Even if they are not alternative for CCTVs everywhere, I think they could at least force those who install cameras to be honest with their intentions.
Like
- "We need a camera near that door so that, at night, we can tell when someone comes close it"
- "Use a motion sensor then. It's cheaper, and easier to analyse"
- "Well... actually, we intended to log the faces of the people who use that door during the day, too."
CCTVs are progressing in a lot of place meeting little to no resistence over privacy concern. But once the police have their hands on a video feed, they can:
1) Track *all* registration plates automatically (right now in London, you couldn't do a 100m in your car without the police nowing it).
2) Soon track you based on face recognition, which seems to be very actively researched. Add this to the fact that certain shooping-mall already forbid you to wear anything on your head (so you can't hide your face to the camera), and you are in for a real Orwellian nightmare.
And of course, it's always possible for them to place the camera for one purpose, letting public opinion completly unaware of what is really done with the feed later, when a new technology is discovered or put into use.
To those who will say I'm being paranoid, or that they have nothing to hide: tell that to the activists who were arrested right before crashing a republican convention, as a result of months of police surveillance (the following link is for the guy with the dot-printer bike; can't find the other one right now: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/10/bikes-against-bush-a.html )
An other (now publicly admitted) example is how phones of pacifists were tapped during Viet-Nam.
And of course now there is the Church of Scientology: - "I've got nothing to hide" - "Then you've never had the gut to piss the COS"
It may seem like a bad idea at first (cheaper == more sensors), but at least this will force them to *really* anonymise the data, and only keep what they need for the security part.
So you're saying that the website used a script to access my cookies or cache, get my gmail session identification, log in as me in gmail and get my contacts?
I see that I'm apparently not paranoid enough.
I don't know much about internet protocols, but shouldn't website only have access to cookies that they emitted? It would be pretty secure since they can not (as far as I know) pretend to be an other url.
What kind of "music" site were you on? The "russian" kind? No. I think it was on http://imeem.com/ , or one of those webiste with mp3s of indy bands (amiestreet ?).
And I'm absolutely positive I didn't give them my gmail password.
Seriously though, there's something else that bothers me about gmail (not the only one to do it): that apparently anyone can get your contact list if they have your address.
Ever happened to you? I was signing up on a music website with a gmail address, and then they asked me if I wanted to send invites to all my contacts, which magicaly appeared on their page. Even if it is apparently a common practice, I find it very disturbing.
Nordic countries usualy have great laws regarding those things.
That said, right now security-paranoid geeks (or rather, anonymity-paranoid ones) probably use tor, which is more than fast enough for searches, or scroogle( http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm ) which is good enough most of the time (it makes the query for you, so google only see their server).
As for finding an ideal country to set up servers, thepiratebay were thinking about buying an island and declaring it an independant country.
That would raise a lot of interesting legal questions, since the official version is that any country is souvereign. Of course the truth is that economical pressure usually ensures that everyone stays in rank (the way the WTO enforces copyright treaties), and military power is never far from it (Iraq, cold war, commando operations). So if thepiratebay really does buy an island, they will need a lot of support from public opinion to be protected from the truth of diplomacy. My bet is they could still have an "accident" involving fire, pirates or simply cut internet cables. (But it would still be worth the risk I think. Did you know they have a political party now?).
Then of course, you have China. China is actually the reason why tor works: both the US and China operate nodes for their own spies (the US Navy first created tor for their spies, then released it to the public for decoys). Civilians using it are a "side effect" of that first use. And as long as a country does not control most nodes, it cannot break the anonymity.
Sorry for the long post. Feel free to reply, here or at my gmail address: semirealblade.
And better than a tinfoil hat, we will need something able to filter what you let or do not let through, as was done with the rfid firewall: http://www.rfidguardian.org/index.php/Main_Page
I hereby ask that nobody ever refers to "tinfoil hat" in a deragatory manner anymore, because we are going to seriously need them.
(cue all known jokes about tinfoil hats, of course; but this is actually a serious post; when some guy will first need to use tinfoil to do any political activism, mainstrem medias should not be able to diss him just because "tinfoil hat" is linked to crazy people).
If you count "killing everyone on earth" as destroying it, then it's probably accurate.
