I doubt there's any difference in the type of polycarbonate used for pirated DVDs versus legitimate ones.... Chances are, they are trained to smell a significant concentration of any optical media in a single place. If they smell a trace of polycarbonate, e.g. a dozen DVDs, that's not suspicious. If they smell 35,000 of the things and the warehouse isn't a disc manufacturing company, a computer company, or a computer/movie/music store, such a high concentration of media in one place screams "professional pirates"....
Yeah, you're right. Those are subcarrier-based signals, not sideband transmission. My bad. That said, I seem to recall reading that HD radio overlaps into the sidebands.
HD radio is not mandated. It is approved. There's no phase-out of analog AM or FM planned, and the non-hybrid HD radio has not been approved, AFAIK. Also, there are dozens of approved FM sideband formats out there, from traffic radio to pagers, and there's nothing stopping you from proposing a competing digital radio sideband standard. For that matter, I think you can already use the the FMeXtra standard as an alternative (at least on the FM band), but I'm not positive about that.
Either way, the HD radio story is a far cry from mandating that the old standard must go away by a particular date so everyone is forced to buy the hardware in question. There's still plenty of time to come up with a better digital radio standard.
Fair enough, but I first heard about this from KCBS, IIRC. There were two studies. One showed the obvious correlation---that overweight people were more likely to consume diet sodas (you'd expect this from reverse causation). The other study followed up on this and tested rats on one of the artificial sweeteners (I forget which one). It noted, among other things, that despite the rats taking in fewer calories in that meal, they gained more weight than the rats that ate the same food sweetened with sugar. Basically, they overcompensated in future meals, making up the calories that they missed and then some.
Here's a link to some less-biased stories on the subject:
Presumably you could also change the effective compression ratio by altering the intake valve timing. With solenoid-driven valves, this could even be computer-controlled to adjust efficiency according to the fuel blend, reducing compression if it detects preignition, etc.
Preliminary evidence suggests that artificial sweeteners (sucralose, aspartame, saccharine, etc.) may be even worse than HFCS. At least in animal studies, consuming fake sugars results in a lowered metabolic rate, which results in weight gain even when consuming fewer calories. If you're trying to lose weight, stick with the regular Coke next time instead of the Diet Coke. Better yet, drink water....
We should, at minimum, ban the use of the word "diet" when referring to these beverages, as they are anything but a good choice for dieters.
No, the problem is far, far more complex than any of this. HFCS is one part. Increased amounts of carbs and decreased protein and fat in our diets is another part.
There's still a third, more insidious cause: artificial sweeteners. Studies have shown significant correlation between obesity and diet soda in humans. Also, in animal studies, consumption of artificially sweetened foods resulted in reduced metabolic rate, which led to weight gain. Just to reiterate, the animals in the artificial sweetener group consumed fewer calories, but gained more weight.
Ironically, our cultural quest for guilt-free sweets may ultimately prove to have been a significant causative factor in the obesity epidemic.
No, AutoRun should not exist. You can't create a warning that scares people into clicking "no". If you try that, the first thing the customers do is call your support line asking why their copy of [Insert expensive software package here] contains a virus when it is really just set to automatically run their installer. Then, the only valid use of AutoRun becomes a black mark for software vendors and they stop using it, making it a completely useless technology.
The only possible way to make AutoRun be usable without being a gaping security hole is to require that all AutoRun software be signed using a signing key distributed by the OS vendor. Unfortunately, that could be a slippery slope to requiring all apps be signed (at significant cost), which would be a giant step backwards for small software vendors, open source, etc. Such a security measure would also have to have been done from the very beginning to avoid the problem of existing apps causing panic attacks in end users.
The only solution is to kill AutoRun completely. It should not exist. It has no good reason for existing. The only thing it really does is by its nature a security hole. Just shut it off already.
Design patent: even if there were one, it would have expired approximately 10 years ago.
Trademark: even if they are named similarly, the company has to show that the infringing product and mark would cause confusion. The name must also be used in a non-descriptive way (i.e. phrases like "Similar to the game Tetris" are prima facie non-infringing).
