However, the "invisible hand" can't guide you, if you aren't responsible for your own actions. Corporate law provides so much of a buffer, that people act with impunity. If more people understood that, then maybe it'd become politically feasible to revamp the corporate system. Right now, any attack on corporations will be assumed as some "wild-eyed, discredited Communist plot.":-)
I'd just like to point out that there are some good reasons for corporations existing as legal entities on their own. Even though this can lead to "evil empires" like Microsoft or Disney or the like, it also provides a necessary amount of protection to providers of a product, providing incentive for investment and production. People aren't liable beyond what they've invested in the corporation. Which means that if the corporation is sued over something, they can't lose their homes over it. Let's face it, a business can be the victim of a Stupid Lawsuit just as easily as an individual. This promotes a willingness to go ahead and take some risks and innovate and such.
And incorporation isn't just for the protection of businesses; the square dance club of which my parents and I used to be members was considering incorporating itself just in case someone fell and injured himself while square dancing and decided to sue.
Don't get me wrong, when a corporation starts acting badly, it needs to be slapped down. But if we didn't have some form of liability-shielding, then people would be too scared to advance anything. While "corporatization" may be a problem in the modern world, I don't think that blind Katzian anti-corporatism is the solution. --
Some papers accept letters and longer editorial pieces from citizens. I just got a 500-word article on why Microsoft should share responsibility for the Love Bug published in my paper, the Springfield (Missouri) News-Leader. Very nice presentation of it, too--a little picture of me, plus an anti-Microsoft editorial cartoon pulled from their files. I also got one published earlier on the Melissa virus, so they know me.
See if your paper accepts editorials or shorter letters. Get the word out to the community. --
Characters cannot be copyrighted, and hence have copyrights expire on them. They are trademarked, and trademarks do not expire. They do, however, have to be continually defended or they are lost, like "kleenex," "xerox," and so forth. The copyrights of the stories with the characters in them would expire, which would mean they could be compiled onto tapes and sold by other people, and perhaps have derivative works based on them...but that's not quite the same thing, and it's sloppy language to say that it is.
Copyrights held by corporations are not infinite--they expire some length of time after their creation. It's just that the length of time keeps getting longer and longer.
Do I remember wrongly, or isn't the DMCA meant to bring the United States into full compliance with some international copyright treaty or other that's already in effect in most other places? Or am I thinking of something else? --
You forgot to mention that, yes, people are free to ignore the law if they like--but they'll still face the consequences if they're caught, just like anybody else. There are pleas for guilty, innocent, no contest, and so forth...but there aren't any pleas for "it doesn't apply to me because I don't agree with it." --
Y'know, until a few days ago I never actually realized there were stories in the Your Rights Online area of Slashdot that weren't shown on the front page.
That being said, it's a real pity that the story on the 2600 freedom-to-link case didn't make it to the front page. The only reason given was that it was a long, long article that not everybody might want to read. So what? People should still know about it. It provides some dynamite anti-DMCA arguments that I hadn't even known about. Check it out. --
Has anyone considered that linking to that Playboy article, with the nudie pics, might open Slashdot to prosecution under those laws that say you can't let people access prurient material without verifying that they're over 18?
Um...did anyone catch the mention in the article that he was travelling "then to Vancouver, where MGM is filming a movie about an open-source hero battling a Pacific Northwest software monopoly"?
I'm terrified beyond all capacity for rational thought. --
I've borrowed this CD-ROM from a friend and, to my annoyance, I find there doesn't seem to be any decent way to read the annotated Fire on Linux...and even on Windows it kind of sucks. Does anyone have any solutions? --
If you're looking for really good science fiction stories, why not check out Alexandria Digital Literature, aka "Alexlit"? It has a neat can't-miss system where you tell it what you thought of what books you've read, and based on the tastes of the hundreds of other Alexlit patrons, suggests some other books you might like. And there's a lot of science fiction and fantasy included in the list. Once you've rated a few hundred stories, you'll start to find ones you've never read appearing, and you can even print out the list to take to the library with you. --
According to the article, Napster removed 317,337 users. Doesn't this strike anyone as just a little...odd? I mean, if you remove the first 7 and the comma, you have the "d00dsp33k" word "31337".
