as they control other distribution channels.
Without the channel control, their position as indispensible middlemen is under threat. The destruction of the internet as a communications medium, and the resulting destruction of any other venture that uses the internet in any way is merely collateral damage, not even particularly "regrettable".
Even the most corrupt politicians can't come right out and say "We've been paid to hand total censorship control over the internet to the media companies". They need a plausible reason to make those laws, and the "fact" that the media companies are being robbed a large proportion if GDP is the reason they've chosen. It doesn't have to be a financially viable reason, just one that sounds better than "Because we're being paid to" when they are asked why they are passing such laws.
It's all about gaining absolute control over the channel, at any cost. Remember, you aren't allowed to sing to yourself in a public place without paying a license fee - people have actually been threatened with lawsuits for doing so. They want control of the internet the same way, so fo instance, you can't make your own music or videos and post them for people to see unless you pay the media companies a license fee for doing that. Control over commercials so companies have to pay for the right to show commercials (like they do in magazines and cinemas now) would be nice too. Maybe that's the real reason they want to attack Google so much.
Murdoch knows far more about it than most posters here would think (he bought his first ISP in 1992 FFS) but he wants a lot of what we think of as the internet stopped so he can get the advertising money instead of Google. This current layer of bullshit is an escalation of his travelling roadshow of the last few years where he called us all thieves to anybody that he could force to listen. The "luddite" paywall tactics were most likely designed to fail so that it can all be blamed on Google etc, and since newspapers were bleeding money anyway there isn't much financial difference even in the short term if they fail. That Chinese cable network Murdoch sold the year before last gave him far more cash from a single sale than all of his newpapers are worth, and the yearly revenue from Fox is probably more than they are worth as well.
So yes, they know but they want to sell us space in a walled garden instead of letting us do things on the commons.
There's not a whole lot an individual can do about that. Too bad the GP is an AC, because that was an insightful comment that unfortunately will be little seen.
When I was in Thailand in 1974 it cost a nickle to ride a bus anywhere in the country. Dinner for four at a decent restaurant cost a dollar. I bought a tailored shirt for five bucks, my bungalow was $30 a month. The median wage was about $1000 per year, yet they weren't really poor.
It took two decades for them to industrialize, and the average Thai is no better off now than they were then.
Free Martian Whores!
Stories like this are why I will never spend another $.01 on music from the major labels. I support musicians I like by going to their concerts and buying their T-shirts but never again by paying for the privilege to listen to a recording of their music. My piracy of music is civil disobedience against the RIAA and MPAA for the copyright terrorism they continue to perpetuate. First it was the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act which ignored the interests of all mankind and extended copyright protection of 75 year old movies for another 20 years specifically to enrich USA media companies. The USA Congress specifically disregarded the rights and interests of the people who elected them into office in order to line the pockets of major corporations. Then it was Metallica suing Napster destroying something which they actually could have leveraged to control online MP3 distribution.
It is my hope that some countries will finally pass rational copyright legislation which sets copyright terms back to the Copyright Law of 1790 which set a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14 year term should the copyright holder still be alive. To this original law I would require that the work remain in print and for sale to the public. eBooks makes it easy to keep books in print so this should not be a huge burden to copyright holders. The moment something goes out of print (or a site ceases to exist on the Internet) the material should enter into the public domain. For example, the day Microsoft stops selling / supporting Windows XP the operating system should enter into the public domain for free use by all.
For most of my life, I've been getting increasingly resentful of these corporate pirates for stealing, hoarding, and even sometimes destroying human culture. They have no interest whatsoever in the "the Progress of Science and useful Arts," nor will they ever be satisfied with any "limited Time" regulating their monopolistic control over thoughts.
Now, these assholes have already shown... They cannot be trusted.
With the exception of some governments, NGOs, and a minority of intelligent artists, the public domain, as defined by law, is a thing of the past. My response to this government and corporations mutual disregard for the founders' more than generous monopoly terms, is to disregard those terms myself, with the maximum effect I can bring to bear. No useless letters to government prostitutes involved.
