Many libraries are privately funded, and many of the public libraries in the U.S. were paid for outright by Andrew Carnegie, a private citizen, but that isn't the point.
My point is that a library purchases a single copy of, or a small number of copies of as many copyrighted works as it can afford, for the sole purpose of making them available to the public without payment of additional royalties to the copyright owner.
How is this different from a person who purchases a Metallica album, makes MP3s, and and puts them on Napster?
There are technical differences based on the physical constraints of libraries, but what is the philosophical difference that makes the library a moral, desirable institution and the Metallica fan with a Napster upload directory an immoral thief?
... I still maintain that the recording studios often DO have good original source material available. In any event, even if the studios only own a few, they still own them and would not release them if the (almost certain) losses were not covered by the promotion of mainstream artists.
You're right... some studios have meticulously maintained their archives and undoubtably have the best copies of their works. EMI has nearly every second of the Beatles' work carefully preserved. The liner notes for the Sonny Rollins' CD "Way Out West" talk about how well Contemporary Records had maintained their masters -- and the CD sparkles accordingly. I didn't mean to overlook that.
In any event, even if the studios only own a few, they still own them and would not release them if the (almost certain) losses were not covered by the promotion of mainstream artists.
Ok... I misunderstood... you're talking about established, revenue-producing bands subsidizing brand new bands... which is fine, and completely within the spirit of corporate copyright and basic capitalism.
Reissues often serve a different purpose. Besides the direct profit from sales of the record, an important product of a reissue is corporate prestige and recognition. When RCA/BMG spends lots of money and studio time to restore and reissue a Duke Ellington album, they are saying, in effect, "Look at us... we are the label that brought you these historic and beautiful Duke Ellington recordings, and we welcome you to join us in revisiting our heritage." Not, "We better get this Duke Ellington album out or there will be no money to promote the new rock bands our A&R people keep scouting out." The reward for a new Ellington reissue is glowing reviews in music magazines and a public association of the label with brand quality, not a huge windfall. Although that happens -- the recent Robert Johnson "Complete Recordings" boxed set made a lot of money, for instance.
And what's the problem here? The studios made the recording. What's wrong with publishing it and holding the copyright? That's what copyright is for.
There's no problem. The point that I failed to make is that a recording company can still make money on works once they have entered the public domain, by bundling those public domain works with previously unpublished works, and selling the package.
That's what public domain means. I don't see a problem here. Can the collector copyright the release if sufficient sound processing has been done to create added value?
I believe that the answer is restorations do not qualify for new copyright because they are recreating something old, not creating something new -- the primary criteria for copyright. The point I wanted to make is that if a Ellington work was in the public domain, for example, and an Italian company were to release an absolutely phenomenal recording of that work, RCA could turn around and use that recording for their own release, so they aren't necessarily harmed by the competition created by the work entering the public domain. And they always have the ability to write new liner notes and obtain a copyright on the packaging.
I have nothing against the public domain. As a matter of fact, I'm a huge fan of the public domain. That doesn't mean that I am opposed to copyright. I have no problem with the concept of copyright, and with reasonable, well designed, functional copyright laws. Taken in moderate measures, they do promote progress -- their only legitimate purpose.
However, I think that many aspects of our current copyright laws -- especially the DMCA and duration of copyright -- are seriously out of balance and are working against the public interest.
His tired old "Linux is like Unix, which is 30 years old, so it must be obsolete"
He fails to understand that what is "new" about Linux isn't the software technology -- it's the development, licensing, and distribution models.
Linux development is driven by the people who use it, not by the people who market it. That's a huge difference that filters out a lot of the unfortunate crap that winds up in market-driven operating system design.
Linux licensing places the source code to the operating system in what could best be described as very close to a "copyright-enforced public domain." by guaranteeing you not only the right, but also the ability to control your software by guaranteeing you access to the source code. Traditional licensing keeps the source code to the operating system as far away from the public domain -- and the public -- as copyright and trade secret laws allow. This is another huge difference.
Linux distribution removes the single point of failure created by the proprietary ownership and distribution model. Traditional software distribution funnels all distribution through a single distributor, who charges monopoly prices, and can remove the product from the market at any time. If RedHat, Caldera, and all the other Linux distributors were to go out of business, or dump the Linux kernel in favor of a new kernel design, Linux would survive. I'd like a new release of the Lisa operating system. When can I expect it? This is a huge difference.
Linux will evolve, just as the Mac OS and Windows will evolve. The difference is that Linux is picking up features like journelled filesystems, while Windows is picking up features like talking paperclips and desktops that blink with advertisements.
That's a huge difference.
The innovation of Linux is that is has created a functional replacement for a Public Domain in software that has never existed due to overly restrictive copyright laws and overly long copyright durations, and like the public domain, has the potential to become ubiquitous.
NOT the fact that it is largely an implementation of a traditional Unix kernel, which, as the article points out, is not a new achievement.
I think we would have it in the same or better quality.
A lot of the record companies and film studios don't have the best copies of their work, because they allowed their masters to be abused and damaged, or lost track of them.
But to directly answer the question, it only takes one Ellington/Armstrong collector with a mint copy of an original pressing of an original release, to collaborate with one person with access to high end sound processing hardware and software, to create a new recording that can be enjoyed by millions, if that work is in the public domain.
So long as that work is still under copyright, the only entity that can do that is the record company, and they don't always have the best source material to work from. Record and movie studios don't tend to work well with private collectors of preprint materials. Mostly, they tend to sue them and drive them underground.
The best examples are from the world of film, although many recording companies have the same problems. So I'll talk about films instead. There are many films, especially Technicolor films, that only exist in private collections. The studios made up hundreds of beautiful 35mm prints, sent them back and forth from theatre to theatre, and at the end of their theatrical runs, dumped all but a few of each film in landfills or had them shredded. Once there were only two or three existing prints of a film in the movie studios' hands, the studios wore out their last existing prints by making copy after copy for television sale, either from the original negatives, or from the few library theatrical prints. Now many movies are not available from the studio libraries in any form.
There's the entire "Dr Who" story. The BBC had 16mm film prints of each and every episode of Dr. Who. That is, until one person decided to clear out some storage space, and ordered that those piles of old black and white films be incinerated. As a result, hundreds of episodes were lost, and even after an intensive effort to track down the lost episodes, over 100 episodes are still missing. It is rumored that many of those lost episodes are actually in private hands -- that a few people who happened to be around at the right time realized what was happening and "diverted" some of those prints.