So perhaps Napster was trying to send a hidden message...they weren't just removing users, they were removing "eleet" users.
If you really feel that way about it, why don't you email Ken Jenks, webmaster of Mind's Eye, and see if you can implement his "no page views without banner ad loads" software, so that anyone who tried to view your page with ads disabled would get a "Sorry, you have to load the banner ad to view this page" notice?
Of course, that would also break compatibility with Lynx, but hey, who uses that old thing anymore anyway (sarcasm sarcasm)? --
Some content on the internet is free, but some content you must pay for. Viewing advertisements it paying with your time. If you can block out advertisements, you are no longer paying. You are essentially stealing.
Personally, I regard these advertisements as stealing my meager 33.6KBPS bandwidth from me, and in some cases holding the rest of the webpage hostage until they load themselves. The animated ones are especially bad in this regard, as they're essentially not just one image, but several. And this is saying nothing of the privacy issues that allow people like DoubleClick to track where you go from page to page with them even without using cookies. No thanks; include me out.
Furthermore, almost no money is ever made from banner ads anyway; most people ignore them and almost nobody ever clicks on them. Incidentally, the technology to block ad-blockers does exist. Mind's Eye Fiction uses it in their "read our stories for free by viewing banner ads" payment option. If places really wanted to force their viewers to see the banners, they could use it.
I regard banner ads as being similar to spam email, and feel justified in using whatever means I can to block them.
I also use the "mute" button on my TV set during commercials...does that make me a bad man, too? --
as far as #1 being theft, i'm not so sure. i know the law is against the idea, but radios and libraries give away music all the time, and that is legal.
Do you refer to the giveaway CDs they give out in contests? Those are promo copies sent by the record label. Or do you refer to the process of beaming music over the air?
Radio stations can transmit music because they pay for each and every song they transmit. License fees go to ASCAP and BMI, who in turn apportion some quantity of them to the record labels and, presumably, the artists. They do this in order to get people to listen to them, so that companies will be inclined to pay them money to advertise. This advertising money offsets the cost of licensing the songs and, if they're lucky, gives them a profit.
There's no licensing process involved for Napster. There's nobody to pay a license fee, nor is there any easy way to keep track of what songs get transmitted to whom without it being an invasion of privacy.
On the other hand, My MP3.com could very well make license arrangements (and according to a news blurb I saw recently, has licensed with BMI) to continue using their music in their CD streaming program.
Anyway...it all comes down to this. If you want to download MP3s via Napster & Gnutella, go for it. Heck, if you want to make them available, do that too. But bear in mind that, even though it's unlikely they'll go after you for breaking the law, they would be perfectly within their rights if they wanted to do so...and whether you think the law is right or not, you'd still have to answer to it. --
Can anyone provide the exact legal citation for the case decision or law that states that personal copies to different formats are covered by fair use?
I've sort of started taking this for granted, as have some others, but in an argument/discussion with some folks on the SFFnet newsgroup, it occurred to me that I'm not sure what basis there is for this supposition, or the exact nature of the decision. I'd like to know this, both for my personal knowledge and as ammunition in my argument.:)
Metallica, you have complained about people trading your works as commodities, not art. However, there are also people out there creating further art based on your work, such as animé music videos or "mixes." (For example, there's a "Starcraft mix" of "One" circulating, which adds voice clips and sound effects from the computer game Starcraft, very effectively in fact.) You could never find something like this through more "normal" music channels, and while it may well be a derivative work, it nonetheless is a work of creativity--that is to say, art. What is your feeling on fans creating such art based on yours? Would fans even bother to do so if they didn't feel it had artistic merit already? --
You hate double standards? Why is it ok for you to deprive the poor helpless advertiser of the revenue they need to keep their cupboards stocked with Ramen noodles, but it is not ok to similarly deprive poor crybaby Lars of the revenue he might have had if you bought his crappy CD instead of downloading it?