My uTorrent stats show 964GB transferred in the past ten days, and a 1:12.8 dl:ul ratio since install. I put as much as I can on properly stored archival DVDs, but I'm one person with limited resources. One advantage that we "little people" have over libraries and funded preservation/conservation efforts is not having to wait past death to make a copy; I have a copy a minute after an RSS feed update, and at least ten more public copies before I'm done with it. Hopefully some of my peers are doing the same. You know, I find it tragicomical how these industrial copy-Nazis and their apologists get so confused about who's greedy, freeloading, cheap, thieving, and who's really "entitled."
That all said, I'm not certain what I'm actually achieving in the end, but I do know that I'm motivated to try to improve things for maximum people, and the MAFIAA pirates' motive is amassing more corporate welfare; i.e., "transfer of wealth" at everyone else expense.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
They always have the option to move to a country where the works are published lawfully.
Migration is actually very difficult, it can be extremely difficult to acquire the necessary permits to live in another country. That's why there are so many illegal immigrants, would you advocate illegally entering another country so you can purchase movies instead of pirating them in your own country?
They always have the option to buy the appropriate brand of computer or game console and watch it on that. And since when has a PC been able to tell whether its VGA, DVI, or HDMI output is headed to a "TV" as opposed to a "computer monitor"?
And why should they? I'm not forced to buy a particular brand of TV to watch broadcast shows, i'm not forced to buy a particular brand of car to drive on public roads.
They always have the option to buy tickets to watch the game in person.
Not at all, it is often extremely difficult to get tickets for major sporting events... A large number of the tickets are reserved for corporate sponsors etc... You have to buy tickets well in advance to get a good seat or to even get a seat at all, and its often exceptionally expensive. Also the event may not be held locally to you, if its held in another country you have to content with flights, hotels, immigration papers etc.. The cost and inconvenience becomes astronomical enough to put a lot of people off.
Also consider events like the olympics, ordering tickets is being done on a lottery system so even people who want to see a specific event and are willing/able to pay for it may not be able to get tickets.
When tickets for major events initially go on sale its often impossible to access their website or phone lines due to heavy demand too.
The option to see the game in person is only ever available to a limited number, equal to the capacity of the stadium... If more than that many people want to see the event live then some of them simply don't have that option at all.
What is reasonable to you is not always reasonable to the work's author.
Prices are usually set by publishers rather than the actual author, who will see a tiny pittance of the price...
This industry is corrupted by extreme greed and arrogance... Why should someone who spends 6 months being filmed in a movie receive millions on an ongoing basis, while other people (including people like camera operators who were there during the same filming) only receive an average hourly wage for the time they actually spent working?
What ever happened to an honest day's work for an honest day's pay?
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
....then they can pay property taxes on it.
That way the govt is reimbursed for all the services it provides in protecting this "property".
And Sony/BMG will have motivation to let some older works slide into the public domain.
You're right, it's only nearly global.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Why should a content publisher have the right to make content available in one country, but then take steps to block third parties from exporting that content to another country (eg region restrictions etc)?
You don't see that happen with physical goods, there's nothing to stop me purchasing a laptop in china and either bringing it with me or having it shipped, and for digital data that can and should be even easier.
I can fully understand a manufacturer who feels that there is insufficient demand for their product in another country that its not worth expending the time and effort to export and market the product there for a tiny number of extra sales. They are saving themselves wasted effort, and it is still possible for anyone who is still interested to import the goods themselves on a small scale.
On the other hand, when a manufacturer actually goes out of they way to prevent third party export of their product to another country that is just ridiculous and highly insulting. They are actually expending significant resources to DECREASE SALES and to SCREW THOSE IN COUNTRIES THEY DONT LIKE... This all strikes me as extremely discriminatory.
It's one thing to not bother, it's quite another to go out of your way to inconvenience someone else.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
And more people wanting to install truly free software on their computers, making them aware of the problem.
