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RMS Responds To NPR File-Sharer's Blog
New submitter UtucXul points out that Richard Stallman has penned a lengthy response to NPR intern Emily White for her post on the organization's site about how she failed to pay for a significant amount of recorded music, acquiring it instead through Kazaa, friends, and CDs owned by the radio station at which she was employed. (We previously discussed musician David Lowery's response; quite different from RMS's, as you might expect.) Stallman wrote,
"Copying and sharing recordings was not a mistake, let alone wrong, because sharing is good. It's good to share musical recordings with friends and family; it's good for a radio station to share recordings with the staff, and it's good when strangers share through peer-to-peer networks. The wrong is in the repressive laws that try to block or punish sharing. Sharing ought to be legalized; in the mean time, please do not act ashamed of having shared — that would validate those repressive laws that claim that it is wrong. You did make a mistake when you chose Kazaa as the method of sharing. Kazaa mistreated you (and all its users) by requiring you to run a non-free program on your computer. ... However, that was in the past. It's more important to consider what you're doing now, which includes other mistakes. You're not alone — many others make them too, and that adds up to a big problem for society. The root mistake is treating a marketing buzzword, 'the cloud,' as if it meant something concrete. That term refers to so many things (different ways of using the Internet) that it really has no meaning at all. Marketing uses that term to lead people's attention away from the important questions about any given use of the network, such as, 'What companies would I depend on if I did this, and how? What trouble could they cause me, if they wanted to shaft me, or simply thought that a change in policies would gain them more money?'"
film at 11
I'll say it for you: copying is not stealing.
but, copying your GPL'd program without credit is stealing
Come on retards... get it out already:
copyright applies when you take from me. It does not apply when I take from you.
What 'the cloud' has to do with pira^H^H^H^Hsharing some MP3s ?
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
Even though I am sympathetic with the author, that is some of the shittiest writing I've seen in a while, which is telling considering the level of writing on the internet. "It's not bad because it's good" is hardly a compelling argument.
What sort of parallel world did I enter?
Does that mean that if it's okay for other people to ignore proprietary copyright, then people can also freely ignore the GPL and make and distribute derivative works of GPL products without source code?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The world needs people like RMS... really. I mean, he is out there on the fringe, where rational thought breaks down into fantasy, but you also have a lot of people in power who are at the other extreme and also living in a kind of fantasy bubble.... heavily subsidized by corporate players of course to ensure they see things the "right" way.
Like so many things in life, the right way isn't always the left or the right, the blue or the red, the democrat or republican, or whatever... its the middle ground where interests from all sides are considered.
On my way home, ill be driving down the central reservation, just to make this point. :-D
When asked about how musicians and others can earn a living when their products are treated as having no value, he reminded her that everybody eats free at the foot cafe.
I don't even know what that means.
If she ever had any credibility to begin with (she didn't), she lost it at having used Kazaa. What is this, 2002? Who even knew Kazaa was still a *thing*?
Second, the comments in the responses on that blog are fucking ludicrous. Are people really that naive and stupid? No wonder copyright lows are the way they are, now. There really is a mass of people out there who think you're a fucking felon for singing "Happy Birthday" to your kid without filing with ASCAP and paying your royalties. Fucking brainwashed, thoughtless, idiotic morons (including Emily).
Just imagine if instead of "file sharing," it was "beard sharing". And someone could come along and just get exactly the same length beard as you, just by wanting it! Now who's feeling threatened, not just by Alan Moore, but by all potential beardos everywhere. Now who's livelihood is under attack. Why, we'd probably be so hungry, we'd have to eat things right off our own feet.
She could have home-taped anything her station played on the air. It would be perfectly legal to do that.
it's also OK to vandalize every building in the city because the laws against buying spray paint aren't fair. And kids should get drunk every morning before school because drinking age laws are unjust.
You did make a mistake when you chose Kazaa as the method of sharing. Kazaa mistreated you (and all its users) by requiring you to run a non-free program on your computer. ...
Hahaha, what? And people wonder why most people think RMS is a loon when he writes shit like this? Yes, Kazaa "mistreated her" by her voluntarily deciding to download, install and use the program without any coercion from the makers of the program. One can only hope she won't be scarred for life from that heinous act.
I agree with Stallman that 110 year copyrights are repressive. But so too is complete abolishment of copyrights. People like to get paid for their creations, and put food on the table. A reasonable compromise would be 10 or 20 years... just long enough to cover the audio engineer/artist/musicians' labor on the song. But short enough that it becomes part of society's shared culture.
BTW ever notice that no Roman or Greek music has survived til today? We have all their other literature but not their songs. Perhaps because there was no monetary incentive for musicians to share their work.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
You !! You !! You !! Shut you mouth !! Not same !! Not even close to same !! You misused the English to twist the truth to suit your agenda !! Sharing is good !! Copyright is not realistic in this day, no matter the age !! GPL !! It is different !! Believe me now !!
RMS needs a competent proofreader for the articles he posts to his site. Why do people persist in publishing text whose intended audience is the entire fucking world without bothering to make damned certain that at least grammar and spelling are correct?
I have a series of blog posts on artificial scarcity and digital bits:
http://yuhongbao.blogspot.com/2010/06/artificial-scarcity-intro.html
I love ya for telling the truth...
if there is a god (agnostic here) i hope he (or she) blesses you, if not then good luck and may the source be with you
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The artists worth listening to probably don't mind if their music is being "stolen," although this does appear to be a sticky situation.
Stallman has some suggestions at the end of the article.
RMS can quite happily say all this bullshit about morals and how some laws are just completely wrong, but he equally does nothing about it.
All he does is try to educate people about unjust laws! That's pretty much his entire gig. That was the entire point of the article we're talking about here.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Hmmm, a black and white opinion in a world of gray. How refreshing.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Who cares about a fucking NPR File Sharer's Blog. Children are starving in Africa and you give a shit about a fucking NPR File Sharer's Blog? Fuck you. Instead of shooting electron beams at a NPR File Sharer's Blog to see what happens these scientists should be in the wheat fields growing food for starving children in 3rd world countries. First world fuckers like yourself are decadent faggots who care more about a NPR File Sharer's Blog than humans. Those same starving children probably mined the NPR File Sharer's Blog for you so you could play with it in your lab. Fuckers.
So you support his solution:
Put a tax on Internet connectivity, and divide the money among artists.
I have never pirated anything. It's a huge PIA, and Pandora is free, radio is free. You want me to pay because you think $1 for a song is too much of your money. yeah, FU asshole. Pay your own bills. You won't die if you don't hear the latest lady gaga song.
If people want to get paid for their creations, then why do they bloody insist on giving it away for free on a $10 CD or $2 of Internet bandwidth?
Musicians just don't seem to be able to understand that they're not CD manufacturers, and they're not Internet Service Providers, they can't charge for CDs, and they can't charge for Internet copying. What they can charge for is only their music... which they're stupidly giving away. People is already being generous when they buy plastic or bandwidth from them (being able to buy it from cheaper stores) just so they get their cut and try to recover their creation costs, but that's the wrong way to go about it.
Artist, does it cost you $60,000 to make your work (include your own salary)?... Pro-tip: Sell it for $60,000, not for $0.99. If your work is really worth that, people will pay the cost. Set up a kickstarter and watch it happen. If your work isn't worth what it costs, then there's no market for you. Tough. But please stop all this lunacy, we need it to stop freaking yesterday.
-Sincerely, an audio engineer who understands what is wrong with the businesss
Children are starving in Africa and you give a shit about a fucking NPR File Sharer's Blog? Fuck you. Instead of shooting electron beams at a NPR File Sharer's Blog to see what happens these scientists should be in the wheat fields growing food for starving children in 3rd world countries.
The children are starving not because of a scarcity of food but because certain people in Africa are PREVENTING the food
from getting to the people who need it.
If you really truly want to make the world a better place, kill yourself.
Since the original purpose of copyright was to grant people the right to make money on copies and give them a monopoly on those reproductions. Let's just. It would solve a lot of the problem. Only original work would have value. Musicians and arts would be employed. Copyright doesn't make sense in a world that has practically free duplication. That's why thoughts and ideas couldn't be copyrighted.
RMS thinks giving other people's shit away is good
The term "giving away" implies a situation where one party is deprived of something so another person can have it. This is not an accurate representation of Stallman's views, nor is is an accurate description of copyright infringement. When a copy is made and provided to another party, both parties now have the item in question.
RMS believes the above described behavior is morally correct, and should be universally allowed. Furthermore, he believes software is an entity unto itself that has rights, just as a person has rights. I happen to disagree with him on these points, but regardless of your position on such matters, it is very important to describe them correctly. Much as RMS has a long history of attempting to redefine the word "freedom" to suit his sociopolitical agenda, I must disagree with those who attempt to make statements on important matters such as these without getting their definitions right.
Write failed: Broken pipe
pretty much just as bad as my parents saying something is cool. Today I stopped pirating music....
war is peace and slavery is freedom
People like to get paid for their creations
And I'd also like to have billions of dollars. Of course, it's up to me to figure out how to get it. If I can't, too bad for me.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I agree with Stallman that 110 year copyrights are repressive. But so too is complete abolishment of copyrights.
No, it's not. Because copyrights serve the middlemen, not artists. In fact, since the copyright got weakened a lot thanks to the Internet, the revenues of the artists are increasing notably .
I know, the world really seems flat at the first glance. But sometimes, things are not what they seem to be.
Do it. Now!
Seeing as how copyright != ownership, I fail to see what you are talking about.
this copy pasta sure smells like summer. wait, this isn't /b/? sorry, kthnxbai
YOU would be out of work too if people were able to just share music for free. There would be no funds for you to get paid for your engineering.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I respect RMS' position on software, even if I don't fully agree with it. As I understand it, he says that a software developer should be able to make money by selling services, e.g. maintaining/customizing software, and there are people out there who do just that.
But I think the argument falls down for music. Sure, following the 'services' argument, performers can make a living (in theory) by performing the music. But not all song-writers are also performers. So in this case, how would RMS propose that a songwriter get reimbursed? What about the people involved in the production of music, e.g. sound engineers.
I think the "music is like software and should be just as free" analogy does no't work.
(This is not to support the RIAA's unacceptable use of the the courts to prosecute the token file-sharing user with outrageous and probably unconstitutional damage judgements.)
nice adjective used, doubt RIAA thinks it is that adjective, though most of us, like you do agree, it is ....
Monopoly rights are a bad way to compensate people for creations. With limited attention available and tightly controlled channels you are close to guaranteed not get jack, while the dominant players take both attention and revenue by having the channel control. Publisher deals become a prerequisite for even having a chance, and to make a good deal you need leverage. Which you have none. Even if you threaten to take your demo and go home.
If copyright was actually about compensation for creators then it would be formulated to actually give compensation to creators. It could just as well take the form of a guaranteed 50% of the proceeds of sales of any copies, like a VAT going directly to the creator while allowing anyone to copy, for example.
Any compromise that has a chance of working has to separate the monetary compensation from the right to control copying. Without that there simply will be no solution.
BTW ever notice that no Roman or Greek music has survived til today? We have all their other literature but not their songs. Perhaps because there was no monetary incentive for musicians to share their work.
Actually its bullshit!
There *are* partial scores from those times... check your facts!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikilos_epitaph
A quick Google search will turn up examples of ancient Greek music. Not many, but the statement that none survived just isn't correct.
And no we don't have all their literature. The general view is that about 1% survives.
http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=2806
Wait, did you just accuse the person to whom you were responding of being an African dictator?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
RMS also believes that he should be given money from one place or another for the work he does... This is strange. Why should he be paid for anything? Any work he does should belong to everyone. I will mail him and ask if he could send half his money to me, I have a right to any profit he makes from his work... Or so he claims.
Anyone who creates anything must own that thing and decide what is to be done with it. If you believe that sharing is correct and must be allowed, make some music and share that. Sharing your own work IS good! Forcing other to share their is not.
BTW ever notice that no Roman or Greek music has survived til today? We have all their other literature but not their songs. Perhaps because there was no monetary incentive for musicians to share their work.
I have recreations of both Greek and Roman works. See http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/beginlst/ancient.html for a good summary of available recordings.
Wrong. Did you even read my freaking post? I'd be getting my cut of those $60,000 acquired through crowdfunding.
The artist gets paid $60,000 for producing the music, the artist pays the sound engineer. Since the artists and everybody that need to make a living has already been paid, the file can be shared around freely without impacting anyone.
Wasnt this obvious from the GP post? Did you even read it?
RMS seems to be embracing a self-contradictory position.
He's all for ignoring the unjust copyright laws when they don't suit his position.
But the FSF goes after people for violation of their license which is based on the same unjust copyright laws.
http://www.fsf.org/news/2008-12-cisco-suit/
In fairness to the GP, describing those view accurately makes it much harder to undermine them. Therefore it's actually important to the opponents to NOT describe them accurately.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Emily: Discussing CD sales is pointless because nobody uses CDs anymore!
RMS: You should be using free software!
Sure, while technically using free software instead of closed alternatives would have been better, its a completely irrelevant point in the context of Emily's post (never mind the fact that free alternatives to some of the software she used simply didn't exist at the time she needed them, or had so few peers comparatively as to be useless.)
I don't believe he's a proponent of forcing anyone to share. He's an opponent of forcing others not to share.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Way to push an agenda: "you did make a mistake".
Do you see what I did there?
Unlike RMS, you people have short memory. Kazaa the company was quite sleazy, especially towards the end. Kazaa the program installed various malware onto users computer, without notification or opt-out. For example spyware Cydoor and hijacker New.net, as well as many others. Read it up on Wikipedia.
copy/paste, but he's right. RMS and the Free Shit movement is ridiculously bourge.
Industry: Here is a printer which was built by thirdworld children in sweatshop conditions
RMS: Where is the driver source code? Stop oppressing me!
Genious! You just figured out who has been giving out millions of dollars using suspicious emails!
Or it might be because those cultures didn't have a means of writing musical notation. They passed their music on through memorisation.
Arguing that software has rights is even more delusional than Romney's believe that corporations are people,
It's one thing to try to persuade people who believe in Free software (or music or video or whatever) to release it under Free licenses. It is another thing altogether to make that decision on their behalf, as RMS seems to be doing here.
It's fairly straightforward.
Let me try to explain: File sharing undermines somebody else's business model.
Anybody who wants to make money by selling "digital artefacts" is basically screwed.
People at large have no problem sharing digital artefacts with everybody else on the internet, meaning that only one sale is required -- often times not even that.
Copy protection, dongles, etc, all exist to try to protect the business model, but typically these only get in the way of the legitimate user, so...
All this has the effect of forcing different business models -- services instead of artefacts. Code that never runs on your computer -- no looking at the source code, no using it without internet access.
Take your "oh but its just data" stance all you like, but unfettered & infinite sharing will continue to change the world in lots of ways that you really won't like. Not that there's anything that can be done about it...
Bank balances are just data too -- how long would society last if we were able to copy money around freely?
...and deliberately mocks something he knows fuck-all about.
film at 10:55
One very obvious way is through live performances. Most sane musicians have already realized that they can earn more money gigging than through selling records which in a lot of cases are only promos to get people into gigs anyway. Hell, even musicians that don't play in "traditional" bands have figured this out which is why you occasionally hear of people in electronic music getting flamed for miming at events!
Lots of musicians also have to have day jobs, and that probably keeps them honest, as it means that they are making music for the love of it.
Finally you have awesome shit like this: http://cashmusic.org/
"BTW ever notice that no Roman or Greek music has survived til today? We have all their other literature but not their songs. Perhaps because there was no monetary incentive for musicians to share their work."
Perhaps. Or perhaps it is because the Romans didnt even have a system of notation (or at least one that we are aware of). Or maybe its because the early Christian Church brutally suppressed all that horrible pagan racket. Or yes, it might be because the artists at Romulus and Remus Records burned their lutes when people started transcribing the stone tablets their greatest hits were carved on.
> File sharing undermines somebody else's business model.
So does the local radio station, the local TV station, MTV, Pandora, and the used Music store. No one has a right to a particular business model.
No one even has a right to ownership over a creative work.
There are no civil rights when it comes to some bit of music you happened to write or perform. It's not property.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Makes me wish I hadnt spent all my mod points. And feel free to mod me redundant, I can take the karma hit.
No one has a right to a particular business model.
I didn't claim that they did.
Pretty much all business models rely on screwing somebody else -- that's how capitalism works.
I think the biggest problem with file sharing will be the next generation of business models that try to work around this issue, and a total absence of quality content (oh wait).
Give away doesn't necessarily mean anyone is deprived of anything. It often does, but not always.
If I watch your prize dog while you are on vacation, a pedigreed breeding dog and I give away his sperm to someone, I have given something of value away. But you aren't deprived of it, that sperm would have been dead by the time you got back from vacation and it would have been replaced by then with new live sperm anyway.