I'm not likely to be arrested for using Junkbuster, as much as the advertisers might want to. I could morally justify my stance on using Junkbuster, but that's entirely beside the point, for this and for MP3s. (Besides, the technology to block ad blockers does exist, and pages could use it if they wanted--but they know that this would cause such an uproar among their users that, compared to the handful of pennies of revenue they lose from it, it's not worth it.)
You will say, the difference is legality - distributing illegal mp3s is illegal whereas junkbuster is not yet illegal. Frankly, if the advertisers had their way, they would make it illegal
That may be so...but they don't.:) The fact of the matter is, everyone who uses Napster has some sort of moral justification for it, simply so they don't have to be all depressed that they're such an Evil, Bad Person for trading MP3s. No, they tell themselves, "Hey, it's not as bad as (foo)," or "The law is wrong," or even "Nobody will ever find out."
The simple point I'm trying to make, and which people keep ignoring and shoving their moral justifications at me, is that 99.99% of the sort of MP3-trading that Napster promotes is illegal. Regardless of whether you think it's wrong, or I think it's wrong, or whether you or I somehow manage to talk ourselves out of thinking it's wrong. Regardless of whether we think Metallica are a bunch of (expletive deleted)s for filing suit. It's against the law. All the Jon Katzian "But...but information wants to be free! This will lead to Big Brother controlling the Internet!" slippery slopes in the world will not alter that one simple fact.
I am just so tired of all the moral justification and posturing, on both sides. If you knowingly do something illegal, you face the consequences, and all the moral posturing in the world won't save you. What's so hard to understand about that? --
I don't know the exact citations for it (and IANAL, etc.) but I seem to recall that insofar as Diamond's RIO MP3 player went, the judge ruled that a computer is not considered a "digital recording device" and hence not subject to the restrictions pertaining thereunto. I've also heard that there's case law precedent that "spaceshifting" (ie, making a copy for compatibility purposes, like copying your CDs to tape to play in your car) is considered fair use. Of course, this is all hearsay, but I'm pretty sure it's somewhere near right...or else all those blank tape manufacturers who put "Perfect for CD!" on their boxes would get sued into oblivion. --
Firstly...Metallica does own all their own songs. Not the label, not the RIAA. That's why they're so mad about this.
Secondly...two wrongs don't make a right. Just because the RIAA and recording studios may be mistreating or stealing money from their artists (and frankly, given that the only people making this claim are people who want to support their MP3 habit, I tend to look upon it at least a little skeptically) doesn't give you the right to steal more. "Only a few pennies of our money go to the artist--so we won't pay them anything!" That's so much better.
But that's really not the point, and it's an argument I don't intend to go into. That's the whole point of the thing, really. No matter how much you might try to morally justify it...it all comes down to "because I want to" in the end.
You can't go about breaking laws just because you think they're wrong and expect the legal system to say, "Oh, well, since you thought the law was wrong, you didn't have to obey it." If you want to break the law out of moral disagreement with it, and the record companies, go ahead. That is how the Civil Rights movement came about, after all. But a lot of Civil Rights activists did spend time in jail because of it... --
The problem here is determining when an MP3 is illegal. How can it be said which of these are trading illegally. Is it a legal requirement that for me to have a legal copy of something I already own, I have to have made the copy personally?
I'm not a lawyer, but some things I've seen elsewhere suggest that it might be.
But regardless--if you make it so that even one person who does not have it already can download it...bang, that's illegal. Frankly, the only people who would really need to download an MP3 are the people who don't already have the CD--if they did, and had a computer of any decent speed at all, they could more easily rip it themselves than find it on the 'net. --
I haven't seen a shred of evidence that mp3 trading actually harms artists...
How much evidence (non-anecdotal) have you seen that it helps them, either?
Frankly, if an artist doesn't want their stuff being used a certain way, art or commodity or what-have-you, it's their right to say that, whether they're being hurt or not. It's their property, that they created with the sweat of their brows. If it were a piece of furniture they built, or a car they put together, or the like, you wouldn't quarrel with their right to do with it as they wished. But just because copying it doesn't also take it away from them, that makes it okay?
