You are deluding yourself. Your choices are hardly choices. People go to law school for years and at great expense to learn "the rules," and even then they have to specialize in a certain area of law in order to know it well enough to succeed in court. That is not even an option for most people. You can pretend that everybody has the same resources and the same chances to learn as everybody else, but you'd be very, very wrong. Perhaps if everyone in this country was able to make a certain minimal amount of money, and this amount afforded them the ability to have good legal representation whenever they needed it, we'd have a more level playing field. We both know that that isn't how our economy works.
If people begin to make more money, then everything starts to cost more money. Somebody has to work at McDonald's. Somebody has to work in the factories. These people are not going to be paid well, even though they are needed by these companies. When people start finding better jobs, these companies have to pay more to hire workers. That is the sort of thing that causes Mr. Greenspan to slam the brakes on the economy in order to avert inflation. This causes many people to lose jobs, thus freeing up more labor, which lowers wages again. Someone has to end up on the bottom. Millions of people, in fact. And barring some stroke of genius or luck, that is where they will remain, because the country needs someone to be on the bottom, and the economy enforces this to a great degree.
What does one have to do in order to be heard by these people? I've written many letters to my congresscritters. I rarely get any kind of response, except the occaisional cookie-cutter, "thank you for your comment" reply. What's it take to get their ear if you don't happen to be the CEO of a large corporation?
Your standard, on the other hand, degenerates into a pissing match between an inventor and an Oracle of Obviousness, whose sole duty is to say, "I could have done that," without needing any evidence to back him up.
Couldn't be any worse than the current system where they just patent any old crap that someone sends in. Personally, I'd rather see fewer patents than the flood of patents we have now. I think the flood is doing a lot more harm.
"If you want any justice in this country, you'd better be able to afford it."
While Mr. Dickenson doesn't dictate the cost of a lawyer, he does have a lot of control over how the patent system works. If it currently requires you to hire a lawyer in order to have a reasonable chance at protecting your invention, perhaps it needs to be changed.
You could be right. At least partially. But remember that not all performers actually perform live. Many make their music electronically and each song takes quite a long time to assemble. This sort of performance cannot be performed live. I'm sure people can think of other similar cases. We need to be fair to all types of artists. I would hope that in the absence of traditional copyright laws, people would continue to support the artists they like so that those artists have the means to continue to do what they love and keep providing us with what we want. I think this is a lot more likely to happen in the internet age when most or all of the middlemen are cut out. Music and other art ends up costing a lot less, therefore we can all buy more of it and support more artists work.
It seems like a win-win situation. I can only hope it works out that way. It's hard to be optimistic about it though. People often think only short-term and take the cheap way out. This is often enforced by our corporate culture where quarterly profits are everything, damn the environment, workers rights, etc.
The Constitution does not mention privacy as a right either, yet many of us consider it a fundamental right.
For your reading enjoyment, I give you the ninth amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The right to privacy is a generally accepted principle in this country. Just because it isn't explicitly spelled out in the Constitution doesn't mean it's any less valid.
Intellectual Property makes sense as a right. I consider I have the right to not-share what I think, know or invent with you, the government, or society in general. I also consider I have the right to benefit or not benefit from it, no matter how great or how little effort was necessary to create it.
While I personally feel that some degree of control over one's ideas for a very limited period of time can be beneficial, it is hardly a natural sort of right in the same vein as the right to privacy. If you really want to control your ideas, you simply don't disseminate them. Nobody is going to perform a mind-meld with you to take your thoughts or ideas. Therefore you control them. Now, once you've told your idea to others, it becomes theirs as well. You cannot remove it from their brain and you should not be able to prohibit them from acting on it, writing it down, copying it, or repeating or disseminating it to others. That is exactly what "intellectual property" laws attempt to do.
When the Constitution was written, it was recognized that granting limited rights to people who publish their ideas would encourage them to do so, thereby adding their thoughts and knowledge to the public domain. Now their works would not become part of the domain immediately. They would have a period of time where they were legally allowed to prevent others from copying or distributing their works so that they could profit from their sale and/or use. This was accomplished through patent and copyright law. Once the period of exclusive control was up, the works became public domain, free for all to use and build upon. This seems to be a pretty decent idea and would probably work pretty well. Unfortunately people and corporations got greedy and began lobbying our government to extend the period of time they could control these works. In most cases it wasn't even the creators themselves that wanted the extensions, it was the heirs of the creator or a corporation that had purchased the work or idea.
I fail to see how this helps to further the purpose of copyright in the first place. Nothing is becoming public domain anymore. They just keep extending the period of control. They have broken the system. It no longer works. It no longer benefits the people in general. It just benefits the owners of the works out there. They are now playing the creators off against the consumers while they play like they're completely innocent in all this and are just trying to defend the rights of the poor creators to make a buck off of their hard work. What a bunch of crap. They are lobbying for an indefinite period of control. They've twisted the system so much that it no longer accomplishes its goal. They've created a system that does not serve the public interest any longer and then they are shocked when the public no longer wants to play by their rules.
I say to hell with them and their bad-faith lobbying against our interests. If they really wanted to help the artists and serve consumers better, they'd get the hell out of the way and roll back the copyright terms to what they originally were, or even less considering how fast things become obsolete now. Until the system is fixed and once again balances the ability of creators to profit from their ideas and the interests of the public that this information be freely available for others to use and build upon, I do not expect to see copyright infringement keep increasing. I sure won't shed any tears for those corporations, or even many of the creators who do not seem to mind giving the public the shaft.
They've set out to abuse the system, now they're starting to see a backlash. We need to keep fighting them, but not just by continuing to distribute MP3s and other such works as a sign of civil disobedience, but by doing some of our own lobbying and protesting. We need to get people who have the ears of our congresscritters to explain to them that we're tired of Congress continuing to aid these corporations in their attempts to screw the public. I'm just afraid that corporate money speaks a lot louder than anything we can say.
Specifically, combating the dangerous and misguided notion that property is not property if it's on the Web, and the piracy that that notion perpetuates.
I don't think that most of us have any such illusions. We do have certain other issues that probably contribute to the "piracy" that he is warring against.
In addition, I want to discuss the very real difference between privacy and anonymity. In the blurred vision of speed and innovation, those two quite separate values have become indistinct, and that lack of distinction is currently having - and will continue to have - a deleterious effect on our culture, our society and the long-term growth of the Internet.
Translation: "If we can't find you, we can't prosecute you. If we can't prosecute you, we can't scare everyone into believing that we actually 'own' the 'intellectual property' out there, just as we own our cars, homes, etc."
Music is on the leading edge of this revolution, and because of that, it has become the first product to illuminate the central - and I believe the most critical - challenge for this technological revolution: The protection of "intellectual property rights."
As we'll see, he isn't talking about the "protection" of these rights. He's talking about the extension of corporate ownership and control.
For all of us, "property" rights are well understood and universally accepted. You own a home. You own a car. They're yours - they belong to you. They are your property. Well, your ideas belong to you, too. And "intellectual property" is property, period.
Here's where he really goes out on a limb. Intellectual property is not the same as physical property. Never has been. Hopefully never will be, although it seems to be getting closer every day thanks to the lobbying by corporations such as Seagram.
If intellectual property is not protected - across the board, in every case, with no exceptions and no sophistry about a changing world - what will happen? Intellectual property will suffer the fate of the buffalo.
What does he mean by "protected?" In every case? With no exceptions? What is he trying to pull here? Then there's his remark about the changing world argument being a sophistry. He says this in the same article in which he claims that the technological revolution will probably change the world much more than the industrial revolution did, and a few other similar remarks about the huge changes that will take place. Then he does nothing to explain why he believes it to be a sophistry. Sounds like he's just trying to use a big word to gloss over something he doesn't want to discuss.
For the great ferment of works and ideas, including your own, if taken at will and without restraint, have no chance of surviving any better than did the buffalo.
Actually, the ideas will survive much more easily when nobody can control who has access to them. I think what he means here is that they won't be able to make as much money off of these ideas if they can't control them. He should just say what he means.
