why don't we boycott the mpaa/riaa? the short answer is that we can't. if you want to watch a movie or listen to music, you are automatically drawn into the mpaa/riaa web.
turn on the radio. very little music on the radio is not distributed through the riaa.
watch a teevee show. very veiw teevee programs are distributed by companies that are not members of the mpaa.
with all the consolidation that has been going on in the last ten years, boycotting the media conglomerates is just impossible to do unless you want to go completely without watching new movies or listening to new music. if we tried to boycott, we're pretty much limited to listening/watching the media we've already bought (rentals are out) or can get used.
our situation is like the farmers of the 19th century. they didn't like the railroads. the railroads at the time were just about the most evil money grubbing and greediest corporations around. corporations that were not above market manipulation, lobbying and outright bribery to get what they wanted. but the farmers had to use them, otherwise their crops would have just rotted in the fields. understand that even lobbying organizatios failed. the farmers' trade union, the grange, couldn't even crack the railroad monopoly. not really. the railroad's grip on the shipping industry only finally broke when trucks became available and practical in the '20s and '30s.
the media industry is, of course, currently faced with a similar threat to their monopoly now, the internet. this explains why the riaa is so apparently dead set against independent distribution of music on the internet, particularly when that distribution enables artists to bypass the major record companies. it also explains why the media networks are dead set against teevee recorders like tivo and replay. it's not piracy they are really worried about, but the alternative distribution channels they haven't learned to control, yet.
now the reason the railroads couldn't use legislation against trucks to enforce their shipping monopoly is probably because of the impact of the depression. when the '30s rolled around, the technological and business model advances of the trucking industry were able to take place without interference from a railroad industry weakened by the depression. sure the trucking companies and truck manufacturers were also suffering, but the cost of building a truck, the barrier to entry, is a lot lower than the cost of building a locomotive. plus, after ww2, the auto and truck manufacturers were very wealthy and powerful (the depression acted as a darwinian tool taking out the weak players) and were able to get the federal government to build a national highway system, no doubt over the objection of the railroad lobby.
but today, with the media industry versus the internet, the situation is reversed. the dotcoms collapsed and the technology industry doesn't have the money or resources to fight a protracted battle with the media companies. plus, the media companies are rich and well prepared to get legislation passed in their favor. if the media industry's grip on technology is going to be broken, it will probably have to come after a prolonged slump in media sales starves the media companies for cash. the farmers couldn't do it to the railroads in the 1880s and 1890s, and we can't really do it today.
if you carefully read lauglin's essay, one of the things he laments is the secrecy behind which coorporate sponsored research takes place. i suppose it would be redundant to mention that the elimination of this secrecy is what patents and copyrights were originally designed to prevent.
patents, exclusive licenses to new inventions, are granted for the sole purpose of encouraging inventors to publish, in full detail, their inventions. without patent protection, for example, texas instruments and fairchild semiconductor may not have ever told anyone how to make an integrated circuit. they would have made the first chips under a cloak of secrecy, sold them as black box devices, and bury the chips in epoxy to protect the secret.
unfortunately, industry, the lawmakers, and even the courts have forgotten the whole idea of patents is to publish. industry wants to call patents property that should belong to the holder and anything that weakens the patent is the equivalent of a 'taking'. congress and the patent office are all to happy to agree. and the courts have screwed the matter up further by taking the position that engineers and inventors are not legally qualified to decide if they are infringing on a patent, and so are not allowed to even look at one when trying to come up with new inventions.
there is no need for a portable LP player. you put an LP on when you want to sit and listen to music. you put a cd or mp3 on when you want to take out the trash or run around the block.
if you nwant to play a record backwards, get a belt drive turntable and put a half twist into the belt. the table will now turn counterclockwise. remember to start the record from the center.
it has less to do with being a good company and more to do with being rather poorly managed.
sony is one of those balkanized conglomerates where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. remember, if they were better organized, we'd have minidisc data by now for desktop computers.
in this case, the peecee side of the business plows on ahead without consulting the movie production side of the business. and neither are coordinated with the professional video end of the business. i've interviewed sony executives when writing magazine articles and different parts of the company really don't talk to each other. the company is a dozen different divisions united by a common web site.
