Although I believe folks that say that they bought more CDs due to music exposure through Napster, I don't think there are enough of those folks to have caused the CD sale spike.
How are people exposed to new music? Up until a few years ago, the answer was that they heard new songs on the Radio. When Napster came along, that changed for a lot of people. Instead of listening to the same handful of corporate-pumped songs interspersed with commercials, many, many people went to their computer to find new music. Now that Napster is essentially gone, the recording industry has, in effect, severed the only remaining advertising link between their product, and an entire generation of college-age customers.
Now that people have less free money, they aren't buying as many CDs, and record sales are back down.
That's one theory, but consider this. In times of recession, people are more likely to spend money on less expensive luxuries. You may not be able to afford that SUV or plasma TV now, but you can probably afford a reasonably priced dinner out, or a couple of tickets to Lord Of The Rings, or a cup of gourmet coffee from Starbucks, or a CD by a new band.
Traditionally, music sales and movie theatres do good business during hard economic times. During the Great Depression, the movie industry made enough money to finance the construction of whole chains of movie palaces the likes of which we'll never see again! Right now, the movie industry is in an enormous boom -- movies right now are making hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. Why is it that people are perfectly willing to spend $9.50 to see a movie once, but don't want to spend $15.00 for a CD that they can keep? The music industry is in the middle of an enormous market failure, and that market failure strongly correlates to the shutdown of Napster. In a bad economy, the music industry should be making money hand over fist. The fact that sales are collapsing is a red flag that they're doing something horribly, horribly wrong.
Napster's rise and fall happened to coincide with the CD sales spike because the Napster phenomenon was tied to the 'net explosion and subsequent implosion, which were driving the economic train that influenced the CD sales bump.
Theory: Napster created a demand for bandwidth, and the destruction of Napster ruined the market for broadband. What's the point of buying DSL if there's nothing to download? I believe that the shutdown of Napster sent shock waves rippling through the economy that significantly contributed to the current recession. This wasn't something that happened in a vacuum. The shutdown of Napster eliminated a major incentive for consumers to upgrade their internet service, and their computers as well. A lot of things have gone wrong in the tech sector in the last few years, but there's probably nothing that did more to squelch the demand for broadband then the elimination of the only compelling internet service that required significant bandwidth!
Again, I have a lot of respect for people who heard a tune on Napster and went out and bought the album - the recording industry doesn't deserve you guys. But I think that for every principled music listener like that, there were probably five people in their dorm rooms or at home in high school who were just amassing free music because it was cheap and there.
I'll suggest that using Napster to amass music only makes economic sense if you're a broke college student sitting on free bandwidth. Otherwise, it's a complete waste of time and energy, and people eventually figure that out.
Time is money. At any given time, any given individual rarely has both. If you're a young college student, you generally have lots of free time, and very little disposible income. The situation completely changes once you leave school and join the workforce. Once you have a job, suddenly you have disposible income, and very little free time.
What's the "cost" of downloading a "free" album from Napster? Well, you've got to find all of the album tracks, then download them, then re-download all the ones that were corrupted or timed out. Then, assuming that you're really trying to displace a CD purchase, you'll spend time uncompressing the songs, and burning a CD. Finally, you'll probably want to make up a CD label. And, you're running up your modem bill, unless you have broadband. How long did that take you, from beginning to end? Let's say that it took you three hours, from beginning to finished "product." What was the "cost" of this free album? The answer is the cost of the authentic product divided by the amount of time it took you to make the bootleg product.
$15.00 / 3 hours = 3 hours work at $5.00 per hour
In exchange for working for three hours at sub-minimum wage, you now have a product, inferior in every way, to something you could have just purchased in the store for $15.00. That makes no economic sense whatsoever...
... unless you're a college student who has free time but no money, in which case you aren't really a potential current customer anyway, because you can't afford the product!
Had you just stopped at the record store and bought the album, you could have come home, put your new album on the stereo, read through the pretty liner notes, and had a nice piece of art to add to your music collection. Hell, if you really wanted the music in MP3 format, it's a hell of a lot cheaper -- and more reliable -- to buy the CD and rip it yourself.
For someone with any amount of disposible income, the only rational use of Napster is as a music sampling/finding tool.
But what about all those college students who spent all that time amassing huge MP3 collections?
They are the next generation of music collectors! If someone spends hours collecting thousands of hours of music, they're learning to love music and learning to want to collect it. They are probably more likely, once they have disposible income and lose their disposible time, to want to continue their "habit" -- only once they enter the workforce it becomes much more economical for them to feed their "habit" with store-bought CDs!
In effect, when the music industry sets out to trash MP3 collectors, they are trashing their own best future customers! If the music industry succeeds in driving college students away from music collecting, then those college students will find something else to spend their college free-time, and later, their workplace free-income on.
Even if Napster raised their sales, it was also uncontrollable by them, and these guys are all about control.
Exactly! The music industry is all about control. The only reason that the recording companies are able to sign musicians to one-sided rip-off contracts is because they have a virtual monopoly over every aspect of the music market. Take that monopoly away, and the recording industry has no value to artists. The effort to shut down, then cripple Napster, serves one purpose -- to re-consolidate control over what music Americans are exposed to.
Andrew Dalke writes:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" -- Article I, Section 8, Clause 8
That seems to me a very clear statement that a public good--the Progress of Science--can be achieved by keeping "Writings" exclusive to the author.
This is a complete misinterpretation of the clause. If you go back to the original copyright laws -- the ones written by the authors of the Constitution, you will find that the Framers required, as a condition of copyright, that the works be published and distributed to the public in order to qualify for copyright. Works that were kept "exclusive" to the author, were ineligible for copyright. This is how patent law works -- if you want a patent, you must disclose to the public how your invention works. You cannot obtain a patent on a device, and simultaneously keep the operation of that device a secret. This is how copyright originally worked, before the 1976 rewrite.
In phrase "exclusive Right" was intended to be understood in the context of required publication. The "exclusive Right" is the right to exclude others from duplicating your invention or writing, not the keeping of writings "exclusive" to the author. The reason why the granting of exclusive rights -- the right to exclude -- was considered a tolerable evil was quite simple -- Such rights were only granted on condition of publication! The public good was that the works were published so that the public could learn from them, and from their examples, create new works! Hardly the case with the "licensed, unpublished, proprietary code" that Dalke is so fond of.
In fact, the keeping of writings exclusively to the author is exactly the problem that copyright was invented to solve!
The first copyright law covered books, charts, and maps. The inclusion of maps was no accident or afterthought. One of the problems in 18th century navigation was a lack of accurate maps. Mapmaking was a difficult, time-consuming, expensive process -- just as software development is today -- and with no way for mapmakers to protect their investments, they resorted to licensing agreements to restrict their users, just as software companies do today. With all of these secret maps, licensed restrictively to ship captains, very little progress was being made in accurate map-making. The problem was that no one could legally compare maps to each other, because all of the maps were locked up under non-disclosure agreements. Copyright was intended to change the situation by granting a monopoly over the reproduction of books, maps, and charts, in exchange for open publication of the works.
Dalke's misinterpretation turns the entire purpose of the Monopoly clause on its head. On the other hand, he can be forgiven for not understanding the purpose of copyright -- most of copyright law has been turned on its head in the last quarter century, beginning with the disasterous rewriting of the copyright code in 1976, and continuing with the disasterous decision to grant copyright protection to object code, and not requiring the publication of source code.