And why is this important? Because you, like we in the entertainment business, are thoroughly dependent on patents and copyright. You need them no less than we do, to protect your processes, your conceptions, your software code, your procedures, your designs, your ideas.
Actually, many programmers are quite set against patents on software. Or at least they are against the system as it exists today. But then they're just the creators, they often create for purposes other than profit. Corporations, on the other hand, exist to make a profit, so I guess I can see why he thinks this way. Copyright is a mockery of what it was supposed to be. It no longer serves just to encourage the creation of new "content", but to enforce the ownership of ideas for as long a time as possible, and the time grows longer every time these corporations go back to Congress to lobby for lifespan to be increased.
I have moved those lawyers - or some of them - but I have done so, and will continue to do so - not to attack the Internet and its culture but for its benefit and to protect it. For its benefit.
Oh, ok then. He's doing this for our own good, so that we'll continue to have an Internet. Thanks dad, but why don't you let us decide what's for our own good. I don't need this self-serving, disingenuous crap.
First, we are focused on creating and launching a consumer-preferred and legal system for consumers to access the media they desire - beginning with music.
"Consumer-preffered?" What makes it consumer-prefferred anyway? It doesn't exist yet. I think he means the creation of an "one-true-way." Anything else will be deemed illegal.
We are providing artists with a broader canvas on which to express themselves, and we are creating a far richer experience for the consumer. For example, consumers will have access to album art, lyrics, production notes and photos of the artists, links to other sites and, eventually, music videos. We'll also offer the chance for them to chat on line with artists.
We can already get all this stuff. Where's the innovation? Where's the broader canvas for artists? What are we getting from all this?
And because of the security our product will offer, consumers' privacy will also benefit because their files and their systems won't be corrupted.
Is that it? That's our incentive? He's going to have to do a lot better than that. I've downloaded over a gig of MP3s and have never had any of my files corrupted. This is just some crap he threw in so that it looks like consumers might see some benefit from his plan.
Second, we know that going into a record store and removing a CD is wrong. It is stealing. It is thievery.
Well, if you don't pay for it when you remove it, then yes.
We will re-emphasize this truth and articulate this message in an educational effort, with our industry allies, targeted to the great majority of people who want to do the right thing - yet, may not fully comprehend that accessing copyrighted material without proper payment or permission in the digital world, is as wrong as it is in the physical world.
Seems to me that the majority would like to support the artists without having to take it in the rear from the recording industry. I'm not sure what he considers proper payment. That concerns me. If I purchase a DVD, I should be allowed to access the copyrighted material that I paid for, but the MPAA (via the DMCA) would have you believe otherwise. They want to control the methods by which you can access the material you purchased. There's definitely a lot of changes coming up, but they are NOT going to benefit the consumer, or even the artist. They will benefit the middlemen.
The Internet world is a brave new world. But make no mistake, it could only have been created and it will only survive, in the context of our civilized world, which has taken humanity centuries to construct.
I wonder what he even knows about the creation of the net. This is just more BS and fear-mongering.
Whether it is better and more robust methods of security, or tools to track down those who ignore right from wrong, technology will offer the owners of property at least as much comfort as it may currently offer to hackers and spies, pirates and pedophiles.
This really ticked me off. He's rolling hackers and "pirates" into the same category of criminal as pedophiles. This is why using terms such as "pirate" to mean "copyright infringer" was a great propaganda move for these corporations. The term "pirate" comes with all sorts of negative cannotations attached to it. It's hard for someone to stand up and defend "piracy." And "pirates" can convieniently be equated with all sorts of other criminals, even violent ones. "Hacking" isn't even a crime, but hackers get rolled in as criminals. I know a lot of people here claim that it's ok to use these terms this way and that language changes all the time, but this is not just changing language, this is manipulation of public opinion by using loaded words, and twisting the meanings of existing words.
Technology exists that can trace every Internet download and tag every file. These tools make it possible to identify those who are using the Internet to improperly and illegally acquire music and other copyrighted information. While adhering to the principle of respect for individual privacy, we fully intend to exploit technology to protect the property which rightfully belongs to its owners.
Technology also exists to prevent such things from being done, which is why their technology will have to be accompanied by legislation. There are more "DMCAs" on the horizon. Besides, corporations almost never respect individual privacy if the potential profits outweigh the risk of a consumer backlash, unless they are forced to do so. Why should we believe this guy?
Another recent victory confirming the application of copyright law to cyberspace involved the unlawful dissemination of DVD anti-copy codes.
Excuse me? What victory? A preliminary injunction that, in all likelyhood, will soon be lifted? That case is far from over.
We will fight for our rights and those of our artists, whose work, whose creations, whose property are being stolen and exploited.
Damn straight. Only corporations such as his should be allowed to exploit artists' work. He says the artists' property is being stolen, but neglects to say that in many, if not most, cases, the corporation owns the work, not the artist. I firmly believe that artists deserve to be able to profit from their work. The problem is that corporations such as Seagram have not dealt with us in good faith. They buy extensions every so often to make sure that copyright doesn't fulfill it's original purpose of expanding the amount of artistic and creative works in the public domain, but instead is twisted to become a tool of corporations to maintain indefinite control over our culture by retaining ownership of the creative works and information that defines it.
What individuals might do unthinkingly for pleasure, in my view, they do with forethought for profit, justifying with weak and untenable rationale their theft of the labor and genius of others.
Here he is talking about Napster, myMP3.com, and Gnutella. If I'm not mistaken, Gnutella doesn't profit from the service that people obtain through using the program. I think myMP3.com was also fairly ethically correct, in that they at least verified that you posess the cd that you want to access from their servers. Napster is on more shaky ground, at least now that the "common carrier" defense has apparently failed, or at least needs to be backed up and argued a lot better than it has been.
Some of the donors may regret their generosity when later they are confronted with their children's college tuition and orthodontic bills, but yes, they have given, and they have given freely.
Cheap shot. He obviously doesn't like the idea of people giving their creations away freely. Cuts into his profits. Also shows that he's not really interested in what the artists want. He's just interested in his company's profits. Kinda sheds some light on his other statements.
Those whose intellectual property is simply appropriated on the Internet or anywhere else, are forced to labor without choice or recompense, for the benefit of whoever might wish to take a piece of their hide.
I agree that the creators should be able to be compensated for their creations. I simply don't think that this guy gives a damn about those who create the works that he wants to profit from. There is a big difference between giving the artist a means to earn a living from his work, just as the rest of us want to do, and giving corporations a means to own, control, and profit indefinitely from the work of these creators.
If this is a principle of the New World, it is suspiciously like the Old World principle called slavery.
That's a pretty over-the-top statement. Copyright infringement bears no resemeblance to slavery. This guy needs to tone down the rhetoric.
The massive power of the Internet can permanently wipe out and shut down in one unthinking moment, a writer who may depend for his living on the sale of 5 or 10 thousand copies of his book. It can devastate a musician who sells a few thousand copies of a homemade CD to his fans in some small and little known community.
More fearmongering, hardly deserving of a comment, but I'll do it anyway:). As he has stated, and as I've said, most people want to support the artists. The problem is the corporations who keep trying to increase their control and length of ownership. They are the one's causing the problem. They are the one's who control the pricing. They are trying to pull off a coup against consumers that will give them complete and utter control over the content that we wish to access. Think Divx was bad? We ain't seen nothin yet. Wait until such schemes are not left to live or die in the market, but are enforced by legislation. He says they are working on a "consumer-preffered" system. We've already seen how much consumers preferred Divx. What do you want to bet that his system ends up being "legally-mandated" system instead?
And these would only be the first casualties. The rest would follow as the very basis of the New Economy was undermined.
More fearmongering. As I said, this is a ploy to scare people into supporting the granting of draconian levels of control over copyrighted works to corporations. This has the potential to turn into another "war on drugs." We've already seen how "hackers" are treated by the government. Next we'll have 15 year-olds serving 20 year sentences for downloading Britney Spears' new song. (I'll leave the jokes about that being a fitting sentence to you guys:) The point is that these things are already getting out of control and people's lives are being seriously and irreversibly harmed due to minor infractions, just as what has happened with the "war on drugs." I'm not trying to do any fear-mongering of my own here. I'm trying to point out what is already happening and that what this guy is leading up to, if past and present events are any idicator, has great potential for turning into a system of terrible injustice.