Zathrus said Valenti claims that the greatest resource the studios have is their film library. Even if you agree with that, most people would agree that the value of a 70 year old movie is close to zero. Yes, there are rare exceptions -- Gone With the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane, Casablanca. And in those exceptions the studio has been generating revenue for 70 years. Isn't that enough? Have they not been paid for their investment and innovation?
i would say that even a film that's still making money for the copyright holder would be still more valuable in the public domain. the 1946 movie, "It's a Wonderful Life" has made millions for public and commercial teevee even though it lapsed into the public domain through oversight. it's certainly created more value than any of its comtemporary films that are still under copyright.
i don't remember seeing too much classical music on napster or the peer-to-peer networks. i always figured the reasons were:
#1 - classical music listeners have a reference point as to what the music is supposed to sound like (live concerts) unlike most pop music which is manufactured in a recording studio. compared to how classical music is supposed to sound, mp3s suck.
#2 - classical music files are big. a three or four minute song only takes three to six megabytes of storage. a major classical work can be ten times larger. even if you have the disk capacity, you are looking a long download times even on broadband. even if you are willing to download a 30 or 60 megabyte file, how many users are willing to upload 30 or 60 megabytes?
#3 - version management. when you finally track track down a recording of, say, "Mathis der Mahler", which version is it? otto klemperer and the london philharmonic? charles solti and the chicago symphony orchestra? orgazmo podunk and his jug band? mp3 labelling is not efficient at storing all the variables needed to describe classical music.
this comment brought to mind how the supreme court may rule on the case. that they will uphold the copyright term extension but strike down the retroactive portion of the staute.
not trying to take sides, but this is similar to the argument big media companies make. that they pay for creating the music or the film and therefore should have control and the resulting profits. the music industry in particular wants to treat music as "work for hire".
or to put it another way; creating music is the hard part for which the performers should be getting a fixed fee. once the music is recorded, why should the record company constantly pay an additional fee for each copy?
of course, the record companies' argument breaks down because the record companies expect the performers to pay for promotion, production, and distribution costs. these costs would not be born by the performers at all in a true work for hire arrangement. however, performing artists have traditionally fought being treated as workers for hire, probably because they ultimatly want a share of the big profits the record companies see from a successful recording. it may be ironic that many performers might actually make more money under a work for hire arrangement simply because the record companies couldn't make them pay for all the costs associated with promoting a distributing a recording out of their royalties.
also, the black toner of the xerox (formerly tektronix) thermal wax transfer printers (called solid ink by the company. i call them crayons since you can draw with them) has always been free. every time you buy a set of color crayons, there are always a few black crayons included. if you run out of black, you can call the company and they'll send you a box of black crayons.
the wax transfer printers aren't for everyone. when turned on, you have to wait for the wax to melt before you can print, so the printers are not good for casual printing. but the color is nice and the printers are great if you have lots of printing to do.
sure, lots of genre styles fall into the sci-fi category - horror and occult, time travel, monster movies, etc. but be realistic - nothing says SCI-FI better than a good old fashioned space opera. i think its safe to say that we wouldn't have sci-fi as a genre without classic space operas like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, This Island Earth, Forbidden Planet, etc. hell, some of the best science fiction movies and teevee shows ever made were space operas.
if the sci-fi channel is going to turn its back on one of sci-fi's defining genre's, then just what is the point of the channel?
again, smallville will go on for several years (at least five i predict) unless its ratings go completely into the toilet. the reason is that it is a warner brothers produced show on a warner brothers owned network. the broadcaster has a vested interest in seeing the long term success of the show. even the superman character is partly owned by warner brothers through their ownership of dc comics.
plus, the network only has to pay the real costs of producing the show rather than the cost of the show plus a profit for the producer.
the difference with Trek is that it is owned by upn's parent company who has a vested interest in keeping the show on the air for at least the five seasons or so it needs to insure the show will be profitable in syndication.
farscape is owned by hallmark entertainment, an independent producer owned by the greeting card company of the same name. sci fi channel is part of usa networks owned by vivendi universal. since usa networks desn't own the show, it has no incentive to keep it going for suficient seasons to improve long term profitability. also, since usa soesn't own the sho, they have to pay the full retail price instead of just the cost of production.
oddly enough, back in the mists of ancient times, apple did make a combination computer/teevee.