I often saw on article about meteors that it wouldn't take much to fill the atmosphere with enough dust (for years) to kill most plants thus most life.
Actually some weeks ago I searched for some time on wikipedia for the effect of nukes and weather their combined power could physically destroy earth. But I quit after having to go on the page about sugar to get an idea of how much energy was in 10^10...:)
I really agree with your post as a whole, and I think it is a shame that current systems discourage leaders to take decisions that are good only in the long term.
But there is a small factual point I don't understand: how would the KGB using polonium was a warning? Everyone knows that Russia has nukes! (and polonium).
Apart from that, you seem to say that the author of that article was on the no-fly list. How did he get off it? Judging from what I heard of this list, that was no small feat.
I agree that the MAD strategy sounds stupid, but the fact is that it seems to work.
An optimistic view of MAD would be that countries accessing to nukes are forced to act in a "mature" way: to preserve the statu-quo and limit the power struggles to cold wars (through proxy states like Viet-nam, or through economical, and now "cyber" warfare).
A pesimistic view would be that with thechnology ever rising (*), it becomes easier and easier to get the nuke; and once an unstabble country gets it, any coup can land a nuke to some weirdo. We already had one country (Pakistan?) selling nuclear tech to pretty much anybody (they blamed it on one guy when it got known).
(*): For example, the missile itself is an important part of the potential danger (think Cuba), and right now for smaller bazooka like missiles, a PS2 is enough do the guidance system.
As for the forcefield: the US are supposely building an anti-missile shield (hit-to-kill missiles), but it's really not working that well. And at the beggining of the cold war it would have been a _very_ risked bet.
(btw, thanks for commenting on the sig! You inserted some code in your comment, but I was thinking more along the line of a grammar tree to hide the instructions in some normal-looking text ^^ )
My source is a TV documentary on a missile crisis during the cold war; very serious as far as I could tell. (It was about a time when reflection of sunlight on some clouds had caused the "missile incoming" alarm in Russia to go off).
Since I obvoiously misremembered the number, I can only say that it was huge (I'm sure about the act it was millions, and ny second guess is it was 100 mil or so). The president, who had received that analysis just after he was elected, definitively ruled out an all out nuclear war.
I find the summary misleading. I thought the risk analysis was about incidents with nuclear weapons when at peace, but he only calculates the risks of all out nuclear war.
While it's an interseting number it's not a useful one to take a decision, since one of the sad premise of today's war strategy is that, since others have the nuclear weapon, you must have it too. No one is going to dump his nuke stocks because he might have to use them some days.
It's like doing an article summary saying "having a gun in your room is dangerous", when it really means "a gunfight is something that might happen".
I would have been more interested by numbers about the effects of an all out nuclear war. The only ones I can remember are that a US president was told (during the cold war) that scenarios predicted 300 million american death *at best* in a *winned* nuclear war against Russia. The second one ( which I'm not sure about) is that, at the peak of the number of nukes between US and Russia, they could have "destroyed the earth 52 times" (killed everything on it? phisically shatter?).
Does anyone have more details concerning these numbers?
And if the cost of it is prohibitive of you doing so, then the illegal filesharing problem has been solved.. This is again a mistake about the illegal nature of p2p.
Yes, it is illegal now, and that is why your parents don't know about it (no ads for an illegal thing). But if this license existed, it would be legal to "eat all you want", which means that making the price prohibitive for big downloader would actually be a problem.
You explain how you don't consume any music; and how that would be illogical for you to pay for an illimited amount of it. Someone already compared this to "bundeling", that is forcing you to buy 2 products at the same time (here, web access and p2p for music). My answer was that, since it's too impractical to separate the 2 products, bundeling is actually justified. (you can see the whole conversation here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=502290&cid=22890492 ). In France, we actually have a flat tax to pay when possessing a TV, which helps fund public TV programs. Nobody complains that this pays for programs they don't watch.
But I agree with you that the license would be a bad thing if it only covered music; I think it should pay for all entertainment (books, films, etc). Then you would be paying for your neighboor's music, but he would be paying for your books or videogames. See the details there: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=502290&cid=22908842
Somebody said that this tax was like taxing electricity; I say that wouldn't be such a bad idea, but the fact is that the correlation between p2p and internet acess is better than with electricity acess. But of course I would prefer an income based tax.