To those who would abandon or subvert those principles, I say we are right with the Constitution, in which protection for intellectual property is founded; right with the common law; right with precedent and right with what is fair and just.
He needs to check the Constitution again. They've managed to pervert the whole principle of copyright and that's what has us in this mess to begin with. I have absolutely no sympathy for his situation.
If things continue this way, the company that invents and creates the replicator would be sued to oblivion before its potential could be fully realized.
Nah, the schematics would be posted all over the net, and we'd all be running around in t-shirts with the schematics printed on them.
The record industry doesn't seem to do all that much to sell the bands except to get them played on the radio and tv. If a band gets a decent amount of radio play, and mtv play, they get popular. Now, the record companies can fund the making of albums and videos, which is why Lars is saying that they're like banks, and that they, or some similar entity, will always be necessary in some capacity. I haven't found fault with his statement yet, so I think he's right about that. Someone has to front the money for the expensive stuff, and whoever it is is going to expect a return on that investment. You can't do it through ordinary banks because that just isn't something that they will fund. Record companies play an active role in the process, and they know the business, which is why they are willing to fund these artists. I'd really like to see an alternative to this situation. MP3.com is a good start, and it would be nice if radio stations would work with companies like that, but they don't front money to the bands for videos and studio time, and if they did, they'd probably want the control, and a return on it just like the record companies.
I've been a Metallica fan for the last dozen or so years. I was really pretty ticked off when they sued Napster, because I felt they were missing the target. I wasn't one of those people who was wanting to burn all my Metallica cds and t-shirts and whatnot, but I was annoyed. After reading this interview though, I can see why Lars is upset and why they felt they needed to do something right away, even if don't think it was the right thing.
Now, I think Napster does bear some responsibility here. They operate and profit from the service they provide. They told Metallica what they would have to do (i.e. give them a list of names) in order for Napster to comply with their wishes. I think Lars is right that Napster didn't really think they'd do it, and now that they did, it's being used as a PR club against Metallica. I think it's pretty obvious that the users who were banned were committing copyright infringement, simply because they were allowing anyone to copy their mp3s without any verification of whether that person owns the right to that music.
I think the heart of the matter is that Metallica does have the right to enforce its copyrights, which is what they seem to be doing here. Unfortunately, the way Napster is set up, anyone who allows others to download copyrighted music (that they don't hold the copyright to) from their drives is potentially committing copyright infringement. Now not everyone is actually infringing, because I'm sure that in many of the cases, both the host user and the client user own a copy of the music. Unfortunately, there is no way to distinguish unless you can identify the people and verify that they own the right to a copy of the music. Since that is probably not feasible, we have a problem.
How do artists protect their copyrights without bankrupting themselves with consultant and lawyer fees, while at the same time not interfering with legitimate copying? This is something that needs a solution before the government and the RIAA get together and come up with their own solution, which I can guarantee we won't like.
Is this a limitation of consumer level equipment (much like the fact that consumer level audio cd-recorders require that special audio cd-r media)? Or is it that you just can't buy (without paying some huge fee to the DVD group that controls the keys) a player that can record the key sectors of the dvd disc?
Umm.. well, both. Consumer equipment is not designed to allow it to write to the key sector. If you want a recorder that does, you have to meet certain qualifications, sign contracts, and pay a crapload of money for it.
So is the encryption on the disc truly there for copy protection, or are there commercial outfits somewhere duplicating DVD's just as easily as CD's in mass quantity.
Oh, they're definitely being copied in mass quantities, mostly overseas. This scheme won't even put a dent in those operations.
You're right that it's really content protection, which should not be allowed, or at least we shouldn't be prevented from bypassing it, which is why the DMCA is so onerous.
And the key to all this is I have never conclusively been shown that you need anything special to duplicate a DVD byte by byte.
Consumer DVD-RW drives cannot write to the "key sector" of the DVD disc, and the key sectors of blank dvds are pre-burned with zeros. Without the key that would normally exist there, the DVD player cannot decode the movie, nor can it read an already decoded movie burned onto a dvd disc.
Now in respect to you already paying a tax on that media. That is not true. Computer CD-R media is quite a bit cheaper than Audio CD-R media. Why? Because your not paying a tax on the Computer CD-R media. Nor did I pay a tax on my hard drive to store movies on. So the MPAA/RIAA isn't getting their percentage of it, and their pissed off.
You're right about this. I remembered after I had posted. Either way, it should be illegal for them to tax the discs in the first place. Seems like a form of prior restraint.
Seems like we agree on everything else though. I was just pointing out that the MPAAs claims that people will be pirating DVDs left and right is just false. That's why there's no reason for the injunction against 2600.
Ok, since you acknowledge that currently, copies are more expensive than originals, I'll let that go for now, although I think it is a very good reason for lifting the injunction against 2600 since any damage that could currently be done will be extremely insignificant.
I was pointing out that currently the only remotely viable method of copying dvds produces an inferior product, since you have to re-encode them with divx or some other codec in order to end up with something of a reasonable size. But you are correct, it will be easier to copy them when we have 2TB hard drives and 100GB removeable disks, for prices that are comparable to todays hard drives and zip disks. And yes, we should focus on our rights to access content that we have purchased in any manner we like, just as we have done with books, videotapes, cassettes, cds, and any other media you care to name. Only now are they trying to take those rights away, even though, as you point out, the DMCA explicitly states that it does not remove those rights.
In short, you're right. I was taking the short-term view of the matter in my post. Probably because I just finished reading the amicus brief and was focused on the 2600 injunction which was put in place ostensibly to stop rampant "piracy".
Just finished reading the letters you linked to. Interesting stuff. I had never heard of Chunkey Monkey before, except the ice cream flavor. I'd like to know what the standard is for a trademark being deemed "famous." That seems to be one of the strongest points that Chunkey Monkey has made, and could be the make-or-break point of the case if this ever goes to trial (which doesn't appear likely since ChunkyMunky.com does not apparently want to fight this, and/or doesn't have the resources to fight it). If the Chunkey Monkey trademark actually is considered famous, then you'd have to figure out if the ChunkyMunky.com name actually constitutes infringement. That could vary depending on the precedents that exist and where the trial is held. Probably have to talk to an attorney on that one, and one that is very knowledgeable about trademark issues.
If, on the other hand, Chunkey Monkey is not considered famous (and it's hard for me to believe that it is, since it's definitely nowhere near as famous as say, Microsoft, Chrysler, McDonald's, etc.), then I think you make a good and valid argument that since the two sites serve completely different purposes and have completely different audiences, there is no infringement.
I'll have to check back later and see if you ever get a reply to your last letter.
And what does one do with these ripped DVDs? You end up with an inferior product, just like a cassette tape copied from a CD. You still have to purchase blank media to store the copies you make, and the industry has already imposed a tax on that media, ostensibly to compensate them for piracy losses, so what's the problem? This is not the huge problem that they make it out to be. It's just the VCR or cassette tape issue all over again. When will they learn?
What if you don't explicitly state that the "DeCSS" link is linked to the DVD decoding code? What if you simply put up a "DeCSS Code" link, that links to code that removes cascading style sheets code or something? Would the clickthrough then be enforceable?
Is it actually fraud if you're not selling anything? Hell, if Microsoft can disclaim everything with their licenses, including fitness for use for any purpose at all, you should be able to use some similar disclaimer.
For the record, I have no idea who "Ed Muth" is. Seriously.:|
Ed Muth is a Microsoft spokesperson, known for his "black-is-really-white" spin during the DOJ vs. MS trial.
Funny, I didn't think you were giving your money to Microsoft. Microsoft didn't make a single thin dime from YOU.
You can't possibly believe that. I'm starting to get depressed now.