It's a petition for a writ of certiorari, which for all practical purposes, is an appeal, albeit not a guaranteed one. That said, I don't think I used the word "appeal" anywhere in my post.... I described it as a case, which it is. The case has been decided, but they are asking the SCOTUS to review it and possibly overturn it, so it is still effectively ongoing until such time as they deny certiorari.
I also didn't mention the Roper case or violence. Are you sure you meant to reply to me?
On the issue of violence, though, sure they could. Kids are not allowed to see R-rated movies in theaters, and video stores are not allowed to rent violent movies to children. I don't see a difference. That's a big part of why we have an industry rating system. All the people trying to draw comparisons to movies and claiming that kids can watch violent movies clearly haven't noticed that any excessively violent programming can only be seen on TV late at night, and other avenues for watching such content have been blocked for years. If anything, arguing that video games should be treated like movies is essentially arguing that laws like this should be encouraged.
Well, I wouldn't say "all" here. Slashdot is not (quite) a monoculture. Personally, I think it is pretty close to unimportant whether states require adult consent prior to selling violent video games or not, what with me not being a minor and all. It's not like kids really have a complete complement of rights anyway, and ultimately the parents have the right to decide whether to let them have/play such games anyway, so these laws really don't take away any rights except the right of game dealers to not have to check for ID. I couldn't roll my eyes farther.
Whichever way this court case goes, everyone loses because we all are forced to pay for the clowns to write the laws, the lawyers to defend them, and the courts to hear the cases. Apart from all the money and time wasted, it just isn't that important... and honestly, I'd much rather them waste their time coming up with and defending pointless, relatively harmless laws like this than coming up with and defending laws that genuinely impact civil liberties, etc.
The lines are pretty clear with other branches of armed forces, but AFAIK, there is no law saying that the guard can be mobilized only in emergencies. More to the point, I believe that the laws governing when they can be activated for state duty vary from state to state.
The National Guard is allowed to operate on U.S. soil. Except when explicitly assigned to help the military, it is legally under the control of the states, and thus is not actually part of the U.S. Military, per se.
Kind of made me want to burn one of those telco marker flags along the roadside.... Is red plastic flag burning patriotic? Unpatriotic? Communist? Anticommunist? I'm confused.
To counter your fundamental assertion, retro games are actually quite popular these days, so yes, they would. One of the most popular games on iPhone right now (#6 in the paid games category) is Myst (1993). Tetris comes in at #16. Pac-Man Lite is #32 in the free apps area (though the full paid version didn't make the top 100).
You're absolutely right that most people would not pay money for the crap that is on YouTube. That doesn't in any way counter my assertion that it is supplanting paid content. I've seen at least a half dozen studies thus far that have all come to the conclusion that people spending time surfing the Internet has significantly cut into things like TV and movie viewing. That was pretty much considered established fact, last I checked.
do you see the top search terms? 99% are all paid, copyrighted, content. Go to any torrent site and it's the same.
That's specious reasoning. It proves absolutely nothing about whether piracy affects movie sales. It only proves that piracy is occurring (or at least that people are attempting to pirate stuff). Stating that piracy must be hurting movie sales because movies are being pirated is the very definition of begging the question, not to mention mistaking correlation for causation---my rock protects me against tigers; I haven't been attacked by tigers this week, so it must work.
To completely cut your argument off at the knees, just this week, KCBS ran a story that said exactly the opposite of what you're saying---that studies show music sharing online has actually led to an increase in music sales. This is really obvious to anybody who really studies the dynamics of this system carefully. We're not talking about underground, anarchist blogs saying this. We're not talking about the pirate party saying it or Bittorrent developers saying it or even people on Slashdot saying it. We're talking about news coverage of a study that aired on a freaking Infinity Radio station saying it. This means that it is obvious to almost everybody except for the people who make their living by demonizing piracy at this point.
So no, your vigorous argument does not prove that piracy is hurting movie sales. If anything it illustrates just why we have to keep shouting to anyone who will listen that the logic behind that argument is fallacious. Far too many people have been brainwashed into believing that nonsense....
This is a terrible example. Kodak may have lost money because people are no longer buying film. But, Their content isn't being shared for free and downloaded. This is the difference. There is still a demand (and a market) for all of the music and movies being shared on the Internet. Proof can be found on torrent sites.