As for the labels having access to the original masters, you are right there. If Disney were to put out a DVD of Snow White, and some other company were to put out a DVD of Snow White, taken from a beat up, red 16mm print, the Disney product would win in the marketplace.
On the other hand, in 1972, ABC ordered a brand new, Technicolor dye transfer print of Vertigo for the Sunday Night Movie. They projected the film once, then threw it away. It was retrieved from the garbage bins by a collector, and, having only been run a few times, is most likely the best copy in existance -- NOT owned by the studio that created it.
That's just one example. How many more "best" recordings and films exist in private hands that would "reappear" if the works were allowed to enter the public domain?
Hard to say, but Richard Haines, in his book, "Technicolor Movies", offers the following:
Film collectors were very supportive of this project and allowed me to screen their private collections of rare 35mm and 16mm dye transfer prints in the various formats. It was encouraging to discover that a large percentage of the U.S. features printed in the stable dye transfer process exist in excellent condition through these collectors although few copies exist in studio vaults. Film collectors may turn out to be the unofficial curators of our color film legacy since many dye transfer prints will outlast the negatives they were made from.
Back to the world of audio...
Somewhere out there, there are probably collectors with mint, unplayed or only-played-once copies of the original pressings of each and every Ellington and Armstrong record, who treat those records like gold. Not necessarily so for the studios, who used THEIR copies as production tools.
You also said:
And there's still the point of the mainstream artists offsetting the costs of introducing new artists who may or may not become wildly popular.
You greatly underestimate the importance of reissues in financing new projects. A reissue is lucky if it breaks even. The market for reissues is a tiny fraction of the market for new albums. How many reissues go gold?
Ah! The ones that include never-before-released material, whose copyright starts when they are first published.
Besides, if some collector were to put out a fantastic release of a public domain Ellington work, what's to stop the record companies from taking that version, adding their own unreleased material, and selling their own compliation?
If we didn't have functionally perpetual copyright, we wouldn't have to depend on the major labels for reissues of the Ellingtons and Armstrongs.
If the record companies hadn't bribed Congress to steal the public domain wholesale, by unconstitutionally extending old copyrights again and again, those exact recordings would be regularly entering the public domain, as they should be, and anyone could publish reissues and anthologies, or make the material available on web sites for free.
Another subtle point that I think a lot of people miss.
It's no secret that despite the "rampant piracy" of people trading MP3s last year, the big labels sold more CDs than ever before. People tend to like buying CDs; there's a psychological difference between downloading an MP3 and going to a store and buying a CD. Consumers aren't buying music -- they're buying CDs, with cover art and liner notes and a little poster inside and a few hidden tracks and a few spoken tracks and perhaps a limited edition signed thingie wedged in between the cover art and the CD itself.
This is exactly what I've been saying all along and I agree 100%... but he also says:
Who Napster does compete with, however, are the independent musicans. While independent musicians are trying to convince people that they don't need to buy from major labels, that they can buy direct (for less!) instead, Napster is showing people that they don't need to buy music at all. So on the one hand, you could buy ABCDEffigy at MP3.com, on the other hand, you could scour Napster for all the MP3s and have it anyway.
So which is it? How can it be that MP3s are promotional vehicles for big label consumers, but piracy vehicles for indy music cans? His core argument appears to be that Baptist Death Ray fans are less moral then Metallica fans. He shouldn't really be making that argument -- it's insulting to his fans, and even worse, it's probably not true.
After reading this article, I went and downloaded the most recent BDR MP3 and listened to it. I didn't really care for it, and won't be buying the album, so I just made your download to sales ratio worse. Sorry. That's the reality... there's a whole lot of music out there, and people are selective in what they pay for. Someone else may well download the same MP3, decide they love it, and buy the album. I won't, but I have purchased other albums that I first heard on MP3... because I liked what I heard.
I mean, now that indi bands can use the internet doesn't mean that they now have an advantage over the big labels. The big labels are still pouring money into promotion, and if you want to compete with that, sorry to say, you have to do the same. About all you can say is that the internet helps level the playing field a little more. In that sense, the notion that the Internet has completely levelled the playing field is false. The internet can provide a distribution system for little or no cost, but not a promotional system. You can use a web site to promote your album, but if Metallica can spend thousands of dollars on an advertising blitz for their new album, they are likely to do better then you, because, after all, you said it... promotion is what record companies do best, and you're still competing with them head to head on that front. Maybe that's why you are still not winning.
MD also uses ATRAC lossy compression, which immediately made it unacceptable for its only real potential target market at the time -- Grateful Dead tapers, who stuck with DAT, and moved from there to CDR when the recorders came along.
Computer accessability is a non-issue. MD recorders have SPDIF digital I/O, and every computer SPDIF card I've ever seen ignores SCMS, so you have always been able to get data off of an MD. However, the ATRAC compression degrades the signal quality, so why use it? Also, MD has a 74 minute limit, which makes the recorders a pain in the ass in a field recording situation -- one of the big advantages of moving from cassette to DAT was that you didn't need to worry about the tape flip anymore. With MD, you need to change media in the middle of the set.
MD is an excellent example of a poorly thought out technology. They created a digital format with all of the disadvantages of cassettes -- short media time and degraded sound -- and tried to compete with DAT, with linear, uncompressed audio and a 2 hour running time.
Not only will it limit the voting field it will allow for corruption. Digital signatures are not fool proof against a purchased vote.
Digital signatures for voting will enable corruption. One of the advantages of polling places is that they allow you to perform the actual act of casting your vote in secrecy. If someone tells you, "Vote for Joe Fraud and I'll pay you $50, you can, if inclined to do so, say, "Ok", go into the voting booth, vote for someone else, drop your ballet into the collection box, leave the polling place, tell that person, "Yes, I voted for Joe", get your money, and be on your way. This is a strong disincentive to try and buy votes.
If voting is something you do at home, that person can say, "Vote for Joe Fraud and I'll give you $50, and, by the way, I have to watch you do it." You no longer have that crucial moment of voting-booth provided secrecy at the moment of voting. Thus, vote buying becomes practical.
his isn't quite correct. No work created since, IIRC the late 1920's has entered the public domain by means of the copyright expiring. The date is, coincidentally enough, just prior to when Mickey Mouse cartoons started.
That's not quite right.