They got it from the OEM, and the OEM is the one that made the decision to include Microsoft products instead of something else. It was an economic decision for the OEM.
The OEM was coerced into including Microsoft hardware, they didn't just get to make that decision all by themselves. If they don't choose MS hardware, they end up paying a lot more for Windows, which means they can't compete effectively with other OEMs. So, tell me, what choice did they have?
You didn't lose ANYTHING, you just got a cheaper computer. Microsoft would have made the same amount of money regardless of whether you bought that machine or not.
Does my freedom to choose the products I want count as a loss? Since the OEM cannot offer me choices for fear of offending Microsoft, I am stuck with the MS hardware, and I then must go out and buy replacement hardware on top of what I already paid for the MS hardware that I didn't want.
Because they aren't fully recouping the cost of the research through the sales of the product being developed.
Yep. How does that give them the right to squash their competitors by pricing their hardware at a loss and recouping the costs through the inflated price of their monopoly products?
It might be illegal.
Yes, it most certainly is.
But I don't think it's wrong.
It's definitely wrong too. Why should Microsoft's domination of the OS market give them the right to kill competition in other markets? Just because Microsoft makes a ton of money selling Windows and Office doesn't mean they should be allowed to use those products to subsidise their hardware so that they can sell it at a loss in order to beat out the competition. The products should have to live or die on their own merit, not with the aid of money made from Microsoft's monopoly products. If this kind of thing is allowed to happen, there soon won't be any small companies competing out there. They couldn't afford to compete with a behemoth like Microsoft unless Microsoft is forced to compete fairly. It is necessary in order to keep competition alive, and competition is the foundation of our market system.
Corel does not have monopoly power. Leveraging is only illegal if the product that is leveraged is a monopoly product. Since Corel is nowhere near being a monopoly, there is no foul.
Additionally, Corel Linux is just one distribution, and it is basically compatible with the other distros. Hard to leverage that.
There's also the issue that most of Corel's products only run on Windows, although this is likely to change.
If Corel does eventually become a monopoly, then yes, they should face the consequences of abusing that monopoly, just as Microsoft should.
Whatever. Look, MS may have "established" themselves in the hardware arena through leveraging OEM relationships, or they may not have. As a consumer, I don't know.
Yeah, the sheeple don't know much of anything. That's why Microsoft gets away with all this crap for so long. I don't give a damn how good their hardware is. They should NOT be able to force it on the OEMs, which is exactly what they are doing, with hardware and software both. They've been doing this crap for nearly 10 years. Microsoft has way too much power over the OEMs for the market to be fair. With that kind of control, the OEMs can't ship a better product, even if some peripheral company makes one available to them, without charging the customer a hefty premium for that product, which makes it very difficult for that peripheral company to compete with Microsoft. Thus the market is tilted heavily in Microsoft's favor. That's not a healthy market.
The difference here is that Microsoft actaully does research into usability and ergonomics. Their products are the results of billions of dollars of said research.
Ahh.. ok, now I see exactly why we should let them force the competition out of the market by leveraging their monopoly to strongarm the OEMs. It's all perfectly clear now. Yeah right. What difference does it make how much money they spend on researching stuff? Why should that give them the right to illegally stifle competition?
Also, regardless of what is shipped with a new computer due to OEM relationships with ANY company, the user is empowered to change anything they want.
Yeah, you're right. We should just give our money to Microsoft for crap we don't want like good little sheeple. Then we can go out and buy the stuff we really wanted in the first place. I don't see any problem with that. Anyone else have a problem with that?
Could have been a troll, but I've seen too many people expressing the very same thoughts here. Valid questions if you don't know much about what's gone on, which many people apparently don't. Might as well take the opportunity to inform some people.
Is (2) true because of (1)? Is (2) true in spite of (1)?
These regulations didn't just spring magically into being. They are the result of our experiences trying to keep the market working. When it goes out of whack somehow, we usually try to figure out what went wrong and then make some regulation that will keep it from happening again. Kind of like fixing bugs in code.
If regulations are good, are more regulations better? Are regulations good up to a point, then bad beyond it?
There is no ideal amount of regulation. It is created as we deem necessary. When something happens to screw things up, we try to fix it. Granted, some regulations are created for political reasons, and are probably bad, but most, and I include anti-trust laws in this, are generally good and helpful in keeping the market free and open and running properly.
Did the congressmen receiving campaign contributions from microsoft's competitors happen to stumble on the perfect level of regulation?
First of all, Microsoft can easily outspend any of its competitors when it comes to political contributions. So, if you have actual numbers, it would be very helpful. It might be interesting to see who spent how much in contributions. I think it would say more about the quality of our congresscritters and our election system than that of the contributors though.
Second, whether the current trial occured because of Microsoft's competitors' complaints or not is irrelevant if they actually broke the law, and it seems abundantly clear that they did. As I've said before, selective enforcement is a bad thing, but that doesn't mean we should just let any offenders go, it means we should work to make sure that all offenders are prosecuted. If you think other companies are guilty of anti-trust offenses, then please, point them out and explain it to us.
Do you have any support beyond "obviously"?
Don't think I even used that word, although it does seem obvious to me that regulation is needed if we are to maintain an open, free market. Simply because the natural instincts of a corporation are to try to get rid of anything that hurts profits, which competition can certainly do.
Assuming that consumers would, in fact, benefit from a break up of microsoft, would this breakup still be desirable once the effect on aspiring entrepreneurs' incentives in the future is considered?
Even ignoring the fact that nobody made Microsoft break the law, and that they had abundant warning that this was coming, I still find that statement to be utterly ridiculous. Does someone need to think that they'll be able to make billions upon billions of dollars before they start a business of their own? Most people are happy to make a good living. The fact that some corporations get huge is a nice dream for some people, but it's not what makes most people start a business. Entrepreneur's everywhere will still come up with new ideas and still create new companies and new markets. A break-up of Microsoft won't change that one bit, just as previous break-ups didn't cause entrepreneurs to throw up their hands and go apply at McDonald's.
Look, we, as a country, have set up a fairly decent market system that tends to accomplish at least the majority of what we'd like it to accomplish. This system is defined by countless regulations that must be obeyed in order for the system to continue to function properly and serve the needs of the people of this country. Many of these regulations are common sense to most people, but many are the result of lessons we've learned along the way, and are not so intuitive.
Now, Microsoft is accused, and this has been upheld by Jackson's court, of breaking some of these regulations. They've probably broken many more regulations, and probably many more times than they will be convicted of, but they have been found guilty of at least some violations. Just as anyone else would have, Microsoft has had it's chance to defend itself in court. They did a pitiful job. This could be considered the fault of their attornies, but I don't believe that, and I doubt anyone else here does either. Microsoft hired very good attornies. I think that it's because it's usually a lot tougher to defend a client that is actually guilty, especially when the prosecution has a mountain of evidence that proves it and your own defense witnesses get caught contradicting themselves and each other. Implying that the case is meritless is just plain wrong. There are laws on the books. The DOJ proved to the judge that Microsoft violated those laws.
Now, you could protest on the basis of the belief that anti-trust laws are wrong. In that case, consider this. Microsoft is a corporation. Corporations exist to make money. The owners face no liability for anything their corporation does. That is a privilege granted to corps by the government, and one that the average person does not have. It would be insane to grant such immunity to prosecution without also setting down some hard, fast rules about how things will be done. Thankfully, the government did this, and will continue to do it as we continue to build experience in dealing with the market system we have created. With such laws on the books, they must be enforced. This can be difficult, as the government often actively fights the enforcement of these laws. It just depends on who is in power.
It's hard to judge the validity of your examples. Perhaps something should have been done about them. But often they didn't have the power to commit the kinds of violations that Microsoft has, or to have such a significant effect on their markets. (The exception being IBM, but then they did get dragged into court, where they stayed for over a decade). We could probably analyze each situation and try to determine whether there was really any cause to charge any of these companies with anti-trust violations. Please go right ahead if you wish to do this. I'm game.