No, there's no difference at all. Kodak lost money because people picked a commodity with a cheaper cost/benefit ratio (digital cameras) over a more expensive one (film cameras). The music and movie industries are by and large losing money because of a glut of cheap and free content online. I'm not saying that piracy isn't causing money loss right now, but even if they could stop 100% of piracy, their paid content would still converge towards being nearly worthless. One of the biggest causes for the drop in TV viewing has been increasing use of things like YouTube, and I don't mean for watching TV shows. It's a case of one source of entertainment replacing another. Simple as that.
You may not consider entertainment to be a commodity, but the reality is that it behaves far more like a commodity than a properly differentiated set of products---not just music and movies, but all entertainment. Increases in one area of entertainment inevitably cause reductions in another. Therefore, people are trading off one source of entertainment for another. As far as the consumer is concerned, it is a commodity, and they are all equal, regardless of how much you'd like to believe that they are not.
Regarding the cost of movie production, SAG wages, etc., that's my whole point. They expect huge actor/actress wages, but the reality is that a fair number of the better movies lately have been done by largely unknown talent. The cost of producing a movie (comes from four main sources:
Personnel. This includes actors/actresses, production staff, etc. The fewer people involved, the cheaper it is.
Set construction/travel/location costs. Again, the fewer people involved, the cheaper it is, and the more on-location shoots you can do locally without paying for travel expenses, the cheaper it is.
Equipment/consumables costs. This includes cameras and film or videotape.
Rights costs. This includes the cost of obtaining the script, the cost of licensing of synchronization rights for music, etc.
With film, my calculations are that it costs more than $11,000 for one hour of 35mm film stock. If you can develop it yourself, it only goes up to about $15,000 to include development costs. If you ship it out, it goes up to more than a quarter million. This basically means that 35mm film is not viable for low budget production, even ignoring the equipment costs. Even 16mm is pretty expensive. With the advent of digital photography, the equation changed.
I made a feature length movie a few years ago, and including paying the talent for their time, all equipment costs (purchasing), rights, location costs, etc. was in the single digit thousands. There are plenty of aspiring actors and actresses out there who will work for next to nothing for the opportunity to get their names and faces out there. There are plenty of people willing to help out in all sorts of ways, assuming you don't do production in a place where everybody is too worried about liability (like Califonria).
So basically, the cost of low-budget movie production can easily be a fraction of what even Kevin Smith's cheapest movies cost, though his movies are a good example of what can be done on a bigger small budget. There's really nothing preventing the studios from being in real trouble except lack of organization among the YouTubers. Give it time.
Regarding your assertion that people expect higher quality movies, that is true if you only look at what sells in theaters. That's mostly because of the cost, though. Theaters won't play a movie unless it is pretty much guaranteed to make a huge income because of the high cost associated
No, it's a basic economic problem. In the absence of a legally binding monopoly such as patents or copyright, if the cost of a commodity is set too high relative to the cost of production, someone else will find a way to undercut you. New technology often makes this possible, and the Internet is an example of such a disruptive technology. Look what digital cameras have done to companies like Kodak, and this concept should become immediately obvious.
Right now, we have a situation where a commodity---they have deliberately commoditized music and movies by flooding the market with throwaway music that all sounds alike, throwaway movies that are just bad rehashes of existing movies, etc.---is sold at a price that made sense when the cost of producing and distributing content was high. Now that the cost of production and distribution is much, much lower, they can look for ways to keep final sale prices high all they want, but the basic laws of economics say that it ain't gonna happen without collusion, and that even collusion will have limited success. Here's why:
Music and movies are commodities now. Because there is insufficient differentiation, copyright is no longer sufficient to ensure a monopoly. If people are unable to get music by a particular artist, they'll just move on to somebody else more often than not, and frequently do just that. This is a really important point that is worth emphasizing, as it is key to understanding why piracy can't be blamed for the industry's problems.
The law of demand. As the cost of obtaining a commodity goes down, more people partake. Therefore, the availability of cheap or free content online will automatically cause more people to partake of it.
The law of economizing. Given a choice between two commodities that provide similar gain, people naturally choose the cheaper commodity. Given two commodities with the same cost, people naturally choose the commodity that provides a bigger gain. This means that they will always tend towards the cheaper online content over more expensive content through other means unless the more expensive content is dramatically better to provide differentiation (making it no longer a commodity).