Works written before 1923 are all in the public domain. Works published with a copyright notice between 1923 and 1963 are in the public domain unless the copyright owner filed a renewal form with the copyright office at the correct time. All works published with a copyright notice between 1963 and 1977 are still under copyright. All works created since 1978 are copyrighted, whether or not a copyright notice was affixed.
Works that did expire were retroactively given their copyright back - this is why you don't see "It's a Wonderful Life" EVERYWHERE anymore around Christmas. You have to pay for it again.
This is also incorrect. In the case of "It's a Wonderful Life", the copyright on the film expired, and the work was considered to be in the public domain. Later, the original copyright owner determined that both the underlying story and parts of the musical soundtrack had been copyrighted separately, and those copyrights had been renewed. They then acquired those copyrights, and based on those copyrights, were able to suppress the film, not because the film itself was copyrighted, but because showing the film would infringe on the music and story copyrights.
The copyright on the film itself was not retroactively restored though.
I've been a programmer for about 15 years, and I've never met an in-house programmer. I have, however, met, and worked for, people and companies who sell software to hospitals, banks, etc...
It all depends on what businesses you deal with and what sort of computers they use. The job description is usually "systems programmer" or "systems analyst", and these are usually mainframe programming jobs.
This job is only possible because most of the big mainframe packages are distributed as source code, and companies that use them need to customize them. It is difficult to install and maintain an MVS system without having someone on staff who understands IBM assembly language and can do some simple programming. These programming systems typically have hooks in them called "exits" that you need to write short assembly routines for. Most systems programmers spend their time making little customizations or tweaks to large, vendor supplied source-code based systems, not writing big applications.
Look in the technology want ads for the keyword "BAL", which means, "Basic Assembly Language", i.e. IBM 370 assembler. Also, MVS, CICS, and VM. Those are the main in-house programming jobs, and they are always in demand. Even more so, now that most universities don't teach mainframe programming anymore.
Most would rather let someone else deal with developing and maintaining software, so that they can concentrate their efforts on the things that they do best.
The cost of having a software vendor make and maintain custom modifications to their product for your company will generally exceed the salary of a good systems programmer. Remember, we are usually talking small changes, not wholesale development, although some well-established companies develop their own software systems. The advantage to having an in-house programmer is that they can do something this week that would take months of negotiations with the vendor to get done. Also, the in-house programmer is the go-to person when disks crash, software crashes, etc. A systems programmer can rip through a huge core dump, find the symptoms, get on the phone with IBM, and have a five line source code patch downloaded and installed in an hour that fixes that specific bug without touching anything else.
Companies that buy pre-packaged, object-code-only operating systems and software packages don't need systems programmers, because they have no source code to customize. They also have no choice but to install big service packages, if they even have that option, that often introduce more new bugs then they fix. They are at the complete mercy of their software vendors.
This ALMOST makes MP3 obsolete for portable players... there is one more factor.
One of the reasons that hard drive based portable MP3 players work well is that when you are playing MP3s, the disk drive only has to wake up occasionally to read a burst of data. I believe that for one of the current products, the drive spins every 10 minutes or so to fill a 15 MB buffer. This helps keep the power consumption on the player down.
Playing uncompressed audio requires that data be read at the rate of:
4 bytes/stereo sample x 44100 samples/second x 60 seconds/minute ~= 10 megabytes/minute.
so playing uncompressed audio using a 15M buffer would require the disk to spin every 90 seconds instead of every 15 minutes. Alternately, a much larger memory buffer could be used. However, large memory chips are expensive and consume more power.
Either way, power consumption is going to go up.
So MP3 may hold onto the niche, for power consumption reasons!
I just wanted to add that Asian counterfeiting of DVDs is a red herring in this case. DVDs are counterfeited not by decoding the DVD with a program like DeCSS, but by making a bit-for-bit copy of the entire disc, leaving the encryption intact.
If they were to use DeCSS, they would lose the alternate soundtracks, the menu features, the hidden features -- all of the features that differentiate a DVD from a videocassette.
In short, it would be much more work to use DeCSS to decode the disc, and would lead to an inferior product. Why would media bootleggers be interested in something like that when they can much more easily produce perfectly working counterfeits with a bit-for-bit copy, which they are doing in enormous numbers right now.
VCDs aren't an issue either, because VCDs are generally produced from analog sources -- a camcorder in a theatre, or a screener cassette.
Implying that DeCSS facilitates commercial bootlegging operations is a complete red herring.
People do not bother trying to circumnavigate restrictions so long as they do not feel restricted. Right now, there's nothing you can do with a DVD except to play it. DVD players have no digital outputs, and the contents of the disc are encrypted.
Most people could care less, because they only see the DVD in terms of a glorified "digital" videocassette, with a few cute add-ons.
We have no idea what people might want to do with the contents of a DVD, because people don't have access to the raw contents of a DVD. There is the potential for entire new art forms -- just like sampling technology ushered in an entire new form of music -- one that was unimagined before digital technology -- or only practiced by a few individuals with extraordinary resources, such as the Beatles with Revolution 9.
Hypothetically, given complete access to the raw digital data on her DVD collection, and video editing software, a person could sample bits and pieces of different movies, combine them with a soundtrack made by sampling different movies and songs, and create expressive new works of art. Even if those works could not be commercially exploited due to copyright restrictions, that wouldn't matter. A person who developed a talent that way could then go on to create similar works using their own sources, or licensed sources as raw material, thus creating works that could be commercially exploited, and at the same time creating an entire new market for stock footage.
Until it is established that one has a fair use right to get at the raw contents of copyrighted works that you have purchased, most people will not even consider the potential possibilities of such access.
In short, there is an entire world of possibilities for new forms of artistic expression that are sitting dormant, because the MPAA is struggling to ensure, through technological and legal means, that the only experience people can bring to their products are to sit on the couch, eat popcorn, and turn off their brain for two hours.
Back to the sampling analogy, sampling doesn't affect most people only in the sense that most people aren't DJs. However, given the popularity of house, hiphop, and other forms consisting largely of samples, a large percentage of the population are affected by and benefit from the talents of the small percentage of the population who exploit sampling technology to create new works, and a similar potential exists for audiovisual works as well. The technology is just emerging that will make this possible, DeCSS is a big part of it, and the MPAA is determined to stop it.