It's not okay. Even though I might be inclined to do it, for probably much the same justification as you do, I would do it knowing it's illegal and probably against the artist's wishes. (For that matter, a lot of things we do would probably be against the artist's wishes--if we check out a book from the library or buy it from a used bookstore, they don't get a penny of that purchase, either. But that's just more self-justification.) If they want to shut down the avenues that make it possible, then they have that right. We might not like it. We might wish it were not so. But that doesn't change the legality of the thing right now.
In regard to Katz's article, whether it's "right" or not really isn't the issue. That it is illegal is. And while we might villify Metallica for taking the measures they are, we cannot, cannot say they are not entitled to. --
Yes, it is illegal, but why are the legal folks so focused on Napster, when, with a small amount of effort you can find the MP3s you're looking for using other means? Have I missed the lawsuits against altavista for providing an MP3 search engine which facilitates illegal MP3 trading?
Well, Napster (and Gnutella) are the first methods of finding MP3s that can be guaranteed to work a substantial amount of the time, as opposed to being 99% dead links. The RIAA didn't really deem it worth their time to interfere too much when it was more in the nature of a scavenger hunt than reaching out and plucking a conveniently-hanging apple off a tree.
Napster and Gnutella are the first killer apps for MP3-finding. And that was sufficient to make the Powers That Be sit up and take notice.
Personally, I'm having trouble seeing where Napster will have a leg to stand on in court. They're not fooling anybody; they honestly are making a profit-based business out of piracy, as much as they might hem and haw and disclaim otherwise. There simply are not enough "legit" MP3s out there for it to be worth founding otherwise.
Gnutella, at least, has more potential for legitimate use...but when anything can be supplied with equal ease, what will be supplied is that for which there is most demand--that's simple Economics. And it seems there's more demand for pirated MP3s, movies, software, and so forth, that can be gotten without burying your screen 'neath a mountain of banner ads and porn sites, than there is for any more "legitimate" information.
I'm sure all the sociologists (and other social scientists) out there are thanking their lucky stars that they're alive today to observe the consequences of this new paradigm breaking across the world; there must be enough papers, articles, and books in this to last from now until doomsday. It's an exciting time.
A friend of mine pointed out, in a chatroom discussion, that this is very similar to prior rapid-distribution paradigms, like the printing press, radio, television, magnetic tape...they all brought on a similar controversy when they came on the scene. Perhaps we should look to history when we try to guess where this new file-sharing paradigm will go next. --
Slashdot Mirror
And incorporation isn't just for the protection of businesses; the square dance club of which my parents and I used to be members was considering incorporating itself just in case someone fell and injured himself while square dancing and decided to sue.
Don't get me wrong, when a corporation starts acting badly, it needs to be slapped down. But if we didn't have some form of liability-shielding, then people would be too scared to advance anything. While "corporatization" may be a problem in the modern world, I don't think that blind Katzian anti-corporatism is the solution.
--
See if your paper accepts editorials or shorter letters. Get the word out to the community.
--
--
Do I remember wrongly, or isn't the DMCA meant to bring the United States into full compliance with some international copyright treaty or other that's already in effect in most other places? Or am I thinking of something else?
--
You forgot to mention that, yes, people are free to ignore the law if they like--but they'll still face the consequences if they're caught, just like anybody else. There are pleas for guilty, innocent, no contest, and so forth...but there aren't any pleas for "it doesn't apply to me because I don't agree with it."
--
That being said, it's a real pity that the story on the 2600 freedom-to-link case didn't make it to the front page. The only reason given was that it was a long, long article that not everybody might want to read. So what? People should still know about it. It provides some dynamite anti-DMCA arguments that I hadn't even known about. Check it out.
--
Or am I thinking of the wrong thing?
--
I'm terrified beyond all capacity for rational thought.
--
"Individualists of the world, unite!"
--
I've borrowed this CD-ROM from a friend and, to my annoyance, I find there doesn't seem to be any decent way to read the annotated Fire on Linux...and even on Windows it kind of sucks. Does anyone have any solutions?