The law of arbitrage. If the price in different markets differs (e.g. online music/movie downloads versus CD/DCD sales), the prices will eventually converge because of the ability to buy products in one market and resell them in another. Although right now, this is most commonly caused by piracy, piracy is not necessary for the value of CD/DVD sales to drop to reach a balance with the price of content available in other markets. For example, the ability to watch YouTube videos and other online content on your TV has the same effect on the value of CD/DVD sales.
The law of diminishing marginal returns. The more content people have access to, the less the value of access to additional content. Therefore, even if people were not pirating content, the big media giants' content would eventually become nearly worthless anyway merely because of the availability of such vast quantities of legal free content online.
That last one is the ultimate kick in the nuts for the industry. It means that the descent of the music and movie industries into peddlers of commodity crap is directly to blame for their products having no value. Translation: if you don't like the money you're making off music and movies, try making better music and movies.
In the long term, though, this is about losing control of distribution. The media giants want to maintain control over distribution. The Internet is basically making that impossible. There's no reason for somebody to release music through a big label except for the ability to reach their listeners. This advantage to label distribution is fading rather rapidly. In the long run, they will have no good reason to exist.
Although movie studios aren't in much danger of that yet, I'd imagine within fifty years, they'll be where the music in
Selling and giving away copies are the same thing, legally speaking. You still owe mechanical royalties for making a copy even if you don't make a penny from it.
Regarding the 1000 unit thing, technically, you owe royalties even if you only give away or sell a single copy. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if ASCAP were wiling to look the other way for small numbers of units. Given the royalty rates, 1000 copies of a song is a paltry $91. That's probably less than they would spend to pay a lawyer to write a C&D letter.... In other words, below that threshold, it probably isn't worth their time. That said, it is still a good idea to negotiate that ahead of time. There are some aspects of compulsory licensing that you don't qualify for if you distribute prior to putting an agreement in place. And, of course, if they decided to make an example of you, that could really hurt.:-)
First, their FAQ says otherwise. Unless there is specific language of indemnification for this in the contract (which I very much doubt), then the contract does not indemnify anyone. I'd be amazed if karaoke-version.com were stupid enough to write something like that into a contract.
Second, D.J. Particle also makes note of a 1000 unit limit. Presumably this is something that karaoke-version.com has negotiated with ASCAP. With a free download from a website, however, there is no way to impose such a limit. Ten thousand people could have downloaded it by now. ASCAP has no way to determine this. That's why free downloads off a website can't be covered by an agreement like this. If he wants to arrange for a compulsory license through HFA or something and then set up a download counter that shuts off downloads when the number of licensed copies is used up, that's entirely within his rights, but otherwise, he doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Third, even if the agreement did indemnify the end user, that doesn't mean he is protected from a lawsuit by ASCAP. At best, such a clause means that if ASCAP sued him, he would have the ability to then turn around and sue karaoke-version.com to try to recover the cost of the ASCAP lawsuit and damage award.
Although the relationship between this person and karaoke-version.com may be a contract issue, the relationship between this person and ASCAP is a copyright law issue. It really is that simple.
Nope. Copyright licensing doesn't work that way. Noncommercial use doesn't cover any form of publication (on the Internet or otherwise) even if you don't make a cent from it. Don't like those rules? Blame Congress. They made the rules.
But... I thought everything on YouTube was a RickRoll... either that or an emo kid... or a copyright violation.... You mean there's something actually important on YouTube now?
Exactly. The problem is that this person didn't pay the required royalties, ASCAP called him on it, and now he's whining that he "doesn't have the money to fight ASCAP". The guy is probably eligible to get some sort of blanket license deal if he'd work with them. It's not like he was being sued.
Alternatively, he could do what Weird Al does and negotiate with the individual composers/publishers. If he had written back with a copy of a stack of permission letters form the composers/publishers, ASCAP would have said "Have a nice day." He didn't do that, either, though.