So I would agree that most people aren't affected by this... yet. DeCSS represents a very basic tool -- the interface between editing software and commercial content. Whether artists have legal access to that interface is an issue that will change the face of audiovisual art forever, for better or worse.
After the Valenti deposition, the MPAA lawyers went before Judge Kaplan to attempt to have the entire deposition sealed from the press. During this hearing, documented here at the cryptome site, Judge Kaplan had some very interesting things to say...
First:
2 THE COURT: That is persuasive only to a point. We 3 are now six weeks away from a trial. If they can't remotely, 4 as you suggest, prove the allegations they have made in this 5 case, embarrassment on the Internet is going to be the least 6 of their problems, because I am going to call this case, one 7 way or another. Obviously, listening to the two of you, 8 somebody is full of baloney. I won't have any hesitation 9 about saying who it is when I see the evidence. So, while I 10 understand this embarrassment notion, I understand both sides 11 are conducting as much of a public relations campaign as a 12 lawsuit, maybe more, but the game all stops next month.
Whew!
And later...
24 MS. ABRUTYN: Even if that is the case, there are two 25 possible remedies. The first one is that your Honor could 1 rule the depositions shouldn't go forward in the first place, 2 in which case there would be nothing to have access to, if 3 Mr. Garbus is off on a fishing expedition.
Yes. They are trying to gloss over the fact that programs like DeCSS allow one to watch movies without regard to region coding. This is a non-infringing use of DeCSS -- it allows you to play back DVDs that you have legally purchased in other countries, and, under the doctrine of first sale, you have the legal right to use.
Their "party line", after all, is that the only use of DeCSS is to facilitate illegal copying, and that DeCSS has no non-infringing uses. That's what the entire lawsuit is riding on.
Schumann glossed over the exact same point by claiming that DeCSS had nothing to do with region coding, which was disingenuous to say the least. I don't understand why Garbus didn't push him on the point. It's a very important point.
The fix is for the movie execs to develop technology which will protect their copywritten material.
No, this is not a fix. It can never be a fix. Copy protection does not work as a long term strategy. It can not work.
The reason is extremely basic and fundamental. The problem is that a protection-stripped product (the "warez" version) is intrinsically more valuable then the original, copy protected product, because you can do more with it. Specifically, you can do the very things that the copy protection tries to keep you from doing, whether it is backing it up, as in the Apple II days, or, as in the case of DVD, extracting and manipulating the raw program content.
As any copy protected technology becomes more and more interesting; as more and more material becomes available in that format, the interest in breaking that copy protection will also rise.
The average age of a successful copy-protection cracker appears to be about 16-18 years old. That's the age when you have enough free time, and enough focus to really dig deep into the details of a copy protection system... that's the "hacker incubation" time. It's when you spend all day and all night studying machine language specifications, attempting to comment disassembly listings, and working on solving the challenging puzzlethat copy protection is.
Cracking copy protection usually does not require sophisticated tools. It does not require advanced training. Mostly, it requires extreme dedication, hard work, and a young mind flexible enough to figure it out. Criminalizing the art of defeating copy protection is nothing more then criminalizing our next generation of computer scientists. We can do it, but wow, what a stupid thing to do.
In other words, you can't regulate 16 year olds. You can't even get them to clean their rooms.
Unfortunately, we have a Congress that was elected on the issues of gun control, the death sentence, and partial birth abortion, so it's not surprising that they understand so little about the Constitution that they would tamper with Copyright the way they have -- by banning reverse engineering, in the apparent hopes that this will "dumb down" the population, at the "small" cost of criminalizing our brightest young people for satisfying their curiosity about their most valued possessions -- their music and video collections.
The real "solution" to copyright infringement is to remove the incentives to infringe. Pay close attention to your pricing, make sure that you are offering a total package that contains more value then just a copy on recordable media. If you're a music publisher, that means including nice artwork, with printed lyrics and liner notes. If you're selling a computer program, that means including good printed documentation. If you're selling a DVD, that means having interesting "extras" on the DVD that people will want to buy, as opposed to just selling the movie itself, which can be decrypted with DeCSS and copied as an MPEG stream.
In short, provide value for your customers money. The same thing that producers have had to do since the beginning of time -- or until our Congress created special laws to relieve the entertainment industry of this "burden".
Copy protection is an illusion. Every copy protection for every interesting product will be broken, given time. If you've based your business model on the illusion that copy protection will allow you to control your customers, then your business will fail. The entertainment industry does not need to base their business model on copy protection, but if they continue to do so, then they will fail as a business.
This has very little to do with anti-piracy and a lot to do with the intense, ongoing effort of the recording industry to do away with all of the "details" of copyright law that they don't like.
The DMCA is designed to outlaw fair use. They don't like that you can legally use excerpts from copyrighted works, so they purchased a law that effectively allows them to "opt out" of fair use by simply encrypting their material.
Now they are out to do away with the first sale doctrine. First sale means that once you buy a copyrighted work, you have the right to turn around and resell your copy. That's why used record stores are legal. That's why you can go to a used record store and buy an old record that is out of print.
If the recording industry is successful in adopting biometrics (which I don't think they have a chance in hell of), then old music will, by design, wither away and die after it goes out of print. Think about it... Right now if you want an album that is out of print, you can buy it on the used market. This new system will eliminate that. Once an album goes out of print, no one will be able to buy that album anymore. That album will in effect cease to exist when the last person passes away who purchased that album.
The industry is well aware that their biggest competitor is their own body of old work. If people spend their time purchasing and listening to old music, that is less money and time they are spending listening to the brand new music that the industry wants us to pay attention to.
That's what this is about... it has nothing to do with "piracy."
Bear in mind that this transcript came from a transcription of a court stenographer. Stenographers are much better at recording things like "I object to the form of the question", then things like "http://www.slashdot.org"
Slashdot Mirror
Many libraries are privately funded, and many of the public libraries in the U.S. were paid for outright by Andrew Carnegie, a private citizen, but that isn't the point.
My point is that a library purchases a single copy of, or a small number of copies of as many copyrighted works as it can afford, for the sole purpose of making them available to the public without payment of additional royalties to the copyright owner.
How is this different from a person who purchases a Metallica album, makes MP3s, and and puts them on Napster?
There are technical differences based on the physical constraints of libraries, but what is the philosophical difference that makes the library a moral, desirable institution and the Metallica fan with a Napster upload directory an immoral thief?