--
If you're looking for really good science fiction stories, why not check out Alexandria Digital Literature, aka "Alexlit"? It has a neat can't-miss system where you tell it what you thought of what books you've read, and based on the tastes of the hundreds of other Alexlit patrons, suggests some other books you might like. And there's a lot of science fiction and fantasy included in the list. Once you've rated a few hundred stories, you'll start to find ones you've never read appearing, and you can even print out the list to take to the library with you.
--
So perhaps Napster was trying to send a hidden message...they weren't just removing users, they were removing "eleet" users.
Something to think about, anyway.
--
Try reading the end of one of the stories under "pay by viewing banner ads" with Lynx, or with ads turned off.
--
Of course, that would also break compatibility with Lynx, but hey, who uses that old thing anymore anyway (sarcasm sarcasm)?
--
Personally, I regard these advertisements as stealing my meager 33.6KBPS bandwidth from me, and in some cases holding the rest of the webpage hostage until they load themselves. The animated ones are especially bad in this regard, as they're essentially not just one image, but several. And this is saying nothing of the privacy issues that allow people like DoubleClick to track where you go from page to page with them even without using cookies. No thanks; include me out.
Furthermore, almost no money is ever made from banner ads anyway; most people ignore them and almost nobody ever clicks on them. Incidentally, the technology to block ad-blockers does exist. Mind's Eye Fiction uses it in their "read our stories for free by viewing banner ads" payment option. If places really wanted to force their viewers to see the banners, they could use it.
I regard banner ads as being similar to spam email, and feel justified in using whatever means I can to block them.
I also use the "mute" button on my TV set during commercials...does that make me a bad man, too?
--
Radio stations can transmit music because they pay for each and every song they transmit . License fees go to ASCAP and BMI, who in turn apportion some quantity of them to the record labels and, presumably, the artists. They do this in order to get people to listen to them, so that companies will be inclined to pay them money to advertise. This advertising money offsets the cost of licensing the songs and, if they're lucky, gives them a profit.
There's no licensing process involved for Napster. There's nobody to pay a license fee, nor is there any easy way to keep track of what songs get transmitted to whom without it being an invasion of privacy.
On the other hand, My MP3.com could very well make license arrangements (and according to a news blurb I saw recently, has licensed with BMI) to continue using their music in their CD streaming program.
Anyway...it all comes down to this. If you want to download MP3s via Napster & Gnutella, go for it. Heck, if you want to make them available, do that too. But bear in mind that, even though it's unlikely they'll go after you for breaking the law, they would be perfectly within their rights if they wanted to do so...and whether you think the law is right or not, you'd still have to answer to it.
--
Can anyone provide the exact legal citation for the case decision or law that states that personal copies to different formats are covered by fair use?
I've sort of started taking this for granted, as have some others, but in an argument/discussion with some folks on the SFFnet newsgroup, it occurred to me that I'm not sure what basis there is for this supposition, or the exact nature of the decision. I'd like to know this, both for my personal knowledge and as ammunition in my argument. :)
Can anyone help me out?
--
Metallica, you have complained about people trading your works as commodities, not art. However, there are also people out there creating further art based on your work, such as animé music videos or "mixes." (For example, there's a "Starcraft mix" of "One" circulating, which adds voice clips and sound effects from the computer game Starcraft, very effectively in fact.) You could never find something like this through more "normal" music channels, and while it may well be a derivative work, it nonetheless is a work of creativity--that is to say, art. What is your feeling on fans creating such art based on yours? Would fans even bother to do so if they didn't feel it had artistic merit already?
--
The simple point I'm trying to make, and which people keep ignoring and shoving their moral justifications at me, is that 99.99% of the sort of MP3-trading that Napster promotes is illegal. Regardless of whether you think it's wrong, or I think it's wrong, or whether you or I somehow manage to talk ourselves out of thinking it's wrong. Regardless of whether we think Metallica are a bunch of (expletive deleted)s for filing suit. It's against the law. All the Jon Katzian "But...but information wants to be free! This will lead to Big Brother controlling the Internet!" slippery slopes in the world will not alter that one simple fact.