I have a brief analogy. Imagine that you, a young student, aspiring to become a novelist. A good teacher would tell you to read as many novels as you can by your favorite authors, because it's only by reading other people's great works, that you learn how to create your own great works. Imagine if you were told, "If you want to be a novelist, you may not read other people's novels -- that's illegal. You have two choices -- either learn to write from scratch, starting from grammar books, and moving on to short stories, and finally novels -- or alternatively, you can get a job with a book publisher which will permit you to read other people's novels, under strict non-disclosure agreements.
I don't think that such a system would result in very good novels, but that's exactly the situation with computer software. There's plenty of good and bad computer software, and millions of young computer programmers who would like nothing more then to be able to read and learn from that software, but the vast majority of it is locked up, never to be seen by more then a handful of people. Such software does NOT advance the progress of science. Science is advanced by publication, not by secrecy. Dalke's theory seems to be that things are ok, because "real" researchers like himself have access to the source code through their institutions, but for every elite, privileged researcher who has access to the source code, there are thousands of other people who do not, and are unable to contribute anything. They are locked out.
If we really wanted to improve the state of software, and everyone talks about how poor the quality of commercial software is, the first step is to require, as a condition of copyright, the publication of complete source code in conjunction with any object code. The problem is that our copyright law, particularly with respect to software, is so completely dysfunctional, that it no longer serves its purpose -- to build a public domain that others can draw from, learn, and improve upon.
The sole exception to the software copyright fiasco is the software published under the GPL. By mandating public disclosure of source code, programs published under the GPL fulfill the original purpose -- and mandate of copyright. The results validate the original purpose and design of copyright -- to promote scientific progress, by providing an openly published base of work that can be built and expanded on by others.
I did a test where I wrote a square wave to a DAT tape, using a true SPDIF I/O card. I was able to re-read the data from that tape on the same card, and obtained the identical, pure square wave.
The same test on a SBLive! card produced a distorted, noisy signal -- nothing like the original.
The SBLive card had SPDIF I/O. However, at least on the input, an unadvertised feature of the card was that your signal was converted to analog on the card, then resampled. The result was heavy distortion and added noise. Don't know if this device does the same thing, but Creative has established a nasty reputation for themselves with audiophiles for this misfeature.
The SBlive cards have SPDIF I/O also. What they don't mention is that, instead of passing the digital signal untouched, the soundcard performs a D/A conversion, passes the signal through the mixer, and performs another A/D conversion. So even though your minidisc or DAT is passing data over the SPDIF port, a considerable amount of distortion is added to the signal.
Don't know if this new device has the same problem.
Anyone considering purchasing one of these cards should be aware of Creative labs "Creative" interpretation of "digital I/O"
Some of their soundblaster cards have a digital I/O port -- labelled SPDIF, and in fact, if you connect a DAT deck to the digital I/O port, it will pass a signal.
However, the card does not pass the digital data. Instead, it converts it to analog, then resamples it to digital!
I didn't believe this at first, but I did the test -- I created a.wav file in Soundforge containing a square wave, then used my Turtle Beach Fiji card to write the.wav file to DAT. Then I used the Fiji to re-read the DAT, and recovered the square wave.
When I used the SPD/IF inputs on the Creative soundcard, it was obvious that the signal was being passed through an D/A/D iteration. The signal was extremely distorted and noisy. It wasn't a square wave anymore!
I don't know whether or not this particular device has the same problem, but anyone who is looking for a device for performing accurate digital I/O transfer should BEWARE!
Doesn't matter how little they are. When they accepted royalties on blank CDRs, they sold the rights to copy their music.
The RIAA certainly has the right to petition Congress if they think that the statutory royalties are unfairly low, but that's quite a different matter from claiming that they "aren't getting paid", when in fact they are.
It would be fraud. You purchase a blank audio CDR. Part of that money is paid to the RIAA as a federally-mandated statutory "royalty." A royalty is what you pay in the exchange for the right to copy music.
Now you have the right to copy music from anyone who collected those royalties. Those royalties are collected by, among others, all of the major record labels.
Then they turn around and make it impossible for you to exercise the right that you have paid for.
Imagine that you purchased a new car, then went out to the parking lot to drive your new car away, but found that the auto dealer had placed a Club on the steering wheel. Wouldn't you be screaming bloody murder?
The recording industry's right to attempt to prevent copying ended when they accepted statutory royalty payments on blank digital audio media.
Heh... The "talent" in the major-label, mass-market music industry is in the producers, and songwriters who manufacture the boy bands and girl bands. The performers on stage are interchangable. Kids who can sing are a dime a dozen, and even if they can't sing, there are computerized devices that can put their voices in tune automatically.
It's the people behind the scenes who are the real talent behind bands like N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys. Hell, watch "Pop Stars" on TV sometime. They show exactly, and shamelessly, the process of manufacturing a top 40 band.
Record companies like the arrangement, because instead of dealing with the demands of temperamental young artists, they can deal with seasoned, older professionals who know the game. There is simply no possibility that the Backstreet Boys will put out an edgy, challenging album, because the songwriters and producers behind the act are in it for the money, and they aren't in the spotlight, so they don't have to deal with the ego problems that musician/songwriters often present.
The recording industry makes their money by getting millions of people to all buy the same album at once.
Remember, the ability to control the market is in itself a form of power. If the record labels can no longer control the market -- if they can no longer dictate the top 40 -- then they lose a lot of their power and influence.
The situation now is that if you are a band, and you want to even have a chance at a "Britney Spears" level career, you have to sign a recording contract (and give up almost all of your money and all of your copyrights.) That's because the recording industry controls the radio stations, and has cut deals with distributors, Wal-Mart, etc.
If systems like Napster give young musicians the idea that they can become even moderately successful without signing away their copyrights and profits to a record label, then they would be less inclined to want to sign with a major label.
That is why the record labels are struggling to destroy Napster. It threatens their monopoly over public exposure to new music.
In order to understand this clause you have to understand the situation in 1992. DAT recorders had been put on the market in Japan, but the RIAA had issued a standing threat to sue anyone who tried to sell a DAT recorder in the U.S. As a result, DAT was being frozen out of the U.S. market.
The AHRA was the result of a congressional attempt to get DAT recorders into the U.S. market. This clause was never intended to protect consumers from the recording industry. It was intended to protect hardware manufacturers from copyright holders. That explains the odd phrasing "based on the noncommercial use by a consumer..." The RIAA was threatening to sue based on exactly those grounds, and this clause eliminated that possibility, and opened the door to DAT recorder imports.
I think that the AHRA certainly does, or at least should protect individuals against the RIAA, but the AHRA was originally drafted to resolve a fight between the RIAA and the DAT manufacturers.
I think that Napster made a key mistake by relying on this clause. The reason that users have the right to download music isn't because the law forbids lawsuits. It's because users commonly make mix CDRs from their downloaded music, and those same Napster users are paying statutory royalties on the blank CDRs, and have the right to fill those CDRs by any means, including digital downloads.
You're absolutely right... A slip on my part. I meant to say "Audio CDRs", but I slipped there.
The royalty is only collected on media that is branded for audio use. So when you purchase unbranded CDRs, or CDRs labelled DATA, or DDS tapes (which work the same as DAT tapes) you do not pay any royalty at all.
Where did you hear about royalties on analog cassette tapes? I never heard of such a thing, and I don't think that it exists. The AHRA only requires royalties on digital media.