... I still maintain that the recording studios often DO have good original source material available. In any event, even if the studios only own a few, they still own them and would not release them if the (almost certain) losses were not covered by the promotion of mainstream artists.
... some studios have meticulously maintained their archives and undoubtably have the best copies of their works. EMI has nearly every second of the Beatles' work carefully preserved. The liner notes for the Sonny Rollins' CD "Way Out West" talk about how well Contemporary Records had maintained their masters -- and the CD sparkles accordingly. I didn't mean to overlook that.
... I misunderstood ... you're talking about established, revenue-producing bands subsidizing brand new bands ... which is fine, and completely within the spirit of corporate copyright and basic capitalism.
... we are the label that brought you these historic and beautiful Duke Ellington recordings, and we welcome you to join us in revisiting our heritage." Not, "We better get this Duke Ellington album out or there will be no money to promote the new rock bands our A&R people keep scouting out." The reward for a new Ellington reissue is glowing reviews in music magazines and a public association of the label with brand quality, not a huge windfall. Although that happens -- the recent Robert Johnson "Complete Recordings" boxed set made a lot of money, for instance.
...
You're right
In any event, even if the studios only own a few, they still own them and would not release them if the (almost certain) losses were not covered by the promotion of mainstream artists.
Ok
Reissues often serve a different purpose. Besides the direct profit from sales of the record, an important product of a reissue is corporate prestige and recognition. When RCA/BMG spends lots of money and studio time to restore and reissue a Duke Ellington album, they are saying, in effect, "Look at us
And what's the problem here? The studios made the recording. What's wrong with publishing it and holding the copyright? That's what copyright is for.
There's no problem. The point that I failed to make is that a recording company can still make money on works once they have entered the public domain, by bundling those public domain works with previously unpublished works, and selling the package.
That's what public domain means. I don't see a problem here. Can the collector copyright the release if sufficient sound processing has been done to create added value?
I believe that the answer is restorations do not qualify for new copyright because they are recreating something old, not creating something new -- the primary criteria for copyright. The point I wanted to make is that if a Ellington work was in the public domain, for example, and an Italian company were to release an absolutely phenomenal recording of that work, RCA could turn around and use that recording for their own release, so they aren't necessarily harmed by the competition created by the work entering the public domain. And they always have the ability to write new liner notes and obtain a copyright on the packaging.
I have nothing against the public domain. As a matter of fact, I'm a huge fan of the public domain. That doesn't mean that I am opposed to copyright. I have no problem with the concept of copyright, and with reasonable, well designed, functional copyright laws. Taken in moderate measures, they do promote progress -- their only legitimate purpose.
However, I think that many aspects of our current copyright laws -- especially the DMCA and duration of copyright -- are seriously out of balance and are working against the public interest.
I think we agree more then we think
His tired old "Linux is like Unix, which is 30 years old, so it must be obsolete"
He fails to understand that what is "new" about Linux isn't the software technology -- it's the development, licensing, and distribution models.
Linux development is driven by the people who use it, not by the people who market it. That's a huge difference that filters out a lot of the unfortunate crap that winds up in market-driven operating system design.
Linux licensing places the source code to the operating system in what could best be described as very close to a "copyright-enforced public domain." by guaranteeing you not only the right, but also the ability to control your software by guaranteeing you access to the source code. Traditional licensing keeps the source code to the operating system as far away from the public domain -- and the public -- as copyright and trade secret laws allow. This is another huge difference.
Linux distribution removes the single point of failure created by the proprietary ownership and distribution model. Traditional software distribution funnels all distribution through a single distributor, who charges monopoly prices, and can remove the product from the market at any time. If RedHat, Caldera, and all the other Linux distributors were to go out of business, or dump the Linux kernel in favor of a new kernel design, Linux would survive. I'd like a new release of the Lisa operating system. When can I expect it? This is a huge difference.
Linux will evolve, just as the Mac OS and Windows will evolve. The difference is that Linux is picking up features like journelled filesystems, while Windows is picking up features like talking paperclips and desktops that blink with advertisements.
That's a huge difference.
The innovation of Linux is that is has created a functional replacement for a Public Domain in software that has never existed due to overly restrictive copyright laws and overly long copyright durations, and like the public domain, has the potential to become ubiquitous.
NOT the fact that it is largely an implementation of a traditional Unix kernel, which, as the article points out, is not a new achievement.
I think we would have it in the same or better quality.
...
A lot of the record companies and film studios don't have the best copies of their work, because they allowed their masters to be abused and damaged, or lost track of them.
But to directly answer the question, it only takes one Ellington/Armstrong collector with a mint copy of an original pressing of an original release, to collaborate with one person with access to high end sound processing hardware and software, to create a new recording that can be enjoyed by millions, if that work is in the public domain.
So long as that work is still under copyright, the only entity that can do that is the record company, and they don't always have the best source material to work from. Record and movie studios don't tend to work well with private collectors of preprint materials. Mostly, they tend to sue them and drive them underground.
The best examples are from the world of film, although many recording companies have the same problems. So I'll talk about films instead. There are many films, especially Technicolor films, that only exist in private collections. The studios made up hundreds of beautiful 35mm prints, sent them back and forth from theatre to theatre, and at the end of their theatrical runs, dumped all but a few of each film in landfills or had them shredded. Once there were only two or three existing prints of a film in the movie studios' hands, the studios wore out their last existing prints by making copy after copy for television sale, either from the original negatives, or from the few library theatrical prints. Now many movies are not available from the studio libraries in any form.
There's the entire "Dr Who" story. The BBC had 16mm film prints of each and every episode of Dr. Who. That is, until one person decided to clear out some storage space, and ordered that those piles of old black and white films be incinerated. As a result, hundreds of episodes were lost, and even after an intensive effort to track down the lost episodes, over 100 episodes are still missing. It is rumored that many of those lost episodes are actually in private hands -- that a few people who happened to be around at the right time realized what was happening and "diverted" some of those prints.
As for the labels having access to the original masters, you are right there. If Disney were to put out a DVD of Snow White, and some other company were to put out a DVD of Snow White, taken from a beat up, red 16mm print, the Disney product would win in the marketplace.
On the other hand, in 1972, ABC ordered a brand new, Technicolor dye transfer print of Vertigo for the Sunday Night Movie. They projected the film once, then threw it away. It was retrieved from the garbage bins by a collector, and, having only been run a few times, is most likely the best copy in existance -- NOT owned by the studio that created it.