That's a good point. Free software, at least at the essential tools level, are already as good or better than their proprietary counterparts. Free movies are getting better as well. Depends on taste, but I don't see any downsides to free music too. Literature is a bit different, maybe in the future a donation based economy might work but it doesn't look doable right now at least. On the other hand, most of the things I read now are free (blogs, wikis, etc.) so I guess we're getting there. I guess in the end we can totally make do with content created by voluntary payments (support if you like it, pay if you have money). Micropayment systems will enable more in the near future too (not sure how good flattr performs at this), and Bitcoin donations help preserve the privacy of content creators (which is pretty much essential if we are to guarantee the safety of dissidents we support, even in art form).
I don't think copyrights themselves are helpful to the humanity as a whole, however I'm not so much against giving content creators the right to define the extent of usage either. The content wouldn't exist if they didn't create them (yeah, it's not as simple as that really, but let's assume that). If it could really work without copyrights, let's give the content creators the choice. (Though, in my opinion, these new regulations are not about giving the content creators the choice, but giving the State more means to intervene with our business; the ultimate use case will not even be about copyrights. I don't see much consequential difference between regulations against content piracy and regulations against illegal content (e.g. CP).)
I admit to downloading and watching copyrighted content, but as a consumer I always donate if there is a channel to do so. I don't own a TV, I don't care to going to a DVD store (it's like buying cigarettes, I need to smoke now, who knows what I would want when I go all the way to the corner store; and besides they close at 7), and I don't know any "legal" streaming providers that serve content to my region. Even if they did, I'm not sure I would want to pay what they ask in advance (not sure though, depends on the amount and what I know about the content). Best option for me is paying if I like it to support the endeavor, or if a prior capital is necessary, become a micro-producer and contribute beforehand to support developing a project that I approve. There are a myriad of problems with this model, from trust issues (in the case of donations in advance) to the decreased incentive to pay, but it's already taking off. If it ever becomes a tradition, which by itself solves a lot of these problems, it might one day become a norm too.
Consider the tech industry a sleeping giant. Consider that Wednesday protest as it opening an eye. Media cartel should be worried. (You can legislate that pi is 3.0, but then your buildings will be more likely to fall down.)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
They have failed to adapt for 10 years now, and their solution is just web censorship. Fuck the MPAA and their ilk.
Do the big search engines really want to take advice from an industry that is out-competed in distribution by *amateurs*? Most people sharing files don't make money off it.
To those who ask "how will creators get paid?", there are plenty of people who will willingly pay for things at a reasonable price, as demonstrated by iTunes, NetFlix, Steam, and even for books, where Baen free library *increased* sales by exposing readers to new authors. I have 100+ DVDs that I got for about $6 each on average over the last decade. I got them used from the video store, and to me that was a reasonable price. $20 new is just too much for me, so I have nearly never bought new ones.
It is AMERICA that is "myopic" in their presumption that they get to shove their dictatorship and police state down the throats of the international community.
Don't lump me in with those shitheads!
"AMERICA" is not who you think it is. The average American does not want to have anything to do with the dictatorship attitudes of the 1% and those in power, and we are pretty much split down the line on the wars. Americans who were for the wars, were only supportive because they honestly felt threatened and were manipulated by those in power to believe it had to be true. As for the police state laws being exported, that has nothing to do with Americans .
Those in power in this country had to use "National Security" to hide ACTA from us for so long. In less than 48 hours over 30,000 Americans told the Whitehouse to investigate Chris Dodd for bribery when he said some pretty stupid things on television because he was butthurt for his Big Content masters.
What about opposing SOPA? Some tech giants got together and a huge amount of Americans got up and screamed against it!
The American People are not who you need to place your anger with. We are powerless victims here either through apathy or the naivete that we can actually be involved in the political process. In other words, we are being played from multiple angles and we are having a very hard time fighting back.
As much as you don't want "our" copyright laws shoved down your throat, we don't want them to apply to us either.
Your anger needs to be placed very specifically on those running America into the shitter. Please don't sully the name America by including them in it.
If publishers (and authors, and musicians, and labels) want to end piracy, it's really simple!. Clue bat: (a) make your material available, (b) DRM-free, (c) at reasonable prices. Start with step (a). The stuff I have pirated is all material that I cannot otherwise get. As long as these idiots continue to shoot themselves in their collective foot, piracy will thrive.