You'd do well to stick to the point at hand instead of trying to put up a semantic front.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The term "giving away" implies a situation where one party is deprived of something so another person can have it. This is not an accurate representation of Stallman's views, nor is is an accurate description of copyright infringement. When a copy is made and provided to another party, both parties now have the item in question.
Wrong. The term giving away means whatever our society decides it means. There are clearly multiple scenarios in which the term can be used and trying to shoehorn a definition into just one or the other doesn't make sense. In the same way people discuss abortion and want a bright line between life and non-life...the world is more complex and there are lots of things that can't be neatly divided.
In the case of "giving away" copyrighted material...when people use that term pretty much everyone understands that it means we have an artificial system called copyright created for economic reasons and the "giving away" violated the rules of that system.
Trying to argue "but it's not theft" or "it's not the same as real property" misses the point...we all know that but we don't want to use a 17 word sentence to refer to the situation at hand.
When your point is dependent on your specific, far from universally accepted definitions being exclusively used, you don't actually have a point.
The term "giving other people's shit away" implies "sharing something that is legally owned by someone else" which is the actual case here, your desire for free entertainment notwithstanding.
But please, continue torturing semantic arguments so you can feel good about your personal greed. It's totally not retarded at all.
Well if their business model isn't working, then maybe they should change it. Not my fault it's outdated.
The patron model, from before copyright, but now adaptable to crowdsourcing. The artist still needs to make their early works at their own cost to prove their skill, but after that, yes... it could work.
But you aren't deprived of it
Unless you made a copy, I sure am. Just like I'd be deprived of a computer if you stole it from me and then it broke before I even noticed it.
If a musician wants to release their music for free, it's their right. YOU do not have the right to make that decision for them. Period.
Copyright is an agreement. I agree that in exchange for this price I will not give away copies. It is not morally correct to break this agreement. There happen to be laws that back up this kind of agreement, like many other laws that stand behind agreements.
"...and yet, I blame society" Duke - Repo Man
Why would "torturing semantic arguments" make someone feel good about something? If what you said implies "sharing something that is legally owned by someone else" (assuming this is copying) and he attempted to correct your original word usage in a way that means the same thing as what you meant, he'd just be saying the same thing. So how would that make him feel any better?
Copyright infringement is actually rape, anyway.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
"Let me try to explain: File sharing undermines somebody else's business model."
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
Robert A. Heinlein
I think that says it all.
RMS is a crackpot. Why do you, /., give him publicity... other than to support your own desire to steal intellectual property from others?
If you don't want to use the necessary number of words to correctly express yourself just refrain from using the wrong term and stay quiet.
Mod parent up. And see also my: http://www.artificialscarcity.com/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
a bar of soap.
Singers and musicians (and engineers) get paid by doing their craft (singing, playing music, engineering) not by doing it once and sitting back reaping the eternal income - in the old days musicians traveled and lived of food/housing they performed in return for... point being, i will pay for when they perform, not when they did at some point perform something (do engineers get paid for each car driving over the bridge they designed and build?)
Expecting money in return for something you already got paid for is foolish in just about every walk of life, except it seems in the "artistic" - perhaps a lot of artists thinks its an easy way to get rich? well, I do not get paid for not working, neither should anyone else.
The total absence of quality content has been greater in the age of copyright than ever before. Copyright does not guarantee quality. Actually it works against it.
Audio engineers are needed for live perfomances... and they would get paid for working on that, so would the musicians - isnt "playing music" effectively what a musician should be doing to make money?
You'll run out of artefacts to share if the artefact building business model is broken, won't you?
What business model would you recommend an artefact builder adopt?
The term "sharing" implies a situation where one party is deprived of something so another person can have it.
FTFY
It is not morally correct to break this agreement.
And just who decided that? Not everyone agreed to such a thing, anyway. Laws deemed unjust do indeed exist, and that applies to any forced "agreements" as well.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Even if artists received NOTHING there would still be exactly zero danger of new music production coming to a stop. Humans are going to make art of all kinds as long as they exist and not being able to make money from it, even if that were the case, won't stop them. It might reduce the amount, quality, and scope of produced works but it will not cause the production of art to cease. And I'm not even convinced it would cause production to slow down at all. It's very likely we'd see more and better stuff being produced. I've seen more evidence to prove that point than the opposite one the RIAA/MPAA try to make.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Romney was simply repeating what is the law in this country: Corporations are treated as people.
You want to so believe your guy is good and the other guy bad that you can't even talk like an adult without dragging politics into it.
Grow up.
No, live performances aren't needed, making music for Internet distribution is just fine. My acoustically designed studio and high [record|mix|master]ing skills are still needed and my job is safe. And if they aren't because home recording and your skills have gotten good enough and I'm out of a job, that's fine. Not everyone can make a job out of an enthusiasm. I'll just go get a crappy job like everyone else - I can work anything that requires a ponytail and a goatee - and keep my studio an expensive hobby. (In reality I'd just dedicate full-time to audio algorithm design, which you would still pay for indirectly when you buy your gear)
Maybe established artists could start taking on promising young start-ups as apprentices? It's worked for thousands of years in other industries.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
the bottom line is, the musician owns the copyright, and they can own and charge for it whatever they please. I'm so tired of people trying to justify piracy, sure it's helpful in some cases, but if your music is shared and then NO ONE pays for it, how do you pay the bills? What if your not a performing artist? Having tried it myself, making quality music is difficult, let alone getting people to pay for your time invested into it.
we all know that
Do we now? I've personally seen a fair number of people who really do believe it's theft. I've also seen people who didn't know what copyright infringement was and believed that it's actually theft in the most literal sense simply because many people happen to call it that. Calling what may be a crime in some places "theft" really can confuse people.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Bad example. Actually, as the owner of the dog, I have been potentially deprived of something - the market for that dog's sperm. There may only be a handful of people in this world who would be interested in buying the dog's sperm for breeding purposes. Since you have gone and sold it to one of those people, my ability to make money off of that sperm when I return from vacation has been irreparably harmed.
Incidentally, I do fall on the side of supporting file sharing, as long as a person does not try to resell a person's music/software/etc for monetary gain.
Or you could just not read it and ignore him. he is as free to be using the "wrong" words as you are to write that asshole reply - except at least he is on topic
Emily White violated the copyrights on the music she acquired ("I've swapped hundreds of mix CDs with friends. My senior prom date took my iPod home once and returned it to me with 15 gigs of Big Star, The Velvet Underground and Yo La Tengo"). You'd think RMS would be against that, since the GPL expresses (admirable IMO) restrictions on what you can do with it under those same copyright laws. His arguments why Emily "did nothing wrong" are mostly the lame tired shit piracy apologists have trotted out for decades now
Untrue. Artist royalties are often ~20% of the sales price; this chart says $.09 for an iTunes download, and artists self-releasing through CD Baby keep 75%. The meme that artists don't get money seems to be a deliberate misunderstanding of the money record companies advance against royalties so artists can make a quality record (The Trichordist explains this well). Regardless of the percentage it is not the consumer's right or job to decide if that's a reasonable or obscene deal from the record company and online store. FFS, if you don't like a song enough to pay $0.99 for an unprotected DRM-free legal copy of it so the artist gets some money in exchange for your enjoyment of her creative endeavor:
1. Skip it and enjoy the zillions of free songs out there — under CC share licenses, out-of-copyright, in the public domain, live performances from trade-friendly artists on Internet Archive, etc.! As RMS knows from software, there are great free alternatives to restricted paid works, so go support those!
2. If you whine "Waahhh, this song I want ought to be free like all those others" so you pirate it anyway, your parents raised you badly.
RMS goes on
Not true. Paying for the copyrighted recordings you want and love works great and delivers money to artists so they can make more! It's insulting to suggest artists should instead try to collect money for something completely different — "touring and T-shirts". (No Sgt. Pepper for you, John Paul George and Ringo are going deaf on another tour that only their teenybopper fans attend.) The idea that artists should not charge for a quality studio recording has been immensely damaging to "the Progress of Science and useful Arts" in the area of recorded music, it's a big reason why today's songs are made on laptops instead of with crack session musicians. And as RMS later acknowledges, touring doesn't even work for those bands that do perform live, because they can't afford to travel to all their fans, then on any night only a fraction of fans in an area make it to the show.
RMS is on better ground with the first of his two ways to support artists
Great idea, let's hope it happens. But his second is a fantasy:
It's been tried, the Fairtunes service during Napster's golden era. I ponied up money for a song I shared, but in several y
=S
Sure, there will always be artists willing to hold part-time jobs to subsidise their art. And corporate-produced junk designed to sell shoes.
I'd simply prefer a society where people could make an honest living selling high-quality digital artefacts without having every ass-hat on the internet deciding that it's their universal right to copy any data they can get their hands on. This is clearly impossible though, so that's why I'm working on a plague of self-replicating robot spiders with which to take over the world and enforce my will.
Uhm.... I don't know if you're asserting that Heinlein said the first bit (about file-sharing), but since you haven't unambiguously shown that you don't, I might suggest that you do, since Heinlein died in '88 and most certainly never said a word on the subject of filesharing.
I know one struggling indie singer, she's refused to play ball with the labels that have come sniffing around (refused to be slutted up) and her record sales are the difference between making a living as a musician, or having to give it up.
It's easy to justify pirating music from big-name artists, but in reality, most people don't bother to make that distinction, they just want free music, they don't care the slightest about the repercussions.
BTW ever notice that no Roman or Greek music has survived til today? We have all their other literature but not their songs. Perhaps because there was no monetary incentive for musicians to share their work.
Yet somehow, authors had incentives to share their work...
Palm trees and 8
Why isn't it "theft". The word "theft" is just a shorthand for a variety of different situations, and ALL of them (including physical property) are based on artificial rules that we made up. Taking someone's chair isn't inherently wrong anymore than illegally taking a copy of copyrighted material - both are defined as problems due to the rules society created. Saying that one is theft and one isn't theft is not a meaningful distinction - they are both illegal activities because we said so and if everyone calls both "theft" what does arguing about that term actually gain?
The word "theft" is just a shorthand for a variety of different situations
I just expressed why I feel it's a bad idea to call it "theft." Because it confuses people about what's actually happening. It doesn't matter what I think, though, because it'll continue happening.
Saying that one is theft and one isn't theft is not a meaningful distinction
I disagree.
they are both illegal activities because we said so and if everyone calls both "theft" what does arguing about that term actually gain?
What does arguing about anything gain? In the end, nothing.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
In case you hadn't noticed, we commonly use single or multi-word phrases to represent much more complex ideas.
We refer to illegally making a copy of copyrighted material as "stealing" and we also refer to illegally taking possession of physical property as "stealing" - in neither case do we typically use the full explanatory sentence, instead we use words that represent the more complex idea.
That's how language works.
But the artefact building business model, just those particular ones which rely on artificial scarcity.
I make a living by writing GPL licensed software, so clearly there are alternatives.
Dilbert RSS feed
I think you missed the part where I said "I happen to disagree with him on these points." In other words, I agree with you.
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Err, no. We do not have all the literature of the Greeks and Romans. We have a very small sampling, and probably a close to random sampling of their "non-hits" at that. The survival of such manuscripts through the dark ages is really pretty miraculous, and due to an extremely small subset of the population understanding (and sometimes just barely understanding) what they were doing. And a great deal of luck.
We have none of their music because they did not write it down, not because they did not share it. The evidence is that they did share it, and indeed commit to memory lengthy songs and poems with few hearings. That would mean they not only "shared", and "re-sampled', but worked in an environment where there was no expected right for someone else to not copy ones work. Indeed, much of literature through the middle ages is full of "glosses" and lengthy quote/paraphrase/re-samplings often to the point that it is difficult to say that certain works have a definitive author.
Recordings of text, music, and images will survive only if people work at it. It would be easy to expect that copyright law actually has a net negative effect on ultimate survival, and that there is actually a societal benefit to work "falling" ("being promoted" may be the better term) into the Public Domain. The film industry has been notoriously bad at preservation, for example.
For what it's worth, musicians can be paid for performance or for authorship. Throughout history it was performance that paid musicians. Extending copyright might be helpful for the authors of songs (or whoever they re-assign copyright to), but not so much for performers. The phonograph and radio disrupted the musicians business model, but that was a while ago. File sharing is a problem for the firms owning the extra-long copyrights, not so much for the musicians.
Finally, somebody hopefully willing to talk about alternatives, instead of assuming where I stand!
Please explain more about your business model -- how does it work?
This is about far more than a semantic front. My point here is that matters like these must be defined accurately from the start, or it taints any discourse that follows on the merits of the true underlying positions. For example, the recording and film industries rely heavily on the common usage of the term "give away," as meant to describe deprivation of property without compensation (they like the word "theft" for the same reason). That characterization is a gross misrepresentation of copyright infringement, and thus we must be careful to "call a spade a spade" when it comes up in the context of the story at hand.
Speaking of context, it matters. What's odd here is that I don't disagree with the bulk of what you've said here, and didn't disagree with it in my original post. In fact, my intent was to reinforce the view you've expressed. Thus, you'd do well to take a few few moments to consider what someone has actually written, and the context in which it was written, before replying to him.
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And yet a two-bit hypocritical like you is wasting time and money on internet connectivity when you could be sending that cash to feed them.
After all, how can we support musicians? Buying recordings from record companies won't do it. For nearly all records, the musicians get none of that money; the record companies keep it. See this article and this article.
Untrue. Artist royalties are often ~20% of the sales price
And before they see any of it they have to pay off certain things the label forces them to pay for.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The difference is that in one case it is the right use of the word, in the other it is not and therefore you fail to transmit information correctly. Language objective is to transmit information between two or more people, when you fail to do so it is not how language works.
By stealing it (and don't pretend it's anything but theft just to make yourself appear to be slightly more ethical), you are depriving the creators of money. If it's not worth buying, then don't steal it. Funny how my children managed to learn this at about the age of six.
you are taking something that is not yours and you are not entitled to, no matter how special and entitled a person thinks they are. In other words, it is theft.
if you don't want to agree, don't steal it. You are not entitled to take whatever you want like a young toddler.
Sorta. Regardless of how shorthand things become, it doesn't quite work in the way where factually something wrong becomes acceptable without challenge or question.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
BTW ever notice that no Roman or Greek music has survived til today? We have all their other literature but not their songs. Perhaps because there was no monetary incentive for musicians to share their work.
There are some that have survived Seikilos epitaph is an example.
There was no means of recording their music, the majority of the population could not read or write - let alone know how to decipher what passed for musical notation so the only practical method of keeping the music "alive" was by teaching it and / or hearing / copying it.
There is an abundance of music prior to the existence of copyright law (first enacted in 1662 by the British).
Performing rights came much later - 1777 (France).
Music was flourishing before the advent of copyright - some may argue that copyright has improved the standard of music - the main beneficiaries appear (imo) to be in the popular music categories - MC Hammer has copyrighted material, Mozart's works were not copyrighted - Mozart also did a lot of derivative works (I love the twinkle twinkle little star variations) by the way.
BM3
When your point is dependent on your specific, far from universally accepted definitions being exclusively used, you don't actually have a point.
In the context of this story, the term has a very specific, well-accepted meaning.
The term "giving other people's shit away" implies "sharing something that is legally owned by someone else" which is the actual case here, your desire for free entertainment notwithstanding.
I don't have any desire for free entertainment. I'm a staunch opponent of copyright infringement, and noted in my original post that I do not agree with Stallman's positions. But please, go on misconstruing and twisting things people post to suit your own personal need for senseless attacks.
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I think with music it's worth pointing out that every musician on the planet started out by playing other people's songs and not typically not paying for the right to do so.
Arguing that software has rights is even more delusional than Romney's believe that corporations are people,
I think that depends on what you consider to be "rights" and where you believe the rights lie. We routinely declare objects to be historical or natural landmarks and that designation includes protection from vandalism, destruction, exploitation and so forth. The object has effectively been given a right to continued existence. Is it delusional of us to have done that?
The majority of the US also believes that books shouldn't be banned or burned. Not only that, but we generally believe they should be available for free to those who seek them out (which is why we have libraries). Books have effectively been given not only the right to exist, but the right to be read. Is that delusional?
I'm not sure just what rights RMS thinks software should have because I hate his writing style and can never finish reading any of his diatribes, but it's not entirely out of the question to say that an object effectively has some rights. I would probably disagree with RMS about what those rights are, but I wouldn't say that arguing that software has rights is delusional.
Not making a moral judgment on copying here, just commenting on RMS's statements...
So RMS says its ok ( even to the point of being encouraged ) to copy another person's copyrighted material, but don't you dare violate the GPL..
Sounds contradictory and some what hypocritical to me.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
BUT - why do we have to keep paying, for (in the US, anyway) 70, 95, or 120 YEARS beyond their death?
Seriously?
Why should we support their kids, and their grandkids, and their GREAT-GRANDKIDS? How in hell is THAT fair?
Cut copyright to something reasonable like less than 50 years from first publication (non-renewable. If you can't make money by then, you never will), and I'm all for it.