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You are deluding yourself. Your choices are hardly choices. People go to law school for years and at great expense to learn "the rules," and even then they have to specialize in a certain area of law in order to know it well enough to succeed in court. That is not even an option for most people. You can pretend that everybody has the same resources and the same chances to learn as everybody else, but you'd be very, very wrong. Perhaps if everyone in this country was able to make a certain minimal amount of money, and this amount afforded them the ability to have good legal representation whenever they needed it, we'd have a more level playing field. We both know that that isn't how our economy works.
If people begin to make more money, then everything starts to cost more money. Somebody has to work at McDonald's. Somebody has to work in the factories. These people are not going to be paid well, even though they are needed by these companies. When people start finding better jobs, these companies have to pay more to hire workers. That is the sort of thing that causes Mr. Greenspan to slam the brakes on the economy in order to avert inflation. This causes many people to lose jobs, thus freeing up more labor, which lowers wages again. Someone has to end up on the bottom. Millions of people, in fact. And barring some stroke of genius or luck, that is where they will remain, because the country needs someone to be on the bottom, and the economy enforces this to a great degree.
What does one have to do in order to be heard by these people? I've written many letters to my congresscritters. I rarely get any kind of response, except the occaisional cookie-cutter, "thank you for your comment" reply. What's it take to get their ear if you don't happen to be the CEO of a large corporation?
Your standard, on the other hand, degenerates into a pissing match between an inventor and an Oracle of Obviousness, whose sole duty is to say, "I could have done that," without needing any evidence to back him up.
Couldn't be any worse than the current system where they just patent any old crap that someone sends in. Personally, I'd rather see fewer patents than the flood of patents we have now. I think the flood is doing a lot more harm.
Let me sum up what you just said:
"If you want any justice in this country, you'd better be able to afford it."
While Mr. Dickenson doesn't dictate the cost of a lawyer, he does have a lot of control over how the patent system works. If it currently requires you to hire a lawyer in order to have a reasonable chance at protecting your invention, perhaps it needs to be changed.
I thought it was a good post.
You could be right. At least partially. But remember that not all performers actually perform live. Many make their music electronically and each song takes quite a long time to assemble. This sort of performance cannot be performed live. I'm sure people can think of other similar cases. We need to be fair to all types of artists. I would hope that in the absence of traditional copyright laws, people would continue to support the artists they like so that those artists have the means to continue to do what they love and keep providing us with what we want. I think this is a lot more likely to happen in the internet age when most or all of the middlemen are cut out. Music and other art ends up costing a lot less, therefore we can all buy more of it and support more artists work.
It seems like a win-win situation. I can only hope it works out that way. It's hard to be optimistic about it though. People often think only short-term and take the cheap way out. This is often enforced by our corporate culture where quarterly profits are everything, damn the environment, workers rights, etc.
The Constitution does not mention privacy as a right either, yet many of us consider it a fundamental right.
For your reading enjoyment, I give you the ninth amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The right to privacy is a generally accepted principle in this country. Just because it isn't explicitly spelled out in the Constitution doesn't mean it's any less valid.
Intellectual Property makes sense as a right. I consider I have the right to not-share what I think, know or invent with you, the government, or society in general. I also consider I have the right to benefit or not benefit from it, no matter how great or how little effort was necessary to create it.
While I personally feel that some degree of control over one's ideas for a very limited period of time can be beneficial, it is hardly a natural sort of right in the same vein as the right to privacy. If you really want to control your ideas, you simply don't disseminate them. Nobody is going to perform a mind-meld with you to take your thoughts or ideas. Therefore you control them. Now, once you've told your idea to others, it becomes theirs as well. You cannot remove it from their brain and you should not be able to prohibit them from acting on it, writing it down, copying it, or repeating or disseminating it to others. That is exactly what "intellectual property" laws attempt to do.
When the Constitution was written, it was recognized that granting limited rights to people who publish their ideas would encourage them to do so, thereby adding their thoughts and knowledge to the public domain. Now their works would not become part of the domain immediately. They would have a period of time where they were legally allowed to prevent others from copying or distributing their works so that they could profit from their sale and/or use. This was accomplished through patent and copyright law. Once the period of exclusive control was up, the works became public domain, free for all to use and build upon. This seems to be a pretty decent idea and would probably work pretty well. Unfortunately people and corporations got greedy and began lobbying our government to extend the period of time they could control these works. In most cases it wasn't even the creators themselves that wanted the extensions, it was the heirs of the creator or a corporation that had purchased the work or idea.
I fail to see how this helps to further the purpose of copyright in the first place. Nothing is becoming public domain anymore. They just keep extending the period of control. They have broken the system. It no longer works. It no longer benefits the people in general. It just benefits the owners of the works out there. They are now playing the creators off against the consumers while they play like they're completely innocent in all this and are just trying to defend the rights of the poor creators to make a buck off of their hard work. What a bunch of crap. They are lobbying for an indefinite period of control. They've twisted the system so much that it no longer accomplishes its goal. They've created a system that does not serve the public interest any longer and then they are shocked when the public no longer wants to play by their rules.
I say to hell with them and their bad-faith lobbying against our interests. If they really wanted to help the artists and serve consumers better, they'd get the hell out of the way and roll back the copyright terms to what they originally were, or even less considering how fast things become obsolete now. Until the system is fixed and once again balances the ability of creators to profit from their ideas and the interests of the public that this information be freely available for others to use and build upon, I do not expect to see copyright infringement keep increasing. I sure won't shed any tears for those corporations, or even many of the creators who do not seem to mind giving the public the shaft.
They've set out to abuse the system, now they're starting to see a backlash. We need to keep fighting them, but not just by continuing to distribute MP3s and other such works as a sign of civil disobedience, but by doing some of our own lobbying and protesting. We need to get people who have the ears of our congresscritters to explain to them that we're tired of Congress continuing to aid these corporations in their attempts to screw the public. I'm just afraid that corporate money speaks a lot louder than anything we can say.
It doesn't say those rights are transferable. And the "limited time" has now become "indefinitely."
Specifically, combating the dangerous and misguided notion that property is not property if it's on the Web, and the piracy that that notion perpetuates.
I don't think that most of us have any such illusions. We do have certain other issues that probably contribute to the "piracy" that he is warring against.
In addition, I want to discuss the very real difference between privacy and anonymity. In the blurred vision of speed and innovation, those two quite separate values have become indistinct, and that lack of distinction is currently having - and will continue to have - a deleterious effect on our culture, our society and the long-term growth of the Internet.
Translation: "If we can't find you, we can't prosecute you. If we can't prosecute you, we can't scare everyone into believing that we actually 'own' the 'intellectual property' out there, just as we own our cars, homes, etc."
Music is on the leading edge of this revolution, and because of that, it has become the first product to illuminate the central - and I believe the most critical - challenge for this technological revolution: The protection of "intellectual property rights."
As we'll see, he isn't talking about the "protection" of these rights. He's talking about the extension of corporate ownership and control.
For all of us, "property" rights are well understood and universally accepted. You own a home. You own a car. They're yours - they belong to you. They are your property. Well, your ideas belong to you, too. And "intellectual property" is property, period.
Here's where he really goes out on a limb. Intellectual property is not the same as physical property. Never has been. Hopefully never will be, although it seems to be getting closer every day thanks to the lobbying by corporations such as Seagram.
If intellectual property is not protected - across the board, in every case, with no exceptions and no sophistry about a changing world - what will happen? Intellectual property will suffer the fate of the buffalo.
What does he mean by "protected?" In every case? With no exceptions? What is he trying to pull here? Then there's his remark about the changing world argument being a sophistry. He says this in the same article in which he claims that the technological revolution will probably change the world much more than the industrial revolution did, and a few other similar remarks about the huge changes that will take place. Then he does nothing to explain why he believes it to be a sophistry. Sounds like he's just trying to use a big word to gloss over something he doesn't want to discuss.
For the great ferment of works and ideas, including your own, if taken at will and without restraint, have no chance of surviving any better than did the buffalo.
Actually, the ideas will survive much more easily when nobody can control who has access to them. I think what he means here is that they won't be able to make as much money off of these ideas if they can't control them. He should just say what he means.