Exactly! - Well said.
I'm sure they know this... and chose to ignore it. Perhaps they're really, really, really stupid... but I think it's all about admitting the huge hole in their now seriously obsolete business model. They know they could make a lot more money and reduce the piracy to the freeloaders who's always been around with cassette tapes, VCR tapes and whatever it took to make a copy of someone elses stuff for free. It didn't hurt anything in the past decades and it still won't. Besides, back then they were already circumventing the geo-discrimination already rampant back then so it could have been even less.
Here's an example from real life that shows how stupid release rules kills the business. A few years back I wanted a certain title by a certain french artist. I'm in Denmark so it has to be imported, but both Denmark and France is in the EU with the internal market and everything so that should be a piece of cake... Nope. Turns out the artist is distributed by a label here that owns the rights to all the titles by this artist but chooses to release only two (there's like 25-30) here. So, my local shop (who I'm eager to support) can just import it themselves, right? Nope. The label ACTIVELY blocks 'parallel import' so the shop cannot import it. I can import it myself quite easily by doing it online, but that would mean cutting my local shop out of the loop, thus costing it a sale. I don't want that. I can also give up having already waited and returned several times etc. Both options hurts my local shop who already invested time in researching this. There's no way they can turn this into a sale.
I did get the title online (and my local shop died) but the stupid policy of not releasing all the titles and blocking attempts at importing them moved the sale from Denmark to France (a loss to the danish distributor) but could easily have lost the sale altogether because of the hassle. Some countries actually also block private import (Denmark didn't ratify that part of the Info-Soc directive which controls all this) which means I'd have been shit out of luck and had to go to the pirate market to get it. That would mean that nobody got paid at all (except perhaps a pirate) and that hurts both the label and the artist. Just how stupid is that policy?!?!
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
The Republicans proudly and openly suck corporate cock. The Democrats pretend they don't, act sorry when they get caught and do it just as much in the end. The system is stacked so it's almost impossible for a third party to get elected. What would you suggest doing? This is an honest question, because I've honestly got nothing. How are you supposed to fight an oligarchic mess when most of your countrymen don't even acknowledge that a problem exists in the first place or even think that we haven't gone far enough in that direction?
To me it is ridiculous to pay an actor and author millions of dollars for a couple of weeks of work. While plumbers, electricians work harder yet get paid less.
Huh? What planet do you live on where that happens? Here on Earth, most of the actors, authors, and other artistic types get paid less than a living wage, because those millions go to the big corporations that control the distribution channels. This has been written about here and in other forums a zillion times, but apparently it hasn't gotten through to whatever planet you're living on.
We do have a new, much cheaper distribution channel that they don't control, called the Internet, and Earth's artists are starting to abandon the older corporate-controlled channels for this new one. The fuss you're reading about here is the corporate controllers' attempts to take control of the Internet, so they can shut down the new, independent distributors and continue to claim the artists' income as their own. If the people on your planet have learned how to block such a takeover, please let us know, so we can try it here.
It's true that we on Earth do have a very few commercial artist that are paid well by the old distribution corporations. This is basically a PR trick, to make the customers think that all artists get that sort of money. But the other 99.9% get close to nothing, unless they've switched over to Internet distribution. Many of us are hoping we can hold off the corporations until they've gone bankrupt, and we've established a permanent system that actually pays the artists. But, as explained in the news stories we're discussing, our governments are trying to pass laws that shut down the new startups and hand the Internet over to the big corporations. Stay tuned, and you might hear how it turns out.
But if you're an alien artist, I'd advise staying home, and not trying to sell your art here on Earth until we manage to establish a system that will actually pay you. Of course, there are a lot of Earthlings who would probably love to see/hear/taste/smell your creations; maybe you could try making them available on our Internet and see how it goes. (Actually, the Internet doesn't do taste or smell very well, so you should just stick to visual, audio, and written works of art.) But our big corporations will probably go after you if they discover you, and claim that they own the Earth rights to your work.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.