Have you ever heard a recreation of Greek music? I have and it sounded discordant. Its notes were not related in pitch the same way notes are in contemporary music.
Popular music does not age well. Hard to find reproductions of music from the 1920s. I challenge you to find a stream of them online.
More important, music from earlier times /has/ survived till today. Bach was paid primarily to perform his work (as far as I know). I suppose he was paid for the Brandenburg Concertos, but /none/ of his work was copyrighted!
The reason we lack a lot of his work is that after his death a lot of his compositions were lost, discarded, or reused -- such as with tar to protect trees during winter (paper being a costly commodity). Copyright would not have served to protect it much. Its inherent genius did, though.
"Let me try to explain: Stealing undermines somebody else's business model."
Yea, easy to say it.
Anybody who wants to make money by selling "digital artefacts" is basically screwed.
so, you're saying that these businesses are not making record profits?
also, do selling these "digital artifacts" undermine the consumer in regards to the right of first sale, lending to friends, etc? they don't get both. they can either accept what is happening or make digital goods have the same features as the physical goods.
Not a good analogy. Your computer wouldn't automatically be replaced in 24 hours, unlike your dog's semen.
If you're that worried about it, though, you should should probably masturbate your dog and store the semen in the freezer until you get back from vacation. That way you'll have your precious dog-spooge waiting for you when you get home.
Ooooh. I thought you wanted each one of us to cough-up $60,000 for an artist to produce a single CD. Like how my employer pays me $60,000 to develop a circuit card.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Ancient music was never recorded because they didn't have any method. Written music is a relatively recent invention.
BTW ever noticed that lots of people don't have much of a clue?
in a world whose main communication infrastructure is predicated on easily manipulated bits
every other point is secondary
the law will catch up with reality, eventually
until then, everyone else is coming to grips with exactly why they call things like the internet "disruptive" technology
writing created civilization (transmission of knowledge and culture across time and space)
the printing press created democracy (it created a middle class that brought about the end of kings and aristocratic exclusion due to limited knowledge)
and the internet is doing away with the idea of intellectual property, by destroying the scarcity of media that intellectual property depends upon as a scheme in order to work
the result? considering what writing and the printing press did to human society, and the time spans over which those changes took place, we are only at the very tiniest beginning of the monumental change
but a monumental change it is. and i believe it means the utter destruction of the concept of intellectual property. i could be wrong, but this is what my thoughts lead me to believe. i am either Voltaire contemplating the printing press, or i am a fool. only time will tell, and that same observation applies to everyone else pontificating and opinionating on the subject
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
fine, but they can make the first move and bring copyright into something far more reasonable, this life + 70 bullshit does nothing to benefit society, which is one of copyright's purposes.
So what? "This restaurant owner doesn't distribute gratuities fairly, therefore I won't pay for the meal I enjoyed" keeps money from the hardworking staff. I'm not sure what argument you're failing to make, but whatever it is David Lowery demolishes it in the section starting
“"t’s OK not to pay for music because record companies rip off artists and do not pay artists anything.“ In the vast majority of cases, this is not true.=S
If I make music and offer it for sale, and RMS "shares" it without seeing to it that I get the compensation I offered my work for, then he IS depriving me of something so another person -- the one he shared with -- can have it.
RMS embodies the ethics of a retarded child. All of you sycophants that follow him do likewise. Doesn't matter how wordy you get -- if you take something that isn't yours without entering into an agreement equitable to both sides, you're a scumbag.
And before your tiny little mind attempts to form even one more thought, this is what you do when the asking price is unacceptable: YOU DON'T TAKE THE MATERIAL, AND YOU DON'T PAY THE PRICE.
And also, fuck you, RMS.
fine, but they can make the first move...
My plague of self-replicating robot spiders have no interest in your copyright problems. It is in their interest to be copied.
Pretty much all business models rely on screwing somebody else -- that's how capitalism works.
No, it isn't. A free market economy is based on trade where both parties benefit from each trade. I realize that capitalism can exist without a free market, but a free market economy IS an example of a capitalist economy where no one gets screwed. Therefore screwing somebody else is not an inherent part of how capitalism works.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Every time RMS speaks, it's like he's expressing the way my soul feels.
It's like a beautiful piece of classical music, it just resonates with the way I feel.
Don't ever stop RMS.
Liberty.
Yeah, but when they change it, they're not going to change it to, "Pay artists to make great music and give it away for free."
In fact, I'm not even sure I can imagine a way they could change it that doesn't deprive me of options of musical experience.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
"This restaurant owner doesn't distribute gratuities fairly, therefore I won't pay for the meal I enjoyed"
Analogies such as this fall apart when you consider that they use the time or resources of the ones doing the job. In a grand majority of cases, the one who created the original copy is not in any way related to the ones doing the copying, so the only thing they have a chance of losing is the potential to gain money that they didn't already have.
I'm against copyright infringement and believe we should pay artists, but I also believe we shouldn't use tired analogies that don't relate to the situation.
RMS is typically strident and way off-course from the meat of Emily White's post and David Lowery's response. His ridiculous solution for compensating artists is to tax internet access and distribute the profits to artists in a scaled manner via some sort of popularity poll. RMS should've stayed out of this debate.
When music was imprinted on a physical good, the music itself was physical. It was part of something you bought, touched. The cover art, liner notes, it was part of the experience of the music. Paying for the music was as much a certainty as paying for a magazine or cup of coffee. No one debated that owning music meant you paid for it.
When you transfer the concept of music to a digital realm, that breaks down. I think that humans by and large have trouble with the concept of digital goods. They see it as theoretical. The experience is no longer tangible. And so by proxy, the artist itself becomes theoretical, intangible. And when that happens, the moral imperative that the artist be compensated goes out the window. And you can see that in Emily's post. She states that she doesn't think she and her peers "will ever pay for albums." She drive to a coffee shop to spend money on her organic, fair trade latte to make sure workers in Columbia are fairly compensated for their labor, but she won't pay for music because it's too inconvenient.
So why is it she and her generation will pay extra for fair trade coffee, but not pay an artist for their work? I can only conclude that her brain cannot process that the music streaming in to her iPhone and her laptop was actually created by people who labored equally. It's just something that exists intangibly, but still something that she desires be omnipresent in her life.
The lack of attachment to a physical good is one part of it, but there is a wider social shift at work here. We have seen a shift from pre-war craftsman trades to post-war industrialized society, and now to a western society that format-shifted to only create ideas, not products. The average person in western countries no longer associates products with the people who create them. Why should they, when most things are mass-produced in Chinese, Taiwanese, and Indian factories? So when even tangible products become detached from the human context in which they were created, younger generations that grew up after this shift to globalized production will not imagine or care that digital goods were products produced by real people who are struggling to get by. This is a much tougher nut to crack than the immediate issues of digital music.
a free market economy IS an example of a capitalist economy where no one gets screwed
That's the funniest thing I've seen all day!
This is some pretty impressive system that guarantees that every single trade is completely fair and equitable -- unlikely in the real world, don't you think?
When one man gets paid 10,000 times as much as another, somebody is definitely getting screwed!
Capitalising the word "IS" isn't much of an argument to warrant a "Therefore", really.
Copyright is an agreement
No, it isn't. Copyright is a government monopoly, which is theoretically, given to authors
It is not morally correct to break this rationale, yet it has already been broken by the copyright holders many times. Unfortunately, corrective action has not happened, because the economic incentives happen to be asymmetrically distributed. The large harm the violations by the copyright holders have caused is spread over many people, while the huge benefits have accrued to very few, who make a lot of extra profits and engage in all sorts of rent-seeking activities that extend and defend the violations of the original agreement.
If I make music and offer it for sale, and RMS "shares" it without seeing to it that I get the compensation I offered my work for, then he IS depriving me of something so another person -- the one he shared with -- can have it.
What, exactly were you deprived of?
What do you have less of after he did it?
If you're talking about a lost sale, where's your evidence that the person RMS shared it with would have purchased it? If that's not the case, you've lost nothing, and gained free advertising.
Sigh.. why must it be brought up every time that possession of something is not the only thing of value associated with it. Copyright gives a legal right to control the copying and distribution of said material, If you copy my stuff and give it away, you are taking my legal rights associated with that and giving them away. Those legal rights can allow me to charge a fee or just give it to you to do anything you want for nothing in return at all, but you are completely missing the point that it is mine and not yours to begin with and you have absolutely no right to take that from me.
You might be surprised to learn I completely agree with you, and am staunchly opposed to copyright infringement. However, in the context of discussions about the story at hand, it is extremely important to properly define what is actually happening. I strongly oppose the media industry's standard characterization of the act of copyright infringement, and I will continue to do my part to make sure things are defined properly in conversations such as these. That said, again, I am strongly opposed to copyright infringment, and will continue to support people enforcing their own rights to the materials they hold copyright to.
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I do not know if you know it or not, but the copy of any book or magazine a legitimate library lends to the public is not priced the same as the like item you or I could run down to borders and get. The library pays an additional charge that is supposed to compensate the copyright holders for the entire lending process although it isn't as much as if every reader purchased it outright. But that is a right by law much in the same as any copyright holder has any control over their works.
Library Books are simply not free. Someone is paying for your access to them and just because it isn't directly you does not make it so.
As a clarification, I partially agree with you. I apologize for the confusion; I thought I was responding to another post. I disagree with this:
Copyright gives a legal right to control the copying and distribution of said material, If you copy my stuff and give it away, you are taking my legal rights associated with that and giving them away.
When someone distributes unauthorized copies of things you hold copyright to, they are not taking away your legal rights in any sense. The recipient does not gain any rights to distribute such content, either. This is a very important distinction, but I do agree with the first sentence of your statement.
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Wow. You managed to miss the part where I said I disagree with Stallman's views. In fact, I am strongly opposed to copright infringement. You may wish to read my other responses in this thread, or you can continue acting like a child yourself. Have a nice day.
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Being a proponent of eliminating the right an author has to control the distribution of their works IS forcing them to share.
No it isn't; artists are perfectly free to create new works and then never share them with anyone.
RMS is at best an idiot. What he says is internally contradicting. He hasn't bathed in decades. He looks like a lump of dog shit. Just lick him in a closet and let him rot.
You missed one:
c) release to the public domain so the work is not lost when you die.
After all, the public domain is the entire reason for copyright's existence.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
I know that library books aren't free and I made no claim that they were.
We make library books available to people who couldn't afford them and we don't charge for that access (I'm assuming here that someone who can't afford to buy a book falls below the poverty level and doesn't pay taxes as a result). We do that because we believe that people should have access to those books. I'm simply taking a different viewpoint... it could equally be said that those books have a right to be available to people who could not otherwise afford them.
Actually, they are taking your rights granted by law over the extent of their infringement. It doesn't really matter if you have more left or an inexhaustible supply of items to exercise those rights over, for the items copied and distributed, that right is gone.
I see,
I misread your post and thought you said something else. I do not disagree with what you said now.
It doesn't really. It's just an arbitrary made up value composed of guesswork and approximations with a heavy dollop of greed. The notion of money "compensating" for a non-economic value where you are stumbling. This: Someone rapes and batters your mother to death with a bat. What is the compensation for your loss and disgust? Follow it down: a book on Linux programming at the library costs (x) more than just buying it retail because WHO feels a sense of loss and disgust? Find out who that WHO is. You will find that there might be an author in the bunch - but maybe not - and a whack load of lawyers and middlemen...
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
That same argument can be used against anything. Complaining about police brutality? Tough, it's worse in the Congo.
Just because there is worse does not mean you are the best, and certainly not that you cannot and should not improve.
Great Intellect...
"BTW ever notice that no Roman or Greek music has survived til today? We have all their other literature but not their songs. Perhaps because there was no monetary incentive for musicians to share their work."
Fucking bullshit. Copyright was invented in the 18th century and its modern form is even newer. You know what music came before that? Almost all of the Baroque movement and literally two thousand years of folk music that is still around in some form. The fate of ancient music of fallen civilizations has nothing to do with copyright and everything to do with lack of a standardized system for representing music in writing at the time and a lack of continued performance of the music which would have kept it alive in spite of not being written down.
This kind of bold-faced lying makes me sick.
Great Intellect...
Incidentally, I do fall on the side of supporting file sharing, as long as a person does not try to resell a person's music/software/etc for monetary gain.
So if the person watching your dog gave the sperm away for free, they didn't do it for monetary gain. So why not support the giving away of your dogs sperm? By participating in unauthorized file sharing, you are depriving the owners of that content from the market that desires what they have. There may only be a handful of people in this word interested in buying their content, but you still are affecting their ability to make money off of that content.
What, exactly were you deprived of?
The ability to control how my content is distributed
And by this argument, as the creator of a book, song, or film, I have been deprived of the market for my movie/film/song by your giving copies to other people for free.
So I'm not clear - you say you support sharing as long as it's not for financial gain... but then you say that giving something away (or providing a free copy of something) is depriving the creator/original owner of that item a market for their product.
You seem to be arguing that filesharing is okay, but you're trying to paint that the scenario above, where you're "deprived of a market for your product," is somehow injurious to you. So if someone's sharing activity is damaging to you... then how can it be morally correct? Whether they do it for a profit, or do it for free, it's simply a matter of how MUCH they've harmed you, not a question of whether or not they're harming you.
RMS is rightfully applauded for his stance on the freedom to give away intellectual property.
His desire to deny the freedom of an individual to attempt to profit from his efforts is tin-god like.
I would find his behavior more impressive if he insisted that he receive no compensation or expense reimbursement for his public appearances (in the name of sharing) and that he insist on the unrestricted right to record and distribute his appearances without any compensation.
Is his money where his mouth is?
So what you're saying is that RMS has the simplistic world view of a toddler, where everything is black and white, and no middle ground exists - say, where a person creating a book, or film, or song, is happy to share his creation with the world, but stipulates that anybody wanting to take a copy of that work should give him $2 as compensation? In this world view, either you share everything with everybody, or you share nothing and exist in isolation.
Any "forced" sharing or "forced" compensation is morally wrong. If a musician says, "I have created this song. If you want a copy, I want $1 from you," then there are three possible scenarios:
1) Is the song valuable to you? Do you enjoy it? Do you believe that $1 is an reasonable trade for the value that song represents to you, and are you okay with the "don't share with other people" restriction? If so, then conclude the transaction.
2) Is the song not valuable to you? Why would you want to take a copy at all, then? Patronize musicians whose business model and asking price are more palatable to you.
3) Is the song of some value to you, but you either disagree with the price or the "no redistribution" stipulation? Then open a negotiation with the musician - if you reach an agreement that both of you are happy with, conclude your transaction. If you can't reach a mutually agreeable plan, then the song is not worth the price, and you walk away from the transaction.
That is it - there is no "right" for you to take whatever you want whenever you want it. There is no "right" for the musician to take money from you if you don't want to give it - any answer to this "problem" that does not involve a mutually agreeable voluntary transaction between the purchaser and the seller is immoral.
Incidentally - why is it that people who hold this simplistic world view are also some of the most vocal critics of social media? If sharing is always ethical, shouldn't anything that encourages more sharing be an unequivocally ethical thing as well? And why do you care if somebody else gets value out of what you've shared? Sharing shouldn't have a price tag associated with it, right?
The ability to control how my content is distributed
That's presuming you ever had it. Do you pay a police to enforce those rights? No? Should I pay someone to enforce those rights on your behalf? Why?
I'd argue that you never had that ability. You were granted those rights for a limited time in exchange for giving the works to the public domain -- that's how copyrights work. But you never had the ability.
So what? "This restaurant owner doesn't distribute gratuities fairly, therefore I won't pay for the meal I enjoyed" keeps money from the hardworking staff. I'm not sure what argument you're failing to make, but whatever it is David Lowery demolishes it in the section starting
“"t’s OK not to pay for music because record companies rip off artists and do not pay artists anything.“ In the vast majority of cases, this is not true.He's right that that doesn't make it okay, he's wrong that it in the vast majority of cases it isn't true. It is true. I spent much of a year working at Universal Music Group, building a royalty calculation engine, so I saw a lot of contracts and a lot of details, and spend a lot of time talking to people who administer those contracts on behalf of the labels.
While it's true that labels give advances, 95+% of the time that advance is all of the money the artist ever sees, and the advances really aren't that big in most cases. Further, the vast majority of artists that never recoup do, in fact, recoup their full advance and then some. But the labels have all sorts of additional recoupable expenses, many of which are grossly inflated. According to the labels, recording an album costs several hundred thousand dollars, most of which actually goes to the label. Labels do things like sending a "complimentary" limousine to take the band to the recording studio... and then add $1500 in recoupable expenses to cover the 30-minute drive, even though the only reason it cost that much was because they dramatically inflate the costs for their vehicle and driver. There are hundreds more tricks they use to inflate recoupables to the point that only the biggest artists will ever see a penny of royalties.