And why is this important? Because you, like we in the entertainment business, are thoroughly dependent on patents and copyright. You need them no less than we do, to protect your processes, your conceptions, your software code, your procedures, your designs, your ideas.
Actually, many programmers are quite set against patents on software. Or at least they are against the system as it exists today. But then they're just the creators, they often create for purposes other than profit. Corporations, on the other hand, exist to make a profit, so I guess I can see why he thinks this way. Copyright is a mockery of what it was supposed to be. It no longer serves just to encourage the creation of new "content", but to enforce the ownership of ideas for as long a time as possible, and the time grows longer every time these corporations go back to Congress to lobby for lifespan to be increased.
I have moved those lawyers - or some of them - but I have done so, and will continue to do so - not to attack the Internet and its culture but for its benefit and to protect it. For its benefit.
Oh, ok then. He's doing this for our own good , so that we'll continue to have an Internet. Thanks dad, but why don't you let us decide what's for our own good. I don't need this self-serving, disingenuous crap.
First, we are focused on creating and launching a consumer-preferred and legal system for consumers to access the media they desire - beginning with music.
"Consumer-preffered?" What makes it consumer-prefferred anyway? It doesn't exist yet. I think he means the creation of an "one-true-way." Anything else will be deemed illegal.
We are providing artists with a broader canvas on which to express themselves, and we are creating a far richer experience for the consumer. For example, consumers will have access to album art, lyrics, production notes and photos of the artists, links to other sites and, eventually, music videos. We'll also offer the chance for them to chat on line with artists.
We can already get all this stuff. Where's the innovation? Where's the broader canvas for artists? What are we getting from all this?
And because of the security our product will offer, consumers' privacy will also benefit because their files and their systems won't be corrupted.
Is that it? That's our incentive? He's going to have to do a lot better than that. I've downloaded over a gig of MP3s and have never had any of my files corrupted. This is just some crap he threw in so that it looks like consumers might see some benefit from his plan.
Second, we know that going into a record store and removing a CD is wrong. It is stealing. It is thievery.
Well, if you don't pay for it when you remove it, then yes.
We will re-emphasize this truth and articulate this message in an educational effort, with our industry allies, targeted to the great majority of people who want to do the right thing - yet, may not fully comprehend that accessing copyrighted material without proper payment or permission in the digital world, is as wrong as it is in the physical world.
Seems to me that the majority would like to support the artists without having to take it in the rear from the recording industry. I'm not sure what he considers proper payment. That concerns me. If I purchase a DVD, I should be allowed to access the copyrighted material that I paid for, but the MPAA (via the DMCA) would have you believe otherwise. They want to control the methods by which you can access the material you purchased. There's definitely a lot of changes coming up, but they are NOT going to benefit the consumer, or even the artist. They will benefit the middlemen.
The Internet world is a brave new world. But make no mistake, it could only have been created and it will only survive, in the context of our civilized world, which has taken humanity centuries to construct.
I wonder what he even knows about the creation of the net. This is just more BS and fear-mongering.
Whether it is better and more robust methods of security, or tools to track down those who ignore right from wrong, technology will offer the owners of property at least as much comfort as it may currently offer to hackers and spies, pirates and pedophiles.
This really ticked me off. He's rolling hackers and "pirates" into the same category of criminal as pedophiles. This is why using terms such as "pirate" to mean "copyright infringer" was a great propaganda move for these corporations. The term "pirate" comes with all sorts of negative cannotations attached to it. It's hard for someone to stand up and defend "piracy." And "pirates" can convieniently be equated with all sorts of other criminals, even violent ones. "Hacking" isn't even a crime, but hackers get rolled in as criminals. I know a lot of people here claim that it's ok to use these terms this way and that language changes all the time, but this is not just changing language, this is manipulation of public opinion by using loaded words, and twisting the meanings of existing words.
Technology exists that can trace every Internet download and tag every file. These tools make it possible to identify those who are using the Internet to improperly and illegally acquire music and other copyrighted information. While adhering to the principle of respect for individual privacy, we fully intend to exploit technology to protect the property which rightfully belongs to its owners.
Technology also exists to prevent such things from being done, which is why their technology will have to be accompanied by legislation. There are more "DMCAs" on the horizon. Besides, corporations almost never respect individual privacy if the potential profits outweigh the risk of a consumer backlash, unless they are forced to do so. Why should we believe this guy?
Another recent victory confirming the application of copyright law to cyberspace involved the unlawful dissemination of DVD anti-copy codes.
Excuse me? What victory? A preliminary injunction that, in all likelyhood, will soon be lifted? That case is far from over.
We will fight for our rights and those of our artists, whose work, whose creations, whose property are being stolen and exploited.
Damn straight. Only corporations such as his should be allowed to exploit artists' work. He says the artists' property is being stolen, but neglects to say that in many, if not most, cases, the corporation owns the work, not the artist. I firmly believe that artists deserve to be able to profit from their work. The problem is that corporations such as Seagram have not dealt with us in good faith. They buy extensions every so often to make sure that copyright doesn't fulfill it's original purpose of expanding the amount of artistic and creative works in the public domain, but instead is twisted to become a tool of corporations to maintain indefinite control over our culture by retaining ownership of the creative works and information that defines it.
What individuals might do unthinkingly for pleasure, in my view, they do with forethought for profit, justifying with weak and untenable rationale their theft of the labor and genius of others.
Here he is talking about Napster, myMP3.com, and Gnutella. If I'm not mistaken, Gnutella doesn't profit from the service that people obtain through using the program. I think myMP3.com was also fairly ethically correct, in that they at least verified that you posess the cd that you want to access from their servers. Napster is on more shaky ground, at least now that the "common carrier" defense has apparently failed, or at least needs to be backed up and argued a lot better than it has been.
Some of the donors may regret their generosity when later they are confronted with their children's college tuition and orthodontic bills, but yes, they have given, and they have given freely.
Cheap shot. He obviously doesn't like the idea of people giving their creations away freely. Cuts into his profits. Also shows that he's not really interested in what the artists want. He's just interested in his company's profits. Kinda sheds some light on his other statements.
Those whose intellectual property is simply appropriated on the Internet or anywhere else, are forced to labor without choice or recompense, for the benefit of whoever might wish to take a piece of their hide.
I agree that the creators should be able to be compensated for their creations. I simply don't think that this guy gives a damn about those who create the works that he wants to profit from. There is a big difference between giving the artist a means to earn a living from his work, just as the rest of us want to do, and giving corporations a means to own, control, and profit indefinitely from the work of these creators.
If this is a principle of the New World, it is suspiciously like the Old World principle called slavery.
That's a pretty over-the-top statement. Copyright infringement bears no resemeblance to slavery. This guy needs to tone down the rhetoric.
The massive power of the Internet can permanently wipe out and shut down in one unthinking moment, a writer who may depend for his living on the sale of 5 or 10 thousand copies of his book. It can devastate a musician who sells a few thousand copies of a homemade CD to his fans in some small and little known community.
More fearmongering, hardly deserving of a comment, but I'll do it anyway :). As he has stated, and as I've said, most people want to support the artists. The problem is the corporations who keep trying to increase their control and length of ownership. They are the one's causing the problem. They are the one's who control the pricing. They are trying to pull off a coup against consumers that will give them complete and utter control over the content that we wish to access. Think Divx was bad? We ain't seen nothin yet. Wait until such schemes are not left to live or die in the market, but are enforced by legislation. He says they are working on a "consumer-preffered" system. We've already seen how much consumers preferred Divx. What do you want to bet that his system ends up being "legally-mandated" system instead?
And these would only be the first casualties. The rest would follow as the very basis of the New Economy was undermined.
More fearmongering. As I said, this is a ploy to scare people into supporting the granting of draconian levels of control over copyrighted works to corporations. This has the potential to turn into another "war on drugs." We've already seen how "hackers" are treated by the government. Next we'll have 15 year-olds serving 20 year sentences for downloading Britney Spears' new song. (I'll leave the jokes about that being a fitting sentence to you guys :) The point is that these things are already getting out of control and people's lives are being seriously and irreversibly harmed due to minor infractions, just as what has happened with the "war on drugs." I'm not trying to do any fear-mongering of my own here. I'm trying to point out what is already happening and that what this guy is leading up to, if past and present events are any idicator, has great potential for turning into a system of terrible injustice.