In short, this guy flagrantly violated copyright law, then whined when ASCAP said, "You can't do that". *rolls eyes*
The whole story is ridiculously exaggerated. ASCAP isn't behaving at all like the RIAA. They're doing exactly what we composers and publishers expect them to do---defend our IP against people outright performing our material without license. This isn't a grey area; it isn't hard to comply with the rules, but this person didn't.
More to the point, ASCAP doesn't threaten to sue you unless you just egregiously ignore the notices. They don't sue customers or try to prevent indy artists from getting a leg up. They just write letters if they see clear violations of the law and take legal action if you ignore those letters. Nothing shady, nothing illegal, nothing evil, just monitoring for flagrant violations and defending our copyrights.
Call me when ASCAP starts suing our customers, and my membership goes away faster than you can say, "ASCAP starts to act like the RIAA". As long as they are behaving respectably and are just trying to negotiate proper licensing, they aren't acting at all like the RIAA, and these sorts of inflammatory articles don't change my perception of that in the slightest.
Actually, there's considerable debate on that subject. Some studies have shown that people who are slightly overweight live longer than people who are normal weight. In other words, extreme obesity is unhealthy, but the middle ranges are very much uncertain.
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt there's any difference in the type of polycarbonate used for pirated DVDs versus legitimate ones.... Chances are, they are trained to smell a significant concentration of any optical media in a single place. If they smell a trace of polycarbonate, e.g. a dozen DVDs, that's not suspicious. If they smell 35,000 of the things and the warehouse isn't a disc manufacturing company, a computer company, or a computer/movie/music store, such a high concentration of media in one place screams "professional pirates"....
Yeah, you're right. Those are subcarrier-based signals, not sideband transmission. My bad. That said, I seem to recall reading that HD radio overlaps into the sidebands.
HD radio is not mandated. It is approved. There's no phase-out of analog AM or FM planned, and the non-hybrid HD radio has not been approved, AFAIK. Also, there are dozens of approved FM sideband formats out there, from traffic radio to pagers, and there's nothing stopping you from proposing a competing digital radio sideband standard. For that matter, I think you can already use the the FMeXtra standard as an alternative (at least on the FM band), but I'm not positive about that.
Either way, the HD radio story is a far cry from mandating that the old standard must go away by a particular date so everyone is forced to buy the hardware in question. There's still plenty of time to come up with a better digital radio standard.
Fair enough, but I first heard about this from KCBS, IIRC. There were two studies. One showed the obvious correlation---that overweight people were more likely to consume diet sodas (you'd expect this from reverse causation). The other study followed up on this and tested rats on one of the artificial sweeteners (I forget which one). It noted, among other things, that despite the rats taking in fewer calories in that meal, they gained more weight than the rats that ate the same food sweetened with sugar. Basically, they overcompensated in future meals, making up the calories that they missed and then some.
Here's a link to some less-biased stories on the subject:
Presumably you could also change the effective compression ratio by altering the intake valve timing. With solenoid-driven valves, this could even be computer-controlled to adjust efficiency according to the fuel blend, reducing compression if it detects preignition, etc.
Preliminary evidence suggests that artificial sweeteners (sucralose, aspartame, saccharine, etc.) may be even worse than HFCS. At least in animal studies, consuming fake sugars results in a lowered metabolic rate, which results in weight gain even when consuming fewer calories. If you're trying to lose weight, stick with the regular Coke next time instead of the Diet Coke. Better yet, drink water....
We should, at minimum, ban the use of the word "diet" when referring to these beverages, as they are anything but a good choice for dieters.
http://www.naturalnews.com/022785.html
No, the problem is far, far more complex than any of this. HFCS is one part. Increased amounts of carbs and decreased protein and fat in our diets is another part.
There's still a third, more insidious cause: artificial sweeteners. Studies have shown significant correlation between obesity and diet soda in humans. Also, in animal studies, consumption of artificially sweetened foods resulted in reduced metabolic rate, which led to weight gain. Just to reiterate, the animals in the artificial sweetener group consumed fewer calories, but gained more weight.
Ironically, our cultural quest for guilt-free sweets may ultimately prove to have been a significant causative factor in the obesity epidemic.
No, AutoRun should not exist. You can't create a warning that scares people into clicking "no". If you try that, the first thing the customers do is call your support line asking why their copy of [Insert expensive software package here] contains a virus when it is really just set to automatically run their installer. Then, the only valid use of AutoRun becomes a black mark for software vendors and they stop using it, making it a completely useless technology.