The sleaziest trick they pull, IMO, is that sometimes they simply don't pay the artists the money that they're clearly owed. Most often this happens in cases where the contract terms are a little hard to compute, but it also happens sometimes just because the label thinks the artists aren't savvy enough to catch it. The term of art for this blatant thievery is "settle on audit", meaning that if the artist ever bothers to pay auditors to trawl through the books (which are often provided in the form of huge boxes of paper that contain transactions from dozens of artists all mixed together, just to make it difficult), then the label will negotiate a settlement for some portion of the money owed. They don't pay all of it, of course, because the artist's auditors and legal counsel recognize that getting all of it would require an expensive and time-consuming lawsuit, so it makes more sense to accept a partial payment.
As for the advance, the amount is normally enough that if a band were to handle the money carefully they could make an album every other year and live a reasonable middle-class lifestyle from it (say, $50K per year, per band member). But, of course, the label convinces them that they're going to get lots of money from royalties and encourages them to spend hard and fast. Why? Because it helps to ensure the label "owns" them. This is also why contracts always lock the artists into multi-album deals, at the label's option. These lock-ins can be broken, but doing it requires an expensive court case.
Bottom line: While the sleaziness of the labels doesn't justify violating copyrights (assuming doing so is wrong to begin with; I'm not addressing that point), to say they aren't sleazy or that they give the artists a fair deal is just wrong.
"Even if farmers received NOTHING, there would still be exactly zero danger of new food production coming to a stop. Humans are going to make food of all kinds as long as they exist, and not being able to make money from it, even if that were the case, won't stop them. It might reduce the amount, quality, and scope of produced food, but it will not cause the production of food to cease."
When you start arguing that people have no right to ask for compensation from the people who derive value from their work, you're a single half-step from advocating slavery.
Please provide hard data to support this claim, or admit that it is wildly, ridiculously speculative and simply a fairy tale you tell yourself to make yourself feel better about taking something from somebody by force, rather than by mutual agreement and trade.
You could say this is a part of promoting creativity. Standing on shoulders of giants, great artists steal, etc.
No, they are not taking your rights. You might say they are violating your rights, but their actions have no effect upon your legal rights. You retain every right you had before, and you're free to pursue legal action against the person who violated your rights by copying your works without your permission. Again, it is important to accurately represent these things if there is any hope of having a reasonable discussion about them.
Write failed: Broken pipe
Also many copyright violators bring up libraries as an analog for their sharing activities, but the analog breaker is that when you take a book (or anything else) from a library you are generally expected to return it, you don't get to keep it.
No, their music does not survive because a) there was no storage medium, and b) musical notation wasn't invented until (and I may be wrong here) the early Reniassance.
But it is not the copyright violator's place to decide to convert a possible sale into advertising.
What he does not have the moral right to do, however, is attempt to make that contract binding on third parties who have not agreed to it. This presents a practical problem with such a business model, but it is a business model problem. Attempting to charge for copies runs up against a hard truth of economics: the price of a good that can be copied at zero cost trends to zero. Artists can either whine about the law of supply and demand, or use better business models.
I agree, in cases where the artist is a party to the transaction. If he refuses to let me see his new work, I absolutely don't have the right to hack into his server and copy it off. However, when I connect up to a torrent, it is in fact a voluntary transaction between my computer and the other computers in the swarm. The artist is not a party to the transaction, does not have property rights in either my computer or the computers that I'm receiving data from, and therefore doesn't factor in.
I don't know how you see it, but I see that as an abuse of the legal system to restrict libraries that way and a gouge of the taxpayer to make government funded bodies pay more for books than private citizens. The publishers can't get away with that sort of shit in my country and libraries can source books wherever they are sold and can take donations from established collections.
But it is not the copyright violator's place to decide to convert a possible sale into advertising.
Correct. And it's not the copyright holder's place to equate this to theft either. It's a copyright violation, which is theft in the same way as it is rape, i.e. not at all.
I'll accept your analogy but I'm not shaking your hand unless you wash it first :)
Except that this isn't about 'rights', this is about a business model.
If your business model is to produce music files and sell them, in this marketplace where the vast bulk of music files are not paid for, then you're an idiot and the market will quickly drive you bankrupt. This isn't about morals, or ethics, but simple business sense.
The old business model of producing recordings of music and selling them is broken. It was enabled by the technology to record music, and it has been broken by the technology to share music. It was a viable business model for about a century, but now it's gone and musicians will need to either revert to the pre-recording-industry model of performing for a fee, or find a new viable business model.
Attempting to make the old business model work in this new marketplace is never going to work, even if God Himself decrees that anyone who shares a file is going straight to Hell.
To rephrase your straw man argument:
If a musician says "I have created this song, how do I make money from it?" then there are an infinite number of scenarios. Creating an easily-shareable mp3 of the song, and then putting it on the Internet where such things are effectively worthless, and then trying to insist that everyone who copies it owes you $1 seems to me to be one of the least-effective methods of making money from it.
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
You have to at least get a chuckle out of this gag:
"Out out damned spotify!"
ZX2C4
if you have to sole right to copy and or distribute something, then when someone else does it to that something, they are taking away you right in regard to that something when they do it. The right does not exist only on copies i can control, but all copies, even the ones other make.
The government creates and enforces the copyright from the start including the rules for libraries and so on. It's all an abuse of the legal system if you ask me, but it is an abuse the government (USA) has a constitutional right to do. Most other countries have obligations through international treaties that existed before the USA was even created and of course changed and added to afterwords.
The term "giving away" implies a situation where one party is deprived of something so another person can have it.
It implies nothing of the sort. It means only that the receiving party didn't have to pay or otherwise compensate the giver.
Quit trying to twist the language to suit your agenda, fucktard.
RMS would agree with most of what you say. The musician Alice can take $2 for giving a copy to Bob - the question is if the musician ethically can ask society use violence[1] to enforce that Bob cannot give a copy to Carol.
RMS would, as far as I've understood him, say that it is never appropriate for society to use violence for this.
You seem to say that it is more or less generally appropriate.
I consider it to be appropriate if Alice is engaged in large scale copying for profit, but consider the collateral damage from using violence in cases of private copying to be too high. In economic-speak, the transaction cost for getting justice through the justice system is so high that having this be an offense leads to people that are accused paying a "settlement" even if they're innocent. I would also have to - the standard settlement is less costly than the risk of having the system fail.
I also consider private copying to be unlikely to be possible to regulate. It is fairly simple to do piracy securely; and over time, it will only get easier. In ten to thirty years, every teenager will have a digital copy of every song, book and movie ever made - if necessary, they'll just copy hard drive to hard drive (or SSD to SSD) when they meet up.
And the problem in regulating this is that it don't fit with people's feeling of justice. There is no harm in making a copy of something. The harm is in not buying something - but we don't try to regulate away "not buying", we try to punish copying.
Eivind.
[1] Including monetary confiscation, which is based in violence or the threat of violence; without the government's monopoly on the use of violence, this could not be done through the courts.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Using "stealing" or "theft" to refer to copyright infringement brings over associations from physical theft. This leads to a less clear way of thinking, and my general impression is that *everybody* that misuse the words that way are fuzzy on the actual effects of copyright infringement.
Can you please list a few cases where copyright infringement is of benefit to the copyright holder, to jog in place and clean up your mind?
For your help, I'll start with listing the case where it is directly deterimental: When the infringer does not buy a copy of the original work, but would have bought a copy if (s)he did not have the infringing copy.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Copyright is an agreement. I agree that in exchange for this price, and the release of the work into the public domain in the future, I will not give away copies. It is not morally correct to break this agreement
Fixed that for you. The agreement's already been broken on both sides. If you're going to make the stupid "morals" argument, the best you can accomplish is a push.
So.... RMS says:
"don't use Kazaa because it's not free.
but "Non-free music? yeah, copy it. Pretend it's free."
Sadly, this inconsistency completely destroys his argument.
On the one side he gets worked up over software licensing to ensure that you get the software legally for free and with freedoms -- to the point that he says "don't use software that isn't offered with those freedoms", and then on the other side he completely ignores legality and freedom by saying "meh, whatever, copy those tracks because, like, they wanna be free." And he says those two things in the same paragraph.
If he wanted to be consistent and honest, he'd have said "no, you were wrong. You should not have copied those tracks, or indeed even listened to them, because they're not Free. You should only listen to music that the artists are explicitly giving away for free, with an open license for you to do the same (and preferably supplied with the master tracks so you have the ability to separate the component parts and re-record it yourself with different vocals)."
If you're going to pretend that music and software are equivalent, then at least have the honesty to take it to the logical conclusion rather than using as an excuse to justify piracy.
I have issues with the way things are working at the moment as much as anyone else here, but RMS's response here is just plain wrong. It's wrong to the point of being disingenuous. And then he wonders why no-one really listens to him any more. (outside of Slashdot, that is)
His point about the laws needing to be changed to allow sharing is virtually lost in the noise. That is probably the real point he wanted to get across, but he failed because he wanted to start out sounding controversial.
Instead of paying $0.99 for a song.. I'll wait till it comes out for free after some suckers have paid $60,000. Lol.. who is going pay for music... haha
Please.. make it happen !
The term "giving away" implies a situation where one party is deprived of something so another person can have it. This is not an accurate representation of Stallman's views,
This is a VERY accurate representation of Stallman's views. Basically RMS believes its ok to take something someone else worked hard on, without compensating that person, in any way shape or form. I guess he believes that creators will eat off of the "sharing goodness" that will happen as people share.
Taking something and sharing it, when you don't have permission is immoral and wrong. You harm the possibility of the creator creating more of the object that you are sharing.
But I guess RMS believes people create stuff out of the goodness of their heart, or that creations grow on trees.
I think I understand what you're saying, though you say it in a silly way. A song isn't bandwidth, it's the manifestation of a creative work.
People still desire particular songs, and we're in a golden age where the music industry has responded to that desire by making nearly every song available in an unrestricted quality format worldwide at an exceptionally reasonable price! Saying artists insist on this or calling it "lunacy" is a bizarre twisting of history, this is exactly what consumers said they wanted when they were bitching and moaning about iTunes DRM and $16 CDs with only two good songs. So you'd think that collecting a buck from 60,000 fans of a good song should be easy... except most of the audience would rather get it for free, and paper over their moral and ethical deficiencies by mouthing the tired Slashdot line on evil record companies-Founding Fathers' intents-information wants to be free-not stealing-blah blah, to which you're adding the "blame the artists for everything" twist. (As David Lowery/The Trichordist waxed so poetically, "On nearly every count your generation is much more ethical and fair than my generation. Except for one thing. Artist rights.")
Several artists have tried Kickstarter-like deals to get their recordings funded, without much success, e.g. http://www.artistshare.com/ You may be right that it's the only way to collect in the future but that sounds like a terrible world for the artists who pay recording engineers like you.
=S
Anyone's writing is going to look terrible if you deliberately join all the paragraphs into one rambling block of text. Follow the links in TFS; it's much more readable.
Please, PLEASE stop misspelling that word over and over again.
People like to get paid for their creations, and put food on the table. A reasonable compromise would be 10 or 20 years... just long enough to cover the audio engineer/artist/musicians' labor on the song.
When I do work, if it's appreciated, I'm paid for it. Once. I don't get royalties based on the number of people that use it or the number of years it's used.
If you're a classical composer backed by a patron to produce a work, you'll be paid once for it and be grateful for the support.
You sound like an extortionist. Please die.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Come for the stories, stay for the pedantry. You guys are confusing me. Distributing someone else's work without their permission is wrong. There, 11 words. No matter how much you feel separated from them it is still wrong. It is just that MOST people are not content creators and therefore have no understanding or common ground from which to base their judgments. Our awesome system still serves to protect the minority from the majority who wishes to vote themselves access to another's work. Damn, that argument doesn't hold water does it? Crap! Well, just because we have an out of control welfare state doesn't mean we should start letting people pilfer movies and music too.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
RMS' concept of sharing here is about that of a spoiled brat 10 year old.
Anyway, your last paragraph is a PERFECT way to illustrate how dumb this is.
Let's replace ARTIST with his GNU organization. Let's replace the copyrighted MUSIC where the 'right' to distribute is controlled through a purchased license with GPL'd GNU SOFTWARE where the 'right' distribute it is controlled through the GPL license.
By your logic (and possibly his), a person that happens to find GNU software on a torrent someplace with all the licenses stripped out is perfectly entitled to 'share' and take that copy and use it however they see fit (perhaps in their closed-source products?). There's no reason they'd then be bound by the distribution terms on the GPL at that point, would there? After all, if you find some music on a server someplace, you're no longer bound to respect the distribution terms of THAT, so why so with software?
Record companies are (almost all) horrible, horrible things that scam (almost all) artists out of their hard work without paying them a dime... but this is just stupid.
RMS should stick to fighting to convince the creators of things to make them free to share. The terms that makers (and their agents) apply to their creations' use should be respected. The fight is to convince people to change the terms, not to selectively ignore the ones you don't like.
I have used free software, and I've shared code back out of a sense of reciprosity. That's a good thing. However, I totally reserve the right to decide on a case-by-case basis what products of my labor are free to share and what I might decide to charge money for.
"The cost to copy is nothing, so it must be free" is BULLSHIT. Products are not 100% production costs. There's the initial development cost, sometimes advertising costs, office space costs, etc. The decision a person or company makes to produce something is based on looking at all of these costs together and trying to see if the sales will be worth ALL the costs.
Just saying "obviously by copying this so easily your business model sucks, so free music for me and you totally deserve to go broke, fool" is not much different than "your front door was open, and it was TOTALLY easy to just walk in and take your stuff... your ownership of things model sucks... so you totally deserve to lose everything, fool". Both things very well could be foolish, given the environment... but that doesn't make actively taking advantage of that person and enriching yourself at their expense right.
What RMS should be arguing for is a boycott of old-school record companies and an embracing of music from artists who promote sharing of their music and aren't represented by bags of slime. Only, there's a lot of good music out there you can only get from record companies... and most people wouldn't know where to start to find the other kinds of artists... and all their friends are listening to the record company music... so that's hard.
Emily DID WRONG in going the easy route and just taking music that should have been bought. Not a lot of wrong, in the scheme of things (especially given the victims).... but wrong nonetheless.
It feels good to give... and it feels GREAT to give something that doesn't cost anything to give. That doesn't make it universally right. The world is more complex than "it feels good so it must be right". Grow up, RMS.
You think it is wrong, and you are entitled to do so. Most of us do not, though, and in a democracy that is what matters. The majority forcing his way over minorities is not always a good thing, but it is what democracy is about, it is the price you pay to live in a democratic country. The other way around, when minorities force their way over the majority, is more often than not much worse.
Right and Wrong are subjective concepts. If most people want to get done with copyright, and it is more obvious everyday that this is the case, copyright must go away, and it is the right thing to do.
(Yet she doesn't feel she owes Big Star, VU and YLT anything? Her selective gratitude is disgusting.)
She (and her asshole prom date) indulged in various forms of copyright infringement clearly against the "All Rights Reserved" clearly printed on all those CDs, not just exchanging mix tapes (and even there she didn't just swap CDs, she uploaded someone else's songs into her own iTunes collection) . Considered in total, a fair use defense would not fly. And if you think there's nothing unseemly about acquiring that much beloved music without any compensation to the artists, there's more than one group of "mindless idiots" in the world. All your ranting about evil corporations ignores the very real harm that artists suffer from actions like hers.
=S
That's presuming you ever had it. Do you pay a police to enforce those rights? No? Should I pay someone to enforce those rights on your behalf? Why?
I'd argue that you never had that ability. You were granted those rights for a limited time in exchange for giving the works to the public domain -- that's how copyrights work.
That applies to private property in general. Your right to own a piece of land a thousand miles away from you that you've never seen only exists because we all (the society) pay for the police to enforce those rights, and tell them to do so.
If you've actually continued to read GP's post, he addressed that. The problem isn't that they're forced to change their business model. The problem is that if you force them to change it, they'll change it to something you'll like even less (but which, coincidentally, does not require copyright or a similar enforcement mechanism).
BTW ever notice that no Roman or Greek music has survived til today? We have all their other literature but not their songs. Perhaps because there was no monetary incentive for musicians to share their work.
I've not noticed any such thing:
Ancient Greek musical notation was capable of representing pitch and note-duration, and to a limited extent, harmony. It was in use from at least the 6th century BC until approximately the 4th century AD; several complete compositions and fragments of compositions using this notation survive.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I think what RMS is saying is that all music should be distributed with a license disclosing what can and can not be done with it. It would only add 20-25 minutes to each song to read out the music distribution license that would be required on every song.
The Gnu Public Music license would require that it be copied along with the song, and that any derivative work distributed to anyone also bear the 25 minute GPM license. Also, all the tracks required to remix the music must be made available to anyone the song is distributed to. Any remixes distributed must also bear the GPM license. And no patented technologies can be used to make the music.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
No. They are absolutely free not to share. Once they do share, the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. But that first choice is ALWAYS theirs. They could even choose only to share with people who have proven themselves willing and trustworthy to share their works no further.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The laws are self-contradictory.