What you are saying is that right now, only 5% of users fully use the potential of the internet for entertainment. They are like scientists who used their company-issued occiloscope to play video-games: it was illegal, because a system was not builded that let everyone benefit from that tehcnological progress.
Once p2p becomes legal, the 95% of people not yet using it will have the possibility to get entertainment in a way which is better even than an unlimited itune, and the additional public will mean the blanket tax will make sense.
A better analogy: you point is like saying that a close road shouldn't be reopened, because the only traffic it gets is the loonies which drive there although it's closed.
Thank you so much for answering!
All in all, it is a really messy problem. Not that much; actually I think it is pretty much the same thing as paying royalties, which is implemented without anyone saying it's the end of civilisation or the music industry (like we hear for p2p). Let's consider each point:
1) More than one country is involved. This is why copyright is enforced as a set of international treaties, with sanctions from the World Trade Organization when someone doesn't comply. Of course if a country doesn't fear the WTO (like China currently), you have a problem; but there is no way around that, whatever the system.
2) People can fool statistics; fans or artists can download just to raise the artist's revenue. This is somewhat akin to the problem of voting on websites. I think that if it is addressed the same way, you can make it unprofitable for the artist (cost of banwidth and trouble of changing ip). If enough fans are going through that trouble to give a few cents each to an artist, then maybe he deserves it (anyways, superfans will still buy the "collector packs" from their favourite artists; I know I do). And if the artist rents a botnet, then he would probably make more money ripping credit cards. Anyways, if there still is a possible abuse, that's where IRS-style inspections (or traffic analisys) come in effect: not perfect, but enough to make the tax system work okay.
3) Buisnesses optimizing cost/viewing. Necessary when there is a given system to retribute work; it's a good thing if the system is good.
4) Family or individuals are indistinguishables. Same for DVD sales. Other small problems are the direct equivalent of standard distribution system problems.
5) Differences between books/music/etc. That's actually the biggest problem. Right now, putting a price on everything and using advertising means you can affect ratio of the budget between books and music; it's not the case if you have one license for music, one for film, and even worse, none for books (which is what was proposed in France when the law was drafted). I think the best is to fix an "entertainment" budget by law, then let statistics decide for the ratio between entertainments. Of course some cost more to produce than others, but that's also true of films; yet they cost the same price to view. Deciding the "entertainment budget" by law is rigid, prone to lobbying, etc, and would be like soviet Russia if it was applied at each level (state deciding of what artists to fund). But if it's one big number to decide, I really think its okay (no artist per artist problem). And international pressure can force it to be x% of GPD or whatever.
That leaves the problem of linking download statistics to revenue without penalizing books or movies which are so different in file size. For example, an author shouldn't be able to raise his revenue tenfold by making ten different "books" for each chapter. This is an open question; I think the best would be a ratio between file size and revenue, fixed by law for each type of entertainment (1M for a book, 1G for a film...). But since I'm optimist, I think that it will still be a good thing for artists, the same way theater are still a good thing for film-makers altough low budget and high budget film cost the same to view.
Sorry for the long post!
Most of your questions were actually those I asked myslef when such a license was proposed in France, so I got time to think about it. The bottom line is: it wouldn't be a perfect system, but most flaws exist in already accepted systems, and on the contrary the gains are huge because the logic of the medium is better taken into account.
You (or anyone) can email me about this if posting on old slashdot threads becomes a bother:) gmail address: semirealblade
Thanks for the answer; but of course the code slashdot uses is distinct from the way it is used. Actually I'm sure the code allows to do what I'm asking for.
I could confirm this time that speaking about the mod system guarantees you an "offtopic" modding, yet it has to be on topic *somewhere*. I think the best would be a "meta" forum for slashdot.