they called it the MacTV. it was based on a mac 550, but with a snappy looking (for the time) black case. read about it here http://www.lowendmac.com/roadapples/mactv.shtml
of course, it went over like a lead balloon. apple may still have some of them in the back corner of their warehouse. they didn't exactly fly off the shelves.
although the integration between the computer and teevee was non existent, part of the reason it flopped had to be that people don't want to watch teevee while sitting up at a desk. we want to lay down or back in bed. we want to sit in a comfy chair. watching teevee and using a computer are fundametally different experiences.
or, alternatively, the computer makers could use this to show that drm technologies just don't sell and that forcing them to include the technology will ruin their business.
probably the most dangerous outcome of this decision is that it could lead to a lot of companies sueing former employees.
if a worker leaves a company, comes up with an idea and then commercializes it, this decision opens the door for the former employer to sue the worker on the grounds that the idea was developed while working for the company. such a lawsuite would force a worker to prove a negative - that an idea was not developed while at the former employer. these types of statements are difficult to prove and the court's decision would have to be based on which side is more believable or who the judge likes better.
the problem could become even worse as employees quit a failing company. such a company, desperate for money, could launch a lot of frivolous lawsuits or sell the right to sue former employees to a law firm. such lawsuits could even be initiated as part of a bankruptcy proceeding. without a clear definition over who owns an idea, employer or employee, this decision could lead to a lot of expensive litigation and cause problems for former employees who decise to become entrepeneurs.
clooney might have been a better batman, but joel schumacher's directing was all wrong for the batman movies. in my opinion it was schumacher's wrong headed directing and the studio's insistance on milking the batman franchise for every last bit of license income that wrecked the franchise.
get over your paranoia about registering on the nytimes web site. they aren't going to sell your personal data. no one's interested in you. get over yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
why don't we boycott the mpaa/riaa? the short answer is that we can't. if you want to watch a movie or listen to music, you are automatically drawn into the mpaa/riaa web.
turn on the radio. very little music on the radio is not distributed through the riaa.
watch a teevee show. very veiw teevee programs are distributed by companies that are not members of the mpaa.
with all the consolidation that has been going on in the last ten years, boycotting the media conglomerates is just impossible to do unless you want to go completely without watching new movies or listening to new music. if we tried to boycott, we're pretty much limited to listening/watching the media we've already bought (rentals are out) or can get used.
our situation is like the farmers of the 19th century. they didn't like the railroads. the railroads at the time were just about the most evil money grubbing and greediest corporations around. corporations that were not above market manipulation, lobbying and outright bribery to get what they wanted. but the farmers had to use them, otherwise their crops would have just rotted in the fields. understand that even lobbying organizatios failed. the farmers' trade union, the grange, couldn't even crack the railroad monopoly. not really. the railroad's grip on the shipping industry only finally broke when trucks became available and practical in the '20s and '30s.
the media industry is, of course, currently faced with a similar threat to their monopoly now, the internet. this explains why the riaa is so apparently dead set against independent distribution of music on the internet, particularly when that distribution enables artists to bypass the major record companies. it also explains why the media networks are dead set against teevee recorders like tivo and replay. it's not piracy they are really worried about, but the alternative distribution channels they haven't learned to control, yet.
now the reason the railroads couldn't use legislation against trucks to enforce their shipping monopoly is probably because of the impact of the depression. when the '30s rolled around, the technological and business model advances of the trucking industry were able to take place without interference from a railroad industry weakened by the depression. sure the trucking companies and truck manufacturers were also suffering, but the cost of building a truck, the barrier to entry, is a lot lower than the cost of building a locomotive. plus, after ww2, the auto and truck manufacturers were very wealthy and powerful (the depression acted as a darwinian tool taking out the weak players) and were able to get the federal government to build a national highway system, no doubt over the objection of the railroad lobby.
but today, with the media industry versus the internet, the situation is reversed. the dotcoms collapsed and the technology industry doesn't have the money or resources to fight a protracted battle with the media companies. plus, the media companies are rich and well prepared to get legislation passed in their favor. if the media industry's grip on technology is going to be broken, it will probably have to come after a prolonged slump in media sales starves the media companies for cash. the farmers couldn't do it to the railroads in the 1880s and 1890s, and we can't really do it today.