Clear?
RMS uses the internal contradictions.
Clear?
His use of the internal contradictions is a somewhat-effective block against the abuse of those laws.
Clear?
Of course clear. You know just exactly why you want to try to discredit RMS. And we all have a pretty good idea why, too.
But you're fooling yourself if you think you can use bad law for you own ends and not get cut in the backlash.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Theft is not an entirely artificial construct. Try these two simple acts:
1. Make a copy of a baby's romper suit or anything else in the baby's possession.
2. Steal candy from the baby.
Note which act the baby complains about. That's theft.
Provided you maintain a torrent ratio of at least 1, you have indeed given it back.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
The great moral question of the twenty-first century is this: if all knowing, all culture, all art, all useful information can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone; if everyone can have everything, anywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone?
In a world where everything is a bitstream, where the marginal cost of culture is zero, where once one person has something, everything can be given to everybody at the same costs that it was given to its first possessor, it is immoral to exclude people from knowledge and from beauty. That is the great moral problem that the 20th century has be bequeathed to the 21st. We can eradicate ignorance at the expense of a few."
- Eben Moglen
There's really not much to it. Essentially, we just charge for something that doesn't exist yet, so it can't be copied - regardless of copyright laws.
There's a GPL licensed platform that anyone can download, along with a bunch of third-party modules that you can plug to it. That platform and a few modules solve most of the problem for any given user, but there's always a bunch of stuff that neither the platform nor any existing modules do - e.g. it's not adapted to local laws, or it doesn't fit exactly the existing processes, or it doesn't integrate with some other software, etc. So users pay us to write new modules that fix those problems - which we then release with a GPL license for everyone.
We also offer some other services - installation, configuration and maintenance of the platform, training, etc.
If you want a similar business model but in a non-business context, Joey Hess just got $25000 from regular users to work on a GPL licensed application that doesn't exist yet (git-annex assistant), and he's hardly the only one.
Dilbert RSS feed
This doesn't make sense on so many levels.
By analogy, I could make the same argument for why any new car should cost $100m (or more), because that is what a car company has to spend to put a new model on the road. Therefore by selling the new car for $20,000, they are essentially giving it away for free.
A musician spending $60,000 to create a work is making the bet that they can sell the "listening rights" to their work for more than the $60,000 they spent, and they are taking the risk that their work might not be as popular, and they could take an overall loss. It's risk and reward all over again.
... made it out of Argentina?
There's no legal way that this third party could have obtained it, so yes, he does.
FTFY.
We've had car analogies, army analogies, restaurant analogies.
I never thought we'd have analogies about mutt fapping.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
this is probably the closest to a solution i've ever seen. it might actually work! lets say an artist makes his album, and the total cost came out to be $60k, including the time (eg, if it took a year to make, and the artist considers 60k to be reasonable compensation for a year's work). then add some amount to this 'cost'. say 15%. so start a kickstarter for $68k, give every contributor a copy of the album, and complete rights to distribute it any way they want. even commercially.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
If you can't get the public to pay the costs, then there's no market for you, period. Just because you have something to sell doesn't mean there's people who'll buy it. What you're doing when you release it before having been paid in full is basically give the public a credit, which in itself is kosher, but you run the risk of them not paying back the credit, and you can't really complain when they don't.
And no, they're not making available any song at all... What they're making available is bandwidth to copy the songs from their servers, nothing more. You pay $.99, they let you copy the song from their server. They never sell you the song itself - they give it away with the bandwidth you buy.
No, I'm not being silly. I'm being logical. Back when the vinyl disc was born, the companies that were involved in the development of that cutting-edge technology suddenly had this ability to make discs of vinyl which could contain recordings of sound to be played back in a different location. They were not music factories, they were VINYL factories. And if they wanted to recoup their investment in the development and gain a profit, they needed a way to sell VINYL in massive quantities, ie. to consumers.
So what did they do? They contracted musicians, put them to play in front of a recording lathe, and then used the music as an excuse to sell the VINYL to the people. At some point they struck this deal that, instead of paying the musicians up front for the recording sessions, they would pay them a certain amount for every disc of vinyl sold, and it turns out that these discs of vinyl that just happened to contain recordings of music in them proved very popular with the public, so a whole industry formed around this. But what they were selling all along was VINYL, not songs, not music, vinyl.
Now, since the practical limitations of technology back then meant these vinyl manufacturing companies effectively had a monopoly on the transportation of recorded music to consumers, everyone in their head made a false correlation (false because it's not causation) that vinyl sold = music sold. However as the tape era came about, this correlation started to fade everywhere but in the people's heads...
...enter the third millenium. Now we have technology that allows us to copy information - not just music - from one place to another. This technology is called Internet. But there's a twist: This thing called Internet, unlike the vinyl, did not start as a medium for transportation of sound. Not because of any limitation on the Internet itself, but because the nodes (computers) connected to the Internet did not have the capacity to store, transmit or play back audio signals, but basically only text. Thus, the fist applications of the Internet involved only textual communications. This means that the companies that established themselves as the owners of the Internet did not have any interest whatsoever in using music as an excuse to sell the Internet to consumers. But computer tech evolved, and the situation changed... Fast forward 20 years, and now every node conneded to the Internet pertains to a consumer, and is fully capable of acquiring, transmitting, storing, copying, and playing back music. It's not that the transportation manufacturer disappeared... It's still there. It's called Internet Service Provider. They're the guys you pay a monthly bill to in exchange for using their bandwidth to transmit information. However, as mentioned above, the difference between the disappearing vinyl (read: prerecorded CD) manufacturers and the Internet manufacturers is that the ISP guys don't have any specific interest in hiring musicians to use as an excuse to sell Internet to the consumers - the Internet sells itself for many other reasons!
So now that there's no one around to pay the musicians their royalities, what the musicians are doing is, in an attempt to stick to the old ways of the vinyl industry, trying to pay themselves their royalities by reselling something they don't
The price doesn't trend to zero. There is one price, that which the artist sets.
I agree that the artist shouldn't go after people who _download_ his songs illegally. But if you do happen to upload it, then you deserve what's coming. By uploading the song for other's to download, you are depriving the artist of a market, and that is injurious to the artist.
If you disagree with an artist's price, then don't buy their record. If you do go to look for illegally provided copies of their songs, then you are getting off on a technicality, and fair enough, but the person who has provided those songs to you for free has broken the law.
You still don't get a right to redistribute the songs though. Unless the song is public domain, the fact that you got it off a torrent does not change the fact that you stil do not have the right to redistribute it.
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Your analogy is invalid because cars can't be magically cloned at virtually zero cost. Information, of which music is a subset, can. See the wall of text I just posted above: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2979739&cid=40654603
It's a shame I have no mod points right now, because your contribution is definitely worthy of being read.
We have Greek and Roman music. Maybe the problem is they didnt have A: recording devices, and B: it was mostly religious and suppressed by the Church as non-christian.
Hagel, Stefan, and Christine Harrauer (eds.) (2005). Ancient Greek Music in Performance: Symposion Wien 29. Sept.–1. Okt. 2003. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. ISBN 3-7001-3475-4
The replication cost argument is pretty much the reason we have patents and copyrights. And it doesn't just apply to digitally produced goods, but to many physical goods, such as drugs.
The "virtual zero cost" is a red herring. What matters is that society has agreed to give control over distribution of works to the artist who creates them, and to allow them to reap the economic benefits. The whole point of copyright was that it became very cheap to produce copies, and the fact that it is now even cheaper would actually be an argument to strengthen, rather than weaken copyright (if you agree with the initial reasoning on copyright).
When you make assumptions, you make an ass out of you, and umption. I said what I meant, and I meant what I said. I didn't mean what I didn't say, but you seem to think I did.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Thanks for that.
I don't see how this could be applied to any of the projects I've ever worked on while still putting food on the table, but hey, good on you for making it work!
For example -- I helped to create a tool that saves users >$500K for every project they use it on. If this tool wasn't artificially scarce, we would find it difficult to convince people to renew their annual licence fees -- and the industry involved isn't exactly known for giving people money out of the goodness of their hearts.
When your business model is based on the usefulness of your secret source -- I don't see an alternative to artificial scarcity.
It's pretty annoying when you've just spent two years working on a console game to see it show up on torrent sites days before it is even available in the stores.
As a salaried employee I was paid to make it just the same, and I do appreciate that a pirated copy doesn't equal a lost sale - it's a complex issue - but I also appreciate that the game studio I was working for no longer exists...
This is why there's been a huge rise in subscription models that rely on the internet to work -- e.g. World of Warcraft doesn't have a problem with piracy -- there are loads of other problems that arise from that, but freely copying the client software around isn't a problem for them.
I am not looking forward to these silly high-latency high-bandwidth cloud gaming services that are in the pipe... ugh!
There has to be a better way!
Artist, does it cost you $60,000 to make your work (include your own salary)?... Pro-tip: Sell it for $60,000, not for $0.99. If your work is really worth that, people will pay the cost. Set up a kickstarter and watch it happen. If your work isn't worth what it costs, then there's no market for you. Tough. But please stop all this lunacy, we need it to stop freaking yesterday.
-Sincerely, an audio engineer who understands what is wrong with the businesss
Actually, it's not a bad idea... Drop a 10 second clip of a chorus or verse as a teaser, and hold the rest of the song for ransom on Kickstarter: once you've received $60k in funding - which may be 60,000 people offering 99 cents - then you release the entire song free. Sharing becomes the distribution system, and since you've been paid in advance, you don't really care about further spread of the song.
Known artists can jack up the price - want the next Katy Perry song*? Funding is $600k. Or even $1M. Unknown artists can set lower prices. But you're right - if there's value to the song and their reputation, then they'll get paid what it's worth. Otherwise, no.
*Of course, not you, Dear Slashdot reader. You only listen to Arcade Fire, or Vampire Weekend, or some indie band no one but you has ever heard of. :)
RMS is a fucking nutcase. Why do people give the fruitcake attention he doesn't deserve by publishing stuff like this?
Copying and sharing is good? In all cases? Seriously?
Yeah let's share our nuclear missile plans with North Korea...
I like free stuff too, but people do have a right to make a living from their creativity.
Is not like RMS is for the elimination of all restrictions, he just wants different ones.
But people ARE able to just share music for free. There are tons of ways to copy files between computers.
Agreed. I like Stallman and I like the GPL and wish it was universal. But just because copyright on music and media in the US is unfair, does not mean it's moral to violate it. This is not about access to food, clothing, medical care, etc... things people need to survive. This is about luxury items - if you don't like the terms of use related to a purchase of music from your favorite band, find another favorite band.
If Stallman was consistent here, he would be advocating that people use binary decompilers on proprietary software and redistribute the resulting source code. After all, proprietary software is immoral, so he should be able to take what he wants and work around the problem, right? Of course that's not what he does, he has a competing software license called GPL that he advocates instead.
I won't defend RMS's support for things like the GPL, because I do find him hypocritical on that point. It's one of the reasons I dislike the GPL, actually.
Additionally, my comment about the price of an infinitely reproducable good going to zero is still spot on, regardless of how much money was required to develop it. The price of something is not set by the cost of its creation, initial or otherwise, but by the intersection of supply and demand. The goal, then, is to sell things that are scarce. As an example, consider that the creation of art is a scarce good; charge for that (e.g. Kickstarter) and not for the copies after creation is completed.
And finally, I do not believe that you can own a configuration of bits on a hard drive. To believe such a thing is to believe that everybody who has ever organized the bits on a hard drive in a certain manner has a property right in my physical hard drive, such that they can demand that I not organize the bits on it in the same manner. Thus, these fake "intellectual property" rights are actually violations of real, physical property rights. If I own the pen, and I own the paper, I can damn well write whatever I please with them, regardless of what someone half a world away may have already written in the past.
It does day it all doesn't it?
RAH thought that just because someone made a profit in the past doesn't mean they should necessarily make on in the future. To highlight RAH's opinion, and explain why it doesn't back what you think it does, let me tell a story...
At one point in time, Britannic made a profit selling encyclopedias to homes. My home had one. They did this for over two hundred years, and it went quite well for them. They where considered to be the best source for the largest breadth of knowledge in the English language, and so people bought their volumes. Then computer networks where developed. This was not initially an issue for the publishers, few had access to these networks, and they didn't contain the breadth of knowledge in their volumes, but over time both of these would change. The ease of sharing information made their volumes obsolete (2010 was the last published version, actually). Now, should the people be mandated to pay for this work, as they did in the past? RAH says no. (I tend to agree with him)
This is not the same as saying that I should be able to copy the work, in it's entirety. and distribute it to others. RAH was talking about situations where new businesses supplemented old ones, not where people wholesale copied creative works. RAH would have no problem with you using file-sharing to distribute your own works, I think he would have a problem with you distributing someone else's (or even his) without their (his) consent.
You don't seem to get it, frankly. Yes, when your business model is based on secret source, you need artificial scarcity. Or, you could use a different business model.
And why should people pay you annual fees? My computer saves me a lot of time and money every year, but I don't pay a yearly fee to HP.
It's pretty annoying when you've just spent two years working on a console game to see it show up on torrent sites days before it is even available in the stores.
As a salaried employee I was paid to make it just the same, and I do appreciate that a pirated copy doesn't equal a lost sale - it's a complex issue - but I also appreciate that the game studio I was working for no longer exists...
Two remarks:
1. The most pirated games are also the most sold ones. Piracy doesn't kill game studios, lack of customers does.
2. Again, different business models are needed. CLANG got $500k from customers before it was even made - before anyone could even consider copying it. Wasteland 2 got almost $3 million. Double Fine Adventure got $3.3 million.
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I was forcibly made aware of this when we sponsored him to speak at an event. His behavior off the stage was rude, inconsiderate and unfeeling--toward others, not me--to an extreme I don't often see. His views are what they are, and may have some value, but when he starts talking about right and wrong, I turn him off, as he doesn't appear to have good judgment in that area.
--------
Politics: n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
Artists do not have the right to control the distribution of their work. Copyright is a completely artificial construct of the government meant to encourage the creation of art by giving the artist a limited monopoly on copying his work. Copyright is an artificial restriction on your RIGHT to copy things. When I make a copy I do not deprive the artist, or anyone else, of anything.
I think copyright is a good idea if it is limited to a reasonable time like 10 or 20 years. The current copyright limits, reduced fair use, trying to collect royalties at private weddings, and other restrictions are an obscene abuse of a once good idea.
Anarchists never rule
If you are trying to discuss legal matters then words like "theft" have very particular meanings. Legally, theft means you have done something so that the legal owner of an object has been deprived of its use. Generally this means taking away a physical object. It also means you did it without personal violence. If you use violence then it is robbery.
Copyright infringement is not theft because you are making a copy and leaving the legal owner of the original with all his legal belongings.
Copyright is an artificial monopoly granted by governments to artists- it is not a generally recognized right.
Anarchists never rule
Yes Stallman's suggestion is to put a tax on *everybody* who buys internet regardless of their music consumption habits. That's been reallly well received by Slashdot in past articles. I'm surprised nobody latched onto it.
The other idea? "Just quickly send money to the artist." So he proposes two solutions:
1) Tax everybody regardless of their use.
2) Have artists beg for money.
He also says that going to concerts is probably paying for music. This is definitely untrue. For everybody except for arena filling rock stars concerts are a loss leader to sell CDs and MP3s.
BTW ever notice that no Roman or Greek music has survived til today? We have all their other literature but not their songs. Perhaps because there was no monetary incentive for musicians to share their work.
Perhaps because musical notation wasn't invented until the 11th century (by Guido of Arrezzo).
Sod all to do with money.
You don't seem to get it, frankly.....you could use a different business model.
Yes, that's why I'm trying to discuss different business models with you.
I am not espousing a position here - I am exploring the space and trying to learn new things!
If you could show how the "very-expensive-tool-it-took-20-man-years-to-make-for-a-small-audience-that-they-didn't-know-they-wanted-it-until-we-could-show-them-how-much-money-it-would-save" project could be reworked into a different business model that doesn't rely on artificial scarcity, I would be most appreciative.
Once the package you are writing GPL modules for becomes 'perfect' (or more likely 'good enough'), you've got no more income.
What is the scaling factor between cost-of-producing-a-module and the one-time-single-fee you get for writing it?
Do commissioned modules get added to the standard set available to everybody?
Why pay for a feature when I can wait three months for somebody else to buckle and pay for it?
Please - I am not trying to have an argument I am genuinely interested.
And why should people pay you annual fees?
Why shouldn't they? Why should banks pay interest on deposits?
If I invest years of my own time and hundreds of thousands of my own money, why shouldn't I be able to arrange things to recoup an actual profit for that?
If these algorithms allow other business to save themselves millions ever year, what's so wrong about trying to get some share of that?