But saying "bundling always favors the seller giving them more power and money" is not true; for example, you can see cars as a huge bundle of tires, motor, etc; but it actually serves the consumer that it is bundled, because the economical impact of scaling is so big that cars can be made much cheaper than the sum of their gears. Compared to an equivalent big company that deliveries those parts in pieces? The only reason such a company doesn't exist, is because what the consumers are buying isn't the bundled parts, but the construction of a car If you were buying the construction of the car, the sum of the price of the pieces would be a lot cheaper than the price of the car (and you can buy them. They're just expensive). Why is it the contrary? Because there is a cost associated to distributing a thousand different pieces, which is significantly bigger than selling the same number of complete cars (overstock problem, for one). (there are other reason, but this one exists and I think it is the biggest; in thcase of coputers, it is not the case)
Why do I think that this internet license makes sense? Because the cost and difficulies of knowing what every internet user downloads is so high, it's just not doable (part of the cost: I would be protesting in the street if it was the case). But the problem starts right there. If you don't know what each internet user downloads, you can't accuratly divide the money among those who deserve them. It would probably hugely favor those who sell the most via traditional stores and show up in the statistics, while very much hurting those who rely on distribution via the internet. ??? You don't speak at all about my suggestion of using piratebay statistics or the like; maybe you've missed it? Or maybe you are referring to the tax on blank media, where of course piratebay statistics are not useable (they were thinking about copies from CD to CD).
By the way, using statistics is how they repay royalies from the radio IIRC. Of course, the radio system is flawed by the fact that someone decides what music get on the radio or not, but you don't have that problem on the internet. The way I see it, any torrent site or emule-like software would be added to the statistics if he provided them; then you add a control organism to check that they don't lie, with IRS-style surprise inspection. That would be as good as any public institution (like the IRS), and fair for the artists as far as I can see.
"" "What about all the independent musicians? Do you think they will get a share in this tax?" Never said it would be the perfect system. But why would independant music make less money with it? You can still buy CDs of a band you want to support. Same goes for Radiohead.
"Remember, this isn't collecting royalties, this is the traditional and dying music industry looking for free money." Betting that this system would be prone to corruption is probably realistic, but it doesn't mean it should be how you judge the system itself. I don't see any technical point which would prevent indepent artists to get money this way. Why wouldn't it be like royalties?
"Why not tax electricity for the RIAA?" Why not indeed (except of course, I think the money should go to the artists, not the RIAA). A global tax (on income, for example), with a fair repartition of the money (proportional to listening) would probably be the perfect way to fund music. For one thing, it would prevent the arbitrary limitation of music one person can listn to. Of course, music haters would be paying for music lovers, but you are already paying for a lot's of roads, when you only use a few each year. Music haters probably like films or books which music lovers will pay for. It just happens to be that the correlation betwenn music download and internet use is better than with electricity. I still prefer to tax income, but as a rule, rich people tend to get their way and impose tax which are disjoint from income (value added tax, etc).
Anyways, all I was saying in my post was that the majors seem to have given up on some key points; of course I would prefer them to die compltely. But I'm happy to know that we have "won" on some points (the disck label fighting with ISPs to stop interering on the content would really be a win for us).
If that deserves to be modded "overrated" (good way for the mod not to tell his reason, especially since this was the first moderation of the post), then sorry for not "FUCK THAT SHIT" lood enough... (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=502290&cid=22889900)
Then again, I don't really know how Slashdot operates.
That's part of the problem, isn't it? Like for example, why don't you when you get a token or not?
I know that the sourcecode is released at slashcode, but I guess the specific rules (like displaying the score of overrated comments in meta-mod) an't be inffered from it.
You're making a small confusion there: I'm not trying to get a recourse fo a moderation, but to change the general rules that govern moderation and meta-moderation to make them mor fair (in the future, and for everyone).
When I was asking "where" I should say that, I ment like a slashdot thread designed to speak about slashdot (Ã la "village pump" of Wikipedia), or some kind of forum (a mail to the editors is not enough; I'm trying to get support in the community).
I know all about bundling, and I hate that PC manufacturers bundle windows with PC.
But saying "bundling always favors the seller giving them more power and money" is not true; for example, you can see cars as a huge bundle of tires, motor, etc; but it actually serves the consumer that it is bundled, because the economical impact of scaling is so big that cars can be made much cheaper than the sum of their gears.
Bundling sometimes translates a reallity about the production and distribution costs to the consumers.
Why does swiss army knife bundle some functions? Because if you add up the cost and difficulties of entirely customzing knives, it does not compensate the savings made by removing the can opener.
Why do I think that this internet license makes sense? Because the cost and difficulies of knowing what every internet user downloads is so high, it's just not doable (part of the cost: I would be protesting in the street if it was the case).