Finally someone is paying attention to this issue. I've posted this information in a couple of slashdot threads, and here it is again. It's one of the most incredible recording industry lies/ripoffs. Maybe now it will get some attention.
The upshot of it is that every time you purchase a digital audio recorder, or blank digital audio recording media, such as audio CDRs, you pay a small statutory royalty into a fund. This fund is collected by the Federal Government, and turned over directly to the music industry. The name of the fund is the DART fund. DART stands for "Digital Audio Recording Technology". The best source of information on the DART fund is right here
These documents are very interesting. They show how the money was paid out. The law was written to allow all of the major copyright interests to gather together and collect all the money in one lump sum. According to the first report on the page, we find that 99.997% (LITERALLY!) of all of the statutory royalties collected on blank digital audio media (mostly CDRs), and digital audio recording devices went to the following organizations:
Broadcast Music, Inc. (``BMI'');
the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (``ASCAP'');
SESAC, Inc. (``SESAC'');
the Harry Fox Agency (``HFA'');
the Songwriters Guild of America (``SGA'');
and Copyright Management, Inc. (``CMI'')
Copyright Management, Inc. is a blanket organization that represents all of the major record labels.
In other words, all of the people who are raising hell that they aren't being paid when people burn music onto CDRs are being...
you got it...
paid every time a blank CDR is purchased!
However, nowhere in any of these web pages will you find the actual dollar figures. The reports go to laughable extremes to avoid disclosing exactly how much money we are talking about. For instance, according to the report, for the 1995 funds collected, 99.998034% was paid to the music industry, 0.001966% was paid to one individual claimant, and 0.000614% was paid to Ms. Alicia Evelyn.
I obtained the actual royalty yearly figures by contacting Ms. Evelyn, one of the individual claimants. Ms. Evelyn is a songwriter who, unable to obtain any royalty payments from ASCAP for her work, petitioned the copyright office directly for payment. She read me these numbers over the phone which she received in the course of her research. If you do the math, you'll find that she received a few pennies for her efforts. Literally.
Here are the total amounts collected year by year since 1992. These statutory royalties were all paid out to the recording industry:
So, while on the one hand, the music industry is claiming that they are not being paid when individuals make audio CDRs of their music, yet on the other hand, they are quietly collecting millions of dollars in statutory royalties from consumers when they purchase blank digital audio media.
The key here is that these are statutory royalties. They are NOT a tax. They are described as royalties in the law, and they function exactly as royalties.
A royalty is what you pay in exchange for the right to make a copy. This is the ordinary meaning of the term "royalty", as it is used throughout copyright law, and there is absolutely no evidence that it means anything else in the context of the AHRA.
I submit that by accepting these statutory royalty payments from the general public, the recording industry, and every major record label claimed this money, has incurred an obligation to permit the public to exercise the rights that they have paid for, to the tune of millions of dollars per year.
This is NOT an issue of fair use. This is an issue of consumers receiving the rights that they have paid for.
Kudos for Rep. Boucher. We need more representatives of his caliber with his level of committment to the rights of the people.
The one thing that was missing from the movie that I really enjoyed in the book was the poetry and songs. It would be nice if some of the additional footage brings this element back into the story.
This article illustrates the complete failure of the only constitutional purpose of modern copyright law with respect to software -- a failure to establish a public domain, in both senses of the word.
The first sense is the idea of public domain as "uncopyrighted" or "expired copyright." Had Congress resisted the urge to tamper with the copyright laws in 1976, things would be different. Under the pre-1976 copyright regime, copyright lasted for 28 years, with the option to re-register for an additional 28 year term. Under this system, abandonware from the early 1970s would be now regularly entering the public domain. In two or so years, we would start to see the first generation of abandoned PC software enter the public domain -- old Apple II software, games and system software from long-lost companies. Instead, by repeatedly extending copyright, and removing the renewal requirement, Congress has essentially consigned the history of computer software to destruction. Very few of us will live long enough to be allowed to legally copy the software that was written before many of us were even born. Even if we did live long enough, the media will have long decayed, any software from the early days of personal computers will only survive as illegally made copies. In essence, Congress has criminalized the work of the historian and archivist, with no real benefit to anyone.
There is another sense of the "public domain" in which the copyright laws have even more drastically failed. This is the sense of the "public domain" as "the body of work available to the public to read and learn from." The problem is that by allowing copyright on object code, and by allowing software publishers to treat source code as trade secrets, in essence, computer programmers are forced to learn their trade from scratch. Imagine if a student expressed an interest in becoming a writer, and was told, "If you want to be a writer, you will never be permitted to legally read books written by successful, popular authors." I doubt that the result would be better literature, but that our public policy with respect to software -- both by attaching copyright protection to object code, and by allowing the attachment of licenses to software that forbid reverse-engineering -- a technical term for "reading" software.
The primary purpose of copyright was to place knowledge into the public domain. That's why patents must be openly published, and why, originally, only published works were eligible for copyright. Now, with copyright protection automatically attaching to all works, whether or not they are ever published in a form that adds to the public domain, we are back to the bad old days of proprietary licensing of -- and the subsequent destruction of learning and knowledge -- the very problem that copyright was designed to put an end to!
I believe that the real revolution in free software is not a better business model. It is not the sense of community that it fosters. It is not the reduced costs or the improved quality.
The real revolution in free software is that it in effect reestablishes the public domain that has been systematically destroyed by Congress in passing ever more restrictive, destructive copyright legislation. In the year 2002, free software is the public domain. It's the software that you can download, study, modify, improve, sell, and give away. It's the software that you can learn from, instead of just use.
Unlike proprietary software, free software is the software that promotes the progress of science and the useful arts, and anyone who is interested in promoting progress in the field of computer science should strongly consider releasing their software under the GPL, after its commercial potential has been exhausted.
First off, Sonny Bono had nothing to do with the act that bears his name. His named was tacked on to the bill shortly after he died in a skiing accident, as part of the propaganda compaign to ram copyright extension through congress. Whatever musical sins he committed during his lifetime, it's unfair to blame the law on him.
It is important to understand that "copyright" is a government granted privilege, not a natural or human right. The Constitution doesn't recognize monopoly rights as natural or human rights -- the authors found monopolies to be offensive and dangerous. Instead, the Constitution authorizes (but does not require) Congress to grant limited monopolies under certain circumstances:
The Congress shall have power to... promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
Copyright is actually the right to exclude others from repeating and building upon your speech. The framers of the Constitution knew how dangerous it was to grant such a right, and they tried to place congressional limits on the copyright power -- the Constitution says that copyright must be for a limited time, and may only be granted to the author of the work. However, over time, those limits have been eroded to the point that the original purpose of copyright has slipped into the shadows.
The purpose of copyright is not to reward authors and inventors -- the purpose of copyright is to create a public benefit by creating an incentive for authors and inventors to publish their works and inventions.
The modern concept and, hence, privilege, is the access of others to this work beyond the author's control
One of the main purposes of copyright is to remove from the author the right to control access of others to their work. This was evident in our country's first Copyright, in 1790. Originally, copyright was restricted to books, maps, and charts.
Why maps and charts? The problem was navigation. Because there was no copyright law, mapmakers were faced with a dilemma. Making accurate maps was a difficult and expensive process involving ships and expeditions. However, copying a map was as easy as tracing it on thin paper.
Because mapmakers had no protection for their maps, they resorted to strict licensing agreements with ship captains very similar to modern software licenses. Ship captains had to license maps from mapmakers.
