...firstly, I give you credit for finding the least logical argument I have heard in a long time. Secondly, I find your implication that posting on a message board is equivalent to artistic expression hilarious. Thirdly, slashdot contains amateurs. The content is not to the quality level of professional news outlets. While there are most certainly advantages to their system (I'm here aren't I?) to say that one is a replacement for the other is ridiculous. The reason the American music industry is famous the world over is simple - America pays more. Anyone with the talent to do it knows that a contract with Tower Records is worth somewhere between a fortune and a personal island in Dubai.
Your suggestion is basically that human time has no value. Your assertion is that the music industries talent, production staff, and management should all simply donate their time for the good of P2P piracy. You'll forgive me if I miss the line forming for that job, I'm kind of distracted. All of the uncontrollable laughter does that; you understand.
But you see, while the files of music are non-scarce, the music itself is. There are only so many songs available, and just because everyone can have a copy doesn't make it a public good. The problem lies in supply. Unless someone starts subsidizing the music industry (God help us) then a profit motive is necessary to keep music coming. I like the idea of one band; they had the file for free, but asked people to pay for it. They didn't have to, but they could. It was that bands highest earning album ever, and it addressed both issues.
I think that Pirate Bay is the excuse, and Wikileaks is the point. Obviously, the government's job, in their view at least, is to gather as much power as they can as quickly as they can. That being said, I think that this bit of power is not nearly so important to them as getting rid of one of the great enemies of tyranny in the world. There is no greater threat to an oppressive govt than educated people who understand what is happening within it. And I have to say, the American govt is at a dead run for oppressive. Religion and propaganda in the schools, daily removal of civil liberties, decrease in checks and balances, increasing refusal to respond to even the simplest of questions, Putin-style publicity stunts (W went on Deal, for God's sake), offshore prisons, it's all there. Give it five years and you will see another industry privatized under the guise of "public wellbeing" (where have I heard that before . . . it sounds so familiar). All good fun till someone gets hurt, as they say. Although, apparently the people getting hurt are the only ones not having fun, no one else acknowledges their existence. Ignore the illegal torture behind the curtain.
The suggestion that the government is going to stop doing something because it is pointless, hopeless, and ridiculously expensive is to assume that the government makes decisions based on data. The government, at least the American one, makes decisions based on emotion: their emotion, the publics perceived emotion, the emotion of the international community, take your pick. While the war on drugs is highly profitable in certain places, those where they are allowed to simply steal everything someone owns when they catch them with a dime bag and call it distribution, but overall it is costing a fortune. A fortune which costs more than every other crime on the books combined. After all, wars are expensive right? Particularly when you have to pretend that you are enforcing a law even as you call it a war.
Now, with drugs you have something fairly concrete. Drugs are a physical thing, you can take them into evidence, examine them, get fingerprints off the bags, and do chemical testing on them. Digital files, on the other hand, are not nearly so concrete. Which is not to mention that the majority of people support the war on drugs. They do this for a number of reasons, not the least of which is simply because the government said it was wrong before they were born, and they grew up hearing it, so CLEARLY it's true.
Illegal downloading, however, is something which is being outlawed now. The only way they pulled off the war on drugs, when it was new, was to play the race card. Cocaine supposedly made black people fly into rages and kill white men and rape their wives. Heroine had a similar effect on the Chinese, by the govt's report. Marijuana was being brought in by Mexicans to lull whites to sleep so they could be robbed. You think I'm kidding, but look it up. There is, to this day, a written policy within the American government that says that, when faced with a question about drugs, every action should be taken to make them sound like they are the single worst thing to ever happen to the human race. Many went so far as to suggest that drugs were created by the devil. Once they had three basic classifications of drugs, that is uppers, downers, and hallucinogens, they could associate mostly any new drug with one of the big three. Meth with coke, acid with weed, etc.
Now, music piracy is very hard to scare people with. It is difficult to say that someone who listens to illicit Metallica is going to be driven to go on a tri-state killing spree with any gravitas or credibility. Their only option to make it sinister is to go to sites like Wikileaks. It is difficult to make a case that the government should be protected from the peoples finding out about their lies and dirty laundry. I am not saying it can't be done, but it presents a problem.
The next issue, of course, is that prosecution is unlikely to be a far cry more effective than the lawsuits are now. They work some times, but not enough that people are running scared. And anyone who is willing to put out info on the govt on Wikileaks will not be scared of jail. There are Tibetans who are willing to risk a Chinese jail (and by jail I mean firing squad) to post things. Penalties are already in place, more penalties rarely effect the people willing to risk their career to get something out. They act for the same reason people rebel - they do what they think is right. I have never had any information worth posting, but I can promise you that if they put a firing squad behind me to watch me make the post and kill me afterwards, it will still get to the net, and after it hits the net you can't stop it.
Which, of course, leads to the final point. They are trying to police the internet. They outlawed Wikileaks once, took down its site, and 7 more were up by the end of the next day. They took down Napster, and 20 more were in place by the end of the year. They even tried to take down YouTube before realizing how royally outclassed they were and giving up altogether. It just can't be done, because the people who REALLY know computers won't work towards the goal of destroying the greatest thing the world has ever built. The internet has changed the playing field, and the government will never quite learn how to play the new game.
Sorry for the WOT there, apparently slashdot is taking a stand against the paragraph.