And since the (real) price of music wouldn't be that high, and since few people are interested neither in music, nor in film, video-games, books or any information-related product, I do think that it cold be a good idea.
And no, I don't imply that **AAs have or right to stay on the loop.
As for the repartition of money to artists, why wouldn't statistics work? That's what they do for the radio, IIRC. Get an approximate idea of how much download each artist got, an split the money. Pirate bay statisics or something like that.
Slashdot Mirror
When you hear something as poetically moralising, there is only one thing you can do: get out of the theater room in disgust.
Even if they are not alternative for CCTVs everywhere, I think they could at least force those who install cameras to be honest with their intentions.
Like
- "We need a camera near that door so that, at night, we can tell when someone comes close it"
- "Use a motion sensor then. It's cheaper, and easier to analyse"
- "Well... actually, we intended to log the faces of the people who use that door during the day, too."
Quick reminder of the situation:
CCTVs are progressing in a lot of place meeting little to no resistence over privacy concern. But once the police have their hands on a video feed, they can:
1) Track *all* registration plates automatically (right now in London, you couldn't do a 100m in your car without the police nowing it).
2) Soon track you based on face recognition, which seems to be very actively researched. Add this to the fact that certain shooping-mall already forbid you to wear anything on your head (so you can't hide your face to the camera), and you are in for a real Orwellian nightmare.
And of course, it's always possible for them to place the camera for one purpose, letting public opinion completly unaware of what is really done with the feed later, when a new technology is discovered or put into use.
To those who will say I'm being paranoid, or that they have nothing to hide: tell that to the activists who were arrested right before crashing a republican convention, as a result of months of police surveillance (the following link is for the guy with the dot-printer bike; can't find the other one right now: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/10/bikes-against-bush-a.html )
An other (now publicly admitted) example is how phones of pacifists were tapped during Viet-Nam.
And of course now there is the Church of Scientology:
- "I've got nothing to hide"
- "Then you've never had the gut to piss the COS"
It may seem like a bad idea at first (cheaper == more sensors), but at least this will force them to *really* anonymise the data, and only keep what they need for the security part.
So probably more sensors, but less abuses.
Thank you, that really explains it. I'm releived that this is the case, actually.
Sorry for the alarming post, then.
Another win for the slashdot method ^^.
No, I wasn't using noscript.
So you're saying that the website used a script to access my cookies or cache, get my gmail session identification, log in as me in gmail and get my contacts?
I see that I'm apparently not paranoid enough.
I don't know much about internet protocols, but shouldn't website only have access to cookies that they emitted? It would be pretty secure since they can not (as far as I know) pretend to be an other url.
Any correction is welcome.
The "russian" kind? No. I think it was on http://imeem.com/ , or one of those webiste with mp3s of indy bands (amiestreet ?).
And I'm absolutely positive I didn't give them my gmail password.
*goes change his gmail password*
Seriously though, there's something else that bothers me about gmail (not the only one to do it): that apparently anyone can get your contact list if they have your address.
Ever happened to you? I was signing up on a music website with a gmail address, and then they asked me if I wanted to send invites to all my contacts, which magicaly appeared on their page. Even if it is apparently a common practice, I find it very disturbing.
Nordic countries usualy have great laws regarding those things.
That said, right now security-paranoid geeks (or rather, anonymity-paranoid ones) probably use tor, which is more than fast enough for searches, or scroogle( http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm ) which is good enough most of the time (it makes the query for you, so google only see their server).
As for finding an ideal country to set up servers, thepiratebay were thinking about buying an island and declaring it an independant country.
That would raise a lot of interesting legal questions, since the official version is that any country is souvereign. Of course the truth is that economical pressure usually ensures that everyone stays in rank (the way the WTO enforces copyright treaties), and military power is never far from it (Iraq, cold war, commando operations). So if thepiratebay really does buy an island, they will need a lot of support from public opinion to be protected from the truth of diplomacy. My bet is they could still have an "accident" involving fire, pirates or simply cut internet cables. (But it would still be worth the risk I think. Did you know they have a political party now?).
Then of course, you have China. China is actually the reason why tor works: both the US and China operate nodes for their own spies (the US Navy first created tor for their spies, then released it to the public for decoys). Civilians using it are a "side effect" of that first use. And as long as a country does not control most nodes, it cannot break the anonymity.