The problem was that very little progress was being made in establish accurate maps. Navigators and mapmakers were not able to compare various maps against each other, and correct mistakes. The result was lost ships and lives. The theory behind copyright on maps was that mapmakers would be given protection against piracy, in exchange for open publication of their work. Copyright was invented to replace the mess of private map licensing contracts.
Interestingly, we now find ourselves in the same situation with software -- except that instead of using copyright for its original purpose -- to replace the mess of private licensing contracts -- we are increasingly seeing companies abandon copyright in favor of private licensing contracts -- an admission by deed that modern copyright law has failed.
I'm not sure that the term "copyprivilege" improves on the term "copyright" in a meaningful way. Copyright is not the "right to copy". It is the "right to exclude others from copying." However, it is a privilege. Copyright is granted by, and can be revoked by Congress. There is actually a "misuse of copyright" doctrine, rarely used, that allows for copyrights to be invalidated if used against the public interest.
The word "copyright" is a misfortunate word -- it is misleading in that the word appears to identify a right, instead of a government-created monopoly, which is what a copyright really is.
I think that the reason Nintendo goes after these people is because with a trademark or copyright, you have to enforce your trademark/copyright or else you face some sort of danger of losing the right to defend it.
This is only true of trademarks, not copyrights. Trademarks are completely different from copyrights -- the purpose of a trademark is to associate products with manufacturers.
If a trademark is abandoned, someone else can adopt and use that trademark. This is why trademarks must be defended. If other people start using your trademark, and you don't defend your trademark by suing them, then you can lose your trademark completely. Examples of lost trademarks are "Linoleum," "Escalator," and "Nylon." This is why companies like Xerox fire off letters when people refer to photocopiers generically as "xerox machines." They have to, or they can lose their trademarks. Companies also have to be very careful about how they use their trademarks, or they can lose them. For instance, here is an interesting page on the DuPont web site about proper use of their "Tactel" trademark. that summarizes the general rules of using trademarks.
On the other hand, copyright holders are free to allow or disallow the copying of their works, and this has no effect on the validity of the copyright, or their ability to enforce it in the future. For example, rock bands like The Grateful Dead and Phish explicitly permit the non-commercial copying of concert performances by their fans. They would not do this if doing so would result in the loss of their copyrights on either the songs or the performances.
Here's my favorite Kibo post:
rec.music.gdead 1993-05-17 00:07:36 PST
cjmcdona@rodan.acs.syr.EDU (Crispin J. Mcdonald) writes:
> Q: What are they serving at the Waco Diner these days?
>
> A: Koreshkibobs.
I have no joke, I just like seeing my name mentioned in the same word as
Koresh.
-- Kibo
It's no surprise that free/open source software thrives in the academic community, and is treated with suspicion by the business community.
Software companies make their money by selling copies of software. Obviously, for a software company to make money, it can't give away its primary product. Otherwise, it won't make money! Duh!
Academic institutions, on the other hand, make their money not by selling products, but by selling access to their prestigious programs/courses/professors/faculty in the form of tuition. A university can give away computer source code written by its faculty and staff, because they make their money not by selling software, but by attracting students, and creating incentives for those students to spend ever increasing amounts of tuition money to attend the institution.
The way that professors build their reputation and prestige is by having their work published openly in peer-reviewed journals. This leads to tenure, job security, and, in the long run, career satisfaction. Gift Culture, Schmift Culture. The correct term is "publish or perish", and university scientists don't make their money on sales of their research papers.
So why is it so mysterious and incomprehensible (to Eric Raymond, at least) that young computer programmers, fresh out of four years of immersion in the university "publication = prestige" culture, would be interested in openly publishing their programming work for peer review? No mysterious "gift culture" convolutions are necessary to explain things. Just the understanding that some business ventures produce software as a primary product for sale. Others produce software as a by-product, and actually benefit in giving it away by increased sales of their primary product.
Hmm... I haven't been used MVS in a while, but as of a few years we at least received regular source listings on microfilm. I'll take your word for it that you can't get source code anymore though...
But I do know that VM/ESA, at least as of about two years ago shipped with full source code. I spent 14 years debugging and modifying that code base; I'm not imagining this!
If you are an IBM customer, you have a zero-cost option of receiving the full source code to OS/390 and VM/ESA.
It isn't truly open source, because the source code isn't available to the general public, only to those with operating system licenses..
However, within the mainframe community, IBM VM and MVS customers are perfectly free to collaborate, swap source code, and inspect both IBM's and each other's code. There is an entire user group, called SHARE, started in the 1960s and still active today, that is largely comprised of systems programmers who have access to and work with IBM mainframe operating system source code.
IBM's MVS and VM source code policy is a big reason why IBM's mainframe line is so successful. The system programmers -- the actual front-line workers in major IT shops, rabidly support and fight to keep IBM mainframe systems, because they know that you can't really support and troubleshoot a computer without the sort of full source code level support you get with IBM mainframe operating systems.
Yes, it's a win, but the court made it perfectly clear that it holds no opinion on the REAL stakes in this war.
The real stakes are the loss of the DVDCCA monopoly over permissable player features.
The entire DVD industry, through the DVDCCA, have devised a set of mutual licensing handcuffs that they are all to wear -- DVD player manufacturers may not manufacture DVD players with unencrypted digital outputs. They may not manufacture and sell region-free players. This keeps the ability to make fair use of DVDs out of the hands of consumers.
If the trade secret status of the decryption algorithms is found to be lost, then third parties, not bound by restrictive DVDCCA licenses, may well be free to offer DVD players with such consumer-friendly features as unencrypted digital outputs, no region codes, and the ability to fast-forward over unwanted trailers and FBI "notices", while the entire current DVD player industry will be unable to match those features, due to their contracts with the DVDCCA, without in effect dissolving the entire licensing structure and having to compete in, horrors, an open, unrestricted marketplace.
Those are the real stakes. They have nothing to do with copyright infringement, and everything to do with what may turn out to be a "suicide pact" amongst all DVD hardware manufacturers.
The court offers soothing, reassuring words to the DVDCCA and current player manufacturers:
We express no opinion as to whether permanent injunctive relief may be obtained after a full trial on the complaint, as that issue is not before us.9 We further have no occasion to decide whether damages for Bunner's disclosure would be appropriate in these circumstances. DVDCCA may, of course, bring an action for damages or even injunctive relief against anyone who violates the Act by conduct rather than speech.
"violates the Act by conduct" presumably means to manufacture an unlicensed player, and that's the real reason that the MPAA/DVDCCA is spending millions of dollars suppressing DeCSS.
The non-negotiable condition for inclusion of patented technology should be that the patent be provided on a royalty-free, non-exclusive basis. Any patent not available on such terms should be automatically disqualified.
The message must be clear. Software patents do not serve the public interest. Instead, they constitute at the best roadblocks -- useful ideas off limits to the public, and at the worst, landmines -- when the patent office grants a patent on a widely used technology.
No -- this program reads the keys out of the system files and uses them to decrypt the files.
This program cannot decrypt a wma file without the proper decryption key for that file, which is stored on your machine and accessed by the program. Without that key, this program cannot help you.
Also worth noting is that this program cannot decrypt wma files that are keyed to another machine.
Slashdot Mirror
Although I believe folks that say that they bought more CDs due to music exposure through Napster, I don't think there are enough of those folks to have caused the CD sale spike.
...