To those who would abandon or subvert those principles, I say we are right with the Constitution, in which protection for intellectual property is founded; right with the common law; right with precedent and right with what is fair and just.
He needs to check the Constitution again. They've managed to pervert the whole principle of copyright and that's what has us in this mess to begin with. I have absolutely no sympathy for his situation.
If things continue this way, the company that invents and creates the replicator would be sued to oblivion before its potential could be fully realized.
Nah, the schematics would be posted all over the net, and we'd all be running around in t-shirts with the schematics printed on them.
Credit card numbers may not even be necessary. Most software companies don't require them and they still manage to make a nice profit.
The record industry doesn't seem to do all that much to sell the bands except to get them played on the radio and tv. If a band gets a decent amount of radio play, and mtv play, they get popular. Now, the record companies can fund the making of albums and videos, which is why Lars is saying that they're like banks, and that they, or some similar entity, will always be necessary in some capacity. I haven't found fault with his statement yet, so I think he's right about that. Someone has to front the money for the expensive stuff, and whoever it is is going to expect a return on that investment. You can't do it through ordinary banks because that just isn't something that they will fund. Record companies play an active role in the process, and they know the business, which is why they are willing to fund these artists. I'd really like to see an alternative to this situation. MP3.com is a good start, and it would be nice if radio stations would work with companies like that, but they don't front money to the bands for videos and studio time, and if they did, they'd probably want the control, and a return on it just like the record companies.
I've been a Metallica fan for the last dozen or so years. I was really pretty ticked off when they sued Napster, because I felt they were missing the target. I wasn't one of those people who was wanting to burn all my Metallica cds and t-shirts and whatnot, but I was annoyed. After reading this interview though, I can see why Lars is upset and why they felt they needed to do something right away, even if don't think it was the right thing.
Now, I think Napster does bear some responsibility here. They operate and profit from the service they provide. They told Metallica what they would have to do (i.e. give them a list of names) in order for Napster to comply with their wishes. I think Lars is right that Napster didn't really think they'd do it, and now that they did, it's being used as a PR club against Metallica. I think it's pretty obvious that the users who were banned were committing copyright infringement, simply because they were allowing anyone to copy their mp3s without any verification of whether that person owns the right to that music.
I think the heart of the matter is that Metallica does have the right to enforce its copyrights, which is what they seem to be doing here. Unfortunately, the way Napster is set up, anyone who allows others to download copyrighted music (that they don't hold the copyright to) from their drives is potentially committing copyright infringement. Now not everyone is actually infringing, because I'm sure that in many of the cases, both the host user and the client user own a copy of the music. Unfortunately, there is no way to distinguish unless you can identify the people and verify that they own the right to a copy of the music. Since that is probably not feasible, we have a problem.
How do artists protect their copyrights without bankrupting themselves with consultant and lawyer fees, while at the same time not interfering with legitimate copying? This is something that needs a solution before the government and the RIAA get together and come up with their own solution, which I can guarantee we won't like.
Is this a limitation of consumer level equipment (much like the fact that consumer level audio cd-recorders require that special audio cd-r media)? Or is it that you just can't buy (without paying some huge fee to the DVD group that controls the keys) a player that can record the key sectors of the dvd disc?
Umm.. well, both. Consumer equipment is not designed to allow it to write to the key sector. If you want a recorder that does, you have to meet certain qualifications, sign contracts, and pay a crapload of money for it.
So is the encryption on the disc truly there for copy protection, or are there commercial outfits somewhere duplicating DVD's just as easily as CD's in mass quantity.
Oh, they're definitely being copied in mass quantities, mostly overseas. This scheme won't even put a dent in those operations.
You're right that it's really content protection, which should not be allowed, or at least we shouldn't be prevented from bypassing it, which is why the DMCA is so onerous.
And the key to all this is I have never conclusively been shown that you need anything special to duplicate a DVD byte by byte.
Consumer DVD-RW drives cannot write to the "key sector" of the DVD disc, and the key sectors of blank dvds are pre-burned with zeros. Without the key that would normally exist there, the DVD player cannot decode the movie, nor can it read an already decoded movie burned onto a dvd disc.
Now in respect to you already paying a tax on that media. That is not true. Computer CD-R media is quite a bit cheaper than Audio CD-R media. Why? Because your not paying a tax on the Computer CD-R media. Nor did I pay a tax on my hard drive to store movies on. So the MPAA/RIAA isn't getting their percentage of it, and their pissed off.
You're right about this. I remembered after I had posted. Either way, it should be illegal for them to tax the discs in the first place. Seems like a form of prior restraint.
Seems like we agree on everything else though. I was just pointing out that the MPAAs claims that people will be pirating DVDs left and right is just false. That's why there's no reason for the injunction against 2600.
Ok, since you acknowledge that currently, copies are more expensive than originals, I'll let that go for now, although I think it is a very good reason for lifting the injunction against 2600 since any damage that could currently be done will be extremely insignificant.
I was pointing out that currently the only remotely viable method of copying dvds produces an inferior product, since you have to re-encode them with divx or some other codec in order to end up with something of a reasonable size. But you are correct, it will be easier to copy them when we have 2TB hard drives and 100GB removeable disks, for prices that are comparable to todays hard drives and zip disks. And yes, we should focus on our rights to access content that we have purchased in any manner we like, just as we have done with books, videotapes, cassettes, cds, and any other media you care to name. Only now are they trying to take those rights away, even though, as you point out, the DMCA explicitly states that it does not remove those rights.
In short, you're right. I was taking the short-term view of the matter in my post. Probably because I just finished reading the amicus brief and was focused on the 2600 injunction which was put in place ostensibly to stop rampant "piracy".
Just finished reading the letters you linked to. Interesting stuff. I had never heard of Chunkey Monkey before, except the ice cream flavor. I'd like to know what the standard is for a trademark being deemed "famous." That seems to be one of the strongest points that Chunkey Monkey has made, and could be the make-or-break point of the case if this ever goes to trial (which doesn't appear likely since ChunkyMunky.com does not apparently want to fight this, and/or doesn't have the resources to fight it). If the Chunkey Monkey trademark actually is considered famous, then you'd have to figure out if the ChunkyMunky.com name actually constitutes infringement. That could vary depending on the precedents that exist and where the trial is held. Probably have to talk to an attorney on that one, and one that is very knowledgeable about trademark issues.
If, on the other hand, Chunkey Monkey is not considered famous (and it's hard for me to believe that it is, since it's definitely nowhere near as famous as say, Microsoft, Chrysler, McDonald's, etc.), then I think you make a good and valid argument that since the two sites serve completely different purposes and have completely different audiences, there is no infringement.
I'll have to check back later and see if you ever get a reply to your last letter.
And what does one do with these ripped DVDs? You end up with an inferior product, just like a cassette tape copied from a CD. You still have to purchase blank media to store the copies you make, and the industry has already imposed a tax on that media, ostensibly to compensate them for piracy losses, so what's the problem? This is not the huge problem that they make it out to be. It's just the VCR or cassette tape issue all over again. When will they learn?
What if you don't explicitly state that the "DeCSS" link is linked to the DVD decoding code? What if you simply put up a "DeCSS Code" link, that links to code that removes cascading style sheets code or something? Would the clickthrough then be enforceable?
Is it actually fraud if you're not selling anything? Hell, if Microsoft can disclaim everything with their licenses, including fitness for use for any purpose at all, you should be able to use some similar disclaimer.
For the record, I have no idea who "Ed Muth" is. Seriously. :|
Ed Muth is a Microsoft spokesperson, known for his "black-is-really-white" spin during the DOJ vs. MS trial.
Funny, I didn't think you were giving your money to Microsoft. Microsoft didn't make a single thin dime from YOU.