It's a win for both parties (and the environment) -- why the indignation?
If you don't like the price - don't buy it, but also - don't use it.
I guess we'll see a rise in building such applications directly into purpose built hardware -- certainly some of our competitors do build & sell hardware, and would love to have our technology built in - we will hopefully be licensing some of this soon. We couldn't compete against *any* of these companies if we had GPL'd our goodies, and there's no way we've got deep enough pockets to win a patent war. Lets not even talk about software patents.
computer saves me a lot of time and money every year, but I don't pay a yearly fee to HP.
I thought we were talking about alternatives to artificial scarcity - last time I looked computers were physical items.
Piracy doesn't kill game studios, lack of customers does.
Indeed - concisely put. The studio I was referring to didn't die due to piracy - actually the GFC and the high australian dollar that followed had a lot more to do with it - the "new management" were just the final nail in the coffin..., but that's a different story entirely. It would be interesting to see how these businesses would have played out without piracy - but this is impossible and unmeasurable so its moot anyway.
Again, different business models are needed...
Yes, that's what I'm saying, and looking for!!
I'm NOT saying artificial scarcity is the one true business model or that nobody has a right to try to undermine it.
Double Fine Adventure got $3.3 million...
It's great to see kickstarter type projects gaining some traction - getting development totally funded before release is definitely a good model, if you can pull it off.
Not applicable to my expensive-tool example above, though.
Celebrities with a single hit under their belts though, should be able to crowd source their funding nicely.
Also seems like a good way to throw up a dozen potential ideas and see which ones gain interest before you've had to build anything.
I can see Apple getting pissed at developers that crowd source funding for free iOS releases -- developer gets paid, everybody gets the App, Apple doesn't get their 30%. I don't see how this is different to any other pay-a-developer-to-make-a-free-app model that is extremely common, so I can't see Apple doing anything about it, ei
When I make a copy I do not deprive the artist, or anyone else, of anything.
You deprive them of a potential sale. It's possible your world view is so limited that you don't recognize that as having value, but in the real world it does. People like RMS are like people trying to understand physics before the concept of "potential energy".
And I don't believe you when you say you think copyright should last 10 or 20 years. If that's what you believe, do you pay for all music, movies, and shows created in the last 10 to 20 years? I think you're just looking for justifications to get valuable stuff without paying for it-- which is my definition of stealing.
E pluribus unum
I am not saying that we are living in a free market economy. I am saying that in a free market economy, every single trade is fair, insofar as both parties gain from the trade. One of them might gain a million times more than the other, but both gain, or the trade would not happen.
I am not even in favour of free market economies. Capitalism should be attacked on its real faults (of which there are plenty), not on imagined ones.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
I can't disagree with that, but that's a *really* narrow definition of fair.
Also, there have been cases in Australia recently where "the trade did not happen", and subsequently the farmer committed suicide.
Any pointers on how to convert "what we've got" into a "free market economy where nobody gets screwed?"
Cheers.
I'd seriously advise all musicians to stop recording then, immediately. You can download all the commercial jingles for free you want.
^This^
Most? Cite or retract.
It won't cause the production of art to cease entirely, therefore, the artist should shut the fuck up and starve so that all you douchenozzles can haz your entitlement.
Perhaps, but he does have every right to prosecute the person who violated the contract, and redistributed his work, for violation of their no-redistribution contract. And since those copies were made against the terms of a valid, binding contract, there is a legal argument that the copies made thusly are therefore illegal, and should be (voluntarily, or forcibly) removed from the libraries of those people who took copies without paying, unless they pay the fee for their copy.
No, it really won't drive the price to zero. Because it costs very real time, money, materials, and training to be skilled enough to make the original recording in the first place. Distrubtion & copying costs are driven to zero, but those fees - even with traditional "physical copy" (CD/LP/Tape/etc.) recordings - represent only a fraction of the overall time and money required to produce the song. Hours and hours of songwriting, recording, practice, training, purchasing an instrument and recording equipment, marketing and hosting of the song for other people to get at it - all of these have very real and very non-zero costs. Arguing that "low- or no-cost copying" will somehow magically eliminate the need for those other costs is wishful MBA thinking.
If the only way it could be available to you is for somebody to break the law, than what you have done is the digital equivalent of receiving stolen goods - in which case you are very much in the wrong. If somebody offers to sell you a stolen car, you may be able to claim extenuating circumstances in court if you can show that there's no reason to believe you knew it was stolen. Even if you can legitimately claim ignorance of the illegal nature of your transaction, that doesn't mean that you get to just do whatever you want with and keep the goods you acquired through someone else's illegal behavior.
And to be clear: I am not defending 'current copyright law' (which I would say is fairly abusive in terms and duration), or the 'business models of the major labels' - I think we're much more likely to move back to a micro-patronage sort of model, where live shows and kickstarter-style funding is going to be the way a lot of artists make their living and produce music - and I think that's a pretty good thing, as I see very little value provided by the major label system that cannot also be provided by electronic distribution - I think you'll still have managers, producers, recording engineers, etc. - they just won't all be employed by middlemen who control distribution and promotion budgets that are the "only way" a small new band is going to get heard. But if an artist wants to retain control over their work after distribution, the moral thing to do is respect that, and either not pay for it (and not take a copy), and let that artist reconsider his business model if he finds he's not making enough money, or respect his wishes and pay for a copy if you feel that there is enough value to YOU in that artist's sales agreement. He doesn't have the right to force you to buy his music, and you don't have the right to force him to provide entertainment to you for free.
The problem is that I don't agree with the initial reasoning on copyright. If technology advancement has gotten us to the point where replication is so cheap and easy, the civilization should reap the benefits of it.
I can't disagree with that, but that's a *really* narrow definition of fair.
True, "fair" is not a very accurate description. However, it is difficult to say that someone has been screwed after something happened, if they are actually better off than they would have been if it didn't happen. "Unfair" I'll accept, but "screwed" does not fit.
Any pointers on how to convert "what we've got" into a "free market economy where nobody gets screwed?"
No, just like I don't have any pointers on how to convert what we've got into a communist economy where nobody gets screwed. Both capitalist and communist beliefs are intended to be ways to organize society which ultimately benefit everyone.
I believe that both sides (and in fact most types of economic philosophy) agree on one thing though: we must not permit business models that rely on someone getting screwed, and certainly not accept that pretty much all business models rely on screwing someone. If it is that bad, we must fix it. Even worse, if laws are helping the bad guys, we must get those laws repealed. Which brings us back to copyright law, which forbids certain transactions which in a free market would have made both parties better off.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Calling something a 'straw man' doesn't make it one.
Your argument is irrelevant, because I never said that the artist has the right to "force you to pay for a copy." I said, "if you take a copy under terms that the artist has not agreed to, it is immoral." You might want to think about that for a moment. The point is this: no matter how badly you think you NEED Britney Spears' latest single, you are not ENTITLED to a copy of it if she has made that copy available for a price > $0.
If you find that her terms & price are a reasonable exchange for the enjoyment and value you get out of the song, then pay the price, and abide by the agreement stipulating "no redistribution."
If you find that her price is not reasonable... do without a copy of the song, and let her business model fail. Spend your money and attention on other artists whose business models you DO approve of, or whose music you DO get enjoyment out of. Eventually, she will go out of business, or at the very least, she will have no reason to try and get money out of you.
If you REALLY love her song, but disagree with her terms (e.g., you think her asking price is too high, or want to be a redistributor of it in some way), open negotiations with her and her management team, and reach a mutually satisfactory agreement under which you pay the price you feel reasonable under terms you feel are reasonable, and they agree to the terms as well. (And if you can't reach terms that are mutually agreeable, see above: DO WITHOUT IT.)
There is no moral fourth option here, I'm sorry. Taking a copy of something against the wishes of its creator is immoral, and any line of argument that seeks to justify it is also fundamentally immoral. "I don't like the terms you're asking me to agree to" is not a blanket entitlement to take whatever you want.
"RAH was talking about situations where new businesses supplemented old ones, not where people wholesale copied creative works."
The business *is* copying and distributing such creations (literally: they are not asking for money for them to create new material but for the right to copy and distribute it).
New advancements make copying and distributing a no-business and yet, some people asks for the government and the courts to guarantee such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest.
Fair enough, for some values of the word 'screwed' :-)
If it is that bad, we must fix it.
Absolutely! We must. With what or how, I've no idea...but it will be really obvious in hindsight, if we ever get there.
It is entirely appropriate for Alice to claim damages against Bob for redistributing her work against her wishes: he has breached their contract. It is also at least partially appropriate for Alice to seek some redress for the people who benefitted from Bob's breach of contract - I think you can make a very reasonable legal argument that people who took a copy of something Bob had no right to redistribute be presented with an option: 1) Pay the fee and keep your copy; 2) delete the illicitly-acquired copy from your library. Now you're right, there's obviously a lot of cost and hassle associated with Alice trying to go after the people receiving copies - probably far more than the couple bucks per track she'd be entitled to recoup (note that I am specifically stating that Alice does NOT have the right to claim "a billion billion bajillion dollars damages from my lost market opportunity!" I find that punitive element to be vastly abusive, and probably far more effective for Alice to simply try and stop Bob from sharing than it is to delete everybody's copy.)
And I agree - if you notice upthread, I also said that I think we're likely to see musicians moving largely to a micro-patronage style of funding, e.g. Kickstarter, coupled with touring and live shows to make a living. But I think it is absolutely Alice's *right* to ask for a fee-per-copy and stipulate as part of that sale that Bob doesn't have the right to redistribute. And I think it's also Bob's absolute *right* to decline to purchase the track, and simply live without a copy of Alice's music. If Bob is in the majority, Alice will either rethink her business model and find a way to support herself, or be relegated to the status of "hobbyist," rather than professional musician. And I have no problem with that - declaring yourself a "professional musician" should not be a guarantee of riches, or even a modest living.
The point here is that if either side is intentionally and willfully doing something against the wishes of the other side, they are behaving immorally. If Alice wants to give away copies of her song and consider it a promotional investment, then redistribute away! But if Alice does not want you doing this... don't do it. If you disagree with her policy, ask her to grant you an exception (written, naturally), or support artists whose ideals align more closely with your own.
There's a singer/songwriter out of the Chicago area, by the name of Joe Pug, who I think is pretty great. From his bio:
I've redistributed his music to just about any of my friends who'll give him a listen - and at least one of them has purchased one of his albums, and bought tickets for a show when he played here in town. So, I know he's benefitted from it at least a little.
Yes, that's why I'm trying to discuss different business models with you.
I am not espousing a position here - I am exploring the space and trying to learn new things!
I think I'm hardly the right person to help you with that. This solution works for us - it doesn't mean I'm an expert in this issue.
If you could show how the "very-expensive-tool-it-took-20-man-years-to-make-for-a-small-audience-that-they-didn't-know-they-wanted-it-until-we-could-show-them-how-much-money-it-would-save" project could be reworked into a different business model that doesn't rely on artificial scarcity, I would be most appreciative.
And I would if I could. But the fact that I can't doesn't mean it can't be done. Or maybe those particular tools will never work without copyright, I don't know.
That said, that's an edge case. Most tools don't take 20-man-years before they're introduced to the market. That's what the whole MVP movement is all about - start small and if it works, grow from there.
Once the package you are writing GPL modules for becomes 'perfect' (or more likely 'good enough'), you've got no more income.
What is the scaling factor between cost-of-producing-a-module and the one-time-single-fee you get for writing it?
It's hard to quantify. The direct margin is not huge, but there are real benefits over having those published modules out there with your company's name attached to them.
In any case, I do doubt you can make the same profit margins, but I'm OK with that.
Do commissioned modules get added to the standard set available to everybody?
Yes.
Why pay for a feature when I can wait three months for somebody else to buckle and pay for it?
Well, for one, because you need it now, not some time in the future. There are opportunity costs in being three months without it.
Secondly, because they can drive the development and make sure it fits exactly their needs (customization - usually by writing an extra module that extends the main one - is very important according to our experience).
Thirdly, because development is just part of the total costs, which usually include technical support, maintenance, training, etc.
If I invest years of my own time and hundreds of thousands of my own money, why shouldn't I be able to arrange things to recoup an actual profit for that?
Doesn't that assume that charging an yearly fee is the only way to achieve that? On what is that based?
If these algorithms allow other business to save themselves millions ever year, what's so wrong about trying to get some share of that?
It's a win for both parties (and the environment) -- why the indignation?
I'm sorry, what indignation? Who said it was wrong?
If you don't like the price - don't buy it, but also - don't use it.
What's your point?
I thought we were talking about alternatives to artificial scarcity - last time I looked computers were physical items.
Actually, no, in that particular sentence we weren't. You justified charging an yearly fee based on yearly money savings, I just gave you an example where the former doesn't incur in the later.
In any case, I'm sure you can think of plenty of money-saving software that doesn't come with an yearly fee.
It's great to see kickstarter type projects gaining some traction - getting development totally funded before release is definitely a good model, if you can pull it off.
Not applicable to my expensive-tool example above, though.
Maybe not. But it is to a whole range of them.
Services instead of software is the obvious other model - the code doing the useful thing only runs on the company's server (cloud cough) - that changes the scarcity from artificial to real.
Well, I certainly won't advocate for that ;)
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Don't confuse legal with moral.
Oh, just Google for MPAA and RIAA statements about rampant piracy. You will see that twice the world population has been engaging on it for sometime, denying them hundreds of trillions of dollars in profits.
When you start arguing that people have no right to ask for compensation from the people who derive value from their work, you're a single half-step from advocating slavery.
Care to show me where copyright infringers are forcing artists to make copies for them for free? The original artist very likely isn't even involved in the process whatsoever.
And food is a physical good that takes time to produce. Not a good analogy.
about taking something from somebody by force
Who is taking anything? No one. If anything, it's copyright that is forceful.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
If they took those rights away from you, you could not successfully sue them. That is the whole basis on which you can sue to begin with, so it makes no sense to say that they're taking away your 'right'.
If I invest years of my own time and hundreds of thousands of my own money, why shouldn't I be able to arrange things to recoup an actual profit for that?
Doesn't that assume that charging an yearly fee is the only way to achieve that? On what is that based?
I don't follow. I was just trying to point out that I should have a right to use technology to defend my revenue stream. I don't see it as any different to having staff and a cash register in a shop! It's designed to protect my business model. Whether circumventing that protection should be legal or not is another matter entirely.
I'm sorry, what indignation? Who said it was wrong?
What's your point?
Apologies for the misunderstandings!
I'm sure you can think of plenty of money-saving software that doesn't come with an yearly fee.
Sure, and I could point out that the yearly fees for this software also include training, support, requested improvements, and so on, so not too different to you! :-)
Software companies charging for 'upgrades' each year or two is pretty common, too. I'm not saying it's right or wrong.
This solution works for us - it doesn't mean I'm an expert in this issue.
Expert or no - thanks for sharing your perspective.
I appreciate it and applaud you making a living with open source.
FWIW I now consider the crowd-funded-GPL model more viable than I did yesterday.
Thanks!
This is not the case RAH was talking about, and you're delusional if you think it is.
If you want to distribute something for free, that's fine, make something and distribute it. People all over the 'net do that. No one has a problem with it. THAT is how you can supplant their business. That is what RAH was saying is OK. What you want to do is sit on your ass, not do anything, and have free access to what others create. Stop being a lazy bum.
Removing all control of a creative work from it's author only discourages potential authors from distributing at all. (literally, what you are proposing is that no author gets paid to create a work.) New works become the domain of the ultra-rich (who can afford to pay someone enough to live on for art), and they have no incentive to ever make the works available to anyone. That is not in the public interest.
"If you want to distribute something for free, that's fine, make something and distribute it."
If you want to do X, that's fine, do Y and X.
No, sir. I don't want to do Y, I just want to do X.
Some time ago, doing X was expensive and time consuming. That's the case no more. But some people that used to earn a lot of money on X want to preserve their exclusive domain on X on a excuse about some irrelevant Y.
"literally, what you are proposing is that no author gets paid to create a work."
Quite on the contrary: I'm all for authors getting paid what the market see fits for *create* a work. But you insist in paying people -usually not the creator, for other things that are not the act of creating.
"New works become the domain of the ultra-rich"
Do you think copyrights have been there forever? Just look to History to learn how you can't be any more wrong.
One could argue that some people who share files (more specifically those who download the files) weren't likely to have bought the "product" to begin with, and that therefore the act of sharing the file to such people would have had exactly zero effect on the market for that "product."
No sale would have occurred anyway, and so nothing was lost.
Again, it's not about morals or ethics, and framing the argument as a moral choice *is* a straw man. This is a business we're talking about, not an ethics convention.
The common practice of the market, whether you like that or not, whether the creator of content likes that or not, is that musical tracks are freely available for no cost. That's maybe not an ideal situation for people to create content in, but it does accurately describe reality. You can say that that's 'immoral' all you want, but that's irrelevant to the facts of the market as it operates.