How are people exposed to new music? Up until a few years ago, the answer was that they heard new songs on the Radio. When Napster came along, that changed for a lot of people. Instead of listening to the same handful of corporate-pumped songs interspersed with commercials, many, many people went to their computer to find new music. Now that Napster is essentially gone, the recording industry has, in effect, severed the only remaining advertising link between their product, and an entire generation of college-age customers.
Now that people have less free money, they aren't buying as many CDs, and record sales are back down.
That's one theory, but consider this. In times of recession, people are more likely to spend money on less expensive luxuries. You may not be able to afford that SUV or plasma TV now, but you can probably afford a reasonably priced dinner out, or a couple of tickets to Lord Of The Rings, or a cup of gourmet coffee from Starbucks, or a CD by a new band.
Traditionally, music sales and movie theatres do good business during hard economic times. During the Great Depression, the movie industry made enough money to finance the construction of whole chains of movie palaces the likes of which we'll never see again! Right now, the movie industry is in an enormous boom -- movies right now are making hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. Why is it that people are perfectly willing to spend $9.50 to see a movie once, but don't want to spend $15.00 for a CD that they can keep? The music industry is in the middle of an enormous market failure, and that market failure strongly correlates to the shutdown of Napster. In a bad economy, the music industry should be making money hand over fist. The fact that sales are collapsing is a red flag that they're doing something horribly, horribly wrong.
Napster's rise and fall happened to coincide with the CD sales spike because the Napster phenomenon was tied to the 'net explosion and subsequent implosion, which were driving the economic train that influenced the CD sales bump.
Theory: Napster created a demand for bandwidth, and the destruction of Napster ruined the market for broadband. What's the point of buying DSL if there's nothing to download? I believe that the shutdown of Napster sent shock waves rippling through the economy that significantly contributed to the current recession. This wasn't something that happened in a vacuum. The shutdown of Napster eliminated a major incentive for consumers to upgrade their internet service, and their computers as well. A lot of things have gone wrong in the tech sector in the last few years, but there's probably nothing that did more to squelch the demand for broadband then the elimination of the only compelling internet service that required significant bandwidth!
Again, I have a lot of respect for people who heard a tune on Napster and went out and bought the album - the recording industry doesn't deserve you guys. But I think that for every principled music listener like that, there were probably five people in their dorm rooms or at home in high school who were just amassing free music because it was cheap and there.
I'll suggest that using Napster to amass music only makes economic sense if you're a broke college student sitting on free bandwidth. Otherwise, it's a complete waste of time and energy, and people eventually figure that out.
Time is money. At any given time, any given individual rarely has both. If you're a young college student, you generally have lots of free time, and very little disposible income. The situation completely changes once you leave school and join the workforce. Once you have a job, suddenly you have disposible income, and very little free time.
What's the "cost" of downloading a "free" album from Napster? Well, you've got to find all of the album tracks, then download them, then re-download all the ones that were corrupted or timed out. Then, assuming that you're really trying to displace a CD purchase, you'll spend time uncompressing the songs, and burning a CD. Finally, you'll probably want to make up a CD label. And, you're running up your modem bill, unless you have broadband. How long did that take you, from beginning to end? Let's say that it took you three hours, from beginning to finished "product." What was the "cost" of this free album? The answer is the cost of the authentic product divided by the amount of time it took you to make the bootleg product.
$15.00 / 3 hours = 3 hours work at $5.00 per hour
In exchange for working for three hours at sub-minimum wage, you now have a product, inferior in every way, to something you could have just purchased in the store for $15.00. That makes no economic sense whatsoever
... unless you're a college student who has free time but no money, in which case you aren't really a potential current customer anyway, because you can't afford the product!
Had you just stopped at the record store and bought the album, you could have come home, put your new album on the stereo, read through the pretty liner notes, and had a nice piece of art to add to your music collection. Hell, if you really wanted the music in MP3 format, it's a hell of a lot cheaper -- and more reliable -- to buy the CD and rip it yourself.
For someone with any amount of disposible income, the only rational use of Napster is as a music sampling/finding tool.
But what about all those college students who spent all that time amassing huge MP3 collections?
They are the next generation of music collectors! If someone spends hours collecting thousands of hours of music, they're learning to love music and learning to want to collect it. They are probably more likely, once they have disposible income and lose their disposible time, to want to continue their "habit" -- only once they enter the workforce it becomes much more economical for them to feed their "habit" with store-bought CDs!
In effect, when the music industry sets out to trash MP3 collectors, they are trashing their own best future customers! If the music industry succeeds in driving college students away from music collecting, then those college students will find something else to spend their college free-time, and later, their workplace free-income on.
Even if Napster raised their sales, it was also uncontrollable by them, and these guys are all about control.
Exactly! The music industry is all about control. The only reason that the recording companies are able to sign musicians to one-sided rip-off contracts is because they have a virtual monopoly over every aspect of the music market. Take that monopoly away, and the recording industry has no value to artists. The effort to shut down, then cripple Napster, serves one purpose -- to re-consolidate control over what music Americans are exposed to.
This battle is all about control.
Andrew Dalke writes:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" -- Article I, Section 8, Clause 8
That seems to me a very clear statement that a public good--the Progress of Science--can be achieved by keeping "Writings" exclusive to the author.
This is a complete misinterpretation of the clause. If you go back to the original copyright laws -- the ones written by the authors of the Constitution, you will find that the Framers required, as a condition of copyright, that the works be published and distributed to the public in order to qualify for copyright. Works that were kept "exclusive" to the author, were ineligible for copyright. This is how patent law works -- if you want a patent, you must disclose to the public how your invention works. You cannot obtain a patent on a device, and simultaneously keep the operation of that device a secret. This is how copyright originally worked, before the 1976 rewrite.
In phrase "exclusive Right" was intended to be understood in the context of required publication. The "exclusive Right" is the right to exclude others from duplicating your invention or writing, not the keeping of writings "exclusive" to the author. The reason why the granting of exclusive rights -- the right to exclude -- was considered a tolerable evil was quite simple -- Such rights were only granted on condition of publication! The public good was that the works were published so that the public could learn from them, and from their examples, create new works! Hardly the case with the "licensed, unpublished, proprietary code" that Dalke is so fond of.
In fact, the keeping of writings exclusively to the author is exactly the problem that copyright was invented to solve!
The first copyright law covered books, charts, and maps. The inclusion of maps was no accident or afterthought. One of the problems in 18th century navigation was a lack of accurate maps. Mapmaking was a difficult, time-consuming, expensive process -- just as software development is today -- and with no way for mapmakers to protect their investments, they resorted to licensing agreements to restrict their users, just as software companies do today. With all of these secret maps, licensed restrictively to ship captains, very little progress was being made in accurate map-making. The problem was that no one could legally compare maps to each other, because all of the maps were locked up under non-disclosure agreements. Copyright was intended to change the situation by granting a monopoly over the reproduction of books, maps, and charts, in exchange for open publication of the works.
Dalke's misinterpretation turns the entire purpose of the Monopoly clause on its head. On the other hand, he can be forgiven for not understanding the purpose of copyright -- most of copyright law has been turned on its head in the last quarter century, beginning with the disasterous rewriting of the copyright code in 1976, and continuing with the disasterous decision to grant copyright protection to object code, and not requiring the publication of source code.