You can't possibly believe that. I'm starting to get depressed now.
They got it from the OEM, and the OEM is the one that made the decision to include Microsoft products instead of something else. It was an economic decision for the OEM.
The OEM was coerced into including Microsoft hardware, they didn't just get to make that decision all by themselves. If they don't choose MS hardware, they end up paying a lot more for Windows, which means they can't compete effectively with other OEMs. So, tell me, what choice did they have?
You didn't lose ANYTHING, you just got a cheaper computer. Microsoft would have made the same amount of money regardless of whether you bought that machine or not.
Does my freedom to choose the products I want count as a loss? Since the OEM cannot offer me choices for fear of offending Microsoft, I am stuck with the MS hardware, and I then must go out and buy replacement hardware on top of what I already paid for the MS hardware that I didn't want.
Because they aren't fully recouping the cost of the research through the sales of the product being developed.
Yep. How does that give them the right to squash their competitors by pricing their hardware at a loss and recouping the costs through the inflated price of their monopoly products?
It might be illegal.
Yes, it most certainly is.
But I don't think it's wrong.
It's definitely wrong too. Why should Microsoft's domination of the OS market give them the right to kill competition in other markets? Just because Microsoft makes a ton of money selling Windows and Office doesn't mean they should be allowed to use those products to subsidise their hardware so that they can sell it at a loss in order to beat out the competition. The products should have to live or die on their own merit, not with the aid of money made from Microsoft's monopoly products. If this kind of thing is allowed to happen, there soon won't be any small companies competing out there. They couldn't afford to compete with a behemoth like Microsoft unless Microsoft is forced to compete fairly. It is necessary in order to keep competition alive, and competition is the foundation of our market system.
Corel does not have monopoly power. Leveraging is only illegal if the product that is leveraged is a monopoly product. Since Corel is nowhere near being a monopoly, there is no foul.
Additionally, Corel Linux is just one distribution, and it is basically compatible with the other distros. Hard to leverage that.
There's also the issue that most of Corel's products only run on Windows, although this is likely to change.
If Corel does eventually become a monopoly, then yes, they should face the consequences of abusing that monopoly, just as Microsoft should.
Whatever. Look, MS may have "established" themselves in the hardware arena through leveraging OEM relationships, or they may not have. As a consumer, I don't know.
Yeah, the sheeple don't know much of anything. That's why Microsoft gets away with all this crap for so long. I don't give a damn how good their hardware is. They should NOT be able to force it on the OEMs, which is exactly what they are doing, with hardware and software both. They've been doing this crap for nearly 10 years. Microsoft has way too much power over the OEMs for the market to be fair. With that kind of control, the OEMs can't ship a better product, even if some peripheral company makes one available to them, without charging the customer a hefty premium for that product, which makes it very difficult for that peripheral company to compete with Microsoft. Thus the market is tilted heavily in Microsoft's favor. That's not a healthy market.
The difference here is that Microsoft actaully does research into usability and ergonomics. Their products are the results of billions of dollars of said research.
Ahh.. ok, now I see exactly why we should let them force the competition out of the market by leveraging their monopoly to strongarm the OEMs. It's all perfectly clear now. Yeah right. What difference does it make how much money they spend on researching stuff? Why should that give them the right to illegally stifle competition?
Also, regardless of what is shipped with a new computer due to OEM relationships with ANY company, the user is empowered to change anything they want.
Yeah, you're right. We should just give our money to Microsoft for crap we don't want like good little sheeple. Then we can go out and buy the stuff we really wanted in the first place. I don't see any problem with that. Anyone else have a problem with that?
Could have been a troll, but I've seen too many people expressing the very same thoughts here. Valid questions if you don't know much about what's gone on, which many people apparently don't. Might as well take the opportunity to inform some people.
Is (2) true because of (1)? Is (2) true in spite of (1)?
These regulations didn't just spring magically into being. They are the result of our experiences trying to keep the market working. When it goes out of whack somehow, we usually try to figure out what went wrong and then make some regulation that will keep it from happening again. Kind of like fixing bugs in code.
If regulations are good, are more regulations better? Are regulations good up to a point, then bad beyond it?
There is no ideal amount of regulation. It is created as we deem necessary. When something happens to screw things up, we try to fix it. Granted, some regulations are created for political reasons, and are probably bad, but most, and I include anti-trust laws in this, are generally good and helpful in keeping the market free and open and running properly.
Did the congressmen receiving campaign contributions from microsoft's competitors happen to stumble on the perfect level of regulation?
First of all, Microsoft can easily outspend any of its competitors when it comes to political contributions. So, if you have actual numbers, it would be very helpful. It might be interesting to see who spent how much in contributions. I think it would say more about the quality of our congresscritters and our election system than that of the contributors though.
Second, whether the current trial occured because of Microsoft's competitors' complaints or not is irrelevant if they actually broke the law, and it seems abundantly clear that they did. As I've said before, selective enforcement is a bad thing, but that doesn't mean we should just let any offenders go, it means we should work to make sure that all offenders are prosecuted. If you think other companies are guilty of anti-trust offenses, then please, point them out and explain it to us.
Do you have any support beyond "obviously"?
Don't think I even used that word, although it does seem obvious to me that regulation is needed if we are to maintain an open, free market. Simply because the natural instincts of a corporation are to try to get rid of anything that hurts profits, which competition can certainly do.
Assuming that consumers would, in fact, benefit from a break up of microsoft, would this breakup still be desirable once the effect on aspiring entrepreneurs' incentives in the future is considered?
Even ignoring the fact that nobody made Microsoft break the law, and that they had abundant warning that this was coming, I still find that statement to be utterly ridiculous. Does someone need to think that they'll be able to make billions upon billions of dollars before they start a business of their own? Most people are happy to make a good living. The fact that some corporations get huge is a nice dream for some people, but it's not what makes most people start a business. Entrepreneur's everywhere will still come up with new ideas and still create new companies and new markets. A break-up of Microsoft won't change that one bit, just as previous break-ups didn't cause entrepreneurs to throw up their hands and go apply at McDonald's.
Look, we, as a country, have set up a fairly decent market system that tends to accomplish at least the majority of what we'd like it to accomplish. This system is defined by countless regulations that must be obeyed in order for the system to continue to function properly and serve the needs of the people of this country. Many of these regulations are common sense to most people, but many are the result of lessons we've learned along the way, and are not so intuitive.
Now, Microsoft is accused, and this has been upheld by Jackson's court, of breaking some of these regulations. They've probably broken many more regulations, and probably many more times than they will be convicted of, but they have been found guilty of at least some violations. Just as anyone else would have, Microsoft has had it's chance to defend itself in court. They did a pitiful job. This could be considered the fault of their attornies, but I don't believe that, and I doubt anyone else here does either. Microsoft hired very good attornies. I think that it's because it's usually a lot tougher to defend a client that is actually guilty, especially when the prosecution has a mountain of evidence that proves it and your own defense witnesses get caught contradicting themselves and each other. Implying that the case is meritless is just plain wrong. There are laws on the books. The DOJ proved to the judge that Microsoft violated those laws.
Now, you could protest on the basis of the belief that anti-trust laws are wrong. In that case, consider this. Microsoft is a corporation. Corporations exist to make money. The owners face no liability for anything their corporation does. That is a privilege granted to corps by the government, and one that the average person does not have. It would be insane to grant such immunity to prosecution without also setting down some hard, fast rules about how things will be done. Thankfully, the government did this, and will continue to do it as we continue to build experience in dealing with the market system we have created. With such laws on the books, they must be enforced. This can be difficult, as the government often actively fights the enforcement of these laws. It just depends on who is in power.
It's hard to judge the validity of your examples. Perhaps something should have been done about them. But often they didn't have the power to commit the kinds of violations that Microsoft has, or to have such a significant effect on their markets. (The exception being IBM, but then they did get dragged into court, where they stayed for over a decade). We could probably analyze each situation and try to determine whether there was really any cause to charge any of these companies with anti-trust violations. Please go right ahead if you wish to do this. I'm game.