Slashdot Mirror
...firstly, I give you credit for finding the least logical argument I have heard in a long time. Secondly, I find your implication that posting on a message board is equivalent to artistic expression hilarious. Thirdly, slashdot contains amateurs. The content is not to the quality level of professional news outlets. While there are most certainly advantages to their system (I'm here aren't I?) to say that one is a replacement for the other is ridiculous. The reason the American music industry is famous the world over is simple - America pays more. Anyone with the talent to do it knows that a contract with Tower Records is worth somewhere between a fortune and a personal island in Dubai.
Your suggestion is basically that human time has no value. Your assertion is that the music industries talent, production staff, and management should all simply donate their time for the good of P2P piracy. You'll forgive me if I miss the line forming for that job, I'm kind of distracted. All of the uncontrollable laughter does that; you understand.
Many thanks.
But you see, while the files of music are non-scarce, the music itself is. There are only so many songs available, and just because everyone can have a copy doesn't make it a public good. The problem lies in supply. Unless someone starts subsidizing the music industry (God help us) then a profit motive is necessary to keep music coming. I like the idea of one band; they had the file for free, but asked people to pay for it. They didn't have to, but they could. It was that bands highest earning album ever, and it addressed both issues.
I think that Pirate Bay is the excuse, and Wikileaks is the point. Obviously, the government's job, in their view at least, is to gather as much power as they can as quickly as they can. That being said, I think that this bit of power is not nearly so important to them as getting rid of one of the great enemies of tyranny in the world. There is no greater threat to an oppressive govt than educated people who understand what is happening within it. And I have to say, the American govt is at a dead run for oppressive. Religion and propaganda in the schools, daily removal of civil liberties, decrease in checks and balances, increasing refusal to respond to even the simplest of questions, Putin-style publicity stunts (W went on Deal, for God's sake), offshore prisons, it's all there. Give it five years and you will see another industry privatized under the guise of "public wellbeing" (where have I heard that before . . . it sounds so familiar). All good fun till someone gets hurt, as they say. Although, apparently the people getting hurt are the only ones not having fun, no one else acknowledges their existence. Ignore the illegal torture behind the curtain.
The suggestion that the government is going to stop doing something because it is pointless, hopeless, and ridiculously expensive is to assume that the government makes decisions based on data. The government, at least the American one, makes decisions based on emotion: their emotion, the publics perceived emotion, the emotion of the international community, take your pick. While the war on drugs is highly profitable in certain places, those where they are allowed to simply steal everything someone owns when they catch them with a dime bag and call it distribution, but overall it is costing a fortune. A fortune which costs more than every other crime on the books combined. After all, wars are expensive right? Particularly when you have to pretend that you are enforcing a law even as you call it a war. Now, with drugs you have something fairly concrete. Drugs are a physical thing, you can take them into evidence, examine them, get fingerprints off the bags, and do chemical testing on them. Digital files, on the other hand, are not nearly so concrete. Which is not to mention that the majority of people support the war on drugs. They do this for a number of reasons, not the least of which is simply because the government said it was wrong before they were born, and they grew up hearing it, so CLEARLY it's true. Illegal downloading, however, is something which is being outlawed now. The only way they pulled off the war on drugs, when it was new, was to play the race card. Cocaine supposedly made black people fly into rages and kill white men and rape their wives. Heroine had a similar effect on the Chinese, by the govt's report. Marijuana was being brought in by Mexicans to lull whites to sleep so they could be robbed. You think I'm kidding, but look it up. There is, to this day, a written policy within the American government that says that, when faced with a question about drugs, every action should be taken to make them sound like they are the single worst thing to ever happen to the human race. Many went so far as to suggest that drugs were created by the devil. Once they had three basic classifications of drugs, that is uppers, downers, and hallucinogens, they could associate mostly any new drug with one of the big three. Meth with coke, acid with weed, etc. Now, music piracy is very hard to scare people with. It is difficult to say that someone who listens to illicit Metallica is going to be driven to go on a tri-state killing spree with any gravitas or credibility. Their only option to make it sinister is to go to sites like Wikileaks. It is difficult to make a case that the government should be protected from the peoples finding out about their lies and dirty laundry. I am not saying it can't be done, but it presents a problem. The next issue, of course, is that prosecution is unlikely to be a far cry more effective than the lawsuits are now. They work some times, but not enough that people are running scared. And anyone who is willing to put out info on the govt on Wikileaks will not be scared of jail. There are Tibetans who are willing to risk a Chinese jail (and by jail I mean firing squad) to post things. Penalties are already in place, more penalties rarely effect the people willing to risk their career to get something out. They act for the same reason people rebel - they do what they think is right. I have never had any information worth posting, but I can promise you that if they put a firing squad behind me to watch me make the post and kill me afterwards, it will still get to the net, and after it hits the net you can't stop it. Which, of course, leads to the final point. They are trying to police the internet. They outlawed Wikileaks once, took down its site, and 7 more were up by the end of the next day. They took down Napster, and 20 more were in place by the end of the year. They even tried to take down YouTube before realizing how royally outclassed they were and giving up altogether. It just can't be done, because the people who REALLY know computers won't work towards the goal of destroying the greatest thing the world has ever built. The internet has changed the playing field, and the government will never quite learn how to play the new game. Sorry for the WOT there, apparently slashdot is taking a stand against the paragraph.