I have a brief analogy. Imagine that you, a young student, aspiring to become a novelist. A good teacher would tell you to read as many novels as you can by your favorite authors, because it's only by reading other people's great works, that you learn how to create your own great works. Imagine if you were told, "If you want to be a novelist, you may not read other people's novels -- that's illegal. You have two choices -- either learn to write from scratch, starting from grammar books, and moving on to short stories, and finally novels -- or alternatively, you can get a job with a book publisher which will permit you to read other people's novels, under strict non-disclosure agreements.
I don't think that such a system would result in very good novels, but that's exactly the situation with computer software. There's plenty of good and bad computer software, and millions of young computer programmers who would like nothing more then to be able to read and learn from that software, but the vast majority of it is locked up, never to be seen by more then a handful of people. Such software does NOT advance the progress of science. Science is advanced by publication, not by secrecy. Dalke's theory seems to be that things are ok, because "real" researchers like himself have access to the source code through their institutions, but for every elite, privileged researcher who has access to the source code, there are thousands of other people who do not, and are unable to contribute anything. They are locked out.
If we really wanted to improve the state of software, and everyone talks about how poor the quality of commercial software is, the first step is to require, as a condition of copyright, the publication of complete source code in conjunction with any object code. The problem is that our copyright law, particularly with respect to software, is so completely dysfunctional, that it no longer serves its purpose -- to build a public domain that others can draw from, learn, and improve upon.
The sole exception to the software copyright fiasco is the software published under the GPL. By mandating public disclosure of source code, programs published under the GPL fulfill the original purpose -- and mandate of copyright. The results validate the original purpose and design of copyright -- to promote scientific progress, by providing an openly published base of work that can be built and expanded on by others.
I did a test where I wrote a square wave to a DAT tape, using a true SPDIF I/O card. I was able to re-read the data from that tape on the same card, and obtained the identical, pure square wave.
The same test on a SBLive! card produced a distorted, noisy signal -- nothing like the original.
The SBLive card had SPDIF I/O. However, at least on the input, an unadvertised feature of the card was that your signal was converted to analog on the card, then resampled. The result was heavy distortion and added noise. Don't know if this device does the same thing, but Creative has established a nasty reputation for themselves with audiophiles for this misfeature.
The SBlive cards have SPDIF I/O also. What they don't mention is that, instead of passing the digital signal untouched, the soundcard performs a D/A conversion, passes the signal through the mixer, and performs another A/D conversion. So even though your minidisc or DAT is passing data over the SPDIF port, a considerable amount of distortion is added to the signal.
Don't know if this new device has the same problem.
Anyone considering purchasing one of these cards should be aware of Creative labs "Creative" interpretation of "digital I/O"
.wav file in Soundforge containing a square wave, then used my Turtle Beach Fiji card to write the .wav file to DAT. Then I used the Fiji to re-read the DAT, and recovered the square wave.
Some of their soundblaster cards have a digital I/O port -- labelled SPDIF, and in fact, if you connect a DAT deck to the digital I/O port, it will pass a signal.
However, the card does not pass the digital data. Instead, it converts it to analog, then resamples it to digital!
I didn't believe this at first, but I did the test -- I created a
When I used the SPD/IF inputs on the Creative soundcard, it was obvious that the signal was being passed through an D/A/D iteration. The signal was extremely distorted and noisy. It wasn't a square wave anymore!
I don't know whether or not this particular device has the same problem, but anyone who is looking for a device for performing accurate digital I/O transfer should BEWARE!
Doesn't matter how little they are. When they accepted royalties on blank CDRs, they sold the rights to copy their music.
The RIAA certainly has the right to petition Congress if they think that the statutory royalties are unfairly low, but that's quite a different matter from claiming that they "aren't getting paid", when in fact they are.
It would be fraud. You purchase a blank audio CDR. Part of that money is paid to the RIAA as a federally-mandated statutory "royalty." A royalty is what you pay in the exchange for the right to copy music.
Now you have the right to copy music from anyone who collected those royalties. Those royalties are collected by, among others, all of the major record labels.
Then they turn around and make it impossible for you to exercise the right that you have paid for.
Imagine that you purchased a new car, then went out to the parking lot to drive your new car away, but found that the auto dealer had placed a Club on the steering wheel. Wouldn't you be screaming bloody murder?
The recording industry's right to attempt to prevent copying ended when they accepted statutory royalty payments on blank digital audio media.
Heh ... The "talent" in the major-label, mass-market music industry is in the producers, and songwriters who manufacture the boy bands and girl bands. The performers on stage are interchangable. Kids who can sing are a dime a dozen, and even if they can't sing, there are computerized devices that can put their voices in tune automatically.
It's the people behind the scenes who are the real talent behind bands like N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys. Hell, watch "Pop Stars" on TV sometime. They show exactly, and shamelessly, the process of manufacturing a top 40 band.
Record companies like the arrangement, because instead of dealing with the demands of temperamental young artists, they can deal with seasoned, older professionals who know the game. There is simply no possibility that the Backstreet Boys will put out an edgy, challenging album, because the songwriters and producers behind the act are in it for the money, and they aren't in the spotlight, so they don't have to deal with the ego problems that musician/songwriters often present.
The recording industry makes their money by getting millions of people to all buy the same album at once.
Remember, the ability to control the market is in itself a form of power. If the record labels can no longer control the market -- if they can no longer dictate the top 40 -- then they lose a lot of their power and influence.
The situation now is that if you are a band, and you want to even have a chance at a "Britney Spears" level career, you have to sign a recording contract (and give up almost all of your money and all of your copyrights.) That's because the recording industry controls the radio stations, and has cut deals with distributors, Wal-Mart, etc.
If systems like Napster give young musicians the idea that they can become even moderately successful without signing away their copyrights and profits to a record label, then they would be less inclined to want to sign with a major label.
That is why the record labels are struggling to destroy Napster. It threatens their monopoly over public exposure to new music.
In order to understand this clause you have to understand the situation in 1992. DAT recorders had been put on the market in Japan, but the RIAA had issued a standing threat to sue anyone who tried to sell a DAT recorder in the U.S. As a result, DAT was being frozen out of the U.S. market.
..." The RIAA was threatening to sue based on exactly those grounds, and this clause eliminated that possibility, and opened the door to DAT recorder imports.
The AHRA was the result of a congressional attempt to get DAT recorders into the U.S. market. This clause was never intended to protect consumers from the recording industry. It was intended to protect hardware manufacturers from copyright holders. That explains the odd phrasing "based on the noncommercial use by a consumer
I think that the AHRA certainly does, or at least should protect individuals against the RIAA, but the AHRA was originally drafted to resolve a fight between the RIAA and the DAT manufacturers.
I think that Napster made a key mistake by relying on this clause. The reason that users have the right to download music isn't because the law forbids lawsuits. It's because users commonly make mix CDRs from their downloaded music, and those same Napster users are paying statutory royalties on the blank CDRs, and have the right to fill those CDRs by any means, including digital downloads.
You're absolutely right ... A slip on my part. I meant to say "Audio CDRs", but I slipped there.
The royalty is only collected on media that is branded for audio use. So when you purchase unbranded CDRs, or CDRs labelled DATA, or DDS tapes (which work the same as DAT tapes) you do not pay any royalty at all.
Where did you hear about royalties on analog cassette tapes? I never heard of such a thing, and I don't think that it exists. The AHRA only requires royalties on digital media.
Finally someone is paying attention to this issue. I've posted this information in a couple of slashdot threads, and here it is again. It's one of the most incredible recording industry lies/ripoffs. Maybe now it will get some attention.
...