That's just one example. How many more "best" recordings and films exist in private hands that would "reappear" if the works were allowed to enter the public domain?
Hard to say, but Richard Haines, in his book, "Technicolor Movies", offers the following:
Film collectors were very supportive of this project and allowed me to screen their private collections of rare 35mm and 16mm dye transfer prints in the various formats. It was encouraging to discover that a large percentage of the U.S. features printed in the stable dye transfer process exist in excellent condition through these collectors although few copies exist in studio vaults. Film collectors may turn out to be the unofficial curators of our color film legacy since many dye transfer prints will outlast the negatives they were made from.
Back to the world of audio
Somewhere out there, there are probably collectors with mint, unplayed or only-played-once copies of the original pressings of each and every Ellington and Armstrong record, who treat those records like gold. Not necessarily so for the studios, who used THEIR copies as production tools.
You also said:
And there's still the point of the mainstream artists offsetting the costs of introducing new artists who may or may not become wildly popular.
You greatly underestimate the importance of reissues in financing new projects. A reissue is lucky if it breaks even. The market for reissues is a tiny fraction of the market for new albums. How many reissues go gold?
Ah! The ones that include never-before-released material, whose copyright starts when they are first published.
Besides, if some collector were to put out a fantastic release of a public domain Ellington work, what's to stop the record companies from taking that version, adding their own unreleased material, and selling their own compliation?
You mean like when I check a book out of a library, read it, and return it?
If we didn't have functionally perpetual copyright, we wouldn't have to depend on the major labels for reissues of the Ellingtons and Armstrongs.
If the record companies hadn't bribed Congress to steal the public domain wholesale, by unconstitutionally extending old copyrights again and again, those exact recordings would be regularly entering the public domain, as they should be, and anyone could publish reissues and anthologies, or make the material available on web sites for free.
Another subtle point that I think a lot of people miss.
I have a basic problem with his argument.
... but he also says:
... there's a whole lot of music out there, and people are selective in what they pay for. Someone else may well download the same MP3, decide they love it, and buy the album. I won't, but I have purchased other albums that I first heard on MP3 ... because I liked what I heard.
... promotion is what record companies do best, and you're still competing with them head to head on that front. Maybe that's why you are still not winning.
It's no secret that despite the "rampant piracy" of people trading MP3s last year, the big labels sold more CDs than ever before. People tend to like buying CDs; there's a psychological difference between downloading an MP3 and going to a store and buying a CD. Consumers aren't buying music -- they're buying CDs, with cover art and liner notes and a little poster inside and a few hidden tracks and a few spoken tracks and perhaps a limited edition signed thingie wedged in between the cover art and the CD itself.
This is exactly what I've been saying all along and I agree 100%
Who Napster does compete with, however, are the independent musicans. While independent musicians are trying to convince people that they don't need to buy from major labels, that they can buy direct (for less!) instead, Napster is showing people that they don't need to buy music at all. So on the one hand, you could buy ABCDEffigy at MP3.com, on the other hand, you could scour Napster for all the MP3s and have it anyway.
So which is it? How can it be that MP3s are promotional vehicles for big label consumers, but piracy vehicles for indy music cans? His core argument appears to be that Baptist Death Ray fans are less moral then Metallica fans. He shouldn't really be making that argument -- it's insulting to his fans, and even worse, it's probably not true.
After reading this article, I went and downloaded the most recent BDR MP3 and listened to it. I didn't really care for it, and won't be buying the album, so I just made your download to sales ratio worse. Sorry. That's the reality
I mean, now that indi bands can use the internet doesn't mean that they now have an advantage over the big labels. The big labels are still pouring money into promotion, and if you want to compete with that, sorry to say, you have to do the same. About all you can say is that the internet helps level the playing field a little more. In that sense, the notion that the Internet has completely levelled the playing field is false. The internet can provide a distribution system for little or no cost, but not a promotional system. You can use a web site to promote your album, but if Metallica can spend thousands of dollars on an advertising blitz for their new album, they are likely to do better then you, because, after all, you said it
Eventually (post-patent expiration) there were some oddball half-speed cassette drives for voice transcription.
Also, double-speed cassette drives for inexpensive multitrack recorders. Fostex and Tascam still make some of them.
MD also uses ATRAC lossy compression, which immediately made it unacceptable for its only real potential target market at the time -- Grateful Dead tapers, who stuck with DAT, and moved from there to CDR when the recorders came along.
Computer accessability is a non-issue. MD recorders have SPDIF digital I/O, and every computer SPDIF card I've ever seen ignores SCMS, so you have always been able to get data off of an MD. However, the ATRAC compression degrades the signal quality, so why use it? Also, MD has a 74 minute limit, which makes the recorders a pain in the ass in a field recording situation -- one of the big advantages of moving from cassette to DAT was that you didn't need to worry about the tape flip anymore. With MD, you need to change media in the middle of the set.
MD is an excellent example of a poorly thought out technology. They created a digital format with all of the disadvantages of cassettes -- short media time and degraded sound -- and tried to compete with DAT, with linear, uncompressed audio and a 2 hour running time.
Bad planning.
The fluid is a dielectric, another word for an insulator. It doesn't conduct electricity, so it doesn't short out the motherboard.
Not only will it limit the voting field it will allow for corruption. Digital signatures are not fool proof against a purchased vote.
Digital signatures for voting will enable corruption. One of the advantages of polling places is that they allow you to perform the actual act of casting your vote in secrecy. If someone tells you, "Vote for Joe Fraud and I'll pay you $50, you can, if inclined to do so, say, "Ok", go into the voting booth, vote for someone else, drop your ballet into the collection box, leave the polling place, tell that person, "Yes, I voted for Joe", get your money, and be on your way. This is a strong disincentive to try and buy votes.
If voting is something you do at home, that person can say, "Vote for Joe Fraud and I'll give you $50, and, by the way, I have to watch you do it." You no longer have that crucial moment of voting-booth provided secrecy at the moment of voting. Thus, vote buying becomes practical.
his isn't quite correct. No work created since, IIRC the late 1920's has entered the public domain by means of the copyright expiring. The date is,
coincidentally enough, just prior to when Mickey Mouse cartoons started.
That's not quite right.
Works written before 1923 are all in the public domain. Works published with a copyright notice between 1923 and 1963 are in the public domain unless the copyright owner filed a renewal form with the copyright office at the correct time. All works published with a copyright notice between 1963 and 1977 are still under copyright. All works created since 1978 are copyrighted, whether or not a copyright notice was affixed.