Sorry for the long post. Feel free to reply, here or at my gmail address: semirealblade.
Just a quick reminder of the facts:
Brain scanner can tell if you are going to buy a product or not:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/11/brain-scans-predict-.html
Brain scaner can tell what you are looking at:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/06/0435226
Brain scanners are so easy to do that now they are in game controllers:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/20/1314254
And better than a tinfoil hat, we will need something able to filter what you let or do not let through, as was done with the rfid firewall:
http://www.rfidguardian.org/index.php/Main_Page
Ok, that does it.
I hereby ask that nobody ever refers to "tinfoil hat" in a deragatory manner anymore, because we are going to seriously need them.
(cue all known jokes about tinfoil hats, of course; but this is actually a serious post; when some guy will first need to use tinfoil to do any political activism, mainstrem medias should not be able to diss him just because "tinfoil hat" is linked to crazy people).
If you count "killing everyone on earth" as destroying it, then it's probably accurate.
:)
I often saw on article about meteors that it wouldn't take much to fill the atmosphere with enough dust (for years) to kill most plants thus most life.
Actually some weeks ago I searched for some time on wikipedia for the effect of nukes and weather their combined power could physically destroy earth. But I quit after having to go on the page about sugar to get an idea of how much energy was in 10^10...
I really agree with your post as a whole, and I think it is a shame that current systems discourage leaders to take decisions that are good only in the long term.
But there is a small factual point I don't understand: how would the KGB using polonium was a warning? Everyone knows that Russia has nukes! (and polonium).
Apart from that, you seem to say that the author of that article was on the no-fly list. How did he get off it? Judging from what I heard of this list, that was no small feat.
I agree that the MAD strategy sounds stupid, but the fact is that it seems to work.
An optimistic view of MAD would be that countries accessing to nukes are forced to act in a "mature" way: to preserve the statu-quo and limit the power struggles to cold wars (through proxy states like Viet-nam, or through economical, and now "cyber" warfare).
A pesimistic view would be that with thechnology ever rising (*), it becomes easier and easier to get the nuke; and once an unstabble country gets it, any coup can land a nuke to some weirdo. We already had one country (Pakistan?) selling nuclear tech to pretty much anybody (they blamed it on one guy when it got known).
(*): For example, the missile itself is an important part of the potential danger (think Cuba), and right now for smaller bazooka like missiles, a PS2 is enough do the guidance system.
As for the forcefield: the US are supposely building an anti-missile shield (hit-to-kill missiles), but it's really not working that well. And at the beggining of the cold war it would have been a _very_ risked bet.
(btw, thanks for commenting on the sig! You inserted some code in your comment, but I was thinking more along the line of a grammar tree to hide the instructions in some normal-looking text ^^ )
Ooookay. My bad for quoting from memory.
My source is a TV documentary on a missile crisis during the cold war; very serious as far as I could tell. (It was about a time when reflection of sunlight on some clouds had caused the "missile incoming" alarm in Russia to go off).
Since I obvoiously misremembered the number, I can only say that it was huge (I'm sure about the act it was millions, and ny second guess is it was 100 mil or so). The president, who had received that analysis just after he was elected, definitively ruled out an all out nuclear war.
Again, sorry for the bad number.
I find the summary misleading. I thought the risk analysis was about incidents with nuclear weapons when at peace, but he only calculates the risks of all out nuclear war.
While it's an interseting number it's not a useful one to take a decision, since one of the sad premise of today's war strategy is that, since others have the nuclear weapon, you must have it too. No one is going to dump his nuke stocks because he might have to use them some days.
It's like doing an article summary saying "having a gun in your room is dangerous", when it really means "a gunfight is something that might happen".
I would have been more interested by numbers about the effects of an all out nuclear war. The only ones I can remember are that a US president was told (during the cold war) that scenarios predicted 300 million american death *at best* in a *winned* nuclear war against Russia. The second one ( which I'm not sure about) is that, at the peak of the number of nukes between US and Russia, they could have "destroyed the earth 52 times" (killed everything on it? phisically shatter?).
Does anyone have more details concerning these numbers?
Yes, it is illegal now, and that is why your parents don't know about it (no ads for an illegal thing).