The only possible way to make AutoRun be usable without being a gaping security hole is to require that all AutoRun software be signed using a signing key distributed by the OS vendor. Unfortunately, that could be a slippery slope to requiring all apps be signed (at significant cost), which would be a giant step backwards for small software vendors, open source, etc. Such a security measure would also have to have been done from the very beginning to avoid the problem of existing apps causing panic attacks in end users.
The only solution is to kill AutoRun completely. It should not exist. It has no good reason for existing. The only thing it really does is by its nature a security hole. Just shut it off already.
Design patent: even if there were one, it would have expired approximately 10 years ago.
Trademark: even if they are named similarly, the company has to show that the infringing product and mark would cause confusion. The name must also be used in a non-descriptive way (i.e. phrases like "Similar to the game Tetris" are prima facie non-infringing).
I can't believe Venkman is Darth Vader's father! No, wait....
Forked upstream beyond all repair.
It's a petition for a writ of certiorari, which for all practical purposes, is an appeal, albeit not a guaranteed one. That said, I don't think I used the word "appeal" anywhere in my post.... I described it as a case, which it is. The case has been decided, but they are asking the SCOTUS to review it and possibly overturn it, so it is still effectively ongoing until such time as they deny certiorari.
I also didn't mention the Roper case or violence. Are you sure you meant to reply to me?
On the issue of violence, though, sure they could. Kids are not allowed to see R-rated movies in theaters, and video stores are not allowed to rent violent movies to children. I don't see a difference. That's a big part of why we have an industry rating system. All the people trying to draw comparisons to movies and claiming that kids can watch violent movies clearly haven't noticed that any excessively violent programming can only be seen on TV late at night, and other avenues for watching such content have been blocked for years. If anything, arguing that video games should be treated like movies is essentially arguing that laws like this should be encouraged.
Well, I wouldn't say "all" here. Slashdot is not (quite) a monoculture. Personally, I think it is pretty close to unimportant whether states require adult consent prior to selling violent video games or not, what with me not being a minor and all. It's not like kids really have a complete complement of rights anyway, and ultimately the parents have the right to decide whether to let them have/play such games anyway, so these laws really don't take away any rights except the right of game dealers to not have to check for ID. I couldn't roll my eyes farther.
Whichever way this court case goes, everyone loses because we all are forced to pay for the clowns to write the laws, the lawyers to defend them, and the courts to hear the cases. Apart from all the money and time wasted, it just isn't that important... and honestly, I'd much rather them waste their time coming up with and defending pointless, relatively harmless laws like this than coming up with and defending laws that genuinely impact civil liberties, etc.
The lines are pretty clear with other branches of armed forces, but AFAIK, there is no law saying that the guard can be mobilized only in emergencies. More to the point, I believe that the laws governing when they can be activated for state duty vary from state to state.
The National Guard is allowed to operate on U.S. soil. Except when explicitly assigned to help the military, it is legally under the control of the states, and thus is not actually part of the U.S. Military, per se.
Kind of made me want to burn one of those telco marker flags along the roadside.... Is red plastic flag burning patriotic? Unpatriotic? Communist? Anticommunist? I'm confused.
To counter your fundamental assertion, retro games are actually quite popular these days, so yes, they would. One of the most popular games on iPhone right now (#6 in the paid games category) is Myst (1993). Tetris comes in at #16. Pac-Man Lite is #32 in the free apps area (though the full paid version didn't make the top 100).
You're absolutely right that most people would not pay money for the crap that is on YouTube. That doesn't in any way counter my assertion that it is supplanting paid content. I've seen at least a half dozen studies thus far that have all come to the conclusion that people spending time surfing the Internet has significantly cut into things like TV and movie viewing. That was pretty much considered established fact, last I checked.
That's specious reasoning. It proves absolutely nothing about whether piracy affects movie sales. It only proves that piracy is occurring (or at least that people are attempting to pirate stuff). Stating that piracy must be hurting movie sales because movies are being pirated is the very definition of begging the question, not to mention mistaking correlation for causation---my rock protects me against tigers; I haven't been attacked by tigers this week, so it must work.