Need and entitlement also have nothing to do with it. The bare facts of the situation is that everyone (including the lady in the original article) lives in a world where copied music is the norm, where constantly trading music with friends and family, even with strangers on the internet, is socially normal behaviour. Trying to change this by labelling it as 'immoral' behaviour is pointless and specious. Maybe it could have been changed way back in the 80's, maybe if the original CD format had some kind of encryption protocol, but not now.
Content creators must adapt to the market, same as any other business, rather than try and force the market to adapt to their wishes. It's pretty simple, lots of people are doing it successfully, it just involves a change in thought processes where mp3's of the music are not 'worth' anything, where you want people to copy your songs and share them with their friends, because the more popular your music is, the easier it is to sell concert tickets/t-shirts/donations/whatever your business model is. In this world, with this business model and attitude, suddenly copying and sharing music becomes a good thing, everyone becomes happy, and the world is a better place.
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
I am a musician. I sell my music online. I didn't give this NPR intern to download my music for free (except for the few tracks that I have put out for free). And it isn't up to Richard Stallman to tell her she is morally right to download my music for free. Stallman talks about "companies" but conveniently avoids mentioning individual creators like myself who are harmed by piracy. He may feel that I should give all my music away, but I don't. And it's not his decision to make. It's mine.
Yes, one "could" argue that, if they were completely disingenuous and simply seeking to rationalize immoral behavior.
If you "wouldn't have bought it anyway," why would you keep a copy, other than your immense sense of entitlement? If you wouldn't have bought it, and don't listen to it, then why is it so unreasonable to expect that you'd delete your copy, instead of sharing it for the rest of the world to download, against the wishes of the creator?
No, the common practice of a few individuals in the market is to take things for no cost. MANY people (perhaps MOST, certainly those who are not entitled toddlers) purchase their music through Amazon, Itunes, Google Music, eMusic, BandCamp, direct from the artist, or from a host of other outlets, or listen through services which compensate artists per-play, such as Spotify, Pandora, and other streaming services. This *is* a moral and an ethical question, and trying to say "just because it's available for free, it's MORAL to take it for free" is dodging the fundamental issue at hand.
What you're really saying is "consumers have the right to take anything at any time, provided they can procure it for themselves in some manner." The tl;dr version of: "If it's not bolted down, it's mine, and if I have big enough bolt cutters, it's still mine." The ONLY thing that prevents people from taking shit that they are not entitled to is their sense of morality, and the possible threat of punishment if they're caught. Arguing that "you can get it for free, therefore it's moral to take it for free" is a cheap rationalization for piracy, and one which will win your side of the debate no support.
You may be right that it's a "better" business model. BUT YOU DO NOT HAVE A MORAL RIGHT to take whatever you want because you believe that forcing somebody else to adopt a different business model will "make the world a better place." Your use of force - taking something you are not entitled to against someone's wishes - is no better than a musician trying to force you to give him 10 bucks whether or not you want to watch his show. If you wish to support a different business model, support that different business model, and DO WITHOUT a copy of music not sold under a business model you approve of.
You are welcome to "think" it is wrong and it is good for us all to have beliefs that we feel strong enough to do something about. However we have laws that say it is an illegal activity. If you want to do your moral and civic duty, you should work to change the laws. You should not pick and choose which laws you want to follow and should not applaud others for ignoring the law.
Laws are not absolute. Laws are obeyed by most people when they do it willingly, because there is general agreement they are fair, or when some institution can force these people to obey them, otherwise they are just words written in a piece of paper. There is no way to force people to obey copyright laws, and it seems they don't think it is fair, so laws are useless here. In time laws tend to catch up with people's feelings in democratic regimens, but meanwhile people will do what they feel is fair, because nobody can force them to do otherwise.
Furthermore in my country there are no laws against endusers sharing copyrighted material. It is not a crime and you can't even be sued by civil law for downloading or uploading music without commercial ends. Or copyright laws are much more lax than those in US, we don't have patents for IP, and I don't see it changing anytime soon.
rationalize
Looks like you're rationalizing your own behavior. I'm not going to provide any arguments to prove this, but I'll state it as a fact, and you must accept it.
immoral behavior
Well, that's the end of that. You called it immoral, and everything changed. The arguments are over. You, a single person, have single-handedly managed to prove that it's immoral merely by calling it such. Amazing!
If you "wouldn't have bought it anyway," why would you keep a copy
Because they like it?
other than your immense sense of entitlement
"Wow! I found a quarter on the ground! Lucky me!" is not quite the same as, "Everyone in the world owes me money! I'm entitled to all the money in the world!" Must so-called 'pirates' aren't holding artists at gunpoint or even telling them to work for free. It's there, so they download it.
If you wouldn't have bought it
Or couldn't have bought it. If they wouldn't/couldn't have bought it, then not even potential profit was lost. If they wouldn't have bought it, that just means it wasn't worth buying to them (but was worth downloading).
It does not matter smash my computer and then replace it with an identical one; you smashed the original, and that is lost.
It being replaced changes nothing.
If "those people" would rather pay for someone to steal dog sperm rather than compensate your dog owner, you may wish to reconsider what kind of market you're getting yourself into. I'd stay away from such "market" no matter how lucrative it may be.
Putting it shortly: certain sales are not worth it. People who don't pretend to know sales and marketing but do in fact understand those disciplines understand that. I'm sure there would have been market for my then-girlfriend's, um, services, in the sunny state of Nevada, for example. Yet I choose not to be a pimp.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
There are library editions of books that are better bound, printed on heavier or better paper, etc. Nobody forces libraries to buy them, though. At least in the U.S., libraries don't have to pay extra for books just because they are to lend them. Heck, if anything, library systems try to maintain volume discounts with publishers, consolidate orders to get better pricing, and generally push their weight around just lika any bigger customer out there would. Where on Earth do you have to pay more for books if you're to lend them? There are such pricing differences for lending licenses for audiovisual works. As for books, that's news to me.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
It didn't survive because people through the ages simply didn't give a fuck about it. It's not some innate right of art to be preserved in perpetuity, you know.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The term "giving away" implies a situation where one party is deprived of something so another person can have it. This is not an accurate representation of Stallman's views, nor is is an accurate description of copyright infringement. When a copy is made and provided to another party, both parties now have the item in question.
No, what you are giving away is the future income you could derive from it.
We live in a capitalist system, and until we live in a society where everything is freely shared (including all property) I don't see why people who create music, art or software shouldn't be financially rewarded just like everyone else..
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Never mind the fact that you couldn't go to a convenience store to get paper and pencils.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
What he does not have the moral right to do, however, is attempt to make that contract binding on third parties who have not agreed to it. This presents a practical problem with such a business model, but it is a business model problem. Attempting to charge for copies runs up against a hard truth of economics: the price of a good that can be copied at zero cost trends to zero. Artists can either whine about the law of supply and demand, or use better business models.
That's whyf we invented the idea of copyright in the first place. It's like how we invented laws to make murder and theft illegal, it's all man-made interference in the natural order of things. Cats and dogs don't have copyright or murder laws.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If your business model is to produce music files and sell them, in this marketplace where the vast bulk of music files are not paid for, then you're an idiot and the market will quickly drive you bankrupt. This isn't about morals, or ethics, but simple business sense.
Why do you think that "simple business sense" somehow transcends morals or ethics? It makes simple business sense for me to hire a couple of goons to kidnap your family and torture them to death if you don't give me all your money, but unfortunately that's, well, illegal.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
In ten to thirty years, every teenager will have a digital copy of every song, book and movie ever made
And by then the only people able to earn a living creating art will be rich dilettantes. Which will suit the self-entitled self-centred selfish wealthy libertarian elite just fine
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Arguing that software has rights is even more delusional than Romney's believe that corporations are people,
You trolls can't read or just pretend to be stupid? RMS never ever said that it was software which has rights. All he talks about are certain software users' rights, or more correctly, freedoms.
If most people want to get done with copyright, and it is more obvious everyday that this is the case, copyright must go away, and it is the right thing to do.
Well then get the fucking law changed if it's such an overwhemingly obvious thing.
Oh no, that won't work because in actual fact most people are not opposed to copyright and are quite happy to pay money to iTunes or Netflix to access media.
Just because you get everything for free from BitTottent doesn't mean that everyone does.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
In the absence of copyright, and thus the absence of a GPL with any teeth, how would you force me to hand over source code when you get a binary?
I would make computers such that they can run only binaries produced by themselves. Each binary in the world would be computer-instance specific and unable to run anywhere else, because it would be fully encrypted. A strong encryption key would be generated and stored internally and never exposed to anyone or anything. Every piece of software would have to come into a computer as a source code and be compiled on site. Occasionally, new encryption key would be generated on user request, in case of old one being compromised by cryptanalysis, so all binaries would be only temporary, created for convenience of greater readiness (faster starting of programs).
There - no copyright, but you have to come across clean.
And if someone does a "cp file.mp3 ~/music", they've not taken anything of mine either. They did the copy.
So what is the "something" that is not mine and not entitled to?
Remember, the copyright remains with the copyright owner, unless I palgiarize.
Nope, he's said specifically he'd be OK with it.
I think that depends on what you consider to be "rights" and where you believe the rights lie. We routinely declare objects to be historical or natural landmarks and that designation includes protection from vandalism, destruction, exploitation and so forth. The object has effectively been given a right to continued existence. Is it delusional of us to have done that?
An historical landmark's "rights" are entirely given to it by human society.
The majority of the US also believes that books shouldn't be banned or burned.
And that is all any "right" is - an agreement by society that something should be thus and not so. I think the US's concept of inalienable rights (literally or metaphorically granted by god) is unhelpful.
If we want to make a law that says that any piece of software must immediately be released into the public domain, free and unencumbered, then we can so so. That doesn't mean that software sudenly gets a quasi-human right to freedom.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If you're talking about a lost sale, where's your evidence that the person RMS shared it with would have purchased it?
Where's the evidence that anyone ever buys any music anyway? Oh, yes, iTunes.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Whereas these "artists" are selling their songs.
Therefore there is a huge gap there.
Additionally, that information is only being asked because you will use it to take all his money (which IS stealing).
The ability to control how my content is distributed
That's presuming you ever had it. Do you pay a police to enforce those rights? No? Should I pay someone to enforce those rights on your behalf? Why?
I'd argue that you never had that ability. You were granted those rights for a limited time in exchange for giving the works to the public domain -- that's how copyrights work. But you never had the ability.
He had the ability because of the copyright laws. No, it is not some mystical divine right, it's a man made piece of law. Just like all the other laws, rules and customs in existence.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
But it is not the copyright violator's place to decide to convert a possible sale into advertising.
Correct. And it's not the copyright holder's place to equate this to theft either. It's a copyright violation, which is theft in the same way as it is rape, i.e. not at all.
Why do people here bang on and on about copyright infringement not being theft?
Unless you think that any sort of theft is the worst crime in the whole world, demonstrating that copyright infringement isn't the same as theft doesn't really say a great deal.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It might reduce the amount, quality, and scope of produced works but it will not cause the production of art to cease.
That's all right then. As long as it's just seriously reducing the value of our culture and not totally destroying it, what's the prob?
You are a philistine and a moron.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
1.414, Amanda Palmer has actually started doing this. She got successful enough to get her fans to be her patrons and now she really does promote younger artists.
You really don't get it. The GPL exists because software can be forbidden to be copied by a copyright license. If you could copy anything you wanted the GPL wouldn't have been created to begin with. Also the more you divorce costs from the price the more distorted pricing will become and obviously is only sustainable because there are laws coercing users to follow them. The state could make a law where you had to pay a tax for breathing despite air being plentiful. Things like black markets exist because there is possible to satisfy demand in practice but there are laws preventing the actual trade. Since software can be copied for nearly zero cost its kind of obvious the invisible hand of the free market will lead people to copying the software a cost near zero which reflects the actual copying cost.
That's mostly because they didn't write it down. Musical notation is a comparatively recent invention.
I make a living by writing GPL licensed software, so clearly there are alternatives.
You can earn a living by writing GPL licensed software because at some point in the chain someone pays you or your employers some money. It's not magic.
And if anyone mentions the word "support" I would just like to ask them how exactly that is going to apply to a music download.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yeah, that;s cool and shit, but there is no such thing as a free market economy except in the imaginations of extreme right wing libertarians. In the real world, capitalism is based on exploitation tempered by democratic institutions such as government and the law.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Most on Slashdot may not think it's wrong but I'd be surprised if that was the case in society in general, a lot of people will view sharing/piracy as something they did as kids but which was still the wrong thing to do- and so they buy content now. If that is the case the current situation is the majority imposing their will over the minority. I may well be wrong here though- may have to spend a while trying to find any non-partisan studies on it.
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No, it really won't drive the price to zero. Because it costs very real time, money, materials, and training to be skilled enough to make the original recording in the first place. Distrubtion & copying costs are driven to zero, but those fees - even with traditional "physical copy" (CD/LP/Tape/etc.) recordings - represent only a fraction of the overall time and money required to produce the song. Hours and hours of songwriting, recording, practice, training, purchasing an instrument and recording equipment, marketing and hosting of the song for other people to get at it - all of these have very real and very non-zero costs.
Irrelevent. The invisible hand doesn't care how long you practice or how many instruments you had to buy, the invisible hand cares only for supply and demand. If an item can be duplicated at effectively 0 cost, then the supply is infinite and the demand price is effectively also 0.
Arguing that "low- or no-cost copying" will somehow magically eliminate the need for those other costs is wishful MBA thinking.
Those costs aren't eliminated, they just don't matter. Almost all of those costs are sunk costs, they were paid to create the original music file. Creating copies of that file costs nothing. The only cost that will have an impact on the price is "hosting of the song for other people to get at it". The other costs just don't matter.
He doesn't have the right to force you to buy his music, and you don't have the right to force him to provide entertainment to you for free.
Frankly, no one is forcing the musician to "provide entertainment to you for free". The song was already recorded. The musician is required to do nothing, and is not impacted except in that it might decrease his ability to sell additional recordings. He has not been "forced" to do anything. The very idea is laughably wrong.
You seem to ignoring the fundamental truth of copyright:
When a musician create a new song and performs it for a public audience, it belongs to the public. The government, however, grants musicians a temporary and limited monopoly on the right to make and distribute copies of the songs they create as an economic incentive to encourage more song creation.
Songs are information, and information can only be "owned" by keeping it secret. Therefore this is not a natural right, it is a government restriction on the freedom of the public for the public good.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
The point was that copyright laws, unlike murder laws, are morally bad. According to RMS, the cost (no sharing) outweighs the benefit (marginally more music).
My opinion is that the cost/benefit ratio was better before the Internet became publicly accessible. There was much less sharing being prevented and more music being created. However, the rise of the internet has increased the costs and decreased the benefits, while spawning new unexpected costs in the form of exported copyright laws, lobbying other countries, public enforcement of private copyright interests and others. Copyright needs to be reformed or abolished.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Since when is copying the use of force? It is these kinds of moronic, not to mention brain damaged, modes of thinking that lead the US to have higher jail sentences for copying than physically assaulting someone. Copying shouldn't even be a jail-able offense. Everyone is going bonkers.
You deprive them of a potential sale.
No you do not. Just because you copied something that cost you nothing does not mean you would be willing to actually pay for it. People accept all sorts of junk for free they wouldn't pay a dime for otherwise.
Library Books are simply not free. Someone is paying for your access to them and just because it isn't directly you does not make it so.
They are free if the library in question is the Library of Congress.
You deprive them of a potential sale.
Is a music critic responsible for lost "potential sales" if he doesn't provide a "good enough" review of an album?
Because once you start trying to figuring our how many people should have bought the album, you've started down a slippery slope to oppression and tyranny.
And I don't believe you when you say you think copyright should last 10 or 20 years. If that's what you believe, do you pay for all music, movies, and shows created in the last 10 to 20 years? I think you're just looking for justifications to get valuable stuff without paying for it-- which is my definition of stealing.
Then you're doubly stupid. Calling anyone who disagrees with you a thief is effectively conceding that you have no argument, plus you admit by your own definition that you either consider yourself a thief or you consider oxygen to be worthless. I propose you try going 24 hours without it, it will solve your idiocy problem one way or another. You've gotten a lot more valuable stuff for free than you will ever be able to repay. Our entire society is based on the implictly understanding that no one can own information. If you disagree you'd better be prepared to go back to being a mute and dumb monkey living in cave, because you certainly have not paid for the millenia of technological advancement that has allowed your arrogantly self-entitled opinions to be posted on the Internet.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
You can earn a living by writing GPL licensed software because at some point in the chain someone pays you or your employers some money. It's not magic.
Well, I'm glad this strawman is out of the way.
I never, ever claimed that money appeared from thin air when you write GPL'ed software. I just claimed it's possible to have a business model that doesn't rely on artificial scarcity, and my own job is a proof of that.