...
The upshot of it is that every time you purchase a digital audio recorder, or blank digital audio recording media, such as audio CDRs, you pay a small statutory royalty into a fund. This fund is collected by the Federal Government, and turned over directly to the music industry. The name of the fund is the DART fund. DART stands for "Digital Audio Recording Technology". The best source of information on the DART fund is right here
These documents are very interesting. They show how the money was paid out. The law was written to allow all of the major copyright interests to gather together and collect all the money in one lump sum. According to the first report on the page, we find that 99.997% (LITERALLY!) of all of the statutory royalties collected on blank digital audio media (mostly CDRs), and digital audio recording devices went to the following organizations:
Broadcast Music, Inc. (``BMI'');
the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (``ASCAP'');
SESAC, Inc. (``SESAC'');
the Harry Fox Agency (``HFA'');
the Songwriters Guild of America (``SGA'');
and Copyright Management, Inc. (``CMI'')
Copyright Management, Inc. is a blanket organization that represents all of the major record labels.
In other words, all of the people who are raising hell that they aren't being paid when people burn music onto CDRs are being
you got it
paid every time a blank CDR is purchased!
However, nowhere in any of these web pages will you find the actual dollar figures. The reports go to laughable extremes to avoid disclosing exactly how much money we are talking about. For instance, according to the report, for the 1995 funds collected, 99.998034% was paid to the music industry, 0.001966% was paid to one individual claimant, and 0.000614% was paid to Ms. Alicia Evelyn.
I obtained the actual royalty yearly figures by contacting Ms. Evelyn, one of the individual claimants. Ms. Evelyn is a songwriter who, unable to obtain any royalty payments from ASCAP for her work, petitioned the copyright office directly for payment. She read me these numbers over the phone which she received in the course of her research. If you do the math, you'll find that she received a few pennies for her efforts. Literally.
Here are the total amounts collected year by year since 1992. These statutory royalties were all paid out to the recording industry:
1992 $118,227.42
1993 $520,162.84
1994 $521,999.64
1995 $473,592.20
1996 $397,152.52
1997 $969,178.06
1998 $1,978,457.93
1999 $3,551,030.86
2000 $5,285,246.32
So, while on the one hand, the music industry is claiming that they are not being paid when individuals make audio CDRs of their music, yet on the other hand, they are quietly collecting millions of dollars in statutory royalties from consumers when they purchase blank digital audio media.
The key here is that these are statutory royalties. They are NOT a tax. They are described as royalties in the law, and they function exactly as royalties.
A royalty is what you pay in exchange for the right to make a copy. This is the ordinary meaning of the term "royalty", as it is used throughout copyright law, and there is absolutely no evidence that it means anything else in the context of the AHRA.
I submit that by accepting these statutory royalty payments from the general public, the recording industry, and every major record label claimed this money, has incurred an obligation to permit the public to exercise the rights that they have paid for, to the tune of millions of dollars per year.
This is NOT an issue of fair use. This is an issue of consumers receiving the rights that they have paid for.
Kudos for Rep. Boucher. We need more representatives of his caliber with his level of committment to the rights of the people.
The one thing that was missing from the movie that I really enjoyed in the book was the poetry and songs. It would be nice if some of the additional footage brings this element back into the story.
This article illustrates the complete failure of the only constitutional purpose of modern copyright law with respect to software -- a failure to establish a public domain, in both senses of the word.
The first sense is the idea of public domain as "uncopyrighted" or "expired copyright." Had Congress resisted the urge to tamper with the copyright laws in 1976, things would be different. Under the pre-1976 copyright regime, copyright lasted for 28 years, with the option to re-register for an additional 28 year term. Under this system, abandonware from the early 1970s would be now regularly entering the public domain. In two or so years, we would start to see the first generation of abandoned PC software enter the public domain -- old Apple II software, games and system software from long-lost companies. Instead, by repeatedly extending copyright, and removing the renewal requirement, Congress has essentially consigned the history of computer software to destruction. Very few of us will live long enough to be allowed to legally copy the software that was written before many of us were even born. Even if we did live long enough, the media will have long decayed, any software from the early days of personal computers will only survive as illegally made copies. In essence, Congress has criminalized the work of the historian and archivist, with no real benefit to anyone.
There is another sense of the "public domain" in which the copyright laws have even more drastically failed. This is the sense of the "public domain" as "the body of work available to the public to read and learn from." The problem is that by allowing copyright on object code, and by allowing software publishers to treat source code as trade secrets, in essence, computer programmers are forced to learn their trade from scratch. Imagine if a student expressed an interest in becoming a writer, and was told, "If you want to be a writer, you will never be permitted to legally read books written by successful, popular authors." I doubt that the result would be better literature, but that our public policy with respect to software -- both by attaching copyright protection to object code, and by allowing the attachment of licenses to software that forbid reverse-engineering -- a technical term for "reading" software.
The primary purpose of copyright was to place knowledge into the public domain. That's why patents must be openly published, and why, originally, only published works were eligible for copyright. Now, with copyright protection automatically attaching to all works, whether or not they are ever published in a form that adds to the public domain, we are back to the bad old days of proprietary licensing of -- and the subsequent destruction of learning and knowledge -- the very problem that copyright was designed to put an end to!
I believe that the real revolution in free software is not a better business model. It is not the sense of community that it fosters. It is not the reduced costs or the improved quality.
The real revolution in free software is that it in effect reestablishes the public domain that has been systematically destroyed by Congress in passing ever more restrictive, destructive copyright legislation. In the year 2002, free software is the public domain. It's the software that you can download, study, modify, improve, sell, and give away. It's the software that you can learn from, instead of just use.
Unlike proprietary software, free software is the software that promotes the progress of science and the useful arts, and anyone who is interested in promoting progress in the field of computer science should strongly consider releasing their software under the GPL, after its commercial potential has been exhausted.
A couple of points.
... promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
First off, Sonny Bono had nothing to do with the act that bears his name. His named was tacked on to the bill shortly after he died in a skiing accident, as part of the propaganda compaign to ram copyright extension through congress. Whatever musical sins he committed during his lifetime, it's unfair to blame the law on him.
It is important to understand that "copyright" is a government granted privilege, not a natural or human right. The Constitution doesn't recognize monopoly rights as natural or human rights -- the authors found monopolies to be offensive and dangerous. Instead, the Constitution authorizes (but does not require) Congress to grant limited monopolies under certain circumstances:
The Congress shall have power to
Copyright is actually the right to exclude others from repeating and building upon your speech. The framers of the Constitution knew how dangerous it was to grant such a right, and they tried to place congressional limits on the copyright power -- the Constitution says that copyright must be for a limited time, and may only be granted to the author of the work. However, over time, those limits have been eroded to the point that the original purpose of copyright has slipped into the shadows.
The purpose of copyright is not to reward authors and inventors -- the purpose of copyright is to create a public benefit by creating an incentive for authors and inventors to publish their works and inventions.
The modern concept and, hence, privilege, is the access of others to this work beyond the author's control
One of the main purposes of copyright is to remove from the author the right to control access of others to their work. This was evident in our country's first Copyright, in 1790. Originally, copyright was restricted to books, maps, and charts.
Why maps and charts? The problem was navigation. Because there was no copyright law, mapmakers were faced with a dilemma. Making accurate maps was a difficult and expensive process involving ships and expeditions. However, copying a map was as easy as tracing it on thin paper.