To completely cut your argument off at the knees, just this week, KCBS ran a story that said exactly the opposite of what you're saying---that studies show music sharing online has actually led to an increase in music sales. This is really obvious to anybody who really studies the dynamics of this system carefully. We're not talking about underground, anarchist blogs saying this. We're not talking about the pirate party saying it or Bittorrent developers saying it or even people on Slashdot saying it. We're talking about news coverage of a study that aired on a freaking Infinity Radio station saying it. This means that it is obvious to almost everybody except for the people who make their living by demonizing piracy at this point.
So no, your vigorous argument does not prove that piracy is hurting movie sales. If anything it illustrates just why we have to keep shouting to anyone who will listen that the logic behind that argument is fallacious. Far too many people have been brainwashed into believing that nonsense....
No, there's no difference at all. Kodak lost money because people picked a commodity with a cheaper cost/benefit ratio (digital cameras) over a more expensive one (film cameras). The music and movie industries are by and large losing money because of a glut of cheap and free content online. I'm not saying that piracy isn't causing money loss right now, but even if they could stop 100% of piracy, their paid content would still converge towards being nearly worthless. One of the biggest causes for the drop in TV viewing has been increasing use of things like YouTube, and I don't mean for watching TV shows. It's a case of one source of entertainment replacing another. Simple as that.
You may not consider entertainment to be a commodity, but the reality is that it behaves far more like a commodity than a properly differentiated set of products---not just music and movies, but all entertainment. Increases in one area of entertainment inevitably cause reductions in another. Therefore, people are trading off one source of entertainment for another. As far as the consumer is concerned, it is a commodity, and they are all equal, regardless of how much you'd like to believe that they are not.
Regarding the cost of movie production, SAG wages, etc., that's my whole point. They expect huge actor/actress wages, but the reality is that a fair number of the better movies lately have been done by largely unknown talent. The cost of producing a movie (comes from four main sources:
With film, my calculations are that it costs more than $11,000 for one hour of 35mm film stock. If you can develop it yourself, it only goes up to about $15,000 to include development costs. If you ship it out, it goes up to more than a quarter million. This basically means that 35mm film is not viable for low budget production, even ignoring the equipment costs. Even 16mm is pretty expensive. With the advent of digital photography, the equation changed.
I made a feature length movie a few years ago, and including paying the talent for their time, all equipment costs (purchasing), rights, location costs, etc. was in the single digit thousands. There are plenty of aspiring actors and actresses out there who will work for next to nothing for the opportunity to get their names and faces out there. There are plenty of people willing to help out in all sorts of ways, assuming you don't do production in a place where everybody is too worried about liability (like Califonria).
So basically, the cost of low-budget movie production can easily be a fraction of what even Kevin Smith's cheapest movies cost, though his movies are a good example of what can be done on a bigger small budget. There's really nothing preventing the studios from being in real trouble except lack of organization among the YouTubers. Give it time.
Regarding your assertion that people expect higher quality movies, that is true if you only look at what sells in theaters. That's mostly because of the cost, though. Theaters won't play a movie unless it is pretty much guaranteed to make a huge income because of the high cost associated
No, it's a basic economic problem. In the absence of a legally binding monopoly such as patents or copyright, if the cost of a commodity is set too high relative to the cost of production, someone else will find a way to undercut you. New technology often makes this possible, and the Internet is an example of such a disruptive technology. Look what digital cameras have done to companies like Kodak, and this concept should become immediately obvious.
Right now, we have a situation where a commodity---they have deliberately commoditized music and movies by flooding the market with throwaway music that all sounds alike, throwaway movies that are just bad rehashes of existing movies, etc.---is sold at a price that made sense when the cost of producing and distributing content was high. Now that the cost of production and distribution is much, much lower, they can look for ways to keep final sale prices high all they want, but the basic laws of economics say that it ain't gonna happen without collusion, and that even collusion will have limited success. Here's why:
That last one is the ultimate kick in the nuts for the industry. It means that the descent of the music and movie industries into peddlers of commodity crap is directly to blame for their products having no value. Translation: if you don't like the money you're making off music and movies, try making better music and movies.