For music, there's pay-what-you-want releases where people consistently paid way more than they had to, there's albums on Kickstarter that have made $200k before they were even released and there's the well proven concerts and merchandising. None of which require artificial scarcity to work.
Dilbert RSS feed
Lets take this to the logical example your giving. Lets say I paid you to purchase your dog's seed. Then I figure out a way to copy (clone) that and give it away for free. I have paid for what I am giving away for free. Is it the same thing as theft? I don't believe it is.
BTW ever notice that no Roman or Greek music has survived til today? We have all their other literature but not their songs. Perhaps because there was no monetary incentive for musicians to share their work.
Maybe they just didn't come up with the idea of music notation. Or maybe there was some religious/cultural taboo over writing down sacred music or something?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Let's invert this and see what it looks like from the other side, just to try and shift some attitudes here ;)
I have a thing. I can copy this thing for no cost and give it to you, so then we both have a thing. I lose nothing in this transaction, nothing at all. You gain happiness from this transaction, at no cost to me. Surely it is immoral for me to refuse to copy my thing for you, to give you happiness at no cost to me?
Note that this is *not* like the old recording industry, where if I have a physical copy of a record, then giving it to you for free deprives me of my physical copy so I am perfectly entitled to keep hold of my copy. But in this situation, surely depriving you of your free copy of my thing is an immoral action?
If my livelihood depends on you not getting a copy of my thing for free, then the only immorality is to do with depriving me of my livelihood. But that's where this stops being about morals and starts being about business models. Because if I change my business model then your behaviour stops depriving me of my livelihood and stops being something I consider immoral and starts being something I consider good.
Let's provide a concrete example... I routinely visit Penny Arcade's* website and view their comics for free. They don't consider this immoral, because they've worked out their business model so that they make a living from people like me visiting their site. But I am enjoying their content for free. I could copy their comics to my hard drive and send them to my friends, and they wouldn't consider that immoral. This *behaviour* is not immoral. And yet this exact behaviour is what you consider so extremely immoral when applied to downloading a copy of (for example) The Beatles' music. The difference between the two is not that my behaviour is moral for one and immoral for another, but that the business model for Penny Arcade is different from the business model for The Beatles. If The Beatles changed their business model so that they profited from the free exchange of their music, then my exact same behaviour would suddenly become 'moral'.
This is why this whole problem is not about the morality of customer behaviour, but about the effectiveness of business models in a digital world because it's the business model that determines the 'morality' of the behaviour. This is also why setting up the behaviour as being intrinsically moral or immoral is a straw man.
* forgive my not finding a music example, but content is content and it's very late at night here. Replace each comic with a streaming audio track and the business model is the same
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
If I take something that you have not consented to give me, I have used "force" to acquire it - if the trade is not the product of mutual, informed consent, it is the product of the exercise of force.
Nowhere did I say that "copying should result in you being locked up, with the key thrown away." In fact, if you read my responses elsewhere in this topic, you'll see that I've specifically said I believe copyright law as it exists today needs to be reformed. In fact, what I said elsewhere is that something as simple as, "if you have a copy you acquired illicltly, you either pay the fee you would have paid on copying, or delete your copy." More to the point, I said that it was well within a creator's rights to try and shut down someone who is redistributing their work without the creator's consent.
You realize that we have varying degrees of punishment for infractions, right? That not everything results in you being flown to Guantanamo Bay and left to rot without trial?
And once again, we're back to ignoring the process by which you acquired it, and the process by which it was created. SOMEONE acquired the song under conditions that they implicitly agreed to at the time of sale: that they wouldn't redistribute it for free, and that they would pay the modest asking price in return for their copy.
Now, once again: if they agreed to that, then it is immoral to give copies away to other people. Because they are violating the agreement they entered into with the artist who they purchased the track from. If you happen to be the beneficiary of this person's immoral behavior, that does not mean that your copy was acquired in a "moral" fashion, no matter how much "happiness" it brings you. The ethical and moral thing to do, if you discover you've become the recipient of illicitly copied goods, is to either make your copy "legal" by purchasing a copy for yourself, or delete the copy you've made, if you don't believe the value of the track is worth the asking price and conditions attached.
This argument that focuses solely on the per-unit cost of copying dropping to zero is specious, *because* it ignores the complex process of creation and distribution. The "effectiveness" of the business model is irrelevant - you do not have any moral right to force someone to change their business model by taking their product under terms they have not agreed to. Your ONLY "moral" right in this scenario is to do business with people (and support business models) which allow the behavior you find preferable. I am not arguing against the business model, I'm arguing against your assumed "right" to force people into it.
To your point about Penny Arcade: you're pointing to somebody who (presumably) allows copying of their work, and encourages it, and saying, "Therefore it's always moral." The context is very important: to the extent that Penny Arcade allows or encourages that copying, then you're right: it's completely moral - you have done nothing that the PA creators have not agreed to. If they posted it up behind a paywall and said, "No redistribution please," then copying it and sharing those copies with friends *would* be immoral.
One last time: I am not arguing against the validity of a different business model - I believe that the cost of enforcing a "pay per copy / DRM" scheme will eventually become too expensive to make it viable. I believe that kickstarter-style patronage funding (for studio recordings and the like) plus fees for live shows and merchandise will become the way most artists support themselves eventually - and that there will be minimal need for "major labels" and RIAA folks as a result. I DO NOT believe that any of us has the right to FORCE an artists to adopt a business model that they don't wish to adopt. This is where you cross the line from "perfectly moral business proposal" to "immoral use of force." As soon as you say, "I don't care whether or not you WANT me to have a copy, I'm taking it anyway," you have behaved immorally. If the artist doesn't agree with your proposal, then you, as a moral person, do without a copy of that artist's work, and support other artists whose work is offered under terms you find palatable.
I don't have a moral right to torpedo StarKist tuna's fishing boats because I disagree with the sustainability of their fishing practices, but I CERTAINLY have the right to boycott them, and buy a similar product from someone else whose practices are more environmentally sound. I don't have a moral right to firebomb a McDonald's because I don't like the healthiness of their menu, but I do have the right to boycott them, and buy healthier food from an alternative source. I don't have the right to hack into Toyota's factories and reprogram their robots to make mistakes while assembling cars, but I DO have the right to buy a Honda instead.
The best way to understand people's thoughts is by their actions. You just have to watch the steady increase in p2p traffic and piracy. Today 90% of all internet traffic is p2p, and piracy has been only increasing.
In Europe the Pirate Party is one of the political parties that has most grown in the last years.
The majority of people judges copyright as unfair, especially the abusive copyright we have this days. Most people are stupid, but even stupid people get it across at some point, when it hurts, and copyright has been hurting pretty much everybody for a long time.
Laws take a long time to change, and unfortunately are subjected to other interests and power besides public will, but rest assured that sooner or later they will get aligned with people's will. It may take a long while though. In the meantime there will be increasing amounts of civil disobedience no matter how much US tries to force his way. Piracy will only increase, until there is no point in fighting it anymore. You can pretend it won't happen and that you can control it, like the MAFIAA lawyers try to sell to their masters, but you can't. Nobody can.
I've read most of the "philisophical" articles over at gnu.org, but I don't recall anything remotely like that. Can you point me to something RMS has said or written on that subject?
RMS does not believe software has rights just as a person has rights, that is a blatant misrepresentation.
He believes that people have rights which are violated by state-protected nonfree software - i.e. he believes that people have rights which software must respect
RMS does NOT think that software has rights, he thinks that people have rights with respect to software.
I'm strongly opposed to copyright infringement, and indicated in my original post that I do not agree with Stallman's views. I'm genuinely perplexed by the fact that many people either can't read, or insist on reading into things to draw conclusions about my views that are completely inaccurate. The point of the post was to make sure the term "giving away" was correctly defined in the context of this conversation, and it wasn't an exclusive statement compared with the first sentence of your response. In fact, I agree with you.
Write failed: Broken pipe
I DO NOT believe that any of us has the right to FORCE an artists to adopt a business model that they don't wish to adopt. This is where you cross the line from "perfectly moral business proposal" to "immoral use of force."
Ah but markets force people to change their business models all the time. They call them 'market forces' for a reason. Markets change as a result of technological changes. The market for recorded music was created by technological change (vinyl records) and is being destroyed by technological change (digital music). Market forces are not immoral, but they will force people in the market to change their business models, even against their wishes.
OK, so we're there, basically. You're agreeing that there is nothing inherently immoral in sharing music (or any content), the immorality is that someone, somewhere, way back up the chain broke an agreement that they had with a licensee of the original artist, and that makes any sharing of that content immoral.
There's one small but obvious flaw with this...the music doesn't come with an attached licence. I don't know if a track I'm downloading is immoral or not. I don't know if the artist whose music I'm listening to has agreed to this use of their content or not, so I don't know whether downloading the track is a moral or immoral action. Nor, as a consumer, can I be expected to know this. I could make the blanket assumption that copying any music is immoral, but that's not a valid assumption when there are musicians who are experimenting with new business models and who want me to share their music (as you've pointed out, this is probably the future of music). I could purchase all my music from music stores, but again that would rule out new business models that involve sharing which I'd like to encourage. I file my music by genre not by licence conditions.
Incidentally this isn't a new problem in the music industry. There have been cases where unscrupulous record distributors have made compilation albums of music without the agreement of the original artists. The purchasers of those albums are obviously acting in good faith, and yet are recipients of illegal, immoral music that they should immediately return to the store for a refund if they knew. Except, of course, that they don't know and can't be expected to know.
Obviously if I purchased some music and there's an explicit agreement that I have signed/clicked on with that purchase that says 'don't copy this' then I'm breaking a rule by copying it, and I'd agree probably breaking a moral code. But there's a wide range of activity here... am I allowed to format-shift my music, is that breaking the 'no copying' rule? I'm obviously allowed to lend my CD's to friends, so can I format-shift my CD's and lend the subsequent mp3's to friends? If I lend my CD to a friend and they then copy it, am I breaking the agreement I made with the artist, or is my friend who didn't make any agreement?
To take a real-life example again... I move in with a girl. We merge music collections like we merge everything else in our lives. We buy music together and format-shift the resulting tracks to our mp3 players. Then we split up because sometimes these things just don't work out, and amongst the endless hassle of splitting apart the joint life we created, we each take a copy of the entire mp3 collection that we bought. I'd argue that attempting to make us go through a process of identifying each track's original licence conditions to determine whether that music track can be shared or if we need to have an argument about who gets to keep it is pointless, futile, and if your business depends on that happening then your business is broken. And no, I don't think this is the moral equivalent of firebombing a Mcdonald's, and any attempt by the music industry to portray the two actions as morally equivalent is just plain wrong.
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
and damn... I got into the morality argument again. I hate that. The portrayal of this whole issue as a moral issue and not a business issue is a move by the content industry to attempt to preserve their broken business model.
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
I think what RMS is saying is that all music should be distributed with a license disclosing what can and can not be done with it.
It is. It's called "copyright".
When a musician create a new song and performs it for a public audience, it belongs to the public.
Its interesting how some people believe in intellectual property just fine when they are taking it from someone. Just not when someone asserts it for themselves.
Although I am unsure, it seems highly likely that IP rights where lobbied for by corporations and not individual artists, which should tell you something. Myself. a publisher and musician, have mixed feelings on the subject - yes, of course IP rights are useful to me but the resulting propagation potential of file-sharing is hugely appealing also. As a musician that is my primary goal - spreading the word so to speak. That is more important to me then loafing around by the pool in my gold underpants - although, of course, I would not mind too much. Copyright is more a capitalist function than a moral one but as a publisher I require money and so have had to find other inventive ways into market and alternate revenue streams.The moral principle for copyright can always be argued for its primary economic function is fast becoming outdated.
How about something more recent? Depending on which empire you refer to there's anywhere between 500 and 2000 years for the music to be lost in. The Greeks did write music down but most of it has been destroyed by time.
When a musician create a new song and performs it for a public audience, it belongs to the public.
Its interesting how some people believe in intellectual property just fine when they are taking it from someone. Just not when someone asserts it for themselves.
You comment betrays a fundamental ignorance of both reality and law. When a musician performs a song for a public audience, he has voluntarily given away the intellectual property (a trade secret). In most of the world, the artist receives a limited monopoly on the right to make copies of the song in return. However, he does not own the song once it has been publicly performed. How could he? Can he go into the minds of all those present and erase the song? Can he prevent them from humming the tune, or singing it to themselves or to their friends? Can he take back the feelings the music engenders? You can't own information, you can only control it and the more people who know it, the more difficult it is to control.
Thus, you can only own a song by keeping it secret, once it has been publicly performed, it belongs to the public. This is both law and reality. There is no taking here, you can't take a song from musician any more than the musician can take a song back from the audience. Those words don't even apply to the situation.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I think the fundamental ignorance is yours. First, intellectual property is not the same thing as a trade secret. Second, being a consumer of a work of art is not the same as being the creator/owner of one. Your assertion is ridiculous on the face of it, any more than knowing what the Chrysler Building looks like gives me a property right to it. Knowledge/familiarity and ownership are two different concepts. The Chrysler Building "belongs to" New York the same way your song "belongs to" the public: it's a part of the culture. That's totally different from ownership in a property sense.
I think the fundamental ignorance is yours.
Of course you do.
First, intellectual property is not the same thing as a trade secret.
Obviously. A trade secret is one form of intellectual property, I apologise if "is-a" relationships confuse you. But a song kept secret can be a trade secret, however, once it is made public it becomes a copyrighted work. The copyrighted work is public and belongs to the public. In exchange for losing ownership of the work, the creator is granted a limited monopoly on the right to make copies and performances of the work.
Second, being a consumer of a work of art is not the same as being the creator/owner of one.
You statement is incoherent because you confuse two different issues. Creator is not the same as owner and that's why you don't understand anything about intellectual property.
Your assertion is ridiculous on the face of it, any more than knowing what the Chrysler Building looks like gives me a property right to it.
You are confused. The Chrysler Building is an object which can be owned, it is not intellectual property. If you can't tell the difference between an object and an idea, you should be committed to an asylum for your own safety and the safety of those around you.
The Chrysler Building "belongs to" New York the same way your song "belongs to" the public: it's a part of the culture.
False. The Chrysler Building is a part of New York, it is owned by the Cooper Union and leased to it's current managers. The idea of the Chrysler building, on the other hand, may be part of the culture. The song on the other hand, is definitely public property. If it weren't public property, you wouldn't need a government law to grant an exclusive right to copy the song back to the author.
That's totally different from ownership in a property sense.
There is no property sense to owning a song. How could you own it? Do you have less song if someone else sings it? Where is the song? Can you pull the song out of your pocket and show it to me? You could show me the media which contains a particular recording of a particular performance of the song, but you can't show me the song itself. The song is an idea, an arrangement of notes and words (even that is debatable since covers often re-arrange the notes and/or words). No particular performance of the song is the song. No particular recording of a particular performance of the song is the song. It can not be owned in any sense of the word that makes actual sense.
Once the song has been performed, it is only a matter of time until it enters the public domain, but rest assured once it has been performed, if the song owned by anyone, it is owned by everyone. The creator only owns the copyright to the song. The copyright is not the same thing as the song any more than an iPod is the songs it contains.
You don't seem to understand that you can't own ideas or music or history or culture.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
You don't seem to understand that you can't own ideas or music or history or culture.
Which contradicts your original assertion, that songs and ideas are owned by everyone once they are published or performed. So it is you that is spouting nonsense when you then say that ideas cannot be owned. If something can belong to a group of people, it can just as easily belong to smaller group or an individual.
I'm going to stop arguing, because you are clearly one of those people who simply do not want to have to pay for something that you could get for free, so you have developed this elaborate pseudo-legal and pseudo-historical argument for why you believe artists should not be allowed to profit from their work. Simple as that.
You've done a fantastic job of creating and knocking down strawmen and purposefully misunderstanding every word I wrote
That's ironic, considering:
You don't seem to understand that you can't own ideas or music or history or culture.
Which contradicts your original assertion, that songs and ideas are owned by everyone once they are published or performed. So it is you that is spouting nonsense when you then say that ideas cannot be owned. If something can belong to a group of people, it can just as easily belong to smaller group or an individual.
That assertion is stupid on the face of it. "You" obviously isn't the same as "everyone". There are many things which belong to everyone (and therefore no one) and can not "just as easily belong to smaller group or an individual". Beyond the already excellent examples of ideas, music, history and culture, there's the sun, the oceans, the air, space, the stars, the universe, the fundamental laws of physics, mathematics, facts. I could go on, but if you can't understand that everything can't be owned by an individual, then you're just hopelessly stupid.
I'm going to stop arguing, because you are clearly one of those people who simply do not want to have to pay for something that you could get for free, so you have developed this elaborate pseudo-legal and pseudo-historical argument for why you believe artists should not be allowed to profit from their work. Simple as that.
Obviously, I must want things for free because I dare to disagree with you.
Fanatically anti-fanatical