if you carefully read lauglin's essay, one of the things he laments is the secrecy behind which coorporate sponsored research takes place. i suppose it would be redundant to mention that the elimination of this secrecy is what patents and copyrights were originally designed to prevent.
patents, exclusive licenses to new inventions, are granted for the sole purpose of encouraging inventors to publish, in full detail, their inventions. without patent protection, for example, texas instruments and fairchild semiconductor may not have ever told anyone how to make an integrated circuit. they would have made the first chips under a cloak of secrecy, sold them as black box devices, and bury the chips in epoxy to protect the secret.
unfortunately, industry, the lawmakers, and even the courts have forgotten the whole idea of patents is to publish. industry wants to call patents property that should belong to the holder and anything that weakens the patent is the equivalent of a 'taking'. congress and the patent office are all to happy to agree. and the courts have screwed the matter up further by taking the position that engineers and inventors are not legally qualified to decide if they are infringing on a patent, and so are not allowed to even look at one when trying to come up with new inventions.
nope, that won't work. turntable moters are usually ac. and if it's battery powered, it won't work at all if the batteries are put in backwards.
there is no need for a portable LP player. you put an LP on when you want to sit and listen to music. you put a cd or mp3 on when you want to take out the trash or run around the block.
if you nwant to play a record backwards, get a belt drive turntable and put a half twist into the belt. the table will now turn counterclockwise. remember to start the record from the center.
it has less to do with being a good company and more to do with being rather poorly managed.
sony is one of those balkanized conglomerates where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. remember, if they were better organized, we'd have minidisc data by now for desktop computers.
in this case, the peecee side of the business plows on ahead without consulting the movie production side of the business. and neither are coordinated with the professional video end of the business. i've interviewed sony executives when writing magazine articles and different parts of the company really don't talk to each other. the company is a dozen different divisions united by a common web site.
Zathrus said
Valenti claims that the greatest resource the studios have is their film library. Even if you agree with that, most people would agree that the value of a 70 year old movie is close to zero. Yes, there are rare exceptions -- Gone With the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane, Casablanca. And in those exceptions the studio has been generating revenue for 70 years. Isn't that enough? Have they not been paid for their investment and innovation?
i would say that even a film that's still making money for the copyright holder would be still more valuable in the public domain. the 1946 movie, "It's a Wonderful Life" has made millions for public and commercial teevee even though it lapsed into the public domain through oversight. it's certainly created more value than any of its comtemporary films that are still under copyright.
http://www.despair.com/consulting.html
"if you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem."
i don't remember seeing too much classical music on napster or the peer-to-peer networks. i always figured the reasons were:
#1 - classical music listeners have a reference point as to what the music is supposed to sound like (live concerts) unlike most pop music which is manufactured in a recording studio. compared to how classical music is supposed to sound, mp3s suck.
#2 - classical music files are big. a three or four minute song only takes three to six megabytes of storage. a major classical work can be ten times larger. even if you have the disk capacity, you are looking a long download times even on broadband. even if you are willing to download a 30 or 60 megabyte file, how many users are willing to upload 30 or 60 megabytes?
#3 - version management. when you finally track track down a recording of, say, "Mathis der Mahler", which version is it? otto klemperer and the london philharmonic? charles solti and the chicago symphony orchestra? orgazmo podunk and his jug band? mp3 labelling is not efficient at storing all the variables needed to describe classical music.
now all we need is jabberwocky in l33t.
s la tions/index.html
http://www76.pair.com/keithlim/jabberwocky/tran
this comment brought to mind how the supreme court may rule on the case. that they will uphold the copyright term extension but strike down the retroactive portion of the staute.
not trying to take sides, but this is similar to the argument big media companies make. that they pay for creating the music or the film and therefore should have control and the resulting profits. the music industry in particular wants to treat music as "work for hire".
or to put it another way; creating music is the hard part for which the performers should be getting a fixed fee. once the music is recorded, why should the record company constantly pay an additional fee for each copy?
of course, the record companies' argument breaks down because the record companies expect the performers to pay for promotion, production, and distribution costs. these costs would not be born by the performers at all in a true work for hire arrangement. however, performing artists have traditionally fought being treated as workers for hire, probably because they ultimatly want a share of the big profits the record companies see from a successful recording. it may be ironic that many performers might actually make more money under a work for hire arrangement simply because the record companies couldn't make them pay for all the costs associated with promoting a distributing a recording out of their royalties.