Because mapmakers had no protection for their maps, they resorted to strict licensing agreements with ship captains very similar to modern software licenses. Ship captains had to license maps from mapmakers.
The problem was that very little progress was being made in establish accurate maps. Navigators and mapmakers were not able to compare various maps against each other, and correct mistakes. The result was lost ships and lives. The theory behind copyright on maps was that mapmakers would be given protection against piracy, in exchange for open publication of their work. Copyright was invented to replace the mess of private map licensing contracts.
Interestingly, we now find ourselves in the same situation with software -- except that instead of using copyright for its original purpose -- to replace the mess of private licensing contracts -- we are increasingly seeing companies abandon copyright in favor of private licensing contracts -- an admission by deed that modern copyright law has failed.
I'm not sure that the term "copyprivilege" improves on the term "copyright" in a meaningful way. Copyright is not the "right to copy". It is the "right to exclude others from copying." However, it is a privilege. Copyright is granted by, and can be revoked by Congress. There is actually a "misuse of copyright" doctrine, rarely used, that allows for copyrights to be invalidated if used against the public interest.
The word "copyright" is a misfortunate word -- it is misleading in that the word appears to identify a right, instead of a government-created monopoly, which is what a copyright really is.
I think that the reason Nintendo goes after these people is because with a trademark or copyright, you have to enforce your trademark/copyright or else you face some sort of danger of losing the right to defend it.
This is only true of trademarks, not copyrights. Trademarks are completely different from copyrights -- the purpose of a trademark is to associate products with manufacturers.
If a trademark is abandoned, someone else can adopt and use that trademark. This is why trademarks must be defended. If other people start using your trademark, and you don't defend your trademark by suing them, then you can lose your trademark completely. Examples of lost trademarks are "Linoleum," "Escalator," and "Nylon." This is why companies like Xerox fire off letters when people refer to photocopiers generically as "xerox machines." They have to, or they can lose their trademarks. Companies also have to be very careful about how they use their trademarks, or they can lose them. For instance, here is an interesting page on the DuPont web site about proper use of their "Tactel" trademark. that summarizes the general rules of using trademarks.
On the other hand, copyright holders are free to allow or disallow the copying of their works, and this has no effect on the validity of the copyright, or their ability to enforce it in the future. For example, rock bands like The Grateful Dead and Phish explicitly permit the non-commercial copying of concert performances by their fans. They would not do this if doing so would result in the loss of their copyrights on either the songs or the performances.
Here's my favorite Kibo post:
rec.music.gdead 1993-05-17 00:07:36 PST
cjmcdona@rodan.acs.syr.EDU (Crispin J. Mcdonald) writes:
> Q: What are they serving at the Waco Diner these days?
>
> A: Koreshkibobs.
I have no joke, I just like seeing my name mentioned in the same word as
Koresh.
-- Kibo
It's no surprise that free/open source software thrives in the academic community, and is treated with suspicion by the business community.
Software companies make their money by selling copies of software. Obviously, for a software company to make money, it can't give away its primary product. Otherwise, it won't make money! Duh!
Academic institutions, on the other hand, make their money not by selling products, but by selling access to their prestigious programs/courses/professors/faculty in the form of tuition. A university can give away computer source code written by its faculty and staff, because they make their money not by selling software, but by attracting students, and creating incentives for those students to spend ever increasing amounts of tuition money to attend the institution.
The way that professors build their reputation and prestige is by having their work published openly in peer-reviewed journals. This leads to tenure, job security, and, in the long run, career satisfaction. Gift Culture, Schmift Culture. The correct term is "publish or perish", and university scientists don't make their money on sales of their research papers.
So why is it so mysterious and incomprehensible (to Eric Raymond, at least) that young computer programmers, fresh out of four years of immersion in the university "publication = prestige" culture, would be interested in openly publishing their programming work for peer review? No mysterious "gift culture" convolutions are necessary to explain things. Just the understanding that some business ventures produce software as a primary product for sale. Others produce software as a by-product, and actually benefit in giving it away by increased sales of their primary product.
Boring old capitalism.
You probably shouldn't have requested delivery by "International Trebuchet"
Now you know.
Hmm ... I haven't been used MVS in a while, but as of a few years we at least received regular source listings on microfilm. I'll take your word for it that you can't get source code anymore though ...
But I do know that VM/ESA, at least as of about two years ago shipped with full source code. I spent 14 years debugging and modifying that code base; I'm not imagining this!
If you are an IBM customer, you have a zero-cost option of receiving the full source code to OS/390 and VM/ESA.
It isn't truly open source, because the source code isn't available to the general public, only to those with operating system licenses..
However, within the mainframe community, IBM VM and MVS customers are perfectly free to collaborate, swap source code, and inspect both IBM's and each other's code. There is an entire user group, called SHARE, started in the 1960s and still active today, that is largely comprised of systems programmers who have access to and work with IBM mainframe operating system source code.
IBM's MVS and VM source code policy is a big reason why IBM's mainframe line is so successful. The system programmers -- the actual front-line workers in major IT shops, rabidly support and fight to keep IBM mainframe systems, because they know that you can't really support and troubleshoot a computer without the sort of full source code level support you get with IBM mainframe operating systems.
Yes, it's a win, but the court made it perfectly clear that it holds no opinion on the REAL stakes in this war.
The real stakes are the loss of the DVDCCA monopoly over permissable player features.
The entire DVD industry, through the DVDCCA, have devised a set of mutual licensing handcuffs that they are all to wear -- DVD player manufacturers may not manufacture DVD players with unencrypted digital outputs. They may not manufacture and sell region-free players. This keeps the ability to make fair use of DVDs out of the hands of consumers.
If the trade secret status of the decryption algorithms is found to be lost, then third parties, not bound by restrictive DVDCCA licenses, may well be free to offer DVD players with such consumer-friendly features as unencrypted digital outputs, no region codes, and the ability to fast-forward over unwanted trailers and FBI "notices", while the entire current DVD player industry will be unable to match those features, due to their contracts with the DVDCCA, without in effect dissolving the entire licensing structure and having to compete in, horrors, an open, unrestricted marketplace.
Those are the real stakes. They have nothing to do with copyright infringement, and everything to do with what may turn out to be a "suicide pact" amongst all DVD hardware manufacturers.
The court offers soothing, reassuring words to the DVDCCA and current player manufacturers:
We express no opinion as to whether permanent injunctive relief may be obtained after a full trial on the complaint, as that issue is not before us.9 We further have no occasion to decide whether damages for Bunner's disclosure would be appropriate in these circumstances. DVDCCA may, of course, bring an action for damages or even injunctive relief against anyone who violates the Act by conduct rather than speech.
"violates the Act by conduct" presumably means to manufacture an unlicensed player, and that's the real reason that the MPAA/DVDCCA is spending millions of dollars suppressing DeCSS.
The non-negotiable condition for inclusion of patented technology should be that the patent be provided on a royalty-free, non-exclusive basis. Any patent not available on such terms should be automatically disqualified.
The message must be clear. Software patents do not serve the public interest. Instead, they constitute at the best roadblocks -- useful ideas off limits to the public, and at the worst, landmines -- when the patent office grants a patent on a widely used technology.
No -- this program reads the keys out of the system files and uses them to decrypt the files.
This program cannot decrypt a wma file without the proper decryption key for that file, which is stored on your machine and accessed by the program. Without that key, this program cannot help you.
Also worth noting is that this program cannot decrypt wma files that are keyed to another machine.