Works that did expire were retroactively given their copyright back - this is why you don't see "It's a Wonderful Life" EVERYWHERE anymore around Christmas. You have to pay for it again.
This is also incorrect. In the case of "It's a Wonderful Life", the copyright on the film expired, and the work was considered to be in the public domain. Later, the original copyright owner determined that both the underlying story and parts of the musical soundtrack had been copyrighted separately, and those copyrights had been renewed. They then acquired those copyrights, and based on those copyrights, were able to suppress the film, not because the film itself was copyrighted, but because showing the film would infringe on the music and story copyrights.
The copyright on the film itself was not retroactively restored though.
I've been a programmer for about 15 years, and I've never met an in-house programmer. I have, however, met, and worked for, people and companies who sell software to hospitals, banks, etc...
It all depends on what businesses you deal with and what sort of computers they use. The job description is usually "systems programmer" or "systems analyst", and these are usually mainframe programming jobs.
This job is only possible because most of the big mainframe packages are distributed as source code, and companies that use them need to customize them. It is difficult to install and maintain an MVS system without having someone on staff who understands IBM assembly language and can do some simple programming. These programming systems typically have hooks in them called "exits" that you need to write short assembly routines for. Most systems programmers spend their time making little customizations or tweaks to large, vendor supplied source-code based systems, not writing big applications.
Look in the technology want ads for the keyword "BAL", which means, "Basic Assembly Language", i.e. IBM 370 assembler. Also, MVS, CICS, and VM. Those are the main in-house programming jobs, and they are always in demand. Even more so, now that most universities don't teach mainframe programming anymore.
Most would rather let someone else deal with developing and maintaining software, so that they can concentrate their efforts on the things that they do best.
The cost of having a software vendor make and maintain custom modifications to their product for your company will generally exceed the salary of a good systems programmer. Remember, we are usually talking small changes, not wholesale development, although some well-established companies develop their own software systems. The advantage to having an in-house programmer is that they can do something this week that would take months of negotiations with the vendor to get done. Also, the in-house programmer is the go-to person when disks crash, software crashes, etc. A systems programmer can rip through a huge core dump, find the symptoms, get on the phone with IBM, and have a five line source code patch downloaded and installed in an hour that fixes that specific bug without touching anything else.
Companies that buy pre-packaged, object-code-only operating systems and software packages don't need systems programmers, because they have no source code to customize. They also have no choice but to install big service packages, if they even have that option, that often introduce more new bugs then they fix. They are at the complete mercy of their software vendors.
Different worlds.
This ALMOST makes MP3 obsolete for portable players ... there is one more factor.
One of the reasons that hard drive based portable MP3 players work well is that when you are playing MP3s, the disk drive only has to wake up occasionally to read a burst of data. I believe that for one of the current products, the drive spins every 10 minutes or so to fill a 15 MB buffer. This helps keep the power consumption on the player down.
Playing uncompressed audio requires that data be read at the rate of:
4 bytes/stereo sample x 44100 samples/second x 60 seconds/minute ~= 10 megabytes/minute.
so playing uncompressed audio using a 15M buffer would require the disk to spin every 90 seconds instead of every 15 minutes. Alternately, a much larger memory buffer could be used. However, large memory chips are expensive and consume more power.
Either way, power consumption is going to go up.
So MP3 may hold onto the niche, for power consumption reasons!
Ok. Enlighten me. Or are you just shooting your mouth off?
I just wanted to add that Asian counterfeiting of DVDs is a red herring in this case. DVDs are counterfeited not by decoding the DVD with a program like DeCSS, but by making a bit-for-bit copy of the entire disc, leaving the encryption intact.
If they were to use DeCSS, they would lose the alternate soundtracks, the menu features, the hidden features -- all of the features that differentiate a DVD from a videocassette.
In short, it would be much more work to use DeCSS to decode the disc, and would lead to an inferior product. Why would media bootleggers be interested in something like that when they can much more easily produce perfectly working counterfeits with a bit-for-bit copy, which they are doing in enormous numbers right now.
VCDs aren't an issue either, because VCDs are generally produced from analog sources -- a camcorder in a theatre, or a screener cassette.
Implying that DeCSS facilitates commercial bootlegging operations is a complete red herring.
People do not bother trying to circumnavigate restrictions so long as they do not feel restricted. Right now, there's nothing you can do with a DVD except to play it. DVD players have no digital outputs, and the contents of the disc are encrypted.
... yet. DeCSS represents a very basic tool -- the interface between editing software and commercial content. Whether artists have legal access to that interface is an issue that will change the face of audiovisual art forever, for better or worse.
Most people could care less, because they only see the DVD in terms of a glorified "digital" videocassette, with a few cute add-ons.
We have no idea what people might want to do with the contents of a DVD, because people don't have access to the raw contents of a DVD. There is the potential for entire new art forms -- just like sampling technology ushered in an entire new form of music -- one that was unimagined before digital technology -- or only practiced by a few individuals with extraordinary resources, such as the Beatles with Revolution 9.
Hypothetically, given complete access to the raw digital data on her DVD collection, and video editing software, a person could sample bits and pieces of different movies, combine them with a soundtrack made by sampling different movies and songs, and create expressive new works of art. Even if those works could not be commercially exploited due to copyright restrictions, that wouldn't matter. A person who developed a talent that way could then go on to create similar works using their own sources, or licensed sources as raw material, thus creating works that could be commercially exploited, and at the same time creating an entire new market for stock footage.
Until it is established that one has a fair use right to get at the raw contents of copyrighted works that you have purchased, most people will not even consider the potential possibilities of such access.
In short, there is an entire world of possibilities for new forms of artistic expression that are sitting dormant, because the MPAA is struggling to ensure, through technological and legal means, that the only experience people can bring to their products are to sit on the couch, eat popcorn, and turn off their brain for two hours.
Back to the sampling analogy, sampling doesn't affect most people only in the sense that most people aren't DJs. However, given the popularity of house, hiphop, and other forms consisting largely of samples, a large percentage of the population are affected by and benefit from the talents of the small percentage of the population who exploit sampling technology to create new works, and a similar potential exists for audiovisual works as well. The technology is just emerging that will make this possible, DeCSS is a big part of it, and the MPAA is determined to stop it.