In the long term, though, this is about losing control of distribution. The media giants want to maintain control over distribution. The Internet is basically making that impossible. There's no reason for somebody to release music through a big label except for the ability to reach their listeners. This advantage to label distribution is fading rather rapidly. In the long run, they will have no good reason to exist.
Although movie studios aren't in much danger of that yet, I'd imagine within fifty years, they'll be where the music in
Selling and giving away copies are the same thing, legally speaking. You still owe mechanical royalties for making a copy even if you don't make a penny from it.
Regarding the 1000 unit thing, technically, you owe royalties even if you only give away or sell a single copy. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if ASCAP were wiling to look the other way for small numbers of units. Given the royalty rates, 1000 copies of a song is a paltry $91. That's probably less than they would spend to pay a lawyer to write a C&D letter.... In other words, below that threshold, it probably isn't worth their time. That said, it is still a good idea to negotiate that ahead of time. There are some aspects of compulsory licensing that you don't qualify for if you distribute prior to putting an agreement in place. And, of course, if they decided to make an example of you, that could really hurt. :-)
First, their FAQ says otherwise. Unless there is specific language of indemnification for this in the contract (which I very much doubt), then the contract does not indemnify anyone. I'd be amazed if karaoke-version.com were stupid enough to write something like that into a contract.
Second, D.J. Particle also makes note of a 1000 unit limit. Presumably this is something that karaoke-version.com has negotiated with ASCAP. With a free download from a website, however, there is no way to impose such a limit. Ten thousand people could have downloaded it by now. ASCAP has no way to determine this. That's why free downloads off a website can't be covered by an agreement like this. If he wants to arrange for a compulsory license through HFA or something and then set up a download counter that shuts off downloads when the number of licensed copies is used up, that's entirely within his rights, but otherwise, he doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Third, even if the agreement did indemnify the end user, that doesn't mean he is protected from a lawsuit by ASCAP. At best, such a clause means that if ASCAP sued him, he would have the ability to then turn around and sue karaoke-version.com to try to recover the cost of the ASCAP lawsuit and damage award.
Although the relationship between this person and karaoke-version.com may be a contract issue, the relationship between this person and ASCAP is a copyright law issue. It really is that simple.
Nope. Copyright licensing doesn't work that way. Noncommercial use doesn't cover any form of publication (on the Internet or otherwise) even if you don't make a cent from it. Don't like those rules? Blame Congress. They made the rules.
But... I thought everything on YouTube was a RickRoll... either that or an emo kid... or a copyright violation.... You mean there's something actually important on YouTube now?
Exactly. The problem is that this person didn't pay the required royalties, ASCAP called him on it, and now he's whining that he "doesn't have the money to fight ASCAP". The guy is probably eligible to get some sort of blanket license deal if he'd work with them. It's not like he was being sued.
Alternatively, he could do what Weird Al does and negotiate with the individual composers/publishers. If he had written back with a copy of a stack of permission letters form the composers/publishers, ASCAP would have said "Have a nice day." He didn't do that, either, though.
In short, this guy flagrantly violated copyright law, then whined when ASCAP said, "You can't do that". *rolls eyes*
The whole story is ridiculously exaggerated. ASCAP isn't behaving at all like the RIAA. They're doing exactly what we composers and publishers expect them to do---defend our IP against people outright performing our material without license. This isn't a grey area; it isn't hard to comply with the rules, but this person didn't.
More to the point, ASCAP doesn't threaten to sue you unless you just egregiously ignore the notices. They don't sue customers or try to prevent indy artists from getting a leg up. They just write letters if they see clear violations of the law and take legal action if you ignore those letters. Nothing shady, nothing illegal, nothing evil, just monitoring for flagrant violations and defending our copyrights.
Call me when ASCAP starts suing our customers, and my membership goes away faster than you can say, "ASCAP starts to act like the RIAA". As long as they are behaving respectably and are just trying to negotiate proper licensing, they aren't acting at all like the RIAA, and these sorts of inflammatory articles don't change my perception of that in the slightest.
Actually, there's considerable debate on that subject. Some studies have shown that people who are slightly overweight live longer than people who are normal weight. In other words, extreme obesity is unhealthy, but the middle ranges are very much uncertain.