But if this license existed, it would be legal to "eat all you want", which means that making the price prohibitive for big downloader would actually be a problem.
You explain how you don't consume any music; and how that would be illogical for you to pay for an illimited amount of it.
Someone already compared this to "bundeling", that is forcing you to buy 2 products at the same time (here, web access and p2p for music). My answer was that, since it's too impractical to separate the 2 products, bundeling is actually justified.
(you can see the whole conversation here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=502290&cid=22890492 ). In France, we actually have a flat tax to pay when possessing a TV, which helps fund public TV programs. Nobody complains that this pays for programs they don't watch.
But I agree with you that the license would be a bad thing if it only covered music; I think it should pay for all entertainment (books, films, etc). Then you would be paying for your neighboor's music, but he would be paying for your books or videogames.
See the details there: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=502290&cid=22908842
Somebody said that this tax was like taxing electricity; I say that wouldn't be such a bad idea, but the fact is that the correlation between p2p and internet acess is better than with electricity acess. But of course I would prefer an income based tax.
What you are saying is that right now, only 5% of users fully use the potential of the internet for entertainment. They are like scientists who used their company-issued occiloscope to play video-games: it was illegal, because a system was not builded that let everyone benefit from that tehcnological progress.
Once p2p becomes legal, the 95% of people not yet using it will have the possibility to get entertainment in a way which is better even than an unlimited itune, and the additional public will mean the blanket tax will make sense.
A better analogy: you point is like saying that a close road shouldn't be reopened, because the only traffic it gets is the loonies which drive there although it's closed.
Let's consider each point:
1) More than one country is involved.
This is why copyright is enforced as a set of international treaties, with sanctions from the World Trade Organization when someone doesn't comply. Of course if a country doesn't fear the WTO (like China currently), you have a problem; but there is no way around that, whatever the system.
2) People can fool statistics; fans or artists can download just to raise the artist's revenue.
This is somewhat akin to the problem of voting on websites. I think that if it is addressed the same way, you can make it unprofitable for the artist (cost of banwidth and trouble of changing ip). If enough fans are going through that trouble to give a few cents each to an artist, then maybe he deserves it (anyways, superfans will still buy the "collector packs" from their favourite artists; I know I do). And if the artist rents a botnet, then he would probably make more money ripping credit cards.
Anyways, if there still is a possible abuse, that's where IRS-style inspections (or traffic analisys) come in effect: not perfect, but enough to make the tax system work okay.
3) Buisnesses optimizing cost/viewing.
Necessary when there is a given system to retribute work; it's a good thing if the system is good.
4) Family or individuals are indistinguishables.
Same for DVD sales.
Other small problems are the direct equivalent of standard distribution system problems.
5) Differences between books/music/etc.
That's actually the biggest problem. Right now, putting a price on everything and using advertising means you can affect ratio of the budget between books and music; it's not the case if you have one license for music, one for film, and even worse, none for books (which is what was proposed in France when the law was drafted).
I think the best is to fix an "entertainment" budget by law, then let statistics decide for the ratio between entertainments. Of course some cost more to produce than others, but that's also true of films; yet they cost the same price to view.
Deciding the "entertainment budget" by law is rigid, prone to lobbying, etc, and would be like soviet Russia if it was applied at each level (state deciding of what artists to fund). But if it's one big number to decide, I really think its okay (no artist per artist problem). And international pressure can force it to be x% of GPD or whatever.
That leaves the problem of linking download statistics to revenue without penalizing books or movies which are so different in file size. For example, an author shouldn't be able to raise his revenue tenfold by making ten different "books" for each chapter. This is an open question; I think the best would be a ratio between file size and revenue, fixed by law for each type of entertainment (1M for a book, 1G for a film...).
But since I'm optimist, I think that it will still be a good thing for artists, the same way theater are still a good thing for film-makers altough low budget and high budget film cost the same to view.
Sorry for the long post!
Most of your questions were actually those I asked myslef when such a license was proposed in France, so I got time to think about it.
The bottom line is: it wouldn't be a perfect system, but most flaws exist in already accepted systems, and on the contrary the gains are huge because the logic of the medium is better taken into account.
You (or anyone) can email me about this if posting on old slashdot threads becomes a bother
gmail address: semirealblade
Thanks for the answer; but of course the code slashdot uses is distinct from the way it is used. Actually I'm sure the code allows to do what I'm asking for.