So I would agree that most people aren't affected by this
That's the real stakes behind DeCSS.
After the Valenti deposition, the MPAA lawyers went before Judge Kaplan to attempt to have the entire deposition sealed from the press. During this hearing, documented here at the cryptome site, Judge Kaplan had some very interesting things to say ...
...
First:
2 THE COURT: That is persuasive only to a point. We
3 are now six weeks away from a trial. If they can't remotely,
4 as you suggest, prove the allegations they have made in this
5 case, embarrassment on the Internet is going to be the least
6 of their problems, because I am going to call this case, one
7 way or another. Obviously, listening to the two of you,
8 somebody is full of baloney. I won't have any hesitation
9 about saying who it is when I see the evidence. So, while I
10 understand this embarrassment notion, I understand both sides
11 are conducting as much of a public relations campaign as a
12 lawsuit, maybe more, but the game all stops next month.
Whew!
And later
24 MS. ABRUTYN: Even if that is the case, there are two
25 possible remedies. The first one is that your Honor could
1 rule the depositions shouldn't go forward in the first place,
2 in which case there would be nothing to have access to, if
3 Mr. Garbus is off on a fishing expedition.
4 THE COURT: I am not accusing him alone.
5 MS. ABRUTYN: Or if both sides are --
6 THE COURT: This is a bass tournament.
I like his sense of humor!
Yes. They are trying to gloss over the fact that programs like DeCSS allow one to watch movies without regard to region coding. This is a non-infringing use of DeCSS -- it allows you to play back DVDs that you have legally purchased in other countries, and, under the doctrine of first sale, you have the legal right to use.
Their "party line", after all, is that the only use of DeCSS is to facilitate illegal copying, and that DeCSS has no non-infringing uses. That's what the entire lawsuit is riding on.
Schumann glossed over the exact same point by claiming that DeCSS had nothing to do with region coding, which was disingenuous to say the least.
I don't understand why Garbus didn't push him on the point. It's a very important point.
The fix is for the movie execs to develop technology which will protect their copywritten material.
... that's the "hacker incubation" time. It's when you spend all day and all night studying machine language specifications, attempting to comment disassembly listings, and working on solving the challenging puzzle that copy protection is.
No, this is not a fix. It can never be a fix. Copy protection does not work as a long term strategy. It can not work.
The reason is extremely basic and fundamental. The problem is that a protection-stripped product (the "warez" version) is intrinsically more valuable then the original, copy protected product, because you can do more with it. Specifically, you can do the very things that the copy protection tries to keep you from doing, whether it is backing it up, as in the Apple II days, or, as in the case of DVD, extracting and manipulating the raw program content.
As any copy protected technology becomes more and more interesting; as more and more material becomes available in that format, the interest in breaking that copy protection will also rise.
The average age of a successful copy-protection cracker appears to be about 16-18 years old. That's the age when you have enough free time, and enough focus to really dig deep into the details of a copy protection system
Cracking copy protection usually does not require sophisticated tools. It does not require advanced training. Mostly, it requires extreme dedication, hard work, and a young mind flexible enough to figure it out. Criminalizing the art of defeating copy protection is nothing more then criminalizing our next generation of computer scientists. We can do it, but wow, what a stupid thing to do.
In other words, you can't regulate 16 year olds. You can't even get them to clean their rooms.
Unfortunately, we have a Congress that was elected on the issues of gun control, the death sentence, and partial birth abortion, so it's not surprising that they understand so little about the Constitution that they would tamper with Copyright the way they have -- by banning reverse engineering, in the apparent hopes that this will "dumb down" the population, at the "small" cost of criminalizing our brightest young people for satisfying their curiosity about their most valued possessions -- their music and video collections.
The real "solution" to copyright infringement is to remove the incentives to infringe. Pay close attention to your pricing, make sure that you are offering a total package that contains more value then just a copy on recordable media. If you're a music publisher, that means including nice artwork, with printed lyrics and liner notes. If you're selling a computer program, that means including good printed documentation. If you're selling a DVD, that means having interesting "extras" on the DVD that people will want to buy, as opposed to just selling the movie itself, which can be decrypted with DeCSS and copied as an MPEG stream.
In short, provide value for your customers money. The same thing that producers have had to do since the beginning of time -- or until our Congress created special laws to relieve the entertainment industry of this "burden".
Copy protection is an illusion. Every copy protection for every interesting product will be broken, given time. If you've based your business model on the illusion that copy protection will allow you to control your customers, then your business will fail. The entertainment industry does not need to base their business model on copy protection, but if they continue to do so, then they will fail as a business.
They will not win. The 16 year olds will win.
Mark my words.
This has very little to do with anti-piracy and a lot to do with the intense, ongoing effort of the recording industry to do away with all of the "details" of copyright law that they don't like.
... Right now if you want an album that is out of print, you can buy it on the used market. This new system will eliminate that. Once an album goes out of print, no one will be able to buy that album anymore. That album will in effect cease to exist when the last person passes away who purchased that album.
... it has nothing to do with "piracy."
The DMCA is designed to outlaw fair use. They don't like that you can legally use excerpts from copyrighted works, so they purchased a law that effectively allows them to "opt out" of fair use by simply encrypting their material.
Now they are out to do away with the first sale doctrine. First sale means that once you buy a copyrighted work, you have the right to turn around and resell your copy. That's why used record stores are legal. That's why you can go to a used record store and buy an old record that is out of print.
If the recording industry is successful in adopting biometrics (which I don't think they have a chance in hell of), then old music will, by design, wither away and die after it goes out of print. Think about it
The industry is well aware that their biggest competitor is their own body of old work. If people spend their time purchasing and listening to old music, that is less money and time they are spending listening to the brand new music that the industry wants us to pay attention to.
That's what this is about
That would explain why recordings of classical music consistantly outsell recordings of bands like N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys.
Consider a practical function of record execs. They filter out the lesser talent and promote the greater talent.
Or one could say that they filter out the less marketable and promote the more marketable.
Yes, I see similarities, but only because your second half is completely wrong.
A quick definition of theft...
taking someone else' PROPERTY without their permission
A quick definition of Copyright infringement....
interfering with someone else' government-granted MONOPOLY without their permission
Bear in mind that this transcript came from a transcription of a court stenographer. Stenographers are much better at recording things like "I object to the form of the question", then things like "http://www.slashdot.org"