I am just so tired of all the moral justification and posturing, on both sides. If you knowingly do something illegal, you face the consequences, and all the moral posturing in the world won't save you. What's so hard to understand about that?
--
I don't know the exact citations for it (and IANAL, etc.) but I seem to recall that insofar as Diamond's RIO MP3 player went, the judge ruled that a computer is not considered a "digital recording device" and hence not subject to the restrictions pertaining thereunto. I've also heard that there's case law precedent that "spaceshifting" (ie, making a copy for compatibility purposes, like copying your CDs to tape to play in your car) is considered fair use. Of course, this is all hearsay, but I'm pretty sure it's somewhere near right...or else all those blank tape manufacturers who put "Perfect for CD!" on their boxes would get sued into oblivion.
--
Secondly...two wrongs don't make a right. Just because the RIAA and recording studios may be mistreating or stealing money from their artists (and frankly, given that the only people making this claim are people who want to support their MP3 habit, I tend to look upon it at least a little skeptically) doesn't give you the right to steal more. "Only a few pennies of our money go to the artist--so we won't pay them anything!" That's so much better.
But that's really not the point, and it's an argument I don't intend to go into. That's the whole point of the thing, really. No matter how much you might try to morally justify it...it all comes down to "because I want to" in the end.
You can't go about breaking laws just because you think they're wrong and expect the legal system to say, "Oh, well, since you thought the law was wrong, you didn't have to obey it." If you want to break the law out of moral disagreement with it, and the record companies, go ahead. That is how the Civil Rights movement came about, after all. But a lot of Civil Rights activists did spend time in jail because of it...
--
But regardless--if you make it so that even one person who does not have it already can download it...bang, that's illegal. Frankly, the only people who would really need to download an MP3 are the people who don't already have the CD--if they did, and had a computer of any decent speed at all, they could more easily rip it themselves than find it on the 'net.
--
Frankly, if an artist doesn't want their stuff being used a certain way, art or commodity or what-have-you, it's their right to say that, whether they're being hurt or not. It's their property, that they created with the sweat of their brows. If it were a piece of furniture they built, or a car they put together, or the like, you wouldn't quarrel with their right to do with it as they wished. But just because copying it doesn't also take it away from them, that makes it okay?
It's not okay. Even though I might be inclined to do it, for probably much the same justification as you do, I would do it knowing it's illegal and probably against the artist's wishes. (For that matter, a lot of things we do would probably be against the artist's wishes--if we check out a book from the library or buy it from a used bookstore, they don't get a penny of that purchase, either. But that's just more self-justification.) If they want to shut down the avenues that make it possible, then they have that right. We might not like it. We might wish it were not so. But that doesn't change the legality of the thing right now.
In regard to Katz's article, whether it's "right" or not really isn't the issue. That it is illegal is. And while we might villify Metallica for taking the measures they are, we cannot, cannot say they are not entitled to.
--
Napster and Gnutella are the first killer apps for MP3-finding. And that was sufficient to make the Powers That Be sit up and take notice.
Personally, I'm having trouble seeing where Napster will have a leg to stand on in court. They're not fooling anybody; they honestly are making a profit-based business out of piracy, as much as they might hem and haw and disclaim otherwise. There simply are not enough "legit" MP3s out there for it to be worth founding otherwise.
Gnutella, at least, has more potential for legitimate use...but when anything can be supplied with equal ease, what will be supplied is that for which there is most demand--that's simple Economics. And it seems there's more demand for pirated MP3s, movies, software, and so forth, that can be gotten without burying your screen 'neath a mountain of banner ads and porn sites, than there is for any more "legitimate" information.
I'm sure all the sociologists (and other social scientists) out there are thanking their lucky stars that they're alive today to observe the consequences of this new paradigm breaking across the world; there must be enough papers, articles, and books in this to last from now until doomsday. It's an exciting time.
A friend of mine pointed out, in a chatroom discussion, that this is very similar to prior rapid-distribution paradigms, like the printing press, radio, television, magnetic tape...they all brought on a similar controversy when they came on the scene. Perhaps we should look to history when we try to guess where this new file-sharing paradigm will go next.
--
Giving them to other people is.
--