also, the black toner of the xerox (formerly tektronix) thermal wax transfer printers (called solid ink by the company. i call them crayons since you can draw with them) has always been free. every time you buy a set of color crayons, there are always a few black crayons included. if you run out of black, you can call the company and they'll send you a box of black crayons.
the wax transfer printers aren't for everyone. when turned on, you have to wait for the wax to melt before you can print, so the printers are not good for casual printing. but the color is nice and the printers are great if you have lots of printing to do.
well, it should be a surprise.
sure, lots of genre styles fall into the sci-fi category - horror and occult, time travel, monster movies, etc. but be realistic - nothing says SCI-FI better than a good old fashioned space opera. i think its safe to say that we wouldn't have sci-fi as a genre without classic space operas like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, This Island Earth, Forbidden Planet, etc. hell, some of the best science fiction movies and teevee shows ever made were space operas.
if the sci-fi channel is going to turn its back on one of sci-fi's defining genre's, then just what is the point of the channel?
again, smallville will go on for several years (at least five i predict) unless its ratings go completely into the toilet. the reason is that it is a warner brothers produced show on a warner brothers owned network. the broadcaster has a vested interest in seeing the long term success of the show. even the superman character is partly owned by warner brothers through their ownership of dc comics.
plus, the network only has to pay the real costs of producing the show rather than the cost of the show plus a profit for the producer.
the difference with Trek is that it is owned by upn's parent company who has a vested interest in keeping the show on the air for at least the five seasons or so it needs to insure the show will be profitable in syndication.
farscape is owned by hallmark entertainment, an independent producer owned by the greeting card company of the same name. sci fi channel is part of usa networks owned by vivendi universal. since usa networks desn't own the show, it has no incentive to keep it going for suficient seasons to improve long term profitability. also, since usa soesn't own the sho, they have to pay the full retail price instead of just the cost of production.
oddly enough, back in the mists of ancient times, apple did make a combination computer/teevee.
they called it the MacTV. it was based on a mac 550, but with a snappy looking (for the time) black case. read about it here http://www.lowendmac.com/roadapples/mactv.shtml
of course, it went over like a lead balloon. apple may still have some of them in the back corner of their warehouse. they didn't exactly fly off the shelves.
although the integration between the computer and teevee was non existent, part of the reason it flopped had to be that people don't want to watch teevee while sitting up at a desk. we want to lay down or back in bed. we want to sit in a comfy chair. watching teevee and using a computer are fundametally different experiences.
yes, well college students are the target victi... er, markets for drm.
or, alternatively, the computer makers could use this to show that drm technologies just don't sell and that forcing them to include the technology will ruin their business.
probably the most dangerous outcome of this decision is that it could lead to a lot of companies sueing former employees.
if a worker leaves a company, comes up with an idea and then commercializes it, this decision opens the door for the former employer to sue the worker on the grounds that the idea was developed while working for the company. such a lawsuite would force a worker to prove a negative - that an idea was not developed while at the former employer. these types of statements are difficult to prove and the court's decision would have to be based on which side is more believable or who the judge likes better.
the problem could become even worse as employees quit a failing company. such a company, desperate for money, could launch a lot of frivolous lawsuits or sell the right to sue former employees to a law firm. such lawsuits could even be initiated as part of a bankruptcy proceeding. without a clear definition over who owns an idea, employer or employee, this decision could lead to a lot of expensive litigation and cause problems for former employees who decise to become entrepeneurs.
clooney might have been a better batman, but joel schumacher's directing was all wrong for the batman movies. in my opinion it was schumacher's wrong headed directing and the studio's insistance on milking the batman franchise for every last bit of license income that wrecked the franchise.
get over your paranoia about registering on the nytimes web site. they aren't going to sell your personal data. no one's interested in you. get over yourself.
that's it. get her a realdoll
www.realdoll.com
jkinney3 said
"I have had problems with that store as well. That manager, in fact. They must be desparate for ANYONE to work there as a manager to keep that bozo."
maybe that manager should look for a job at fry's.
it's all in good fun until someone loses an eye.