I could confirm this time that speaking about the mod system guarantees you an "offtopic" modding, yet it has to be on topic *somewhere*. I think the best would be a "meta" forum for slashdot.
You don't speak at all about my suggestion of using piratebay statistics or the like; maybe you've missed it? Or maybe you are referring to the tax on blank media, where of course piratebay statistics are not useable (they were thinking about copies from CD to CD).
By the way, using statistics is how they repay royalies from the radio IIRC. Of course, the radio system is flawed by the fact that someone decides what music get on the radio or not, but you don't have that problem on the internet. The way I see it, any torrent site or emule-like software would be added to the statistics if he provided them; then you add a control organism to check that they don't lie, with IRS-style surprise inspection. That would be as good as any public institution (like the IRS), and fair for the artists as far as I can see.
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"What about all the independent musicians? Do you think they will get a share in this tax?"
Never said it would be the perfect system. But why would independant music make less money with it? You can still buy CDs of a band you want to support. Same goes for Radiohead.
"Remember, this isn't collecting royalties, this is the traditional and dying music industry looking for free money."
Betting that this system would be prone to corruption is probably realistic, but it doesn't mean it should be how you judge the system itself. I don't see any technical point which would prevent indepent artists to get money this way. Why wouldn't it be like royalties?
"Why not tax electricity for the RIAA?"
Why not indeed (except of course, I think the money should go to the artists, not the RIAA). A global tax (on income, for example), with a fair repartition of the money (proportional to listening) would probably be the perfect way to fund music.
For one thing, it would prevent the arbitrary limitation of music one person can listn to. Of course, music haters would be paying for music lovers, but you are already paying for a lot's of roads, when you only use a few each year. Music haters probably like films or books which music lovers will pay for.
It just happens to be that the correlation betwenn music download and internet use is better than with electricity. I still prefer to tax income, but as a rule, rich people tend to get their way and impose tax which are disjoint from income (value added tax, etc).
Anyways, all I was saying in my post was that the majors seem to have given up on some key points; of course I would prefer them to die compltely. But I'm happy to know that we have "won" on some points (the disck label fighting with ISPs to stop interering on the content would really be a win for us).
If that deserves to be modded "overrated" (good way for the mod not to tell his reason, especially since this was the first moderation of the post), then sorry for not "FUCK THAT SHIT" lood enough... (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=502290&cid=22889900)
Then again, I don't really know how Slashdot operates.
That's part of the problem, isn't it? Like for example, why don't you when you get a token or not?
I know that the sourcecode is released at slashcode, but I guess the specific rules (like displaying the score of overrated comments in meta-mod) an't be inffered from it.
You're making a small confusion there: I'm not trying to get a recourse fo a moderation, but to change the general rules that govern moderation and meta-moderation to make them mor fair (in the future, and for everyone).
When I was asking "where" I should say that, I ment like a slashdot thread designed to speak about slashdot (Ã la "village pump" of Wikipedia), or some kind of forum (a mail to the editors is not enough; I'm trying to get support in the community).
I know all about bundling, and I hate that PC manufacturers bundle windows with PC.
But saying "bundling always favors the seller giving them more power and money" is not true; for example, you can see cars as a huge bundle of tires, motor, etc; but it actually serves the consumer that it is bundled, because the economical impact of scaling is so big that cars can be made much cheaper than the sum of their gears.
Bundling sometimes translates a reallity about the production and distribution costs to the consumers.
Why does swiss army knife bundle some functions? Because if you add up the cost and difficulties of entirely customzing knives, it does not compensate the savings made by removing the can opener.
Why do I think that this internet license makes sense? Because the cost and difficulies of knowing what every internet user downloads is so high, it's just not doable (part of the cost: I would be protesting in the street if it was the case).
And since the (real) price of music wouldn't be that high, and since few people are interested neither in music, nor in film, video-games, books or any information-related product, I do think that it cold be a good idea.
And no, I don't imply that **AAs have or right to stay on the loop.
As for the repartition of money to artists, why wouldn't statistics work? That's what they do for the radio, IIRC. Get an approximate idea of how much download each artist got, an split the money. Pirate bay statisics or something like that.